The Democratic party elite just put Donald Trump in the White House.
"Dow futures have plummeted more than 400 points"
"Other world markets follow"
"Peso falls through the floor"
"US dollar falls as Trump takes Florida"
What does this mean? It means first that the whole world is against the man. Second, it means that the wealthy elite who have bought and controlled government in the world - and in the US - are so detached from reality that they can't believe that this monster they created is actually winning. These elites have been screwing ordinary Americans for so long, and getting away with it, that they imagined they can keep doing it forever...
And so far that has admittedly worked out for them. But not this year. Because this year, the people struck back. In both Democratic and Republican primaries, overwhelming numbers of people voted for the Populist candidates who addressed working- and middle-class economic concerns. But the elites blew off BOTH of the Populist candidates. In the case of the Democrats, they were willing to use the most heinous of tactics to defeat him, including race-baiting (Sanders the Jew; Sanders the 'privileged white guy'), red-baiting (Sanders the socialist), ageism, and out and out fraud (DNC role). In the case of the Republicans, they couldn't do it, and they ended up with the guy they didn't want - and many abandoned him because of the fact.
Why the difference? Here's why. Republican electoral power has leaned on the white working class and middle class vote in the US since Nixon. And the white working class revolt overwhelmed the Republican party elite this year. But since Bill Clinton the Democrats have relied for their power on the black vote -- and the black vote lined up behind HRC. That fact empowered Hillary Clinton to ignore the Sanders bid, to refuse even to take seriously the issues that Sanders' success so clearly showed Americans were concerned about. The Democratic Party elite and its media supporters went into the election with a smug self assurance based on their confidence that their 'support' for feminism and civil rights would continue to put them over the top - and they were wrong. The departure of the white working and middle class from Clinton and the Democrats sealed her fate.
One after another, counties that voted strongly for Obama in 2012 or 2008 turned to Trump. This is not because those counties suddenly decided to become racist - it was a reaction against Obama's abject failure to do anything to help the American working class; and the Democrats' abject failure to respond to their plight in 2016. In short: this election did not go to Trump because of the racism of the American public alone - though that will no doubt be the liberal narrative. This election went to Trump because of CLASS.
The outcome was predicted well in advance: throughout the Spring and Summer months, poll after poll showed Hillary either barely eking out a victory or outright losing to Trump if the two were paired in the general election. Those same polls consistently showed Bernie Sanders beating Trump - every time - by very comfortable margins. But rather than register this fact, the Democratic party elite chose to back a candidate who was deeply unpopular with voters - and so they lost the election to the biggest loser American presidential electoral politics has ever produced.
The Democratic party elite just put Donald Trump in the White House.
Comments
But you have to understand who these people ARE...
The Democrats are just going to be who they always have been...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHJbSvidohg]
(Sorry, Couldn't resist.)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Humor is healing.
A good dose of Mel and Gene would be very beneficial right now.
two things i said to my Hillary supporting partner...
...several months ago. first, that if Trump continued run to Hillary's left on economic issues he stood a chance of winning. two, that OMG Trump is NOT a campaign strategy. both seem to be bearing out tonight.
You got it right, solublefish.
The writing was on the wall for everyone to see, if you were outside the Beltway Bubble. Thomas Frank has pretty much been the only pundit who's been saying so all year.
Nice piece covering the Democrats' and 1%'s hubris and ignoring of the massive populist uprising that led us to now.
There's so much to cover. I'm just too tired, and quite frankly stunned, to get further into it now.
Keep thinking about a comment on the excellent Democracy Now roundtable coverage, in which it was mentioned that at some point when it looked like he might win, Trump left his election party to be alone with his wife somewhere. The pundit was saying animatedly that he didn't really want to be president, and it was all coming down on him now, that he made too many promises that he couldn't keep, etc.
Surreal moment. I kept saying what we needed most was a cataclysmic event to kickstart us out of the somnambulism that keeps us from being truly civically engaged, enough to change society. Well here it is. Right Here, Right Now. A very real opportunity for a gathering storm to coalesce the 99% outside of the graveyard of Democratic Party politics and snatch that mantle from those pretenders who were fronting as the Party of the People.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
I wish I saw this coming
I would have shorted the market like a motherf*cker
Podesta stated a short while ago that it was time to wait and
be sure that all the votes are counted. He didn't think that was important during the primary, though. Too late, Podesta! We should have counted all the votes when it counted--during the damned primary!
Edited because of autocorrect.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Americans don't get class
As a Brit I'm constantly bewildered By this. It even shows up in American incomprehension of British accents. Unlike in the USA, British accents are class markers.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
By and large true, I think
But if Brits really "get class" so well, why so gobsmacked by Brexit?
We are all in the grip of an Establishment that does not want to let go, and these are the results. The authoritarian right in every country will play the same (false) economic populist + (real) racist/xenophobic nationalist card (=fascism) at this moment. The left needs to act to cut that off. Cheers to Corbyn!