Thomas Frank on the Real Potential Disaster of 2016
Writing in The Guardian:
With Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton
Subtitle: Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people’s concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all
Here's the point he reaches:
This is the real potential disaster of 2016: That legitimate economic discontent is going to be dismissed as bigotry and xenophobia for years to come.
Here's how he gets there:
(Trumps') chances, as measured in the polls, went almost overnight from fairly decent to utter crap. For much of this year, populism had the gilded class really worried. There was Bernie Sanders and the unthinkable threat of a socialist president. There was the terrifying Brexit vote. Just a short while ago the American national newspapers were running page-one stories telling readers it was time to take seriously Trump’s followers, if not Trump himself. And on 3 August, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman actually typed the following: “It scares me that people are so fed up with elites, so hate and mistrust [Hillary] Clinton and are so worried about the future – jobs, globalization and terrorism” that they might actually vote for Trump.
Yes, it scared Friedman that the American people didn’t like their masters any longer. As it has no doubt scared many of his rich friends to learn over the past few years that the people formerly known as middle class are angry about losing their standard of living to the same forces that are making those rich people ever more comfortable.
Well, Friedman need be frightened no longer. Today it looks as though his elites are taking matters well in hand. “Jobs” don’t really matter now in this election, nor does the debacle of “globalization”, nor does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos dream in the first place.
As leading Republicans desert the sinking ship of Trump’s GOP, America’s two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Party office-holders selected Clinton as their candidate long ago, apparently determined to elevate her despite every possible objection, every potential legal problem. The Democratic National Committee helped out, too, as WikiLeaks tells us. So did President Barack Obama, that former paladin for openness, who in the past several years did nearly everything in his power to suppress challenges to Clinton and thus ensure she would continue his legacy of tepid, bank-friendly neoliberalism.
He stops short of arguing that Trumps implosion may have been intended all along as some are guessing, that his role was merely to play patsy to the best-orchestrated candidacy in the history (and future) of the galaxy (all hail the ascension of the rightful and true queen of America!).
Here's his prediction - the nightmare which keeps many up at night:
Things will change between now and November, of course. But what seems most plausible from the current standpoint is a landslide for Clinton, and with it the triumph of complacent neoliberal orthodoxy. She will have won her great victory, not as a champion of working people’s concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all, as the leader of a stately campaign of sanity and national unity. The populist challenge of the past eight years, whether led by Trump or by Sanders, will have been beaten back resoundingly. Centrism will reign triumphant over the Democratic party for years to come. This will be her great accomplishment. The bells will ring all over Washington DC.
We shall see what we shall see... I don't believe it's all carved in stone at this point.
Comments
The stone is there.
The carver has tools in hand.
I await Trump campaigning on Hillary's corruption, her war mongering, her health, her tax returns, her crappy judgment as SoS.
We get crickets. We get 2nd amendment solutions.
Oh, wait! The carver just started etching!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I really like Thomas Frank
but I think he's overreacting.
Trump never embodied the anti-elite reaction. He merely rode it.
When the economy dumps in 2017 or 2018, the populist reaction will be bigger than ever.
Where Frank gets it wrong...
...is right here:
"The populist challenge of the past eight years, whether led by Trump or by Sanders, will have been beaten back resoundingly."
The populist challenge has not been beaten back by any measure.It has merely been temporarily repressed.Clintonian triangulation has created a huge vacuum on the left.Four more years of Obamaesque neo-liberalism will only strengthen a leftist movement based on democratic socialist principles.
Solidarity
I think you're right rwiley
I suspect Frank is feeling (as many of us are) quite jaded at present. I believe we won fair and square and have had the race stolen from us with most people just as happy to play along and not peek behind the veil. Even those of us who are trying to see have to wonder if it's really as bad as it *could* be by outward appearances.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
I believe people like Frank
Don't spend a lot of time with millennials hocked up to their eyes in debt with no good job prospects to make the living he was able to. THESE are the constituents the duoplay party needs to be worried about.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Working class life has never been easy.
But it's become pathological.Everyone's up to their ass in quicksand,one small tremor and you go under.My kids have done
OK,so far, but the tension and uncertainty is a constant presence.And my teenage grandchildren?That's what this struggle is really about for me.If we don't turn things around soon I'm afraid the future for their generation...well,I really don't want to contemplate it.
Solidarity
Yes indeed, a vacuum
If Trump implodes, the GOP will likely suffer too. This leaves the Democrats as the only conservative party in the US.
FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.
Trump is a billionaire liar,
Trump is a billionaire liar, cheat and user who, as has been pointed out, is playing on a populist note - why? Because it worked for Bernie, who really means it and has the pretty much life-long record to prove it, that being why he won the Dem nomination of which The People, not only of America but of the entire Earth, were cheated.
The populist challenge and voters were not merely repressed but ripped off by those intending to rip off the entire world, even though they must know that they'll destroy it, and themselves, in the process.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Amen Sister ! n/t
Solidarity
Yes, Mr. Frank should reconsider this view
Thomas Frank is quite perceptive, but I agree that he's overreacting a mite. gjohnsit, you nailed why he's wrong with your essay today:
"The elites are not the problem right now, the people are"
Income inequality is what is going to bite them in the ass. Under Hillary Clinton, it will only get worse ... probably a lot worse.
Exactly. It ain't fashion
fueling the discontent, not an idle game of the comfortable to pass the time. The discontent springs from hurt, and so many things are hitting more people everyday.
On the other hand: great time for a really big war, neh?
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
As the old saying goes
It all seems to me to have been planned in advance to pull our strings. OK, call me a cynical old fool and conspiracy theorist, but does anyone have a better answer?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
It was absolutely planned in advance beginning May 2008
When she had to face that Obama was NOT, in fact, assassinated and she had lost (nevermind the RFK calendar)
She was NOT going to lose again.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
It gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach
(somewhere near duodenal exit) that we can expect more shit like this for 4 or more years.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
The duodenal exit
is usually via an ileostomy bag.
You do know that, don't you?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
Preet Bharara
Could change everything in the next three months.
Or the Clintons might have hidden things well enough that he won't find anything...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
He has been so good in NY. Maybe fewer lawyers involved?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
There remain a LOT of irons in the fire at present
...and goodness knows there's a LOT which could stick. Question is, WILL SOMETHING STICK or are all public servants and enforcers just wussies?
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Hillary's trough
is long and deep and wide. An ambitious man like Preet needs to either make a huge splash against Hillary or buckle under for consideration.
OMG it would be sooo nice if integrity could win just once before I die!
I think he's right ... this cycle.
But I don't think that the articles written in 2018 are going to be so sanguine.
Her honeymoon ends on day 1. She'll get her supreme court appointees, and then we're going to start loud and stay loud, all the way to #BrandNewCongress.
I haven't yet ruled out voting R in 2020 if it means getting her ass out of that chair.
And if the Rs decide to run someone worse than Trump?
Example: Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
We should take our chances this year to spend a miserable four years than a truly miserable eight years that will see a lot of our freedoms further curtailed.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Ted Cruz would be worse than HRC ...
... but I don't think that Rubio is.
Mind you, I don't think either has a chance in Hades of being nominated by the Republicans in 2020. Look at the entirety of the clown show they put up this time, and Trump is the winner? (please clap). No One On That Stage will be a serious candidate in 2020 (Huckabee will be there to shill a vitamin or bible business when he loses).
More likely looking at Ryan, unless he completely soils himself between now and then.
The only way out of this morass to me is to think along the lines of Brand New Congress, and get more people thinking like we do elected to more offices.
We wouldn't be having this discussion if real progressives comfortably held both the House and the Senate, right?
This Rubio?
Marco Rubio Wants To Shut Down Muslim Cafés and Diners, Maybe Some Mosques Too
The difference between a lot of the precious candidates and some upcoming ones is that Trump is saying what they believe even when they don't give words to it. Another difference is that Trump doesn't appear to believe in the words he is saying, but for at least the primary, saying those things out loud was a good marketing ply. There is a good chance that he is very much a bait and switch campaign similar to HRC pretending she is a progressive.
A number of people I trust the opinion of (Thomas Frank, Chris Hedges, etc.) have said that the Republicans will come back with someone even worse than Trump in 2020 with the difference of him not making all the noise. The Democrats have left the Republicans with no where to go other than off the deep end as the Ds have donned almost the entire R mantle.
Ryan? The guy who wants to do away with the federal government Ryan?
Yes, no mater who is in the White House, down ballot is going to make a huge difference, and needs massive attention from now until eternity.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Don't construe my ranting ...
... as support for Rubio, or anyone else on that stage. I suggest to you Ryan because that's what the core of fiscal conservatives want out of a Republican, and he's probably the sanest one in the asylum. That doesn't mean he isn't nuts.
But that's what I expect from Republicans. My red mist over HRC is that I expect far, far better from Democrats, and I'm particularly pissed about the CTR campaign against us. Frag me? No, frag you.
It's an admitted double standard that I suspect we share to some degree.
Our way of defeating the likes of Ryan and Republicans should be on ideology: that ours works and theirs doesn't. While that message is undoubtedly true, it hasn't exactly penetrated to the majority of the populace.
I very highly doubt that they're going to come back with someone worse, they know that's now a complete dead end. In fact, I thought I saw something recently that has them attempting to capture working people that Democrats have abandoned. Look for them to start edging left of current Ds, like Trump has attempted to do with trade.
All ready happening.
A ex navy seal is running on the republican ticket is running on guns and getting money out of politics
Solidarity forever
More likely it ends November 9th
or as soon thereafter as the results are "finalized" - if they are. If the election doesn't end in deadlock and throw the decision to the House (or the Supreme Court, if they're stupid enough to horn in again).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I hate the thought of back door, political maneuvering
I wonder if the prospect of such a scenario is going to hurry the confirmation of Obama's Citizens United loving judge.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Trump still could be president, but through the House
Just playing this out. The disgust with Hillary (and Trump) is so strong, 3rd parties get record number of votes and cause Blue and Red states to reverse voting outcomes. For example, Bernie was strong in Oregon (even though some pollster had him losing like 15%). Oregon progressives vote Jill Stein with the gop base holding steady. And then Trump takes Oregon. Nobody wins the Electoral College and the decision then goes to the House.
Electoral college
Unless a candidate other than Clinton or Trump receives a plurality in some state, probably more than one, Clinton or Trump will win the election.
No, there *are* rules,
and a mere plurality is not good enough. It *has* to be "50% plus 1", or the election goes (is supposed to go) to the House. That is the whole point of the website 270towin.com.
Note: when I checked it just now, the map was showing one of several potential ways the election could be deadlocked.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Electoral college
You aren't following me. It is necessary to get 50% plus 1 of the votes from the electoral college. But except in 1 or 2 states that allocate electoral votes by congressional district, a plurality of votes is enough to carry all of the state's electoral votes. If someone other than Trump or Clinton doesn't get a plurality in some state Trump or Clinton will receive a majority of electoral votes.
I don't see much chance of anyone else getting a plurality statewide anywhere.
Climate change will be the ultimate decider
of the fate of the Democratic party. People will realize how they are being exploited for short term profit and long term extinction, and one last party of hope will rise up, maybe with Jill Stein as the leader, or maybe with another one of the tens of millions of outraged, articulate and honest people as the leader, or with a whole bunch of good people as leaders, either in time or too late, but it's inevitable barring an improbably complete transformation of the Democratic party.
Beware the bullshit factories.
A leaderless revolution
has the best chance for success:
http://www.starfishandspider.com/
That looks like an extremely interesting read
Thank you. I like the "Wikipedia model" mentioned in the intro. I'm sure algorithms can be made to enhance it.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Yes, it is not only interesting, but I don't think the authors
even know the depth and breadth of what they have tapped into.
We so frequently hear about how this head of Al Quaeda or that leader of Isil was killed. These are leaderless organizations and are perfect for a continual war for the MIC. The MIC cannot win and that is how they want it. War is too profitable to abandon.
The thing to do is to somehow show how ineffectual our hierarchically based miltary is, and how it fails. The public needs to clamor, as they did in the VN war, and shine a light on the horrific nature of our interference in middle eastern affairs. Our children are dying for the oligarchy as are millions of people with brown skin. Somehow we need to communicate this, but how do we break through the barrier the media has built made of fear and loathing for "THE OTHER"?
I'm at a loss.
Sometimes I think a brigade of the elderly and sick could be utilized. Why are suicide bombers always young people? We are watched so much these days it would be hard to organize anything at all.
The one thing sometimes that really gives me hope
is the fact that we've now got a lot of young people who are educated, under or unemployed who have nothing but time on their hands and could be motivated to run for office. Either the young protest en masse and it gets violent, which it might take IMHO, or they get moving and take back the government for want of a better way to put it. Hell, to take back this world before our elites destroy it. And I do think they will.
Our elites are content to leave this group to their own devices, to do nothing to get them employed and out of that debt, and to keep on doing massive damage to this globe for profit, I would love to see that bite them in the ass.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Is This The End of America's Two Party System?
From Counterpunch:
All's well that ends well.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/12/the-crack-up-is-the-two-party-sys...
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I think the TPTB who are feeling
very self satisfied right now are in for a bitch slapping they never anticipated. A constituency nearly as large as the baby boomers is mad, in debt, and aren't a big fan of party loyalty. Some wise folks called these youngsters "naive" and "not understanding". They also laughed at them, dismissed them, and finally defrauded them.
No worries, I'm sure these young kids looking at a lifetime of shitty opportunities will forget about all that.
Or maybe this election just doused the flames of that discontent with gasoline. In which case, I say, Burn baby burn.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Cops Will Die
Not a threat. Maybe a warning or prediction:
http://lawattstimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=369...
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
My rhetoric
Was metaphorical. When I say gasoline and burn, I'm not advocating for violence. I'm advocating for justice. I'm advocating for "fighting" back like young people did during th Civil Rights movement.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
In view of the planned War On
In view of the planned War On The World, for which Obama is setting up in preparation for Hillary or whichever other corporate pawn, I expect that
when they're all packed off to attack/invade other countries until killed or disabled and then denied the benefits they were promised, as seems to have been traditional in the 'wealthiest country in the world'.
No worries, all provided for! So much cannon-fodder - especially of youth likely to protest/organize - will be required that: ...
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/us/politics/congress-women-military-dr...
Needless to say, the people for this in the Senate must have adult children or some other means of preventing this from applying to their children/grandchildren, assuming that they care about even their own.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I fully expect that to be the breaking point
and I'd be very surprised if they meekly do as they are told.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I never once expected Clinton to go left, except for
primary campaign rhetoric. But....did he call Hillary "moderate?" She's not even all that moderate for a Republican, much less a moderate Democrat.
Keep calm
We don't know yet how this will end. Trump's numbers have fallen, but Hillary's numbers have not increased. The Republicans have not done any advertising as yet. People are only seeing her ads and they are not buying what she is selling. I'm hearing that some people no longer openly show support for Trump, they are keeping low. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan
Clinton will be an austerity war president
The wars she starts will be cover to go back to the reactionary policies of the DLC and first Clinton administration. There will be nothing moderate about her.
The Wars is the thing
upon which the Rulers success rests. I can't comprehend why this isn't front and center in the entire 'liberal' commentariate. Everything, every il and lost opportunity stems directly from the eternal war making.
Go to Kos or democratic underground and not a peep -- even though it's as plain as day that H means more and bigger aggression.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
HRC is being re-invented at those websites
The orange site now revels in endorsements from militarist and aggressive republicans who have wrecked violence on a lot of people. Neocon warmongers are being re-invented as serious foreign policy people who apparently recognize in Hillary responsible and wise, but strong war and foreign policy chops. Forgotten for sure are Obama's attacks on her Iraq vote. Her entire pro-violence, pro-regime change policies really not allowed to be mentioned or posters attacked for mentioning it. I have gotten down rates or whatever they are just for mentioning in a anti-Trump nuclear weapons diary that neocon warmongers are seriously talking about winning a nuclear exchange/war with Russia. I believe that by next summer, these "liberal" Democratic party websites will be some of the most aggressive pro-war sites on the internet. With the Russian/Putin bogeyman, it has started in earnest.
I said last year
that unless Bernie was allowed to win (he did and he wasn't) that whichever party won in 2016 would cease to exist by 2020. Both Hillary and Trump are so hopeless that the backlashagainst the winner would destrot their party.
On to Biden since 1973
If Hillary wins, you are probably right.
If Hillary is true to character and turns toward the anti-New Deal policies of the DLC/1st Clinton administration, and starts a bunch of wars,, Dem turn-out in 2018 will be beyond horrid as Bernie supporters of all strips along with many minority voters will not show up or vote third party. Add to this what will be a post-Trump rebuilt gop. Total disaster for the Democrats. Maybe even enough votes for impeachment. Yah, I can see a mass exodus from the Democratic party by 2020.
(I can see Bill Clinton personally taking down both Hillary and the party if he keeps up the pay-to-play bribery schemes. )
Will they bother faking more
Will they bother faking more than one management 'Party' or elections, once Hillary/Trump-or-other-Repub and the again-to-be-majority-corrupt Supreme Court falsely declare the unconstitutional offshoring of domestic law under Trojan Horse 'trade deals' to be Constitutional, legal and binding upon free countries and populations declared - in a privately made and traitorous agreement which nobody could ever have any right to make - nothing more than corporate chattels existing to provide maximized anticipated corporate/billionaire profits for those involved, at the cost of the health, lives, safety, democracy and environment of all involved people?
They're clearly planning to infect the defense systems of Russia and China so that they'll be sitting ducks for nuking without any chance of defense or retaliation as they go down in a globally spreading blaze of deadly radiation, but even if that works out for TPTB, it won't for the remaining life on the planet forming the life-support system and already snowballing rapidly to disaster.
And it's insane to expect that all of the other countries of the world will wait for the corporate/billionaire-serving US President to nuke or otherwise attack/invade them one at a time, using the public funding and militaries of the 'trade deal'-betrayed countries, rather than to band together in desperate self-defense against this bizarrely destructive, suicidally evil madness.
We are all expendables to the psychopaths funding the psychopaths cheating their way into public office - yet people are still thinking of voting for either evil and the destruction of life on the planet, whether at any time via nukes or possibly other weapons of massive destruction or more slowly and painfully over decades.
I can't believe that people believe that their children/grandchildren will have oxygen, rather than industrial pollution, to breath, safe water to drink, safe food to eat or a life worth living, when the odds are, with unlimited corporate/military destruction, pollution and other abuses, that complex life, along with adequate oxygen production to support life will be extinct in the very near future.
Do people not understand what's been done in countries where the people and environment are not protected against corporate depredations, or think that 'it can't happen here'?
If US electoral cheating is to be again accepted as a done deal, to be 'fixed next time' yet again, we - planetary life - are done as well, barring a successful - but not then peaceful - revolution as we fight for the chance of a few of our lives against a then-entrenched enemy in or moving into all countries with all systems 'legally' on their side and mustered against us all.
There is supposed to be a mechanism by which a cheated-in leader rejected by the people can be not recognised by the rest of the world - I am totally not up to research right now, but I'm hoping that some of the brilliant people on here will be.
If at all possible, this needs to addressed legally and politically - not violently. And our recourse is being shrunk down to what we'd most like to avoid.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
If she wins it is.
Carved in stone. NeoLiberalism for another quarter century. At least. The "Bernie Revolution" has all but collapsed. Mostly becuz Bernie himself threw in the towel.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
What's changed since the spring?
Frank talked about the Sanders and Trump phenomenon and stated that while Clinton would likely win, she wouldn't fundamentally change the conditions that have lead to the challenge this election cycle. I'm not really clear what's changed since then. Does the margin of victory really matter? Hoover won by a massive landslide in 1928, but then was crushed in the following election.
Right now there is already significant distrust of the parties and media and traditional institutions. If we have an economic boom, she should do fine, but under the surface there are still major problems with the global economy. In terms of the risk for global conflict as well, the odds seem fairly high -- especially with someone like Hillary Clinton.
Right now it looks like a near-repeat of the 1992 election where third parties could easily net more than 10% of the vote nationally. Clinton likely wins by an electoral landslide, but does so with perhaps 45 percent of the vote -- a plurality rather than a majority.
As a side note, I wonder who his Bernie friends were who actually believed that Clinton had made a fundamental shift to the left. There have been some pretty weak gestures. The VP pick definitely didn't send that message. Her actions before, during and after the convention didn't send that message either. The way she is campaigning right now, is exactly why people like me and millions of others voted for Sanders in the primary.
The disaster of the 2016 election is that the two leading candidates are Clinton and Trump. Regardless of the outcome, it's likely that the challenges facing the country will get worse. That's the real disaster.