American Exceptionalism After 2016

Eight years ago, long before we ever imagined the Trump-Clinton disaster election we just had, a younger Senator Obama was being hammered for his views on "American Exceptionalism." Basically, he didn't believe we are an exceptional nation by birth. He didn't believe in some form of divine greatness that Americans have by birth. Conservative Americans were insulted.

Barack Obama was right.

America has been an exceptional nation throughout it's history. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were exceptional. The first Moon landing was exceptional. The Emancipation Proclamation and winning the Civil War was exceptional. Building the Interstate Highway System was exceptional. Winning both World Wars was exceptional. Developing the nuclear bomb was exceptional. The Civil Rights Movement was exceptional. Bringing the internet to household scale was exceptional. Building the New York City skyline was exceptional. The Marshall Plan was exceptional. America has many exceptional moments in it's past.

"Making America Great Again" this past Fall is not exceptional.

I don't view us as exceptional right now. Talk of building a wall on the Mexican border isn't exceptional. Building a "Muslim registry" is not exceptional. Withdrawing from the Iran Deal is not exceptional. Putting more guns on the street is not exceptional. Denying climate change is not exceptional. Cutting and privatizing Medicare and Social Security is not exceptional. De-regulating the banks is not exceptional. Nothing this man is proposing is exceptional.

I find nothing exceptional about Donald Trump or his 62.5 million voters. I find it embarrassing. With promises of nonsensical things, like bringing back factories and mines, the President-elect has convinced millions of uneducated and desperate people to sign onto his xenophobic, hyper-nationalistic agenda. We will now have a President-elect who wishes to partner with Vladimir Putin, of all the terrible people he could pick, but wants to pick a fight with China. This is not a welcome change.

We're not exceptional right now.

Realism for Resistance in Trump America

Today, Donald Trump will be elected by the Electoral College as the 45th President of the United States. The "Hamilton Elector" movement will spectacularly fail, probably gaining more Democratic electors voting for Bernie Sanders than GOP electors voting for someone besides Donald Trump. While I don't like this, and I don't disagree with those who say history will be harsh to these electors, reality is the only thing we can truly face at this point, even if we don't like it. Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States. There is no stopping that.

Here's another harsh reality- the next two years for Democrats are not about actually legislating. All talk of progress, of passing new laws, or of making any great change has died. No progressive legislation will pass the House. In the Senate, the value of Senate Democrats is entirely based on keeping 41 Senators together against any piece of Trump legislation. To the extent that Senate Democrats are willing to mount filibusters, they will matter. It ultimately doesn't matter if Democrats hold all 48 votes together, but they will need 41.

The situation is even more dire in the states, where Republican Governors and legislatures will simply do what the North Carolina legislature did, and move the goalposts. There is no way for Democrats to stop this. It's going to be a tough two years of legislating. It could very well be a tough two years politically too. The economy has been fairly strong in recent years. Americans have shown they can be optimistic about new Presidents even when they don't like those Presidents. Prepare for a frustrating situation.

The job of Democrats is not to win any of these fights, or to create a "liberal Tea Party," it is to stay awake and give this man no cover. Don't vote for any Medicare privatization plan. Don't vote for cuts to Social Security. Don't vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act or Dodd-Frank. Don't vote for bank and environmental de-regulation. Force the Republican Party to own all of the Trump agenda on their own. Don't even vote for misleadingly popular things he wants to do, like "infrastructure spending" that is just tax cuts for construction companies. Vote no. Point out what is wrong with what he's doing. Shine a bright light on all of the offensive and stupid things he says. Never let up. Never play along.

Expect to lose though, and that's good. The more he actually does, the more his actual record will be there to use. It's worth noting that he got 46.2% of the vote, a lower share than Mitt Romney got, meaning that even a marginally popular Democratic candidate in 2020 has a shot to beat him. The more things the GOP does on their own, the easier it is to run against them as a party in 2018, a year that was supposed to be awful for us, with 26 Senate seats up. We don't have to defend a "top of the ticket" candidate now, and the Republicans do. Gaining three seats might still be a stretch, and the House will be a lift no matter what happens, but the idea of gaining House seats and not losing Senate seats is possible, if we oppose him right. Just don't expect too much more.

Here's the good news though- I do think we will defeat Donald Trump in 2020, provided we don't give into our worst impulses. He's not seen the normal bounce for a President-elect, and I don't think he will be able to get a "9/11 bounce" from global events, like President Bush did, due to the deepened polarization of our electorate. I know that many Democrats believe he'll do dramatic things, like a new Jim Crow, but I think that's over-stating the way government works. Democrats can still defeat this man in four years, and possibly get back Congress too, if they don't self-destruct. That could be a very large "if" though.

Moving Forward in Trump America

On January 20th, it goes without saying that Donald Trump's America is going to be a lot different than Barack Obama's. Obviously the rhetoric will change clearly. Obviously the objectives will change, wildly. Obviously the faces in power are going to change dramatically. It's important to realize the concrete differences we're going to see.

Rather than expanding the social safety net, as we saw with the ACA under President Obama, look for the Trump Administration to work hard to tear down the FDR "New Deal" and the LBJ "Great Society" programs. Look for Medicare to be privatized. Look for Medicaid to be turned into a block grant. Look for Social Security to be changed into a much smaller-scale program. Look for public education to be increasingly privatized. Paul Ryan has already begun writing the plans. Newt Gingrich has openly said it. His cabinet appointees, with their open antipathy for their departments, make it clear.

Look for environmental regulation to be curtailed immensely. Regulations to combat greenhouse gases and global climate change will be lifted. Investments in green and renewable energy to be rolled back, in favor of investments in fossil fuels. Protection of wild and natural lands to be stopped, and more to be leased to oil and gas drillers. Look for much less global dialogue with foreign leaders on ways to work together to save our environment. Look at both his stated opinions, the words of his incoming Chief-of-Staff, and his appointments at the EPA, the Interior, and the Energy Departments.

Look for social positions that go against everything the Obama Administration fought for. Look for an open antagonism against refugees, immigrants in general, and future immigration from foreign nations. Look for regressive policies on women's health issues. Look for the Federal Government to crack down on states who legalized marijuana. Look for judges, based on Trump's own list of potential SCOTUS appointments, who will roll back LGBTQ rights. Look for a Muslim Registry, because he has never wavered on doing so. Look for a border wall with Mexico, because it is still his stated policy. Look for a closed door and cold shoulder for Black Lives Matter advocates. If you doubt me here, just look at his appointment of Jeff Sessions to be our next Attorney General, a man who was deemed too racist for the federal bench in the 1980's. Look at his bringing Steve Bannon, a white nationalist, into his White House as his Counselor.

Look for a foreign policy that overturns much of the order by which the world has worked since World War II. He has been loud and clear about his intentions to be more friendly with Russia, a petro-military power who's economic interests are selling oil and weapons. He'll let them prop up Assad in Syria. He'll let them have Crimea. He'll certainly let them work with Exxon to make money. It's good for business. So is letting Israel build settlements in the West Bank. So is handing over a political dissident to Turkey. Frankly, so is agitating China over Taiwan. If you doubt that his foreign policy will be very business-driven, just look at him appointing the head of Exxon as his Secretary of State.

Do not be fooled. Not by Kanye, nor by his bizarre Twitter rants, or even by his ridiculous charges that millions of "illegals" voted in the election. Look at Donald Trump's direct actions. He's going to cut taxes for high earners and corporations. He's going to tear down "safety net" programs for the poor and middle classes. He's going to pursue a more "business friendly" world for American corporations. He's going to let the banks and the oil companies out from under regulations, and probably the health insurers too. He'll let the social conservatives have their playground at the Department of Justice. He's surrounding himself with billionaires and generals in his cabinet who come in with agendas and outsider credentials, and many of them have an antipathy towards their departments we haven't seen often in our history. Don't act shocked by Ben Carson going to HUD, where the objective is to de-regulate and let the real estate market heat up as much as it wants. In fact, don't be shocked by much of anything. In every appointment, Donald Trump is clearly signaling where things are going next year.

Be clear eyed. Don't get distracted. Don't be fooled again.

It's 2016 and Nothing Matters

Bobby Valentine as Ambassador to Japan. Disputes over the extent to which Russia influenced our election. Exxon Mobile's CEO to lead the State Department. Kanye West, fresh out of the "looney bin" to visit the President-elect. Continued questions over how the President-elect will handle his business dealings as President, amidst rumors that Turkey is already trying to blackmail him using his private business ties. Rick Perry, who forgot the name of the Energy Department when he wanted to get rid of it in 2011, will now serve as Energy Secretary. The President-elect is going to stay on as Executive Producer of the new season of "Celebrity Apprentice" for NBC/Comcast. Jim Brown and Ray Lewis had a meeting with the President-elect. The First Lady isn't moving to the White House. The National Security Adviser is pushing conspiracy theories on Facebook on how their former opponent and her campaign chairman were running a child-sex ring out of a pizza shop in Northwest DC. The White House's chief strategist is a "white nationalist." His two biggest surrogates during the election are both going to get no job in his administration.

All of this comes on the heels of the most ridiculous election in my lifetime. As a candidate, he called for building a wall on the border with Mexico, the imprisonment of his opponent, Russia to hack his political opponents, and said he sexually assaulted women, and it's okay, because he's rich and famous. The man who will serve as our next President lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, or over 2%. He pulled off the near impossible feat of winning the Presidency without winning a majority of his party's primary vote, or the general election vote. He accused a primary-opponent's father of being involved in the JFK assassination, and that primary opponent eventually endorsed him, but not until after attacking him at his own convention. The whole thing was silly season.

Please don't tell me facts, policy, or anything substantive matters anymore. We have entered an age of cultural/tribal politics, where literally everything is identity. Donald Trump tapped into a form of hyper-masculinity that had a cult following, particularly across the Upper Midwest region of the country and down through the South, if for no other reason than it was standing up to the "uppity" smart liberals in the big cities, and the "others" whom are taking America away from the "Man's man." Many of Trump's supporters openly admit when asked that they don't think he'll actually "build the wall," or bring back the factories and mines, or really do much of anything that he said, they just like that he said he will, and said he'd stand up for them. The guy literally said he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose any votes, and frankly, there's no evidence that he's wrong.

Most of America doesn't understand policy, which should have been evident after the ACA debate in 2009-10, but clearly wasn't. Most of America will tolerate bad behavior from their leaders in their private lives, which ironically should have been true from Bill Clinton. Most of America isn't all that "in tune" with activist types and their pet causes, let alone the in's and out's of why they feel that way. Most of America just goes with gut reactions and feelings in their politics, and basically votes on a brand of identity politics that is way more crass and basic than most liberals would like to admit. They don't want their taxes raised, they're not sure they really want the government to do a whole lot, they just want their way of life to be preserved, and their economic well-being to be kept. The debates of Washington, Twitter, college campuses, and political organization meetings mean nothing to them. You might be able to get them to say they don't approve of something Trump said in a poll question, but that's not what's driving their votes in the end. All the high minded political debates just don't really matter.

It's 2016- and nothing matters.

No Time for Intelligence Briefings, Plenty of Time for Kanye

Donald Trump is taking an intelligence briefing about one time a week right now. He's the President-elect of the United States, he's going to take office as President in 38 days, and he's not doing a daily intelligence briefing. This should shock and alarm all of us.

Trump met with Kanye West today. They talked about "life." Seriously, the President-elect met with a rapper today. In fact, he met with a rapper who just got out of a mental hospital. He did this on the day he announced his nominees for Secretary of State and Energy. You can't make this up.

On Trump's part, this is just his latest distraction for the media and public, something to get them to stop talking about Russia and it's connections to his nominee at State. For Kanye though, this is a new low. The man who once had a social conscience is now going to Trump Tower to be a prop. I'm done with Kanye. I was never starting with Trump in the first place.

Kremlin Don- Moscow Has It's Puppet

The Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community on the whole has come to a conclusion- Russia interfered in our election to help Donald Trump's campaign for President. Now, to be completely fair, they haven't released a lot more than that (probably because it's classified), and they have not once said they actually hacked our election and physically tainted our results. They also never said that didn't happen either. They simply have stated that Russia actively interfered in our election for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the White House. Whether you call that disinformation or hacking our voting machines, it's very alarming.

Donald Trump simply rejects this finding. He says they are wrong. He doesn't believe them. He says he doesn't think it's even the CIA's position. He doesn't want to get a daily intelligence briefing, he says he doesn't need them. John Bolton, a major adviser to the Trump Transition, says this entire Russian hacking story might even be a "false flag" operation by the government to discredit the President-elect. The Trump Transition has even brought up the ghost of the Iraq War in casting doubt on the credibility of the intelligence community.The incoming Administration is casting direct doubt on the findings of the intelligence community, and casting doubts on the value of their work to the new President.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is naming a Secretary of State with very close relations with Russia. Rex Tillerson is the CEO of Exxon Mobil. He has no foreign service experience, no political experience, and in fact no life experience outside of Exxon, the only place he's ever worked. Tillerson has negotiated many deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a massive energy exporter whom Exxon has to work with. Tillerson has been so good at this that Russia gave him their top civilian honor, an extremely rare outcome for a foreigner. This comes after Donald Trump named a National Security Adviser who also wants to pursue a more pro-Russian foreign policy. The Trump Administration is clearly going to pursue a more pro-Kremlin foreign policy.

Something is not right about all of this. Russia interfering in our election, Donald Trump appointing a pro-Russian National Security team, and the active efforts to discredit our intelligence community- it all strikes me as very weird. It would appear to any objective person that Donald Trump is pursuing the foreign policy that Russia wants. It would appear that he is allowing Vladimir Putin to violate our sovereignty as a nation. It would appear that he is reversing the entire history of the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would appear that he is Vladimir Putin's puppet. Donald Trump, as well as President Barack Obama, owe it to the American people to de-classify the information on this matter, and let us know if we're still a sovereign nation. This is far too important for our people to have any questions. This raises questions about the very independence of our nation.

It's Not About Cities vs. Suburbs

One of the great divides between myself and most millennial liberals is driven by geography. Much of our millennial liberal base is located in urban centers, and has an urbanista-political bias. I grew up in the suburbs, and while I've lived and worked in some very large cities, i'm not hostile to suburbia. I see it's advantages.

One of the big areas of divide for me is on transit politics. I'm not anti-car. I'm still pro-mass transit, but I'm not in favor of enacting policies to end car use in center cities. I support parking garages and free parking, as do many urban businesses. I still support regional mass transit systems though, and think they work fine. I've seen SEPTA help people who live in the suburbs reach better paying work in the urban core. I don't define mass transit as an "urban" politics thing. I'm also not anti-car though.

The "thinking man's" right-wing is seeking to create a policy and ideology divide between cities/mass transit systems and suburbs/cars. In fact, they want to see Donald Trump drive this wedge:

What President-elect Trump has the opportunity to do now is to launch a third great wave of suburbanization, one that can revive the American Dream for the Millennial generation, produce jobs and wealth that can power the American economy, and take advantage of changing technology to create a new wave of optimism and dynamism in American life.

There’s a confluence of trends that make this possible. In the first place, the Millennials, like the Boomers, are a large generation that needs both jobs and affordable homes. Second, the shale revolution means that energy in the United States will likely be relatively abundant and cheap for the foreseeable future. Third, both financial markets and the real economy have recovered from the shock of the financial crisis, and, whatever hiccups and upsets may come their way, are now ready for sustained expansion. Fourth, revolutions in technology (self-driving cars and the internet) make it possible for people to build a third ring of suburbs even farther out from the central cities, where land prices are still low and houses can be affordably built.

For national politicians, this is a huge opportunity. Creating the infrastructure for the third suburban wave—new highways, ring roads and the rest of it for another suburban expansion—will create enormous numbers of jobs. The opportunity for cheap housing in leafy places will allow millions of young people to get a piece of the American Dream. Funding the construction of this infrastructure and these homes gives Wall Street an opportunity to make a lot of money in ways that don’t drive the rest of the country crazy.

This approach meshes very well both with the President-elect’s economic instincts and with the economic interests of the people who voted for him. It also works for the Republican dominated states around the country. It capitalizes on one of America’s distinctive advantages: less densely-populated than other advanced countries, the United States has the elbow room for a new suburban wave.

I have three main critiques of this line of thought, and none of them is that it's a bad thing if a suburban revival happens. Donald Trump could do a lot worse than trying to be the new Dwight Eisenhower and build an interstate highway system. I'd love to see Paul Ryan's House even consider that though. Anyway, my critiques:

1. Cheap energy? Shale revolution? Are you kidding me? Look, shale is certainly going to be a part of the nation's energy policy in the age of Trump, but saying this is going to drive a cheap energy revolution is nuts. Energy costs are relatively cheap right now, under President Obama's "all of the above" energy policy- more domestic fossil fuel, more renewable energy, and more energy efficiency. Shale is not what's driving down energy costs- a sane energy policy is. Hopefully Donald Trump's business instincts will drive him to not play "big government" favorites, and try to crush renewable energy sources, which are creating lots of jobs and cheaper energy here in the United States. Expansion or nuclear power, continuing our domestic production, and encouraging renewable investments is the way to go on energy. 
2. This is not a mass transit OR highways thing. The Philadelphia Region's SEPTA system spans from the University of Delaware all the way north to Doylestown. Tens of thousands of people in the region who live in suburbs use mass transit every day. Meanwhile, look at the highways going out of Philadelphia in the morning. Tens of thousands of Philadelphians are using the car to get to work. A smart transit grid, one that is not pushing an ideology of urbanism or suburbanism, includes robust mass transit systems and highway systems. Look at the Washington, DC region, where the metro connects Northern Virginia suburbanites with good paying jobs in downtown, as well as students at the University of Maryland out in the suburbs with opportunities in the nation's capitol. This isn't one or the other, it's about adequately funding both.
3. Sustainability is the key here. Environmental sustainability and market sustainability. Trying to move people out of mass transit, and put more cars on the road, is not sustainable. Cars are expensive. If I could get rid of one area of my bills, it would be my car. Cars are also polluters. Even beyond that, the idea that we're going to flood the housing market with a bunch of cheaper, newer housing options in the suburbs isn't feasible. Out here in suburban America, where I live, we are just getting beyond the stage where suburban houses on an acre of land were sitting vacant because the owners just left. The pricing of housing has re-adjusted finally. The inventory is finally getting back to normal levels. The idea that a flood of new housing developments just beyond the edge of suburbia would succeed right now is wishful thinking. It would greatly deflate the values of existing homes, and probably not end up being a winner in a rational housing market. I don't believe the consumers are there at this time.

None of this is to say that I don't think that Donald Trump should invest in our infrastructure, particularly our interstate highway system. I just don't see this as some sort of zero-sum game. I also don't think that a quick boom of suburban expansion is a realistic thing in 2017 or 2018, and might not be for five years or more. While I realize that political concerns are playing into right-wing hopes of a suburban expansion, I don't think it will happen. It is true that millennials are beginning to want home ownership like their parents and grandparents had, and suburban life will probably become more desirable to them, there aren't enough of them currently able to get into the market who want to get into the market. In short, I haven't seen much evidence that any of this idea is feasible.

The People Who Teach You to Think

Sometimes the convergence of events can help one gain clarity that they had long lacked. Sometimes several things happen at once, and cause you to remember something core to who you are, or what you believe. It's random, but it opens your eyes to things that are happening in front of you.

Donald Trump is putting together a cabinet that a former U.S. Senator called "the worst ever" to me last week, even before some of the worst picks were announced. Trump's cabinet is a combination of generals, right-wing purists, and billionaires that resembles what you'd expect to see in a third world oligarchy. Billionaires who oppose public education, and support fully automated (robotic) work-forces, working along side military strongmen who made their reputations on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Generally these forces don't assume civilian control of the government, but in the time of Trump they do. This is particularly scary when you cast this against hyper-nationalistic rhetoric, talk of "strong borders," and the President-elect launching personal attacks against comedians, journalists, union leaders, and other super-power nations in the world, all from the comfort of his Twitter account, while his supporters follow up his taunts with threats against pizza shops, union leaders, and Star Wars movies. To be clear, this is not normal, and this is not the America of my youth.

Meanwhile back home in Bethlehem, PA, my college adviser was teaching his final class. I was interested in, and read a lot about politics before I ever met Gary. I can't say that I thought super-critically about these issues and our world before that though. It was under his watch that I learned about things I would never have otherwise even thought about. I read books like "Blowback," that completely altered my view of American foreign policy and thinking on things like the Iraq War, or U.S. policy towards Iran, Saudi Arabia and others. Exploitation of foreign workers and identity politics were things I never had given a single thought about, much less understood, prior to my time with Gary at Moravian. The kinds of "banana republics" and dictatorships that I now draw parallels to in the time of Trump are places I was introduced to in Gary's classes. The lessons of yester-year are suddenly so important, again. Just as important though was the over-arching themes of those classes- to critically examine why things were happening, and not just accept a superficial answer as satisfying. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, I find myself trying to apply that standard to myself, and to the political party that I find myself as a member of now. We're going to need a lot more of that critical thought as we move into whatever the hell tomorrow is going to look like.

The convergence of a frightening future and a nostalgic moment about my time learning under a man who taught me to think comes at a time when I am coming back to campus anyway tomorrow for an alumni board meeting. Not a day goes by where I don't wish I could sit in those classes today, as a more mature person. Many of the lessons I should have been learning at that time are lessons that I blocked out because of a youthful and inward-looking world view. I find myself trying to re-capture that moment in my mind now, and to re-teach myself. I also find myself quite grateful for being given the critical thinking skills that I was given during my time on that campus.

Be Honest With the Working Class

Behold Bethlehem Steel. It basically closed when I was a child. The company ceased to exist sometime when I was in college. Thousands of people worked at the place in that picture above, every day. Members of my family worked there. First and second generation Americans made a good life there, as members of the United Steelworkers Union. America was built there.

They don't make steel there anymore. Sure, there is a little bit of steel production still in Bethlehem, but it is no longer the driver of the economy in the city. It hasn't been for a couple of decades now. Even with those losses, Bethlehem is doing great. Crime is low. Employment is high. Quality of life is good. People are not yearning for the plant to come back. Bethlehem is not suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. In fact, while Bethlehem has preserved it's heritage through careful protection of historic structures, the city has moved completely beyond the days of the steel mill.

Nothing angers me more than politicians lying to people who are perhaps incapable of understanding the issues they are being lied to about. Much has been made of West Virginia this election cycle, somewhat unfairly since the state has been "red" for a while, and how it has "fallen in love" with Donald Trump. Much of why West Virginia seems to love Trump more than they loved President Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney, has to do with his promises to bring back the coal mines. Much of the same was true in Western Pennsylvania. He went across the Rust Belt, from Iowa to Pennsylvania, and promised to bring back factories, bring back coal mines, and stop job losses. He even ran out to Indiana to tout a terrible deal with Carrier as President-elect. He promised a suffering people the Moon.

I've got bad news for these folks- he's not going to deliver it. No one is. The factory jobs may not be lost to Mexico and China if Trump carries through on tariffs, but they will be lost to automation, or the dreaded robots. If he does slap huge taxes on companies that outsource jobs and try to sell products here, the trade war that will follow would make it impossible for us to manufacture anything here that would sell abroad. If the market doesn't kill coal, it's finite supply and costs will do so. If the depression that would follow protectionism doesn't kill the factories, automation will. The factories aren't coming back. The coal mines aren't coming back either. At best, Donald Trump's de-regulatory policies on domestic fossil fuels will help practices like fracking. At worst, they'll do absolutely nothing for laid off workers.

The truth of the matter is that West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Western Pennsylvania have already probably taken the worst of the hit from globalization and renewable energy. The job losses have been significant, and the impacts have been felt. The middle-class way of life that blue-collar workers once enjoyed is gone. Nothing that Donald Trump wants to do will change that. Not protectionism. Not tax cuts. Not de-regulation.

What these people need is some straight talk. They need re-training programs when their jobs leave. They need investments in developing renewable energy in places where the mines once were. They need a commitment to educating the children, so that they can compete in a new economy that is not like that of the glory day in that region. In short, they need to be told that the mines and factories are never coming back- but that there is a plan to make sure they are okay. In short, they need honesty. They are not getting that. That is not something we should be proud of.

Newsflash, Again: Trump is Going to be President

I find it utterly shocking and disgusting- Donald Trump was elected President on November 8th. Sure, he got less votes. Sure, he has no idea what he's doing. Sure, he has conflicts of interest. Sure, he makes foreign policy mistakes. Sure, Russia! I could go on. All are perfectly valid complaints.

None matter.

Donald Trump will be elected President of the United States by the electoral college on December 19th. A month and a day later, on January 20th of 2017, he will be inaugurated as the President. That is not going to change. All of this talk of "Hamilton Electors," recounts, and investigations won't add up to a bit of good for Democrats in the end. The recounts won't turn up enough votes, in fact they never had a chance to. The investigations would take years, if they even happen. The electoral college is made up of mostly Republican regulars, or at least the 306 Trump electors are, and they are not going to break from the GOP's candidate.

I see a lot of Democratic activists who want to do stuff now. They have a lot of energy. I understand that. A Trump Presidency is absolutely terrifying. Almost anything being done right now though by Democrats, from the absurd "Civil War," to throwing money at the Louisiana Senate race, to holding rallies and "mourning" parties, is not going to make a hill-of-beans difference for the Democratic Party going forward.

It's time to make peace with reality. Trump will be President. The Democratic Party and broader American Left is not gone for good though, nor is it terminally broken, and all this "blood letting" is a lot of talk about nothing. Donald Trump is terrible, and Hillary Clinton did beat him by 2.7 million votes. All of these realities can be true at once, and all are. It's time to accept that.

Trump's Carrier Deal a Loser for America

This should come as no shock to anyone- Donald Trump is celebrating an achievement of his own creating today. He's been talking about a Carrier plant in Indiana that was going to ship jobs to Mexico for a while now, and he promised to intervene to save the jobs. He has done so, sort of, and now he's actually flown to Indiana to toot his own horn. Of course the compliant press is covering it as a win, too.

This deal is a loser for everybody though, particularly the American people. First off, it's crony-capitalism at it's worst. In exchange for Carrier keeping 1,000 jobs there, out of the 2,000 that were in danger, they are getting $7 million over the next ten years. Break that out, and it's $700 a job, per year, for the next decade. Is it breaking the bank? No, but it is taking revenue away from the state. United Technologies Corporation, the parent company of Carrier, certainly doesn't need $7 million in tax breaks. Go look up their revenue.

Second off, while we should all be happy for the people at that factory who get to keep their jobs, it's important to note that you would have to do a job deal like this every day for a couple of decades to match the kind of job savings you got from the much-maligned auto-bailout of 2009. You can't piece-meal your way through the micro-economy to stem manufacturing job losses. This is not an economic strategy for a nation the size of our's.

The third problem is the awful precedent this just set moving forward. Literally every manufacturer in America is looking at this and wondering if the simple threat of going to Mexico could land them a grab-bag of goodies from the Trump Administration, and the thing is, they are probably right. Trump has made this such a part of his political identity that he has to do it. Even more so though, he has to also lower taxes, as he promised that to his cronies. He has set up a dangerous system, where threats like this are rewarded. It's either extortion or bribery, you take your pick.

The fourth and maybe scariest thing is the way leverage was probably used in this deal. United Technologies Corporation is a major defense contractor. They simply couldn't afford to risk those contracts, and i'm sure the Transition team knew that. Welcome to the era of open thug government. That this factory happened to be in Indiana, where Vice-President-elect Mike Pence is still governor, probably made this even worse yet. Sure, LBJ did this, and frankly most of us support that he did. Donald Trump is no LBJ. Lord only knows what kind of sick, twisted threats he'll make.

Here's the last, and maybe most important part to remember amidst Trump's chest-pounding today- the workers aren't really winning either. Sure, 1,000 of them keep their jobs, for now. At least several hundred, if not an actual 1,000, will lose their jobs in the coming weeks. Those that keep their jobs will probably see some changes to their compensation in the coming months (since that's not being mentioned anywhere). Still others will see their jobs disappear in the future, either when the company finds a loophole to make more money without this deal, or when the deal runs out. Many will lose their jobs now. All will probably see changes to their compensation. None of them receive any real security.

Keep your eye on the prize here. Trump has laid bare his economic principles. Yes, he does want to keep manufacturing jobs here, which is good, but it's the tip of the iceberg. He wants to cut taxes, and cutting these types of deals and using compliant state legislatures is easy for him. He also believes wages are too high, and he'll probably cut them with this deal. You can't stop globalization just by hunting around for individual cases of job losses and trying to fix them, which is essentially what Trump's strategy is. He's setting a false narrative, where it's not about enforcing regulation on trade partners, and it's not about automation, because it's convenient for him. This is a loser for the rest of us.

Drain the Swamp? Yeah, About That...

Donald Trump ran for President as a real outsider, a developer from New York (no, really), not an every day, career elected politician. He promised to change Washington by "draining the swamp." How's he doing?

Today he named Elaine Chao as his Secretary of Transportation, wife of Mitch McConnell and former Labor Secretary. Yesterday it leaked out that he was naming Rep. Tom Price to lead HHS. When he's not naming people with extensive Washington resumes, he's naming Wilbur Ross to lead Commerce, Betsy Devos to lead Education, and Ben Carson to lead HUD, all very rich Republicans with decidedly traditional Republican ideological views. When he's not naming DC insiders or millionaires and billionaires, he's naming Nikki Haley, South Carolina's Governor, to lead the UN. It is entirely a team of people deeply engrossed in right-wing politics, and typically with decidedly right-wing, traditional views. Price wants to end Obamacare and Medicaid as we know it. Ross used to run a mining company that had plenty of unsafe conditions for their workers. Devos opposes public schools and wants to enact vouchers. Carson ran for President as a Christian Conservative favorite. Haley was a class of 2010 governor, and governed in the spirit of the Tea Party. I could go on. There's nothing new or different here.

It's not just the picks he's made either. People like Rudy Giuliani, a total has-been Mayor of New York, and Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP Nominee for President, are still out there, not to mention the ultimate swamp-creature, Newt Gingrich. He could still go with Chris Christie for something too, presuming he's not putting him in prison for angering his son-in-law.

While Donald Trump distracts America with bizarre tweets alleging voter fraud, threatening to take away the citizenship of people, and attacking reporters, he's basically putting together a standard Republican Administration, with all the normal characters. Donald Trump isn't going to "Make America Great Again," or even really break from the stated and enacted policies of George W. Bush.

Congratulations America- you've been had.

Re-Counts Aren't Going to Change the Result, But....

Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated as the 45th President at noon on January 20th, 2017. I don't believe anything other than his own health can prevent that now, for what it's worth. You're not going to make up 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania with a standard re-count. You're probably not going to make up the 10,000 vote margin in Michigan, for that matter. What i'm basically saying in short is that the election results aren't going to change because of Jill Stein's publicity stunt.

This is by no means a good reason to stop doing it though. If you follow Donald Trump on Twitter, or just go to his page like I do, you will see how this recount is making the man completely unhinged. He is lashing out, making up outlandish conspiracies, and undermining the very election that elected him. If you don't want Trump re-elected, or future versions of Trump to be elected, then having him meltdown pretty regularly is a good strategy. If having a re-count bothers the guy who is putting a white supremacist in his White House, then I say have re-counts everywhere.

There is a second reason though to be more interested in this though, and that is the oddity of Trump's victory. David Wasserman at Redistrict and the folks at the Cook Political Report have been maintaining a popular vote tracker, both at the national level, and in all 50 states plus DC. There results show some interesting stuff. They defined "swing" states as those that changed hands from 2012 to 2016, or those that were within 5% in the final results. In those 13 swing states, Donald Trump won by about 830,000 votes, a 48.4-46.6% margin. In the other 37 states and DC, Clinton won by over 3,000,000 votes, a 48.9-45.5% margin. The overall national vote gives Clinton a 2.23 million vote lead, a 48.2-46.5% lead right now. Turnout was up in Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado, to name a few. Turnout was down in Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Turnout on the national level was higher than in 2012. The results are peculiar in only that the "swing" voters in the "swing" states seemed to move exactly opposite to the other 37 states. There is nothing in the tracker that screams "RE-COUNT!"

So, should we do it? Yes, of course there should be a re-count. Donald Trump's victory is among the most odd victories in American history. You have to go back more than a century to find someone lose as badly as he did in the popular vote, but still win the electoral college. Beyond that, his electoral college victory gave him over 300 electoral votes, something that seems almost statistically impossible for having lost the popular vote that bad (I said almost- it's not impossible). His distribution of votes was perfectly placed in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. It's pretty amazing, and given the level of disbelief over it, a second count won't hurt if the disbelievers are willing to pay for it.

Is it odd that he won with his voters being in exactly the right places? Sure. Re-counts won't change that though. If you were to believe that this election were stolen, and if you were to believe that this result were illegitimate, you'd need to prove a mass problem with machines in a state (malware infecting the machines and changing votes type of stuff), which isn't going to be proven in a count. If it were true, it would also really undermine our entire system of voting and force a real look at our democracy. I personally don't think it's 100% impossible, but I think it's extremely unlikely.

Even so, I think it's worth going through. If it makes people feel better about the results, count twice. If it makes Donald Trump act like the crazy man he is, re-count a third time. Nothing will change, but it will make life a little better in America for a few people, so go with it.

Congratulations America- You Elected an Idiot Man-Child

Seriously, can we have a chat for a second. This is the status of the next President of the United States:

Last week, the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump had only received two classified intelligence briefings since election day — a number they said was “notably lower” than the amount received by his predecessors at this point in the transition period.

In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Dana Bash asked Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway about the allegation.

Conway did not deny the Post’s report, but instead stressed that in addition to the (limited) intelligence briefings he has received, the President-elect is “receiving information through his personal and on-the-phone meetings with over what’s now 41 world leaders.”

Ok, so the President-elect of the United States isn't taking his intelligence briefings from our national security experts, he's "receiving information" from foreign leaders, some of which I presume are business leaders, and not heads of state. Great, wonderful, outstanding! Never mind that we have a massive, expensive, and actually fairly good national security community in the United States, let's just work off of whatever Vladimir Putin says.

Then, of course, there's this madness...

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

So now, the President-elect of the United States is baselessly asserting that the election he won had massive fraud, in his efforts to discredit a recount of his victories in three specific states, and calls to audit the vote. First off, logically his argument is one you'd make if you were calling for a national recount and audit of the vote. Second off, no one associated with the Clinton campaign is out there saying the results have any chance of being overturned. Third- this is the President-elect of the United States, throwing a temper-tantrum on Twitter because people are hurting his feelings. Seriously. He has absolutely no evidence of millions of voters voting illegally, he has no evidence that those states cheated, and he has no real reason to be throwing around crazy accusations like this- he's going to be sworn into office on January 20th. For him to throw dirt on our electoral system is idiotic, and frankly makes no sense to a normal President-elect who just won under this system. But, this is not normal times, and the Lord only knows what this man is thinking.

Then.... there's this:

Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state https://t.co/HDtpjeJTc3

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 24, 2016

I did tell him privately. And I'll respect his decision. Point is the volume & intensity of grassroots resistance to Romney is breathtaking https://t.co/bknmfGZ13a

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 27, 2016

Can we start with the obvious here- she's not just talking out her rear here. Kellyanne Conway is either speaking under instructions, or she is the most rogue actor we've all ever seen in politics. So, let's be honest, she's speaking under instruction. This appears to be an open effort to have suckered Romney into the mistake of visiting Trump during the transition, acting like he was in play for Secretary of State, and now setting him up for complete and total public humiliation, which is the M.O. of this crew so far. All the talk about how Trump "won't prosecute" Hillary Clinton for crimes she's already cleared of is semi-ridiculous, given that Presidents don't prosecute people, but it succeeds in making her look guilty, and making Trump look like a man of clemency. Same here, where Trump gets to invite Romney to see him, act like he's really considering him, and then they put him through the public humiliation of either apologizing in public, being "shot down" by Trump's base, or worse yet, both. They will systemically make Trump appear to be showing mercy to his fierce rivals from 2016, while also making them look weak, corrupt, criminal, or just like losers in general. This is also not normal at all. George W. Bush didn't even do this to Al Gore or John Kerry, for what that's worth.

We are about to enter into the governance of an ignorant man-child, born with a silver-spoon in his mouth, who ran and won on the "uneducated" white voter, and now is going to subject us to his ego. He attacks comedians for making fun of him, news stations for showing unflattering pictures of him, and reporters who publish critical stories about him. He is deeply bothered by questions of his legitimacy over the popular vote, despite having questioned the citizenship of his predecessor. He's an egomaniac, and he can't control himself on Twitter. Of course though, he will be the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military. You should have known that though, when you elected a man who has made his money by putting his name on things.

Congratulations America- you elected the junior high bully as your new President.

Normalcy? We're Not Getting That.

A white nationalist, which should be read racist. An Education Secretary who doesn't believe in public education. A HUD Secretary who's actually a surgeon. People arguing that Rudy Giuliani is qualified to be Secretary of State. A Commerce Secretary who's coal mines were a virtual death trap for his workers.

And Donald Trump hasn't even named his HHS Secretary yet.

He's tweeted angrily at SNL for making fun of him. He's tweeted angrily at the world for bringing up that he lost the popular vote. He's tweeted angrily at NBC for posting a picture of him with a double-chin. He'st tweeted angrily about people wanting a re-count of his win. He's attacked the New York Times on Twitter, then met with them and told them they are great. His response to Fidel Castro dying was to excitedly tweet that Castro was dead.

Just wait until someone criticizes his inauguration speech.

These are not normal times. Kellyanne Conway can talk all she wants about unity out of one side of her mouth, as long as she's slamming Mitt Romney out the other, we all know it's BS. These are not normal times, and normal unity is not in play. Not with Bannon in the White House. Not with a "Muslim registry" under discussion. Not when we have open debates going on over "whether Jews are people" and "is Islam actually a religion" on CNN. Not when the Japanese internment camps are being cited by people who want to specifically target specific groups. Not when our next President is being friendly with a Russian dictator. These are not normal times.

So you're going to have to excuse the majority of us, by over two-million by the way, who aren't planning to unify. You're going to have to excuse the majority of us who don't want to join hands with those of you who voted for Trump. Sorry, elections do have consequences. You are getting the President you want, and he's completely unacceptable to the rest of us. He's not normal. We're not going to wish him well. It's bad enough that the electoral college holds California, Chicago, and New York City hostage to Alabama, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, or that the blue-states in America basically produce the wealth here. Now we have to accept Donald Trump, a man who's main qualifications are Howard Stern, Wrestlemania, and a porno. Yeah, I'll pass. He'll take office on January 20th, and he'll be the President of the United States, but he won't be my President. That implies a level of respect he's not capable of.

Sore losers? You just refused to give a hearing to President Obama's Supreme Court nominee for a year. You just spent the first three years of President Obama's term in office screaming for his birth certificate, because you thought he was born in Kenya, because he had a "Muslim sounding name" or something. You called President Obama a Muslim, even though he wasn't one, as though that was insulting anyway. The Republican Party took no part in governing the nation with President Obama, voting nearly unanimously against the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, the Stimulus, and every other initiative he had, while even shutting down the government in 2013 after he was re-elected. Republicans wouldn't give background checks on all gun sales a vote, even though 90% of the country wanted that.

You disrespected President Obama at every turn. You disrespected his wife, calling her an ape and attacking her appearance. You attacked a family who didn't have scandals, a family man with one wife. You disrespected a constitutional law professor, and now expect us to respect the guy who bankrupted casinos. You disrespect the man who won a majority of American votes, twice, and now want us to respect the guy who's going to lose by close to 2,500,000 votes. You want us to respect the minority-election of a man who called the electoral process rigged, and once attacked the electoral college as ruining America.

This is not Bill Clinton handing power to George W. Bush, this is not Jimmy Carter handing it off to Ronald Reagan, this is not even Lyndon Johnson handing the office off to Richard Nixon. You're not going to get nice pictures like the one above, where Presidents Ford and Carter talk together and pretend they are great after a tough election. It's not going to happen.

He attacked Hillary Clinton for her husband's foundation's fundraising, while his own foundation is under investigation. He attacked Bill Clinton's infidelity, when he said he can "grab 'em by the pussy" in regards to women for himself. He attacked Hillary for giving paid speeches, and he did it himself. He said the election was rigged against him, and at least some people are believing it was rigged for him. Donald Trump will be afforded no pleasantries, no honeymoon, and no unity.

I'm sorry, but i'm not, to all of the Trump fans out there, and Donald himself. This is the new normal. You created it. Now you have to live in it. That's how life works. Voting has consequences.

Donald Trump has consequences.

My Grandfather, the Last Time a Republican Promised Better Days Ahead, and Blue-Collar Workers

I visited my grandmother on Friday for the first time in over a month, and since the election. As I was eating a sandwich and talking to her, she said she wanted me to read something she wrote, and then she proceeded to read it to me. It was a letter about my grandfather, voting, and the impact on his life. At first I found it a bit odd, but then I found it to make perfect sense in light of the results of this election.

My grandfather was a registered independent at the end of his life, a Navy veteran, and chaired his township's planning commission, serving on the body for over 40 years. He almost always voted Democratic though, having grown up in an immigrant household where everyone backed the party of FDR and JFK. The only exception in his Democratic votes for President prior to 1980 were his votes for President Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. As 1980 approached though, things weren't quite going as well for him at work. The boss' kids were now running the business, and many of the benefits were starting to go away. Ronald Reagan promised to bring back American greatness, and to end the sense of a downward spiral in the country. My grandfather liked what he heard. By 1982 though, he was dealing with part-time layoffs, a bleaker future, and tougher times. By 1984, he was anti-Reagan. He felt mislead.

I don't write this to compare Trump to Reagan, but I think there is some level to which the two share common messaging. America did really well from early 1950's until the late 1970's, and the quality of life for working class men was pretty darn good. Unions had secured them raises, benefits, and retirements that allowed them to raise a family in suburbia, and have a sense of pride. That started to die in the 1970's, and the death of it accelerated in the 1980's. The 1990's were a nice decade, but it was more of a pause in the downward spiral than a break. Reagan, at the start of the decline of the working class man, promised that his administration would relieve them of their crushing tax burden, and would give them room to prosper. Trump now promises an even more vague sense of greatness, in which he's going to bring back coal mines and factories, cut taxes to the bone, and somehow balance the budget. It is nothing short of magic, but magic sounds better than reality, especially when the alternative is a pride-less existence, where the good paying jobs are gone, but all the struggles are here to stay.

I am by no means discounting the influence of racism and sexism on the Trump victory- you simply can't divorce them from the outcome. You cannot pretend that they did not contribute to the result, but you can't exclusively blame them either. Here's the simple truth- while the Democratic Party has talked a lot about the plight of a lot of people who absolutely need a government that works for them, the Democratic Party has largely white-washed out any agenda that seems to address blue-collar white guys. Yes, part of that is these voters not voting for us. Part of that is also a push towards identity politics that seem to cast these folks as "privileged," even while they feel forgotten. Are they ignorant on a lot of matters? Yes, they are. They are still people and voters though, and it's hard to see them voting for a party that talked a lot less about apprenticeships and re-training people in the trades, and a lot more about social issues that speak largely to a more affluent voter in the cities and on the coasts.

Reagans' 1980s were not kind to my grandfather's hometown of Phillipsburg, an industrial place that saw many of it's top employers leave. His old workplace, Keystone Packaging, looks largely closed at this point, and definitely isn't employing a bunch of blue-collar workers today. Reagan did leave office fairly well-liked though, in no small part because he spoke directly to these blue-collar workers and convinced them that he could solve their problems. Donald Trump has gone a step further, blaming the "others" for their problems, and saying that he alone can solve these issues. Democrats would be wise to not discount the power in that message moving forward.

My guess is that Donald Trump will actually try to govern more in the tradition of pre-JFK Democrats than actually as a full-blown Reagan, or worse yet, a Hitler. He will infuse populist economics in his message, while sprinkling in some racism, sexism, and classism that his base craves. That is how he ran, and it worked well for him. He'll scapegoat groups, while sometimes not acting on his wild-eyed promises, and use that to cover up the simple truth of the matter here- Donald Trump isn't bringing back those factories, he's not bringing back those coal mines, and he's not ending global trade. Nobody is. If he actually succeeded, we'd have a Depression economically, and we'd go backwards a century. For that reason, I doubt he'll actually succeed in enacting his campaign promises, but he'll keep that rhetoric up to mask the fact that he is actually governing like any mainstream Republican of the last quarter-century would- tax cuts for the wealthy, de-regulation for corporations, and some hand-outs for supportive groups of the party. Donald Trump won't actually be a change agent at all, he'll just be a fraud that manages to enrage people on all political sides.

My grandfather was a working class boy from Phillipsburg, who served his country, and then was able to move out to the township and have a decent life. He, like many blue-collar men of today, fell for a man who promised to make American life great again, if we'd just follow him. It took him a lot less time than most to realize he had been had. Unfortunately, it's happened again in America. We can only hope this time that people come to their senses quicker.

How to Stand Up to Trump

Donald Trump will be the President of the United States on January 20th. That's not under dispute. He will also lose the popular vote. That's pretty much settled at this point. Donald Trump did say things that were pretty bigoted, from calling Mexicans "rapists and drug dealers," to calling for a Muslim ban, to his denigration of women. That's also not being disputed.

The only one of those three points that is actually going to matter on January 20th is the first one. The second point is but a foot note in history at this point, and the third point was hammered home with millions of dollars of ads- and he still won. The truth is that Trump won in no small part because the attacks on him didn't motivate anyone. It's not that they didn't work, people don't like Donald Trump who voted for him, but none of these attacks got people motivated to vote for Hillary Clinton, and so they didn't. The late movement in the polls was simply a matter of people deciding she was an unacceptable choice for President, and voting for the alternative. People believed every thing that was said about Trump. None of it mattered to their lives.

Now we can sit here and slam those people, and sometimes it's worth doing so. It does take an extremely privileged person to ignore that a candidate for President is a bigot. It does take a morally bankrupt person to accept a White Nationalist in the White House. That's all true. It's not productive to constantly beat people up though. Telling white folks they are to blame for the "Trail of Tears," slavery, and all the Neo-Nazis behind Trump doesn't move them to act, it moves them to shut down. It moves them to tune you out. Why would you vote for a movement that's calling you a racist? No one is motivated by being shamed. Frankly, the perceived (though false) dishonesty of Hillary Clinton appeared to have more of an effect on voters than Donald being mixed in with bigots.

Shouting louder won't change the behavior of people. Calling them racists louder won't make them buy into it. Telling the working class to be different is probably not going to change them from what they are. If that is the game plan moving forward, Trump's coalition will hold.

There are three steps to attack Trump. If we do all three of them, there's a chance we start to hurt him, politically.

1. Put forward an actual economic agenda. No, it's not just trade and the minimum wage. How would we re-write the tax code? How about get more working class people into apprenticeships and other good paying jobs that anyone who wants to work can do? Let's talk community college and trade schools, how about it? Talk retirement. Talk protecting the safety net. Talk home ownership. Yes, talk trade and minimum wage too, but not just those. Oh, and for the love of God, talk inclusive, not intersectional. I'm all for intersectional politics, but that's not what sells a message to the middle class. The middle class is where elections are still won.
2. Attack Donald Trump's failures. Donald Trump is not going to deliver the successes that he says. When he inevitably only delivers the kinds of things that any standard Republican would deliver (tax cuts, de-regulation), nail him with it. Remind people constantly of the things he promised. Remind them that they aren't getting those things. Be relentless on it.
3. Focus on the economic, not the cultural. This doesn't mean we abandon all cultural issues or that we abandon attacking his most egregious failures. This means pick your spots. Donald Trump is going to encourage a lot of hate speech, hate crimes, and online harassment hate. You can't just slap him with all of them, people stop paying attention. Every time he passes traditional Republican orthodoxy on cutting wages, taxes, and regulation, you crush him with it. You call him an establishment Republican. You hit him on the worst of the culture war offenses, and you fight him on the fights that need fighting- like a Supreme Court justice. 

We can't just hit Donald Trump how we want and expect it to work. I know that's not what anyone wants to hear, just like we hated when our mom told us to eat our peas and carrots before ice cream. I've spent my life in a white, working class house hold. I don't want this guy around any longer than necessary either. If we want him gone, discipline will be a huge part of how we do it.

Why #NeverTrump Must Also Mean Never President Trump

My immediate reaction to the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States is to simply oppose him and destroy him at any cost. I'd like to see the Senate Democrats use the filibuster as the GOP has, including on a Supreme Court nominee, and force Mitch McConnell to destroy the Senate as an institution altogether by killing the sixty vote rule, or letting us stop it from working. Essentially declare an unholy war on this Presidency from the start and make it fail.

This is entirely counter to my natural inclination, which is that transitions of power should be orderly, and Presidents should get room to succeed. I admire both Presidents Bush for their work to make sure their successors could hit the ground running. I admire that LBJ embraced Richard Nixon after a hard fought election. This is who we always have been. Pushing the other way has been awkward and unnatural for me. It's advocating for a brand of politics I constantly scold my party for. It's drawn notice from friends too, many of whom I can dismiss as Trump supporters, but not all of them. Many a Democrat is willing to move on from the 2016 election, or to bash our party.

I stand by my initial thought though- Donald Trump must be opposed almost universally. Donald Trump ran his campaign appealing to bigotries and fears. He spoke of Mexico "not sending us their best," when calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. He wants to build a border fence. He called first for a ban on Muslim immigration, then revised it to only mean certain nations. He constantly referred to "the Blacks," and "inner cities" when speaking about his plan for a "law and order" Presidency that takes us back towards the Nixon years, all the while embracing policies like "stop and frisk." He fat shamed women, called for the abolition of major parts of our safety net, and attacked the disabled, among other groups. There's literally almost nothing to unite with him for under the campaign he ran. If he is embracing bigotry and Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, then the only choice for a Democrat is to stand against President Trump on day one.

I did put the word "if" into that last sentence for a good reason. I take Donald Trump at his word, there's no reason not to. The man has done what he said he would do, so far. It is possible that he is not going to try and do anything he said during the campaign though. It is possible that Donald Trump totally hoodwinked his base of blue-collar, low educated voters. It is true that Trump could be anything from a Hitler-esque fascist, as his rhetoric leaves open the possibility of, but the other end of his potential range is that he's essentially a pre-JFK Democrat, embracing economic populism and some level of racial resentment and negative social-justice policy. In other words, Trump could be everything from a Nazi to Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman. I think the most likely outcome is something of a pre-Obama Republican, essentially embracing big government corporatism. It's likely that he embraced the Birther lunatics and the white nationalists during this campaign simply in order to get elected, and now he's going to govern like any other blue-blood conservative would, wrapping himself in the flag, and a lot of corporate goodwill.

In other words, I'm laying out the only two possible outcomes for a Trump Presidency- one is that he is every ugly caricature that he showed us in the campaign, the other is that he's a damn liar, who preyed on the downtrodden and ignorant, and now will simply revive a past era of either GOP corporatism, or racist Democratic populism. In other words, he's either a dangerous racial warrior or a liar. Take your pick, and let me know which one I'm supposed to be cheering for.

It is also very possible that his followers will be okay with either way. Just denying the Obama/Clinton party the White House for another four years is good enough for many of these people, some of whom opposed them based on simple bigotry, others because they are both "big city elites," and still others yet for no sane reason that we can discern. It is entirely possible that Donald Trump being a total liar will have no impact on his relationship with the Republican base.

All of this brings me back to my initial position though- IF you believed that Trump was a Kremlin stooge who aligned himself with bigotry to reach office, and you're unwilling to embrace that under any circumstances, you should not "give him a chance." His supporters may now implore you to, just because you might be wrong. Trump will not govern as a 2017 progressive, that is for certain. If Trump did lie to his base of votes to reach office, that is a very evil thing to do, and frankly it is in the interest of the Democratic Party politically to make sure that is clear at every point. There's no reason to embrace a lying version of President Trump, particularly when the chances that his policies will help the people the Democrats represent are not particularly high. There's no political or governing advantage to embrace him. You don't achieve anything helping him.

The best possible argument people give me is that "hoping for the best" with President Trump is "for the good of the country." This is simply a fairy tale. Look, if he was honest about his policies, no one in the Democratic Party should embrace him. If he lied about his policies, it's in the interest to expose the hypocrisy. Even the good possibilities for his Presidency are not good possibilities. There's no good reason for Democrats to reach out to this Republican President to make this work- particularly after they obstructed everything President Obama wanted to do, and were rewarded with the White House, courts, Congress, and state governments all over the nation. Why would Democrats go out of their way now to not obstruct, particularly given that the best case scenario is giving him cover for lying to his own base of support? It's not as though Democrats agree with him on more mega-tax cuts, arming everyone and their mother with guns, mass deportation, a border wall, repealing Obamacare, or lowering wages. If they don't agree with him on the policies, the politics suggest opposing him will work, and they think he ran an immoral campaign, what is there to unite under?

This is not to say that I oppose every last thing he's saying, or think it will be a 100% disaster. George W. Bush was not a President I hold in high esteem, but he was exemplary on AIDS funding in Africa, for instance. Donald Trump's talk of infrastructure spending may very well end up being a highlight. If he reverted to his early support of a $10 minimum wage, that would be good too. In those rare cases where the policy and politics line up with working with him, Democrats should consider it. It would be foolish not to.

There's absolutely no reason to unite behind a border wall, repealing Obamacare, a deportation force, corporate tax cuts, or embracing the police state. That is currently where his agenda stands. If he moves from it, great, but it's in our interests to point out that he's a liar. In other words, Democrats should not unite behind this man ahead of his inauguration. I don't see any upside to doing so.

Wtf Just Happened

Let me get this straight- For eight years, we had President Barack Obama, cool as they come, working hard to fix the problems of the world, a thinking man's President, and now we're going to replace him with the dude my Dad wouldn't even let me listen to on Howard Stern as a kid, Donald Trump? Wow.

In 2004, when George W. Bush was re-elected, I remember laying in bed the next day and wondering how it happened? All the protests I saw, the huge crowds for John Kerry events, the palpable anger against that President had to have been real, right? How could he have won, after doing the things he did? How?

Well, I'm a little older now, and while I'm much more upset about President-elect Trump, I don't have many questions in my mind about "how?" I know "how" this happened. It's super complicated, but it's not too. One piece of this is what Donald Trump came to represent for people, and one part of it is what Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party came to represent for people. Another piece of it is the people themselves. Some of it falls on media coverage and the media in general too, I'm not absolving them at all. A lot of it comes down to American life.

Either way- it's over now. Now we can all just hate President Trump. I'm not going to write a long essay about why Trump won, because frankly it'd take too long, and because it's done. He's going to be President in January. That's the fact of the matter.

So that leaves the real question as this- what now? What will President-elect Trump do? I think you have to take him at his word. He said he'll build the wall with Mexico. He said he'll ban immigration from Muslims, then amended it to be mean certain nations. He said he'll gut gun control. He said climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese. He said he'll forge a friendship with Vladimir Putin. He said he's for "law and order," like President Nixon, including "stop and frisk." He said a lot of things, almost all of which I disagree with, but a few I agreed with (raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour was at one point his position). I have to take him at his word, at who he says he is.

That leads to a really ugly conclusion moving forward- either Donald Trump is the bigot he is, or he's an opportunist who just lied to millions of his followers for over a year to get elected. If he's not going to do the things he said he is, then what did you vote for? You should feel used. If he is going to do what he said, well then why should I support his Presidency?

So basically, either way, he's #NotMyPresident