Trump
A few comments in response to Charles Lipson regarding Donald Trump
Professor Charles Lipson published a good article entitled What Happens After the Electoral Earthquake?.
I have a few disagreements with it, however.
Prof. Lipson assumes that the published position papers, policy speeches and the content of the stadium speeches Trump has been giving for months are irrelevant. This is incorrect. Contrary to what everybody says, Trump has been comparatively specific about what his policy positions are. The best-founded prediction is that Trump will try to do what he repeatedly and firmly said he would do in all the various policy areas.
Prof Lipson says: “… Republicans couldn’t simply say they would repeal Obamacare. They had to promise to replace it with some kind of health-care policy, probably one featuring nationwide insurance markets, health-care savings accounts, medical liability limits, and subsidies for the sick and poor.”
This is exactly what Trump ran on. Universal health care with a large competitive market component. This is actually the optimum position under current circumstances. Trump’s position on this was published early, and it is a top-line blueprint for what he will try to get through Congress, with elbow room for negotiation.
“Trumping the Elites”
She had it all—the pliant media, the tech oligarchs, Wall Street, the property moguls, the academics, and the all-around “smart people.” What Hillary Clinton didn’t have was flyover country, the economic “leftovers,” the small towns, the unhipstered suburbs, and other unfashionable places. As Thomas Frank has noted, Democrats have gone “from being the party of Decatur to the party of Martha’s Vineyard.” No surprise, then, that working- and middle-class voters went for Donald Trump and helped him break through in states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa—that have usually gone blue in recent presidential elections.
Yes, but. The Democrats also offer a vision of more taxes, more regulation for the ostensible benefit of unsubstantiated lefty causes such as global warming, more cronyism (see: more regulation), more divisiveness, more abuses of power against out-of-favor individuals and groups, and retrenchment in foreign affairs. Despite media spin, you don’t have to be an unemployed coal miner or small-business owner to oppose such things.
(Via The Right Coast.)
Quote of the Day
Nigel Farage, commenting on the election of Donald Trump:
“This is a big opportunity for all British business because once we’ve left that awful EU thing we can do our first trade deal with the United States of America. Isn’t that great?”
President Trump
I never thought, except in a few moments of fantasy, that I would be able to say that.
I have been interested in Trump as a phenomenon all year.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Wilson conceded that “Trump is still a very powerful force right now” because he appeals to part of the of the conservative base that Wilson said was activated by his “nativist” message. Wilson insisted that the donor class “can’t just sit back on the sidelines and say, ‘oh well, don’t worry, this will all work itself out.’”
“They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump,” Wilson said. “And that’s a fact.”
Wilson is an alleged GOP consultant. Trump may be fatal to many GOP consultants as they were not only mistaken but disloyal to the team they were supposed to belong to.
What happened? Richard Fernandez has a theory.
Hillary’s real enemy was Obama’s real record of failure added to her own. Low-wage growth, a disastrous foreign policy, a catastrophic Obamacare, and numerous scandals to name a few weighed down on her like an anvil heavier than any insult that Donald Trump could lay upon her.
It’s important for progressives to realize this, for they are even now casting about for something to blame. Paul Krugman tweeted: “I truly thought I knew my country better than it turns out I did. I have warned that we could become a failed state, but didn’t realize …” Realize what? That the electorate wouldn’t notice the last administration’s debacles?
A lot of this can be laid on Obama. He has been a disastrous president. I thought he would be all along.
In February 2008, I posted this.
Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s kingmaker.
Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio program.
I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:
“He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”
“Oh, you are? Who might that be?”
“Barack Obama.”
Obama had no record of accomplishment. Jones put his name on bills he had had nothing to do with.