Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[drogulus]

    Age played very little role for Sanders, no more than for Trump or HRC. If you're a member of the status quo elite, you're too old at 40. I do think Dems would benefit from an infusion of new talent and move them up.

    Warren is my age, and she will be 71 in 2020. She's well placed to appeal to working class voters, the "good kind" of liberal elitist.

    With Warren as VP candidate HRC would have won. All they would have needed is for Dems to turn out in larger numbers in the battleground states, not record numbers but in line with expectations. Warren would have done it. HRC probably ruled out Warren fairly early for understandable reasons. They don't fit, HRC is as mainstream center left as they come, and Warren is the other thing. "The other thing" is where Dems must go. If all they get is 40 year old triangulaters Dems will have their own extinction to worry about.

How is Warren "set free"?  I mean, she can give potboiler speeches as is her wont, but she's hobbled legislatively.

     Let me count the ways:

     1) She's in the minority party, free to attack in any direction. She doesn't have Obama and HRC millstones to drag around. She's already attacking Obamacare from the left, where it's far more vulnerable than from the "repeal and replace, no really!" right.

     2) The status quo Dems have been repudiated.

     3) Sanders now looks like a better choice. Even if he lost, the party would have a better message going forward, all they would need is a better candidate to send it.

     4) Warren is that better candidate. She is smarter, a much better polemicist, and she knows how to talk to non elite people in a way they can understand and based on their experience, agree with.

     

That´s all very nice but why didn´t you post it before November 8? AFAIR, you were only too happy that the GOP will explode and did not express the slightest concern about Hillary and the Dems not winning or employing wrong tactics... 

     I thought she would win anyway, and I saw Warren as my insurance policy that she wouldn't drift into triangulatory hell. What I think we Dems have learned is we can't coast any more, and the Dem crisis has arrived sooner than I would have guessed. But I've been promoting Warren as the Dem future for some time now, whether that future arrives with her leading it or with a 40 year old political virgin.

[Todd]

Age played very little role for Sanders, no more than for Trump or HRC.

True-ish for Sanders only in that he appealed to the most fickle group of voters.

I know aging people never like to hear that it is their time to go, but as James Carville told Bill Clinton in the 90s, the world is basically run by men in their 50s.  One can add women to that truism if they like. 

     3) Sanders now looks like a better choice. Even if he lost, the party would have a better message going forward, all they would need is a better candidate to send it.

     4) Warren is that better candidate. She is smarter, a much better polemicist, and she knows how to talk to non elite people in a way they can understand and based on their experience, agree with.

A better candidate is needed, that is true.  Warren is not that candidate.

[Mahlerian]

     When Hillary used the "deplorables" epithet she committed the "Kinsley gaffe", telling a truth that rebounds back on you. Her goal should have been to win over as many borderline deplorables as possible, particularly in the Rust belt areas of the "Blue Wall" that crumbled and elected Trump, but also throughout the Red zone.

Her saying it was not necessarily a mistake, but what needed to happen for the ploy to work was for people  to hear the comment that "half of Trump's supporters are in this basket of deplorables" and want to disassociate themselves from such a group.  Instead, people heard, and Trump encouraged them to hear, that they personally were being insulted and accused, and that kind of thing always backfires.

[André]

Nor is it something that should be blown out of proportion.  The Klan is a boogeyman from another era.  Yes, there are still some Klan chapters around, but there are some chapters with only a handful of members.  White nationalists/neo-Nazis/skinheads still exist, but they are rare as well.  They lack much in the way of money or organizational power.  I live in Oregon, a state that had the exclusion of African Americans written into the state constitution, and it was nearly run by the Klan in the 1920s.  Even in the deepest red parts of the state - the east and the south - the remnants of these organizations are gone.  In their place are evangelical and fundamentalist Christians for whom abortion, gun rights, and a weak federal government are the big issues.  There are certainly portions of the country where white supremacists are more widespread, but their numbers are limited.  The SPLC lists 892 hate groups and 998 anti-government patriot groups in the US today.  That's a lot, to be sure, but these groups are not teeming with thousands or tens of thousands of members.  The risk must be put into proper context.

.

The definition of patriot in the Merriam-Mebster on line dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriot

Why then are "patriot groups" more often than not made up of white male right wingers ? Are there gay patriot groups? Black patriot groups ? Latino patriot groups ?

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the term has come to describe something quite specific to a certain type of people, slipping away from its original, more inclusive definition. Aren't all Americans patriots ? As in most other countries, I mean.

[Todd]

Why then are "patriot groups" more often than not made up of white male right wingers ? Are there gay patriot groups? Black patriot groups ? Latino patriot groups ?

I invite you to review the SPLC website.  They track everything they deem to be hate groups and patriot groups, which does include some militant minority groups.

Generally, anti-government patriot groups in the US tend to be all white, or overwhelming majority white.  That is why I made it a point to include them in my response, and to use the complete phrase anti-government patriot groups, rather than what you purposely decided to bold, because I recognize what they are.  I also recognize the limits of their membership and influence. 

[Todd]

Instead, people heard, and Trump encouraged them to hear, that they personally were being insulted and accused, and that kind of thing always backfires.

[drogulus]

Her saying it was not necessarily a mistake, but what needed to happen for the ploy to work was for people  to hear the comment that "half of Trump's supporters are in this basket of deplorables" and want to disassociate themselves from such a group.  Instead, people heard, and Trump encouraged them to hear, that they personally were being insulted and accused, and that kind of thing always backfires.

     It was an unforced error to attack Trump that way, but in a more general sense HRC was wrong to attack Trump more than she advocated for stronger policies to help workers. Instead she spent too much time disparaging Trump, a fat target to be sure, but she didn't realize that this fight was asymmetric. Trump damaged her by attacking her as an out of touch elitist, it didn't matter what HRC said in response as long as it attacked Trump supporters, too. She needed to go around, over or tunnel under Trump and Repubs to get to the abandoned workers. Insulting them is just stupid, and reinforced the out of touch narrative.

[Mahlerian]

Clinton took one segment of Trump supporters (a small segment imo) and used it to describe at least half of Trump voters, over 30 million people.   It takes no encouragement to hear it as an insult, since there is no other way to describe calling a large group of people deplorable than as an insult.  All she did by saying it was to prove her status as an elitist.

I was not instulted; I was pleased when she outed herself in so dramatic a fashion.

How does it prove that she's an elitist?  Are you saying that calling a group of people reprehensible makes one elitist in and of itself?  Wouldn't that reflect on Trump, too, for disparaging far larger groups of people than Clinton ever did?

If disparaging others makes one an elitist, why would Trump, who disparaged the most people and the largest groups of people, not be more of an elitist than Clinton was?

The point remains that Trump twisted what she said and used it to rally support to himself on the basis of a fabricated version of it.

[Todd]

How does it prove that she's an elitist?

She said it while at a star-studded fundraiser where the top ticket price was $250,000 and over $6 million was raised. 

[Todd]

am optimistic that Republicans will be the majority party for years to come if Dems keep at it.

Rove got ahead of himself and thought something similar.  He was wrong.  In the post-war era, there has only been one case where the same party held the White House for three consecutive terms - Reagan/Bush.  Trump, while underestimated through the election and probably now, is not Reagan, nor is Pence Bush.  Triumphalism should be avoided at all costs and Republicans should be merciless in their electoral strategy.

[Tritone]

This, I find rather disturbing.

A list of things Trump promises to put into immediate effect. (See the link to the times article for more details).

Regarding No 20, I thought continues to advocate a more sweeping ban on Muslim immigrants.
No 17 I find confusing, since undocumented immigrants with criminal records are already subject to deportation.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/11/us/politics/what-trump-wants-to-change.html

It's priceless;  Clinton used the huge euphemism "undocumented" to describe illegal immigrants and "deplorables" to describe her own American nationals!!  No wonder she lost.

[Mahlerian]

No, he did not twist what she said.  There is only one way to understand what she said.

Yes, he did twist what she said.  When he went to his rallies and said "She's calling you deplorable," he was using Hillary Clinton's words that half of his supporters were in a "basket of deplorables" to make all of his supporters feel that they personally were being attacked, which was neither the intent nor the meaning of what she said.

I am glad to see that Democrats continue to misread the dynamics of this election.  I am optimistic that Republicans will be the majority party for years to come if Dems keep at it.

I'm not a Democrat.  I've never been affiliated with any party and my politics are moderate.

[Mahlerian]

Have you ever voted for a Republican?

Not in the past few presidential elections, though I have occasionally voted for Republicans for state and local offices.  I fail to see how not usually supporting Republican candidates makes me a Democrat.

[André]

I invite you to review the SPLC website.  They track everything they deem to be hate groups and patriot groups, which does include some militant minority groups.

Generally, anti-government patriot groups in the US tend to be all white, or overwhelming majority white.  That is why I made it a point to include them in my response, and to use the complete phrase anti-government patriot groups, rather than what you purposely decided to bold, because I recognize what they are.  I also recognize the limits of their membership and influence.

"Anti-government" and "patriot" are two different terms. But here they are cobbled together. I didn't see the word "patriot" mentioned once in the SPLC web page. I had to type it in their search engine to get entries. Pardon me for not being attuned to the intricacies of american lingo.

[Mister Sharpe]

How does it prove that she's an elitist?  Are you saying that calling a group of people reprehensible makes one elitist in and of itself?  Wouldn't that reflect on Trump, too, for disparaging far larger groups of people than Clinton ever did?

If disparaging others makes one an elitist, why would Trump, who disparaged the most people and the largest groups of people, not be more of an elitist than Clinton was?

The point remains that Trump twisted what she said and used it to rally support to himself on the basis of a fabricated version of it.

There are plenty o' racists, sexists, homophobes and people like Trump in the U.S. who think it's ok to make sport of the disabled. They resent being asked or told to think otherwise; it's an infringement on their civil liberties (they see it as mind control) and to do so is to risk being branded as elitist, if not worse.  I was surprised and disappointed Clinton said the deplorable word, she ought to have known better. I agree they are deplorables, but it's not bright, polite or politic to shame people whose votes you want.

[Herman]

I am glad to see that Democrats continue to misread the dynamics of this election.  I am optimistic that Republicans will be the majority party for years to come if Dems keep at it.

So who's going to repair the fiscal consequences then?

You know the drill: Reagan - Bush create a giant deficit; Bill Clinton leaves with a big suprlus. Dubya blows a whole in it, which a D prez needs to repair again.

[Todd]

"Anti-government" and "patriot" are two different terms.

Not necessarily.  The US has a long history of groups opposing the federal government, starting with the Anti-Federalists who emerged in the 1780s.  Patrick Henry ("Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death") is among the more famous Founding Fathers who opposed the Constitution itself before its adoption.  In the US, it is quite common to differentiate between the country and the federal government, and since literally the day the Constitution was ratified, there have been people dedicated to weakening the central government.  This peculiar feature of the US is one reason (of many) why even in the 1870s, 1890s, and 1930s, a dictator did not, could not emerge.  A good portion of the American far right is dedicated to demolishing the federal government. 

[arpeggio]

I do not dread Trump messing up.

What I do dread is IF he does mess up having to listen to all of the excuses and why it will be everyone else's fault.

[Todd]

So who's going to repair the fiscal consequences then?

You know the drill: Reagan - Bush create a giant deficit; Bill Clinton leaves with a big suprlus. Dubya blows a whole in it, which a D prez needs to repair again.

There are a few things wrong with the Reagan through Clinton statement.  First, the 1990 COBRA, which was one of the contributing factors to Bush I's defeat (it raised revenue), set the fiscal tone for a good portion of the 90s.  Second, another major contributing factor to the 90s fiscal surpluses was the so-called peace dividend, which was only possible because the Soviet Union collapsed and the US began significantly scaling back its military expenditures.  (Now, one can of course argue how much Reagan's staunch anti-communism played in that, but it at least played a minor role in pushing the USSR into the political graveyard.)  Also, the easy money policies of the Fed post-1994 helped lead to the dot com bubble, and the Clinton surpluses relied more heavily than normal on capital gains taxation due to the booming stock market.  Bush II's tax cuts were not the best, though it is worth noting that none other than Paul Krugman admitted that they served an expansionary function when they were instituted, and that was the proper approach in aggregate.  The mortgage meltdown has its earliest roots in the 1970s, with changes to ERISA and the birth of private market securitization, and one of its major legislative causes in GLBA, signed by Clinton, that killed off the Glass-Steagall (1933 Banking Act) separation of commercial and investment banking.  The US history of fiscal policy and regulation is a messy one, and both major parties have a lot to answer for.

Trump and the 115th Congress will pass new tax cuts sure to swell the deficits.  No one cares about that right now, and it will only become an issue around election time in a weaker economy.  As long as buyers keep on snapping up Treasuries - probably the rest of my statistically probable lifetime - it will not be a functional concern.

[Todd]

What I do dread is IF he does mess up having to listen to all of the excuses and why it will be everyone else's fault.

Presidents always blame the other party.  The other party always blames the President.  Only George Washington escaped this, and then not even completely.  (Hamilton, that dastardly Federalist and secret monarchist, had Washington wrapped around his finger, you see.)