It’s after 1 am Eastern Time, and while it’s not yet over, it’s looking like the racist ignoramus Donald J. Trump has defied all odds and been elected President of the United States. There’s a lot of parsing of the exit polls and other post-mortems to be done but whether the results hold or Hillary Clinton rebounds to eke out a narrow win, I think Michael Moore’s pre-election analysis is the best explanation I’ve seen:
The Biggest F- You in Human History?
Michael Moore’s pre-election analysis is looking shockingly prescient.
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97 responses to “The Biggest F- You in Human History?”
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Yup. Michael Moore was on top of it. The elites really lost this one out. And for an example of the elites that I’m talking about, Hillary has been endorsed by the neocons from the Bush years. That helped to jinx her, in my opinion. Hillary also jinxed herself when she supported the Iraq war and then the Libyan war, and then she also wanted to support the Syrian war…
We get it that there are the interventionist types. But they lost this one with Hillary.
Obama was right that the people wanted something new from this election. But Hillary and her supporters missed the chance to sit this one out. I was watching a little of Obama’s recent speech in Pennsylvania and he was pouring in emotion. That he was betting this one on the people. It’s tough. Now let’s hope that Trump will not screw it up. It took me an hour to accept it. I’m past it though.
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@Aelio: Supported Libyan War? She and Susan Rice started the Libyan War.
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One day, in 20 years time, I’ll be having a beer with my two daughters, by then young women. We’ll talk about this current period of flirtation with populist demagoguery in the West with bemusement, and I’ll wonder if it ever really happened.
” Yes, Trump won. Yes, Le Pen got close (or pulled it off) in France. Yes, openness and tolerance seemed in danger. But Trump was just a Berlusconi-esque buffoon. When the pissed off rust-belters realised he wasn’t bringing back any jobs, and the only meaningful changes from his presidency were a dollar that went through the floor and the taking away of healthcare, they voted for the democrat candidate in 2020 and Trump got his clock cleaned. We saw the resurgence in Europe of rational, centrist, open governments in the early years of the 2020s too. You girls won’t remember it, you were still in elementary school. Crazy times, eh? Sure, i’ll have one more beer.”
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@Chris:
I don't think this is about jobs or a wall or any of that; I think anti immigration feelings and anti-muslim hatred is the driver behind Trump's momentum.
The economy crashing, interest rates spiking? None of that matters to Trump supporters.
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James, I suppose that it’s no surprise that I believe you’ve long been on the wrong side of history, sustained by this vote. As your friend, I think you should rethink your misguided positions, but I acknowledge that’s unlikely to happen.
DJT is a very unpleasant person. Tell me again how that’s unique for American Presidents.
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Speaking of f-you’s, I just watched MSNBC and their entire panel of people, ALL of whom have been completely wrong about this entire campaign and spent the last year mocking, insulting and demeaning Donald Trump and his supporters, just engaged in a group scold about all the things Donald Trump needs to do and say to earn their approval.
Mike
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@Lit3Bolt:
The Establishment can just move to the Seychelles or Caymans
Most probably Normandy or Brittany. Possibly Belgium since it’s in the middle of everything. We’ll know more once we start looking at houses.
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Ok, just….f*ck all of you.
You don’t realize how bad this is. Donald Trump could be calling Putin right now for all we know, giving him the codes.
You have just sh*t the bed of America, and guess what? We all have to wallow in it.
By the way, Donald Trump is still due in federal court in a few days.
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@Lit3Bolt:
I’m an M&A attorney. My money is already elsewhere as a matter of SOP.
The only real question is whether they’ll permit a remote arrangement with flyins as required or just request a saleback. At this point, I’m fine with either one. My kids are old enough that they’ll adapt, and they all speak fluent French already.
Sad to have to say it, but what little faith I had left in the people of this country just evaporated. It’s in the hands of the mob now, and I’d just as soon get out now before it gets worse. Believe me – I didn’t miss the folks chanting Jew-S-A at his rallies. I heard them loud and clear.
If history, especially my family’s history, has taught me anything, it’s that waiting to see what happens usually means you waited too long. Noah built the ark BEFORE the rain …
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Exactly right. The great white unwashed sent a message to the establishment, all right.
And the message they sent was that they will crawl over broken glass as long as you hate (insert minority.)
The message they sent was that they are the most easily manipulated, gullible loons to ever exist. And they are eager and willing to give their vote as long as (demonized minority here) is persecuted a little bit. Not even so much as to upset the status quo. But enough for people like JKB to feel POWERFUL.
What a value proposition!
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@Lit3Bolt:
Yeah, I’m not really sure what that means. You’re obviously having a hard time dealing with Donald Trump kicking your ass, Hillary’s ass, Obama’s ass, Michelle’s ass, the NYT’S ass, the Democratic Party’s ass, National Review’s ass and other various and sundry asses who chirp away online.
You and all the other legion of the butt-hurt should remember, however, that the America who just elected Trump is the same America who twice elected Obama and is still giving him pretty high approval ratings. Maybe you should ponder exactly how much you and yours are to blame because you just had to nominate the only person in the known universe who could make Donald Trump look like the more acceptable alternative.
Mike
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@Lit3Bolt:
Where was the candidate of color in the Democratic presidential race? How exactly was it that the effort to follow the first black President was an entirely lily white affair?
Mike
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it was a big f-you to all those who think elections should be rigged and the common person should have no say in the election. in essence, the voters spoke up instead of standing down and gobbling up the standard bs that the msm and liberal blowhards spew at them.
as far as polling goes, there’s a lot of us who do our best to mess with pollsters- we like to say one thing while doing another, just for fun. oh, and we mainly stay off the grid- we don’t need to feel all warm/fuzzy about being lemmings. -
Well, at least the country made a clear choice. A majority of Americans have decided to take the country on a rightward path, and return to trickle down economics. The old cycle continues- republicans wreck the country and leave it to democrats to clean up the mess, but with a new twist: don’t let them fix it, allow it the worsen, and win a resounding victory, only this time with a crazy person at the top and a seat at the table for the most extreme wing of the alt-right.
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I have said repeatedly win or lose, the buyer’s remorse on Donald Trump is going to be epic. I see nothing to change that attitude.
That, and we still have Congress to deal with as well. Remember, the majority of the Congressional idiots are the ones who absolutely refused to oppose Obama. You’ll pardon me if I’m not dancing in the ais gunles.
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@MBunge:
You still have not, and never will, provide a counterfactual of how Sanders could have won this race.
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@Lit3Bolt:
Trump voters deserve to be left behind and their fate. Pity the sane amongst who aren’t and lack the wherewithal to settle in the low countries or some sunny island.
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@MBunge:
Oh I don’t know, maybe an old white woman who has been demonized continuously for 25 years was a bad candidate, as opposed to a young African American unknown who voters could materialistically project their dreams and fantasies upon.
Just like they’re doing to Trump. Just like you’re doing now.
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Please, Democrats, please stop taking your advice from corporate attorneys. Please stop thinking Lena Dunham has an insight into anything. Please stop with the navel-gazing policy wonks, the endless experts-on-everything in the media, the “consultants” hired after two years in the White House and nothing else, the financial gurus, the endless stream of John Stewart snark. You are teetering on the edge and don’t even know it.
We cannot build an effective party on the top 10% plus whatever minorities we can wrangle up. How anyone could be deluded enough to think the white working-classes in the United States didn’t matter any more is truly the question of the century but what’s done is done. Are we going to offer them something significant enough to pull them back into the Democratic orbit or will we put hands over our eyes like the HarvardLaw92s of the world who created this mess and then pretend they can bail out of it?
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@BigFire: Hey, Trump said it would be easy. I remember that.
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I know it’s tempting to write this off as America being racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc. If that comforts you, fine. But some history: In 2000, Clinton was handed a Senate seat on a platter. It was a touch and go for a while. She won by ten points … in a state Gore carried by 25. In 2008, she was handed the Democratic nomination. She proceeded to lose to a half-term Senator from Illinois. In 2016, the Democrats cleared the field, knee-capped their own candidate and she was given a popular incumbent, an OK economy and a deranged hamster for an opponent. And she lost.
Maybe she’s just not a good politician.
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@bill: Who said that common people should not have a say? Even Trump’s own polls did not see this coming. It is a shock to them as well. It is now on him and his team to govern. As much as I don’t like a sore loser, I like a sore winner even less.
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I’ve said this on my own blog when Democrats have won and conservatives have shrieked that this is the end of personal responsibility and everyone just has their hand out: remember that people vote the way they do for their reasons, not for the reasons you’d like to attribute to them.
As a former Republican and still conservative, I find this election to be incredibly disheartening. The party of free trade, small government and prudence is gone. The GOP will rally to Trump and start following his ideas, not vice versa. Small government free market conservatives will be purged. I expect the Democrats to also decide that abandoning free trade is a great idea and that the problem was that they weren’t liberal enough. It’s dark road ahead. For the first time in my life, I’m wondering if my kids will have it worse than I did.
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@HarvardLaw92: Please don’t come to Canada. We have enough of their ilk.
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On the bright side: a lot of left-wing candidates won. People willing to really, actually go into battle against the Republicans if the DNC will only give them the support they need. There’s a chance here to rebuild the party into a war-machine that wins. And we’re going to need that because Trump’s climate stance sentences us all to death.
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Given the preponderance of evidence, I will concede the point that yes, she’s not a good pol.
But good god, TRUMP is?
I mean, telling people you will burn the witch at the stake may make you a good pol with a finger on the pulse of the people.
However, that’s meaningless when it comes to policy, temperament, and governance.
I mean, even flarking Frank Luntz predicted Clinton.
There’s something else going on here. An appeal being made beyond the usual Republican dog whistles…
I’m sticking with my model of voting as consumerist fantasy wish-fulfillment. That’s what happened in eight years of Obama, and now it’s happening for Trump with different demographics. Obama ran on HOPE and CHANGE. He accomplished neither and barely rammed through a Republican healthcare bill through a Democratic Congress. Trump has run on explicit racism and Putin-worship, and unfortunately, he is in an excellent position to accomplish anything he wants. And also the next three SCOTUS will be whoever Trump wants.
Hail God-Emperor Trump!
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@Ben Wolf:
Pfft. We’re done.
I’d advise anyone here not to marry, or have children. It will not go well for you in the next eight years.
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@Lit3Bolt: They don’t think Trump is a good politician. They have slim hope that he might be something beneficial. They had no hope in Clinton because she ran as the anti-hope candidate.
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@Lit3Bolt: Never let a crisis go to waste. Disasters also offer opportunities. One has just been handed to us; will we take it?
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The Democratic party refused to believe how risky it really was to nominate a candidate as flawed as Hillary Clinton. I’m not at all happy about this result. But many of the other commenters here on this blog beat me up for months during the primaries. I never had any particular affinity for Bernie Sanders or his policies (I wish Joe Biden had been in the race). But I was legitimately worried about exactly this scenario. Whether fair or not, too many people just did not like or trust Hillary Clinton.
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@Lit3Bolt:
I have to think that while Trump is garbage, he is a better politician that Clinton. He stuck to one theme (Make America Great Again) hit on some important populist points (corruption, etc.) and got Clinton’s allies to spend almost all of their time talking about how awful Trump was. In retrospect, the Democrats made a huge mistake making this election about Trump.
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@Lit3Bolt: The polling error for Sanders would have had to be larger given all the polls taken earlier in the year where he’d beat Trump by 10 points versus Clinton beating him by 4. And there’s just something intensely moronic about running a status quo candidate in a change election.
Maybe she’s just not a good politician.
In the months leading to today, you could say this till you were blue in the face and the jerks here would call you sexist or deluded. Obviously you suffered from Clinton Derangement Syndrome, that special sickness for people who disagreed with Clinton on any particular. God, think about Todd and the amount of demonization the commenters here put him through.
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Since I listen to Nate Silver and not Sam Wang (who can now be safely ignored forever), I knew this was a possibility.
What I envision here is a Nixon-like presidency. Trump might actually change a couple things for the better (like Nixon helped establish the EPA and scared his Russian counterparts). But there is a significant possibility that this ends badly.
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The Republicans now own this, lock, stock, and barrel. This country has elected a man with the attention span of a goldfish and the intellectual curiosity of a can of Spam. He has more potential conflicts of interest than any president we’ve ever had, and his “plan” to turn over his business to his kids doesn’t pass the sniff test. He has no idea how government works. He will not be able to deliver on the vast majority of the promises he has made. His VP is not terribly clever either. I will be shocked if this isn’t the most scandal-ridden administration we’ve ever had, largely due to incompetence.
I’ll admit I’m completely gobsmacked by these results. I didn’t think there were that many men afraid of a woman being in charge.
The GOP now has a loud and proud racist as its titular leader. No more whining. No more excuses. No more blaming Obama. This is the party.
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Something important was just pointed out to me on Twitter. Trump will probably win with *fewer* votes than McCain or Romney lost with. The problem was Clinton who drew 10 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008 and 7 million fewer than Obama in 2012.
That suggest, at least to me, that Democrats didn’t show up. That would also explain why the models were wrong — that “likely” part of “likely voters”.
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@Jen:
The Republicans now own this, lock, stock, and barrel.
I think the first place we’re going to see the effects of this, is with the Republicans having their bluff called on healthcare. They now have no impediment to repealing Obamacare. But the flip side of that is, they also have no excuse not to produce on the “replace” part of their mantra. It’s not going to be pretty.
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That suggest, at least to me, that Democrats didn’t show up.
Democrats probably suffered from two things: low enthusiasm to begin with, but also complacency. Trump voters NEVER believed any of the polls. Apparently too many left leaning voters did … and because of it they either stayed home or voted 3rd party.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if social media today is filled with these type of people who didn’t think there was any way that Trump would win, so felt free to “vote their conscience”, but are now shocked and regretful … ala Brexit
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@Ben Wolf:
What can you offer them? Because I have to tell you, for, say, a former steel worker in his 50s, there are legitimately only two options:
1) Tell him the truth – that his job is never coming back and there is no place for him in this economy that doesn’t involve him either collecting an assistance check or stocking a shelf, or;
2) Lie to him with some “Make America Great Again” horseshit of a platitude that Jesus Christ couldn’t deliver on with help from the Pope and a house full of rabbis.
Now, judging from last night, he prefers being lied to, but that’s a temporary situation at best. Eventually he’s going to notice that he’s still eating Spam and can’t pay his bills. He’s too old to retrain and he doesn’t have marketable skills, so to be frank, he’s f*cked and he’s going to remain f*cked. There is no hope for him, but there does seem to be political opportunity in blowing sunshine up his behind. Sort of difficult to build a party around that unless you just propose to out-bullshit the GOP.
Blame me if you like, but I didn’t create post-industrialism.
And you can’t fix it. After a few choruses of Jew-S-A, I have no concern left for his plight. My concern is protecting my famil FROM him.
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@Ben Wolf: “And we’re going to need that because Trump’s climate stance sentences us all to death.”
We? There’s no we. You’re a Trump voter. You helped caused this “death sentence.” You don’t get to come around and talk about how progressive you really are. You own this.
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@Todd: Yup. And all those good Americans who voted Trump because he would kill Obamacare and its awful premium increases are going to find themselves with no insurance.
And when they discover they have cancer and no way to treat it, it’s nice to think that maybe one of them will admit they made a mistake. But they won’t. It will all be someone else’s fault.
I’ve watched relatives die from cancer. It’s excrutiatingly painful. Sorry, Trump voters.
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@wr: No, I’m not a Trump voter. And you own this: your candidate, your campaign, your failure. Grow up.
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So I hope you all are right about this. Because if you’re wrong, you are catastrophically wrong.
This is not a comment I wanted to return to, but I am unimaginably mad. I was gaslighted by my own party, and by implication and accusation made to feel like I was either politically sanctimonious or a misogynist for having doubt and voicing it.
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@wr:
The image that sticks in my mind is that guy in Kentucky who was just thrilled to get coverage from Kynect, but “didn’t want nothing to do with that dayum Obummercare.”
Fundamentally we are Britain circa 1955. They were where we are; they are where we’ll one day be. The difference there is that the average British worker had a very finely tuned sense of self-interest and what benefitted his. Our steelworker guy? He’s either too dim to understand or he’s too invested in believing the lies he tells to himself. You can’t fix that, and they outnumber us. Say what you will about the French worker, and I could say plenty, but they’re smart enough to know what’s in their best interest & demand it.
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@wr: I’m not in any way implying that it’s a good thing. I just think it will be genuinely interesting to see how that part of the story plays out. Politically, I don’t see how even the Republicans will be able to get away with just yanking insurance from 20 million people. What type of compromise plan they produce in the end, and how similar it is to the current PPACA (but with a different name than Obamacare) is what I’m curious to see.
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@cian: Actually, no, a majority voted against Trump. An efficienctly distributed local majority combined with an archaic selection mechanism (the electoral college) is handing power to a profoundly unqualified individual
That distinction makes no practical difference but it is a marker for history
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@Todd:
The Democratic party refused to believe how risky it really was to nominate a candidate as flawed as Hillary Clinton.
But as I said a few months ago, the mistake lay further back than the primaries–in the 2013-2014 period, when several standard, relatively younger elected Democrats declined the opportunity to run. At that time, Hillary herself was extremely popular–one Gallup poll had her at 66% favorable, 27% unfavorable. She was more popular than Obama at the time, and more popular than Sanders has ever been. By the time her ratings cratered in 2015, the only alternatives available who had actually entered the race consisted of a septuagenarian socialist, an obscure Maryland governor, and two mavericky ex-Republicans who were anything but conventional liberals. Was it a mistake to stick with her? In hindsight, perhaps. But I’d say it was a pretty understandable one. It isn’t easy for a candidate to just jump in the race late without preparation, and beyond that, the existing candidates besides Hillary were either untested, unconventional, or both. By the time it became clear how weak she was, there weren’t a lot of choices left that didn’t themselves carry big risk.
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@Tillman:
I was either politically sanctimonious or a misogynist for having doubt and voicing it.
As predicted at the time, there is absolutely no joy at all in being right. 🙁
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I think the most telling trend of the election is the Utah result. A full 10% of the electorate told the pollster they couldn’t vote for Trump but would go third candidate, but once they were alone in the secret ballot box, they marked Trump anyway. Trump got his win on the wings of those to ashamed to admit they’d vote for a guy like this.
I just feel like 2004 – you reelected whom? -
@Kylopod:
But as I said a few months ago, the mistake lay further back than the primaries
I don’t disagree. I’ve said for a while now that I believe the most significant event of this campaign on the Democratic side happened in May of 2015 when Beau Biden passed away. Even as late as the Colbert interview it was obvious that Joe Biden really wanted to find a way in his heart that would allow him to run; but he couldn’t do it. Alternative history is tough, and he wouldn’t have been a perfect candidate either, but it’s hard to imagine that Vice President Biden would have lost to Donald Trump.
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Well, the dog caught the car. Now what?
I suspect that Donald Trump will find it much more difficult to actually deliver on any of his promises. Much more difficult than selling the deal. Especially considering that he’s promised everything to everyone, totally ignoring that the Numbers Don’t Add Up.
And the people who voted for him will discover that a con man is always a con man, and something that sounds like it is too good to be true usually is. Donald Trump can’t magically cause coal to exist again in the mountains of West Virginia, nor can he unilaterally impose trade deals on everyone around the world.
And I have absolutely no sympathy for the gullible who are going to get squashed by the express heading towards them at light speed. You just handed the future of the US over to China, you idiots. Have fun learning Hanzi!
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It’s fun to make broad pronouncements and everything, but some data is going to be needed to sort out the whys and hows. That will take some time to gather.
At this point, it really comes down to perhaps 100,000 voters (give or take) pulling a surprise in the Rust Belt. I wouldn’t be inclined to judge 300+ million people based upon margins that thin.
Votes are still being counted, but thus far, Clinton has more popular votes than Trump, so this may be a repeat of 2000.
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@Ben Wolf: Sorry, I read your messages. You are at the very least a Trump enabler. And this is all yours. I only hope you live in a red state so you can feel the full effect.
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@Todd: “Politically, I don’t see how even the Republicans will be able to get away with just yanking insurance from 20 million people. ”
Why not? There is nothing to stop them. And their voters are, frankly, so stupid they’ll cheer them on. And when their children are dying, Trump will tell them it’s Obama’s fault and they’ll believe him.
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Well, the dog caught the car. Now what?
Now we get to watch Republicans place a few SCOTUS justices and cement conservative judicial eminence for another generation.
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@Todd:
I want to thank you for your insightful comments above. I think that each of them is a gem. I hope that more people take the things you’ve said to heart.
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I hope that more people take the things you’ve said to heart.
Honestly, if given a choice, I’d rather be called an idiot for being so wrong.
But this is the reality we now live in. We can argue back and forth trying to assign blame, or we can figure out how to fit in going forward. Personally, until I see evidence to the contrary, I’m going to try to imagine the most optimistic scenarios possible.
A lot of what is said on the campaign trail by any candidate, both about what they will do, and how bad things will be if their opponent is elected is usually pretty hyperbolic.
And with Donald Trump, there’s also this …
We have to remember that Trump is a reality TV star. He’d been playing a Presidential candidate for the past 2 years. Now he’s going to switch to playing President. It is likely that a lot of the people who excitedly voted for him are going to be really confused when he doesn’t follow through on some of his more emphatic (and controversial) promises.
In short, before we lose our collective minds, let’s wait until January to see what actually happens.
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I, for one welcome our new ” racist ignoramus” overlords !
I look forward to:
* The wall being built,
* A new federal police force,
* Detention camps for 11 million people until their deportation (to a country that likely will not accept them – but that won’t stop us)
* Stop and frisk for anyone with a tan (or WORSE !!! BROWN !!!)
* A new National ID card, proving citizenship that all must carry, at all times.
* 22 million back without insurance
* A 12% tax on the poor, eliminating tax breaks for those so-called “poors”
* Pictures of bootstraps for all !!
* The end of entitlements and social security
* The resulting suspension of personal discretionary spending
* Layoffs due to a slowing economy
* A market that refuses to climb, fearing lack of investments
* Austerity
* Recession
* Increased National Debt
* Increased State and Sales Taxes to replace federal aid
* Elimination of minimum wage to “bring jobs back” making our labor force competitive with Pakistan
* The elimination of Government departments and regulations, increasing unemployment ranks
* The collapse of the housing market
* Recriminalization of Marijuana & Abortions (with no exceptions)And with an All-Trump-All-the-time control of the executive house senate and supreme court, the hits will keep on coming.
No more “politically correct” talk! You’ll be able to call a spade a spade! And with “improved second amendment rights”, personal defense rights can rise. Maybe get rid of TSA so we can have gun on planes again like God Himself intended!
I could go on and on !!!
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These people feared “Red Dawn” so much they chose to do it to themselves.
Two years in, what will happen when the right wing media cant blame the DEMs for blocking all of Trump’s campaign promises?
I was considering an early retirement. I can kiss that goodbye. If I am lucky, I will keep my job and make it through this, as I am a white male… luckily, the first generation immigrant thing doesn’t show on me. ( Who needs those silly Baltics to have their independence… I wasn’t planning to visit there anyway.)
Hey Andre – the last time the USA made such a blunder, I was in Brazil because Emerging Markets were kicking ass… now, not so much, eh?
FFS, what a day…
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Yeah, Hillary does appear headed to be the second Democrat in 16 years to lose the presidency while receiving more votes nationwide, only this time without contested results.
As long as some of us are on an “I told you so” kick (and there really is little else I feel like doing currently), can we finally agree to bury this myth we’ve been hearing for the past few years, that Democrats have a massive electoral college advantage?
How did this myth get started? Partly due to analysis indicating that the EC was slightly skewed toward Dems in the 2012 election (to change the outcome Romney would have had to win at least one state that went for Obama by over 5 points, yet his popular-vote lead was less than 4), though it made no practical difference since Obama won both the popular and electoral vote by a solid margin. This inspired some people to assume that a fleeting and ephemeral effect represented some lasting condition.
Then there were all the theories about Dems’ increasing advantage among minorities who were growing as a share of the electorate. As a matter of fact, those theories aren’t altogether wrong–in the long run. But 2000 should have taught us that even an advantage with the general populace doesn’t necessarily prevent the other side from winning in a fluke.
Also (and I count myself as having dismissed this idea a bit too easily), Dems’ advantage among minorities was always going to be counterbalanced by a potential backlash among white voters.
Throughout this year, Nate Silver and the FiveThirtyEight crew not only pushed back heavily against the “blue wall” nonsense but repeatedly warned people that Donald Trump had an abnormally large chance of winning the EC while losing the popular vote. Many Dems weren’t in the mood to listen, and he took a lot of abuse for being more bullish than other forecasters on the prospect of a Trump upset of any kind.
If Hillary’s current popular-vote lead holds, then Dems will have won the popular vote in 6 out of 7 straight elections–and had only 4 times this gave them the White House. In the end, part of Dems’ basic disadvantage is structural: even when there are more of us in the country, we’re increasingly concentrated in heavily populated areas while the GOP dominates rural regions, which (due to the way the Senate, the House, and the EC allocate votes) gives them power vastly out of proportion to their numbers. I don’t know what to do about this problem (as long as Republicans continue to be the beneficiaries of this effect, there’s little chance of them agreeing to do anything to end it), but we surely aren’t helped by pretending it doesn’t exist.
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@Todd: “But this is the reality we now live in. We can argue back and forth trying to assign blame, or we can figure out how to fit in going forward.”
I can tell you where I’m fitting in — I’m not. I’ve got health insurance, and it’s through the State of California, so it’s not going anywhere. I’ve got a retirement plan, so when the time comes I can live without Social Security. And I live in the heart of Manhattan, so I don’t care if the hicks who voted for Trump collect all the guns in the world or kill themselves with meth or simply die because they voted to take away their own health insurance.
My only regret is not being in California right now. Love NYC, but it’s clear that CA is the place where they’re embracing the future, not running away from it in panic.
Of course, if Trump starts a war I’ll be affected. Until then I’ll accept my tax cut, and I will spend every penny knowing it comes straight out of the pockets of the morons who voted for Trump.
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@wr: Personally I’m fairly secure too. Retired military with a good civil service job. But I have kids and grandkids whose future I do care about.
For all of our sakes, but especially their’s, I really do hope that all of the “I’m so scared” crying on my social media feed turns out to be overly dramatic worrying. The thing I hate most about how our politics has become like a sport, is the idea that many people on the left will be actively hoping to see Trump fail.
Screw that. I’m a patriotic American (not in the right wing a$$hole way, but truly interested in the good of the country). I would much rather see Trump succeed (or at least not fail too badly) than think about how Trump in the White House might help the Democrats win in 2 or 4 years.
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@Todd:
I would much rather see Trump succeed …
That was the gist of the Friedman article.
However, this is how I REALLY Feel
Wonkette gets it right.
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@Todd:
What little comfort I find this morning comes from my confidence that Trump is first and foremost a scam artist. He has little or no interest in executing any policy. The ACA will die at the hands of a Republican Congress since he’ll never veto anything they send him and the Iran nuclear deal is also likely to be scuttled since he’ll surround himself with Gingrich, Giuliani and Bolton.
But the wall and mass deportation, better trade deals that bring jobs rushing back into the country or the easy obliteration of ISIS – none of these things are going to happen.
This is just Trump University on a national scale. Promises of everything you’ve ever wanted, delivered with ease once you max out your credit cards. There was a massive audience ripe for just such a flim flam sales pitch. They’re gonna be pissed when he doesn’t deliver – just as TU never delivered.
Our best hope is that they take it out on Trump and his enablers and not all those people they’ve been empowered to hate.
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@Todd:
What little comfort I find this morning comes from my confidence that Trump is first and foremost a scam artist. He has little or no interest in executing any policy. The ACA will die at the hands of a Republican Congress since he’ll never veto anything they send him and the Iran nuclear deal is also likely to be scuttled since he’ll surround himself with Gingrich, Giuliani and Bolton.
But the wall and mass deportation, better trade deals that bring jobs rushing back into the country or the easy obliteration of ISIS – none of these things are going to happen.
This is just Trump University on a national scale. Promises of everything you’ve ever wanted, delivered with ease once you max out your credit cards. There was a massive audience ripe for just such a flim flam sales pitch. They’re gonna be pissed when he doesn’t deliver – just as TU never delivered.
Our best hope is that they take it out on Trump and his enablers and not all those people they’ve been empowered to hate.
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@Todd: The question is how many Americans have to learn the hard way not to do stupid things, rather than relying on their own prudence and wisdom. Trump is gullible enough to swallow every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, so I suspect we’ll see quite a lot of silliness (the Flat Tax, anyone) promulgated by him and his coterie of deluded misfits. I expect a few stock market crashes, and at least one depression during his enthronement as POTUS.
At some point, all the PR and banging of the drum in the world does you no good. Mama Nature ALWAYS wins. So do the laws of mathematics. Which Trump et al. will have to learn the hard way.
Me? I’m just going to sit back, cultivate my own garden, make sure I have a bit of a bolt-hole somewhere, and take advantage of the incredible gullibility of my fellow Americans which this election has so depressingly demonstrated.
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@wr:
Politically, I don’t see how even the Republicans will be able to get away with just yanking insurance from 20 million people.
Why not? There is nothing to stop them.
Well, there sort of is. The insurance and health care sector (hospitals, pharmacies, everything in the system) have spent billions coming into compliance. If the whole thing is thrown out, they lose a ton of money–not just the money spent, but the money that comes in from various sources. States that have taken the Medicaid expansion will be SOL too.
Republicans used “repeal & replace Obamacare” because the slogan worked, not because they had any *real* intention of doing so. The lobbying to keep this part or that section is going to be intense, not to mention the people with pre- existing conditions, etc. There are massive industry dollars at stake. Everyone is going to try and protect their little bit of turf.
Trump will not be able to keep his promises.
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@wr: I live in a very red state. Two major employers here are BMW and Boeing. If and when the new Prez starts a trade war, a bunch of Trump voters may learn the hard way to think before you vote. For years my wife and I have kept large balances in cash that wasn’t earning anything. But it gives us a pretty nice cushion we can draw on for the next 8 years.
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@Argon: Oh, that’s always standard. “Our” congresscritters are the “good ones”; it’s “those over there” that are the bad ones….
Sort of like how getting farm subsidies and tax breaks isn’t welfare….
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Calling him a racist ignoramous is beneath the standards expected of the writers of a blog like. The commentariat has different motivations, including intentional snark for entertainment value. A parlor game.
This was, at core, a pocketbook campaign. Yes, there was Trumps boorishness and Clinton’s corruption. But it was pocketbook. Look, county by county, at the upper Midwest and on east through PA. Look at the timing of the ObamaCare repricing. Look at the false economic portrayal vs reality. Ignore it at your peril, and apply the salve of calling your political opponents Nazis and stupid if you must, people. But it’s just foolishness.
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@Ben Wolf:
Please, Democrats, please stop taking your advice from corporate attorneys. Please stop thinking Lena Dunham has an insight into anything. Please stop with the navel-gazing policy wonks, the endless experts-on-everything in the media, the “consultants” hired after two years in the White House and nothing else, the financial gurus, the endless stream of John Stewart snark. You are teetering on the edge and don’t even know it.
Excellent Straw Man Alert.
I don’t look to Lena Dunham or corporate attorneys for anything – although I must say I’d rather get my advice from Jon Stewart or a good corporate attorney than from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, or some ‘average’ angry resentful white guy (aka ‘salt of the Earth’) who feels left behind because women have good jobs, there are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were 35 years ago, and for whom facts are of no concern.
So what happened? Simple: Hillary had too much baggage, and there really is no shelf life expiration date on resentful aggrieved white male voters.
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@Ben Wolf: “Please stop thinking Lena Dunham has an insight into anything”
Personally, I think Lena Dunham has an insight into writing and producing a television show, and I don’t plan to change that because you’re starting a list of Democrats who must now be purged . The last thing I’m interested in is the purity police.
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@HarvardLaw92: I’m not sure you’re rich enough to relocate to Belgium, after all, you only live in Westchester County IIRC. 😉
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@Terrye Cravens: Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.
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@Jen:
Well, that didn’t take long!
The direction of health reform under Trump — and a Republican House and Senate — will be to “greatly diminish (though not abolish), and thus partially unwind an entrenched Affordable Care Act”, said former Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in comments to The Tennessean.
An NPR blurb said that Ryan’s statement today included “fix what is wrong with Obamacare,” but I haven’t been able to locate the text of the statement to verify.
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@Terrye Cravens: sour grapes make bad whine, i’m not sore at all- just glad people finally woke up and smelled the attempted coup before it was too late.
the msm is very sore though, still fawning over hrc as her corpse is in full rigor now.
and trump won’t get a any honeymoon from them either- and he could care less as he won despite them and the establishment. he was, in essence, a real 3rd party candidate. -
@bill: It’s sweet that you think Trump is on your side because he said he hated all the people you hate. Enjoy this moment now. You’ll find out how you’ve been played soon enough. Or, considering your intellect, maybe not.
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As luck would have it, the firm has an office in Paris. They’re even paying for the move 🙂
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I really do think the ACA will be eliminated. There’s no way to allow pre-existing conditions to be covered without universal enrollment. (See “Death Spiral” for insurance companies.)
I know two Trump supports and I’ve asked them what about the 20 million people who have insurance due to the ACA?
The first said, well, they have emergency rooms. The second just shrugged her shoulders.
They simply don’t give a sh*t.
