Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

i think we might be able to get some republican allies to block whatever racist policies might be coming from a white house where a chief advisor is neo nazi steve bannon

i am not optimistic about stopping the traditional republican agenda from getting through unless, for some reason, trump and ryan start feuding or whatever

There's always that hope when monstrous egos are involved.

Forget 'deplorables,' howbout answering the $675,000 Question with a shrug and "That's what they were paying"? Why that didn't create empathy with every single mother knocking her brains out working two jobs, I can't imagine. And there was more where that came from.

sean g otm

can't we filibuster tho?

GOP expected to abolish filibuster?

AP sez it's Giuliani at State. ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

GOP expected to abolish filibuster?

lol that would be crazy and super risky/dumb. they would p much have to go fascist, after that.

the Democrats won't control a single lever of power come 2017

AHEM

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/gned/lapham_lights96.pdf

The permanent government, a secular oligarchy of which the company at dinner was representative, comprises the
Fortune 500 companies and their attendant lobbyists, the big media and entertainment syndicates, the civil and military
services, the larger research universities and law firms, It is this government that hires the country's politicians and sees
the terms and conditions under which the country's citizens can exercise their right--God-given but increasingly
expensive--to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Obedient to the rule of men, not laws, the permanent
government oversees the production of wealth, builds cities, manufactures goods, raises capital', fixes prices, shapes the
landscape, anti reserves the right to assume debt, poison rivers, cheat the customers, receive the gifts of federal subsidy,
and speak to the American people in the language of low motive and base emotion.

EXCEPT - and this seems important - since Lapham wrote this, in the nineties, we seem to have inverted his concept.
The permanent government is the one that believes in laws, not men. The provisional one, the one elected on a technicality, not by democracy, appears to believe in nothing.

flopson, recall the 'nuclear option' of 2013 that the Dems did not use

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/14/this-is-why-senate-republicans-might-not-go-nuclear/

Speaking of thte permanent Washington class:

Michelle Obama has burned off her date-night meals at Washington’s new generation of acclaimed restaurants by pedaling at SoulCycle. President Obama has shopped for Jonathan Franzen novels with his daughters at local independent bookstores. Obama administration staff members, their barhopping chronicled in the gossip pages, have hit the 14th Street hot spots hard.

Decades ago, Washington was broke and run by a mayor best known for smoking crack with a prostitute on a surveillance tape. Neighborhoods had not fully recovered from the 1968 riots, and an aging Georgetown elite still set the tone. The administrations of two Bushes and a Clinton in between hardly had an effect on the city.

But Mr. Obama’s arrival in 2009 coincided with an urban renaissance. Economic development, federal and private investment, and an influx of highly educated young, gay and diverse professionals gentrified neighborhoods, leading to an explosion in restaurants, bars and cafes. And the Obama family — African-American, youthful, attractive and urbane — were archetypes of a modern city on the upswing

Dems have the Senate filibuster and thats it. in 2008 that was all the GOP had too (well, and the SC)

Things are moving fast:
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/798345065571774464

Here's a recent shot of California and Texas separatist leaders meeting in Moscow:

McConnell's recent comment about how "majorities dont last forever" + his past as minority leader would suggest he's not eager to abolish the filibuster. But we'll see.

but didn't Ds have a supermajority in 08?

jesus christ

The whole point of the senate is basically to allow the minority to grind things to a halt.

Xp

Dems never had 2/3rds iirc

Xp

In the House Pelosi should look for opportunities to exploit the division between Ryan and the Freedom Caucus, and engineer combining votes w the Freedom Caucus to oppose legislation where possible.

There are looming cracks and schisms in the GOP majority. When yr in the minority, those are yr weapons.

somehow I'm sure they'll all be able to find common ground

To what extent do the deep blue states gerrymander the hell out of districting like red states?

Dan Savage was advocating figuring out voter suppression for Republican voters which is crazy but if states at least stacked the deck a bit more for the House I wouldn't be mad.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/aftermath-sixteen-writers-on-trumps-america

the Dems are going to have to learn tactics that they've been too reluctant to learn out of (a) moral squeamishness (b) collusion

I think pelosi has it in her. Less confident about Schumer.

Gerrymandering favors the minority party. In most of the country, Republicans are still the minority party.

scott, I kinda thank you for sharing that, but I read almost all of it last night and it's pretty clear every one of them phoned it in and there was barely any editing at all (because "essays" don't need fact-checking etc); I was especially disappointed by Shteyngart, although I guess I shouldn't have been and he's probably right anyway we all live in hell etc. And I have no idea what point Gawande was trying to make, other than "we need to keep doing our jobs!" thanks I'm glad the medical profession needed to be reminded of that

"Nancy Pelosi brilliantly exploited tension between Senate Republicans torn apart on whether to starve the poor, hunt them down in the streets, or boil them alive before consuming their flesh."

"voter suppression for Republicans" = "actual democracy"

Pelosi is in the House flopson

that was an xp to milo
turnout, turnout, candidates we care about, register, show up, vote the line.

That too

But we have 2 years til next election. In the meantime legislative hardball is required. Sad to see ppl here suggest there should be compromise w GOP.

aww, i didn't know gwen ifill died. i just heard it from obama. she would have been a better president than trump. r.i.p.

xp otm. it's not even so much a political question as a moral one.

god, someone shared a Bill Burr-Conan interview on Facebook and I started watching it. I'm glad the rich white guy who screams constantly has nothing to fear from Trump.

lol that would be crazy and super risky/dumb. they would p much have to go fascist, after that.

― flopson, Monday, November 14, 2016 10:03 PM (one hour ago)

it's actually a great idea in terms of fairness and democracy, though it's a shame it'll happen in this context

but didn't Ds have a supermajority in 08?

― flopson, Monday, November 14, 2016 10:19 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dems never had 2/3rds iirc

Xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, November 14, 2016 10:21 PM (forty-five minutes ago)

need 60, not 2/3, which the dems had for a short time until ted kennedy died. it was all downhill from there

Oh right 3/5ths. My bad. I thought they only had 59 even w kennedy tho.

I will be surprised if mcconnell ditches the filibuster tbh. What does he care about democracy, he knows they're likely to be in the minority as soon as Trump fucks up.

Oh right 3/5ths. My bad. I thought they only had 59 even w kennedy tho.

― Οὖτις, Monday, November 14, 2016 11:22 PM (three minutes ago)

depends if you even wanted to count shitbags like evan bayh and joe lieberman

See my RIP Joe Lieberman thread for reference

need 60, not 2/3, which the dems had for a short time until ted kennedy died. it was all downhill from there

― k3vin k., Tuesday, November 15, 2016 4:08 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

president scott brown was the end of the honeymoon for the obama administration. obamacare could only pass through reconciliation and it all went to shit from there.

when does trump appoint that papa johns creep as the official white house chef

Is Dave Thomas alive to take the job? Wider variety at Wendy's.

he knows they're likely to be in the minority as soon as Trump fucks up.

i admire your optimism

ditto

i still don't really understand how US politics works, still trying to read that thing Morbs linked about "cloture" lol

i've been on a pendulum this week. i haven't noticed it really until today, thinking -gutted and nauseated though i was feeling on the 9th- that i was keeping a level head, but today the Bannon pick has my heart racing, and i'm realizing that i've been holding a certain panic at bay. this sense of the ground slipping out from underneath me, the disorientation and sense of strangeness even, like when you return to your house after a long trip, feels ancient and familiar for me. it dates back to my childhood, which i thought far down the tunnel of memory, and the feelings leading up to the overthrow of Allende, except it's not far down a tunnel after all, it's right here after all, hovering over me, or even right here in the pit of my stomach.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countycartrb512.png
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countycartpurple512.png

Mark Newman's adjusted-by-population cartograms are back, and even if they seem a bit premature (aren't we still waiting on a large number of votes to be counted?) or incomplete (pity Alaska and Hawaii) they may still be helpful in the ongoing quest to grasp What Happened and What's To Be Done.

I work with a lady that leans conservative (and I won't ask about her vote) that is buying private health insurance, is knowledgeable about politics and medicine (her daughter is a doctor), is not insured at work (part-time with no options in the company for full-time) and she makes too much for a subsidized market place plan (because of alimony and investments and such), but is 7 months away from Medicare. Her current options are $1200 a month for catastrophic care that doesn't cover much of anything at a day to day basis or the unthinkable of going without. She's figuring out how to juggle expenses while she waits for Medicare.

I won't be laughing at her gradual realization that there may not be anything for her in the short or long term future. Maybe she should have made better life choices.

My parents went through a pretty rough ten years after my dad lost his job, and finally getting on Medicare has made a big difference to them. After what happened to my dad, seeing him lose medicare might make me angrier than anything else I can think of right now.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, provided a useful breakdown of voting patterns in last Tuesday’s presidential election. Taken at face value, the results seem to show that Hillary Clinton did well among those voters on the lowest incomes. She led 53%-41% among those earning less than $30,000 a year and by 51%-42% among those earning between $30,000 and $50,000.

But these statistics are misleading. There was actually a 16-point net swing to the Republicans between the 2012 and 2016 elections among those earning less than $30,000 a year and a 6-point swing among those earning $30,000 to $50,000. By contrast, there was a swing to the Democrats among those on higher incomes, and this was particularly pronounced among those earning more than $100,000 a year.

The reasons for Trump were also the reasons for Brexit | John Harris
One interpretation of these numbers would be that Americans on average or below average incomes voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 because they expected fundamental change from which they would benefit. They were still waiting for the change to come in 2016 and thought Trump was more likely to provide it than Clinton. The better off, who have being doing just fine out of business as usual, supported Clinton as the candidate of the status quo. For Wall Street and Silicon Valley she was the safer choice. As in other western countries, the party ostensibly of the left had nothing to say that its traditional base wanted to hear.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/nov/13/donald-trump-product-of-new-economic-depression