"We must all hang together or we will surely hang separately." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1776
It's morning in America again and a cold one at that. Will Trump attempt to govern for all America and move to the center or will he make good on his hate-filled rhetoric? Will a GOP that's divided by (now) three separate ideologies be able to govern? How will the Dems re-organize?
I don't know any of the answers to these questions, but I'm not moving to Canada and still fighting for progressive change. Events like this tend to be like a dive into Lake Superior. The frigid water wakes you up so vibrantly, you feel alive in new ways.
Speaking of Lake Superior, one of the basic truths of this election that I think Hillary's campaign missed (but not Bernie) is that you can't win a national election without the heartland. So many good jobs were lost in Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio that the people that voted for Trump were voting for him out of desperation – and against the failed promises of the Dems and their coastal myopia.
The prosperity of the industrial Midwest (where I live) that once offered decent jobs and retirements for those without college degrees diminished to such an extent that those voters were left behind -- and angry. So we need to be careful on how to interpret what happened.
Go into any factory town from Amana, Iowa, to Dayton, Ohio, and you can see what transpired. Technology and information jobs favor those who are educated and adaptable.
If anything, our education system hasn't kept up with this change. You used to be able to get a factory job, earn decent money, get a guaranteed pension, healthcare and have disposable income. That world started to erode some 40 years ago and the crash of 2008 only made people realize that this social contract was shredded some time ago.
And here’s the rub: Did the Democratic party really help the working class, despite all of its preaching? Except for the Affordable Care Act, the answer is no.
Union protections, which only cover some 12% of the working population, continued to erode and the Dems stood by as corporations corroded the power of collective bargaining. Decent-paying jobs/blue collar jobs kept disappearing.
Take a hard look at the electoral map and learn from it. People still vote their pocketbooks in this country and ask the perennial question "am I better off than I was four years ago?"
For most of the middle class, the answer is still no and Trump seized on that anxiety in a clear, unambiguous message. Hillary did not. Bernie got it, but couldn't build a big enough base.
But some words of reassurance. Liz Warren says it best when she talks about real incomes not keeping pace with health care or higher education costs. Most people are falling behind and it’s gotten worse since 2008.
The Map Tells Most, But Not All, of The Story
Take a close look at the electorial map, which you can't interpret without some context. Look at the areas that flipped. The highest concentrations of Dem-to-Trump votes occurred in Great Lakes states.
Now if I was an editor at the Washington Post, I'd ask my graphics folks to do an overlay of employment data, more specifically jobs lost from manufacturing. What I know about the quadrant between the Twin Cities, Peoria, Rockford and Des Moines is that a lot of high-quality union jobs were lost from Deere, Cat and other big manufacturers.
Northern Ohio and upstate New York State -- pretty much the same story. You can't win a national election without the heartland. People were grieving the losses of good union jobs that started to go away 40 years ago. After the 2008 crash, they stayed away.
Dems did nothing for these people other than squeak through Obamacare. Forget about the electoral college for a moment. The Dems lost the core of the country.
I'm angry about this analysis. The Dems had the money, the organization and certainly the ideas to win this part of the electorate.
Sure, Hillary had some baggage, but her campaign could've neutralized it by releasing all of the emails, big-money Wall Street speeches and shut down the Clinton Foundation. They blew it, got distracted, didn't have a strong economic message and let Trump step into this void.
Even after grafting some of Bernie's policies onto Hillary's platform, the angry, economically hobbled voters came out in droves and the educated ones -- both young and old -- largely stayed home.
This was the Dem's game to lose against one of the worst candidates ever. They need to fire the usual suspects and start over. Stop generating polls and actually go into communities to see what they need.
Get local organizations to give them insights on where the pain is and where the healing can begin. Final word on this mangled map: Epic fail by the Dems. Get out of New York City. Go to Akron or Moline or Milwaukee. Get away from your damn computer screens and talk to people and ask them why they’re not finding decent jobs or have to work three crappy jobs to pay the bills.
If they still want to be the party of working people and educated folks alike, Dems need to be kicking some butts out the door.
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See: www.washingtonpost.com/...
Trump’s Dilemma
Although I'm shocked and disappointed, here are my reasons for hope:
1) Trump says he wants to create jobs and fix infrastructure. He's got about a year before the mid-term election season begins. If he fails to deliver, the opposition party is favored to take seats in the House and Senate (which might happen anyway).
2) The GOP still doesn't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and guys like Rubio and Cruz have some scores to settle, so he might not have that chamber entirely on his side.
3) If Trump pushes through an infrastructure spending plan, the majority of fiscal conservatives in his party aren't going for it unless he finds a way to pay for it. Will he cut defense? No. Will tax cuts give him the revenue he needs? Do the math. Will he impose new taxes? The Tea Partiers will bury him. Basically, he doesn't have a fiscally sound way of doing what he's promised, so that might doom him with his own party. If the GOP can't deliver by mid-terms, both Houses could turn over.
4) What about the Supreme Court? Even the most pro-business conservatives can end up being social liberals. Look at John Paul Stevens. Roberts and Kennedy, both conservatives, voted to end the hideous same-sex marriage prohibitions. Progress like that isn't going away. The country has moved on.
5) Sure, Trump campaigned as a bigoted, misogynistic bully and it got him a lot of attention. But to govern a country this large and diverse, you need to move to the center. That's the way of the world, folks.
6) Keep in mind that his own party disavowed him for his anti-free trade rhetoric and defense of Social Security and Medicare. Ivanka Trump actually gave a liberal speech at the GOP convention, so maybe Trump didn't believe anything he said and will shift his positions to get re-elected. That's my bet. Remember that Paul Ryan still wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare, something that almost no one getting those benefits wants in any way. My guess is that Trump stays the course on social insurance or Ryan hits the road.
7) What about immigrants? No president has the power to deport 11 million people. What would happen to the roofers, restaurant workers and landscape workers who do these jobs now? "Will you mow your own grass and bus your table," Mrs. Smith-Jones? Not going to happen.
8) Will some scandal derail Trump? Yes, but which one? Trump University was a flim-flam. He still has to release his taxes.
9) And there's this question about his romance with Putin and his conflicts with Moscow. Oh, and he's probably going to be sued by a few women. The people who voted for him, cast their votes for a TV celebrity -- and were angry at Washington in general -- but now he's commander in chief. Whole 'nother ballgame.
10) Then there's the jobs deal again. Unless he produces a lot of them and brings back prosperity to the heartland (Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan), he's dead in the water. Is he going to build factories across Ohio and rebuild Detroit? A lot of blue-collar jobs are simply being automated. Even the saintly Elon Musk is building robotic factories. That's the way of the future and you can't blame the Mexicans or Chinese for that. Technology lowers labor costs and it's going to continue bigtime -- and reach into the white collar world as well. This trend is going to make things worse and there's nothing Trump can do to stop it. He can promote education and retraining, but that's not the GOP bag -- that's a progressive policy!
So the backlash against Trump will be massive and pronounced if he can't deliver. Meanwhile, the opposition will be bolder, smarter, more organized and more data-centric. But they will have to stop their naval gazing and listening to the same, incestuous policy wonks who never set foot in Iowa or central Ohio or Appalachia.
The counter-revolution is about spiritual economics, grassroots politics on the local level and the states. It's about focused action and not complaining. It's not about big parties anymore. Those days are done, thank God.
Moving Toward the States -- Again
Under our federalist system, states have more power to shape their destinies than the national government. There's still a filibuster rule on Supreme Court nominees and the Senate GOP doesn't have a filibuster-proof majority, so we may have eight Supreme Court justices for a while.
And much of the GOP was not on board with Trump, certainly not the free traders nor fiscal conservatives.
Now Madison and Hamilton looks like geniuses, if my reading of the Federalist Papers is correct. No one "faction" is likely to dominate since there are now two factions (perhaps three) within the Dems and at least three within the GOP. Still, I'm concerned that Trump has awakened a hydra of hate. We'll see more hate crimes.
An Epic Fail By a Big-Party Machine
In summary, The Dems blew it by abandoning the middle/working class. It was their election to lose all along and they pulled off their own, arrogant, stunning upset through sheer incompetence and sipping wine in their own echo chamber.
Of course, the Dems have to be a viable opposition party, but to do it they need to get rid of a lot of people, including the top leaders in the DNC. They should get Bernie and the Cubs’ Theo Epstein to run the party. Oh, and hire that team running the LA Times/IBT poll. That was the only poll that was right.
Future political organizing in this age of over-information, segmented media, clouded polling and misleading big data, needs to be ground-up and disruptive. MoveOn is a better model than the DNC echo chamber. The DNC needs to be dissolved. We need a start-up political organization that’s more entrepreneurial and less corporate.
Moving Towards Progress
In the Progressive Era, we had the "Square Deal." In the Depression, we had "The New Deal." The 60s saw Civil Rights. Obama seeded the New Progressive Era.
Now let the new Human Rights Era begin, which despite the election results, made some progress during the Obama presidency with marriage equality, affordable care (at least in principle) and financial industry policing (witness the fine DOL fiduciary rule).
I know this wasn’t enough progress for many – and we will see the GOP backlash against it soon enough – but we need to stiffen our resolve and keep pressing for change.
Let's get everyone on this progressive page. We need a spiritual economics that’s inclusive and nourishing, a compassionate capitalism that rewards those that work hard, no matter what they do or where they live.
The American project, please remember, isn’t about rural or urban, college-educated or non-degreed folks. It’s about ascension and aspiration. The Dems seemed to have forgotten this and they were punished for ignoring this ethos.
Forget About What It Looks Like Now, Have A Vision, Go Local
There will be more unrest in the streets and more gun violence. But for those who still want compassionate, progressive change, our time is now. Martin Luther King is more relevant than ever.
Yet in order for anything good to happen, young/old people, people of color, gays, disabled folks, women, educated white men, Hispanics, Asians and anyone else left out in this election have to stop their bawling and get out to work on the new progressive movement.
You want a stake, claim it! You see injustice, challenge it! You want progress, demand it or throw the bastards out! This crisis is an opportunity. Seize it or deal with the consequences. It may be a cold morning in America, but how we deal with the dog who caught the car will determine the future.
We need to listen better, become organized, target education and focus on the principles that made us great. We're still about the "pursuit of happiness." Hopefully that includes a shared prosperity and peace. Work harder. Focus on what you can do in your community to make it more equitable and prosperous. Fight for better education and healthcare. Keep your eyes on the prize.
John F. Wasik, Journalist/Poet/Speaker/Author Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lightning-strikes-john-f-wasik/1123663456?ean=9781454917687
