Great stuff here and thanks Miriam.
I'm astounded even from conventional democratic terms and that is with a
smal "d" that folks in even the liberal media, in some quarters call the
Trump victory a mandate.
The hell it was, for in pluristic democratic terms he lost the popular vote.
Some "populist" eh.
Those who know me know my common distain for the Democrat and Republican
"establishment" as well.. But, that said and in spite of the stunning
electoral victory, which should be examined and understood, Trump did not
really win the election anymore than George Bush did over Gore.
Shit, he didn't even win the "plurarity of the popular vote let alone the
majority. And that is no "mandate".
All the levers of power are in single hands now even though this country,
even popularly speaking is so equally divided. This wasn't the 50/50 outcome
in reality.
So, I agree, it is now time for total resistance at every front and every
afront!
No, fucking honeymoon for sure is warrented!
Obama can be as gracious as he wants, as can Clinton. I won't be so for it
is my life, liberty and future on the line and that of my loved ones and
class members.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 7:05 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] It Really Is That Bad
It Really Is That Bad
Published on
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
by
The Nation
It Really Is That Bad
So now we must get very good at saying “no” to Trumpism.
by
John Nichols
Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. And that is
awful, awful news. (Photo: Reuters / Andrew Kelly)
On the Sunday before the 2016 election, when media and political elites
still imagined that Democrat Hillary Clinton might become the 45th president
of the United States, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was asked what he
thought would happen if the candidate he was supporting, Republican Donald
Trump, were to prevail.
The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives did not paint a rosy
picture of peace and prosperity and national unity. Quite the opposite.
Gingrich imagined more division.
Much more division.
“November 9th?” asked Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. “What do we do as a
country on November 9th? Because this has been a rough election. And I want
to use your words. This is what you said in January of 2001 after another
very contentions presidential election. You said the following: ‘Most
Americans do not find themselves actually alienated from their fellow
Americans or truly fearful if the other party wins power. Unlike in Bosnia,
Northern Ireland or Rwanda, competition for power in the U.S. remains
largely a debate between people who can work together once the election is
over.'”
“That was American circa 2001, as far as you were concerned,” continued
Todd. “Do you believe that’s the case in January of 2017?”
“No. No, I think tragically, we have drifted into an environment where… if
Trump is elected, it will just be like Madison, Wisconsin with Scott Walker.
The opposition of the government employee unions will be so hostile and so
direct and so immediate, there will be a continuing fight over who controls
the country. I think that we are in for a long, difficult couple of years,
maybe a decade or more, because the gap between those of us who are deeply
offended by the dishonesty and the corruption and the total lack of honesty
in the Clinton Team. And on their side, their defense of unions, which they
have to defend, I understand that. But that will lead to a Madison,
Wisconsin kind of struggle if Trump wins.”
“Wow,” replied a nonplussed Todd, who reflected momentarily on the picture
Gingrich had painted and then said, “I’m going to let you go.”
That option no longer exists. We must take Gingrich, and Trump, seriously.
The Trump team is in charge.
For now.
The “billionaire populist” has won the presidency, empowered by white
working-class voters who were so desperate for change that they embraced an
oligarch. Clinton has conceded her defeat in the bitterest presidential race
since 1800. Trump has won an Electoral College majority, even if he is
likely to lose the popular vote.
The Republican president will have what Walker and many other Republican
governors had who were elected in the “wave” year of 2010: “trifecta”
control of the government, with GOP dominance of the executive branch and
both chambers of the legislative branch.
We can and must be ready to "obstruct, delay, and halt the attacks on people
of color, women, and working families."
Donald Trump said so many things in so many different ways during the course
of his 17-month campaign for the presidency - about building walls, banning
Muslims, tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, abandoning climate agreements and
scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership - that it is easy to imagine that he
might take the country in any of a number of difficult directions.
But that is the same nonsense that has allowed Trump to get this far. We
know enough about Trump and the party he leads.
Make no mistake, Trump now leads the Republican Party. And that party has in
recent years developed an approach to power. When it does not control the
executive branch, the GOP obstructs the Democrat who is in charge. When it
has the executive and legislative branches in its grip, the GOP acts.
Quickly.
Despite the whining of “Never Trump” conservatives who griped that the
Republican nominee was politically impure, Trump accepted the nomination of
a socially and economically conservative party that spelled out its agenda
in a platform that People for the American Way’s “Right-Wing Watch”
recognized as a more extreme version of the party’s previous programs: “a
far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to
meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea
Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP.”
Gingrich correctly noted that the platform on which Trump was elected
outlines an aggressive anti-labor agenda that parallels the worst of what
Walker and other members of the GOP’s “Class of 2010″ implemented in the
first months of their tenures. The new president has criticized minimum-wage
laws and supported anti-union “right-to-work” laws. Only fools would doubt
that his fiercely anti-labor vice presidential running mate, Indiana
Governor Mike Pence, will hesitate to implement the agenda (as a defining
player on domestic policy) just as quickly as did Walker. Nor should they
doubt any of the other outlandish and extreme commitments made by Trump
during what the new president described in his victory speech as a “nasty”
and “tough” campaign. Trump will have skilled and experience allies, not
just in Pence but in House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell.
That means that the immediate response of progressives to Trump’s election
must be one of opposition - an opposition that is prepared, as Democracy for
America activists say they are, to “do everything in our power to obstruct,
delay, and halt the attacks on people of color, women, and working families
that will emerge from a Trump administration.” But this must be a knowing,
and informed opposition. Protests will be a part of it; protests as large
and impassioned as those seen in Scott Walker’s Madison and John Kasich’s
Columbus and on occupied Wall Street. But protests cannot be the whole of
the oppositin. Senate Democrats retain the filibuster power, and they must
use it - from the start, and without apology. They must, however, understand
why they are using it. The point is not partisanship, it is solidarity with
everyone who cannot afford Trump or Trumpism.
Those who oppose Trump must embrace the critiques of Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren.
This must be s solidarity with the Somali refugees Trump attacked during his
late-in-the-campaign trek to Minneapolis, with the Muslims of Dearborn, with
the women who are horrified that the United States has elected this crude
and violent man to the presidency, with the rural Americans who saw Trump as
their only hope and with the displaced workers of every race, class and
creed who responded to the Republican nominee’s empty promises of better
trade deals, meaningful work and a future for their forgotten communities.”
Those who oppose Trump now must do so for a common good that has been denied
not just by Republicans but by too many elite Democrats. The frustration
that Trump capitalized on as an insurgent candidate for the Republican
nomination, and then for the presidency itself, is real. Trump’s response
was too frequency xenophobic, racist and reactionary; but his wrong reaction
does not make the economic and social inequality of our times right.
Those who oppose Trump must embrace the critiques of Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren - who must be accepted as
the leaders of Democratic Party that requires a great reflection and an even
greater reformation - along with the programs and policies of Congressional
Progressive Caucus leaders such as Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and
Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan. They must utilize the inside-outside
strategies of the Working Families Party, National People’s Action, 350.org
and the Dreamers and the Black Lives Matters activists and all the groups
that have challenged politics as usual far more sincerely than Trump ever
has - and than Trump and his Republican allies ever will.
“Tonight Donald Trump was elected president,” read the statement from the
Our Revolution movement that extended from the Sanders campaign. “Our job
is to offer a real alternative vision and engage on the local and national
level to continue the work of the political revolution in the face of a
divided nation.”
Trump will stumble quickly. He will not deliver on the promises that he
should keep, and he will keep the promises that should be abandoned.
Americans will come to realize his election as a profound error of
judgement, just as the voters of Great Britain quickly recognized the folly
of last year’s #Brexit vote.
Trump has secured an Electoral College majority. But he was not the choice
of the majority of Americans who cast ballots for the presidency. And the
popular vote, which should elect presidents, will ultimately favor Clinton.
This is the place of beginning. Donald Trump has won the presidency. But he
has no great mandate. Indeed, the great mandate is with those who can and
must oppose not just a Trump presidency but the cruel hoax that is Trumpism.
(c) 2015 The Nation
John Nichols
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor
of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book,
co-authored with Robert W. McChesney is, Dollarocracy: How the Money and
Media Election Complex is Destroying America. Other books written with
McChesney include: The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media
Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the
American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols'
other books include: The “S” Word: A Short History of an American
Tradition, Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The
Founders' Cure for Royalism.
Skip to main content
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It Really Is That Bad
Published on
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
by
The Nation
It Really Is That Bad
So now we must get very good at saying “no” to Trumpism.
by
John Nichols
* 24 Comments
*
* Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. And
that is awful, awful news. (Photo: Reuters / Andrew Kelly)
* On the Sunday before the 2016 election, when media and political
elites still imagined that Democrat Hillary Clinton might become the 45th
president of the United States, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was asked
what he thought would happen if the candidate he was supporting, Republican
Donald Trump, were to prevail.
* The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives did not
paint a rosy picture of peace and prosperity and national unity. Quite the
opposite. Gingrich imagined more division.
* Much more division.
* “November 9th?” asked Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. “What do we
do as a country on November 9th? Because this has been a rough election. And
I want to use your words. This is what you said in January of 2001 after
another very contentions presidential election. You said the following:
‘Most Americans do not find themselves actually alienated from their fellow
Americans or truly fearful if the other party wins power. Unlike in Bosnia,
Northern Ireland or Rwanda, competition for power in the U.S. remains
largely a debate between people who can work together once the election is
over.'”
“That was American circa 2001, as far as you were concerned,” continued
Todd. “Do you believe that’s the case in January of 2017?”
“No. No, I think tragically, we have drifted into an environment where… if
Trump is elected, it will just be like Madison, Wisconsin with Scott Walker.
The opposition of the government employee unions will be so hostile and so
direct and so immediate, there will be a continuing fight over who controls
the country. I think that we are in for a long, difficult couple of years,
maybe a decade or more, because the gap between those of us who are deeply
offended by the dishonesty and the corruption and the total lack of honesty
in the Clinton Team. And on their side, their defense of unions, which they
have to defend, I understand that. But that will lead to a Madison,
Wisconsin kind of struggle if Trump wins.”
“Wow,” replied a nonplussed Todd, who reflected momentarily on the picture
Gingrich had painted and then said, “I’m going to let you go.”
That option no longer exists. We must take Gingrich, and Trump, seriously.
The Trump team is in charge.
For now.
The “billionaire populist” has won the presidency, empowered by white
working-class voters who were so desperate for change that they embraced an
oligarch. Clinton has conceded her defeat in the bitterest presidential race
since 1800. Trump has won an Electoral College majority, even if he is
likely to lose the popular vote.
The Republican president will have what Walker and many other Republican
governors had who were elected in the “wave” year of 2010: “trifecta”
control of the government, with GOP dominance of the executive branch and
both chambers of the legislative branch.
We can and must be ready to "obstruct, delay, and halt the attacks on people
of color, women, and working families."
Donald Trump said so many things in so many different ways during the course
of his 17-month campaign for the presidency - about building walls, banning
Muslims, tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, abandoning climate agreements and
scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership - that it is easy to imagine that he
might take the country in any of a number of difficult directions.
But that is the same nonsense that has allowed Trump to get this far. We
know enough about Trump and the party he leads.
Make no mistake, Trump now leads the Republican Party. And that party has in
recent years developed an approach to power. When it does not control the
executive branch, the GOP obstructs the Democrat who is in charge. When it
has the executive and legislative branches in its grip, the GOP acts.
Quickly.
Despite the whining of “Never Trump” conservatives who griped that the
Republican nominee was politically impure, Trump accepted the nomination of
a socially and economically conservative party that spelled out its agenda
in a platform that People for the American Way’s “Right-Wing Watch”
recognized as a more extreme version of the party’s previous programs: “a
far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to
meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea
Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP.”
Gingrich correctly noted that the platform on which Trump was elected
outlines an aggressive anti-labor agenda that parallels the worst of what
Walker and other members of the GOP’s “Class of 2010″ implemented in the
first months of their tenures. The new president has criticized minimum-wage
laws and supported anti-union “right-to-work” laws. Only fools would doubt
that his fiercely anti-labor vice presidential running mate, Indiana
Governor Mike Pence, will hesitate to implement the agenda (as a defining
player on domestic policy) just as quickly as did Walker. Nor should they
doubt any of the other outlandish and extreme commitments made by Trump
during what the new president described in his victory speech as a “nasty”
and “tough” campaign. Trump will have skilled and experience allies, not
just in Pence but in House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell.
That means that the immediate response of progressives to Trump’s election
must be one of opposition - an opposition that is prepared, as Democracy for
America activists say they are, to “do everything in our power to obstruct,
delay, and halt the attacks on people of color, women, and working families
that will emerge from a Trump administration.” But this must be a knowing,
and informed opposition. Protests will be a part of it; protests as large
and impassioned as those seen in Scott Walker’s Madison and John Kasich’s
Columbus and on occupied Wall Street. But protests cannot be the whole of
the oppositin. Senate Democrats retain the filibuster power, and they must
use it - from the start, and without apology. They must, however, understand
why they are using it. The point is not partisanship, it is solidarity with
everyone who cannot afford Trump or Trumpism.
Those who oppose Trump must embrace the critiques of Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren.
This must be s solidarity with the Somali refugees Trump attacked during his
late-in-the-campaign trek to Minneapolis, with the Muslims of Dearborn, with
the women who are horrified that the United States has elected this crude
and violent man to the presidency, with the rural Americans who saw Trump as
their only hope and with the displaced workers of every race, class and
creed who responded to the Republican nominee’s empty promises of better
trade deals, meaningful work and a future for their forgotten communities.”
Those who oppose Trump now must do so for a common good that has been denied
not just by Republicans but by too many elite Democrats. The frustration
that Trump capitalized on as an insurgent candidate for the Republican
nomination, and then for the presidency itself, is real. Trump’s response
was too frequency xenophobic, racist and reactionary; but his wrong reaction
does not make the economic and social inequality of our times right.
Those who oppose Trump must embrace the critiques of Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren - who must be accepted as
the leaders of Democratic Party that requires a great reflection and an even
greater reformation - along with the programs and policies of Congressional
Progressive Caucus leaders such as Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and
Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan. They must utilize the inside-outside
strategies of the Working Families Party, National People’s Action, 350.org
and the Dreamers and the Black Lives Matters activists and all the groups
that have challenged politics as usual far more sincerely than Trump ever
has - and than Trump and his Republican allies ever will.
“Tonight Donald Trump was elected president,” read the statement from the
Our Revolution movement that extended from the Sanders campaign. “Our job
is to offer a real alternative vision and engage on the local and national
level to continue the work of the political revolution in the face of a
divided nation.”
Trump will stumble quickly. He will not deliver on the promises that he
should keep, and he will keep the promises that should be abandoned.
Americans will come to realize his election as a profound error of
judgement, just as the voters of Great Britain quickly recognized the folly
of last year’s #Brexit vote.
Trump has secured an Electoral College majority. But he was not the choice
of the majority of Americans who cast ballots for the presidency. And the
popular vote, which should elect presidents, will ultimately favor Clinton.
This is the place of beginning. Donald Trump has won the presidency. But he
has no great mandate. Indeed, the great mandate is with those who can and
must oppose not just a Trump presidency but the cruel hoax that is Trumpism.
(c) 2015 The Nation
/author/john-nichols
/author/john-nichols/author/john-nichols
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor
of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book,
co-authored with Robert W. McChesney is, Dollarocracy: How the Money and
Media Election Complex is Destroying America. Other books written with
McChesney include: The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media
Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the
American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols'
other books include: The “S” Word: A Short History of an American
Tradition, Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The
Founders' Cure for Royalism.