The problem with a Trump win is that all the crap we said was going to happen, is happening. They feel emboldened. Be careful. Read this.
James Hohmann with a harsh judgment:
The lame-duck president has convinced himself that Republicans probably won’t go through with repealing Obamacare when they realize just how hard it will be. Ditto with the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. “Reality has a way of asserting itself,” Obama reasoned. “I also think that he is coming to this office with fewer set hard-and-fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with. I don't think he is ideological. I think ultimately he’s pragmatic in that way.”
-- Is Obama really that naïve? Probably not. He is just wallowing in a state of denial and has resorted to wishful thinking as a coping mechanism. It is a natural psychological condition that afflicts most human beings grieving a major loss, at least for a time. Presidents are not immune.
Brian Beutler/New Republic with a counter-narrative:
Obama Is Warning America About Trump’s Presidency. Are You Listening?
Obama kept returning to three basic themes: that Trump will be given every opportunity to succeed, thanks to the tutelage Obama and his team will be providing, and the fact Trump won’t be inheriting massive crises—which should give him the kind of running room Obama never enjoyed; that the work of a presidency is ceaseless, and much of it highly detail-oriented; and finally that Trump’s grasp of what he’s been elected to do is at best remedial.
Conservative health wonk and decent human being (hate that I have to add that) Philip A.Klein:
Should they repeal it outright, however, there would be a number of consequences. There are already about 20 million people receiving coverage through Obamacare — either through its insurance exchanges or Medicaid. To put it in context, that number is higher than the record number of people who voted for Trump in the Republican primaries and it is roughly equal to the population of his home state of New York. Democrats, and the media, will highlight all of the most sympathetic stories of those standing to lose coverage, particularly those with pre-existing conditions. Republicans, who spent years hammering Obama on his broken "if you like your plan, you can keep it" pledge and railing against unaffordable insurance will have to be willing to explain why so many people would be losing their plans. It's unclear whether they would have the stomach for that fight.
Fully repealing the law without simultaneously replacing it would also complicate the budget math. The reason is that as long as Obamacare is on the books, any plan to replace the law is judged relative to Obamacare. That means if Republicans want to, say, offer tax credits toward the purchase of insurance, it could be deemed a spending cut, because they'd simultaneously be saving trillions of dollars by slashing Medicaid and Obamacare exchange subsidies. But if they wipe Obamacare off the books first, and then try to replace the law, any spending – on tax credits, on addressing those with pre-existing conditions, and so forth – would count as a spending hike.
So, they'd ideally want to replace the law as they repeal it. The problem is, despite the urgings of people such as myself and others for years, Republicans have not resolved their differences over healthcare policy and united around an alternative.
John Podhoretz/Commentary:
- The key problem with Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s newly named strategist, isn’t that he’s an anti-Semite. He may be, though the only piece of personal information suggesting anti-Semitic views come from a contentious divorce proceeding two decades ago—and such charges need to be viewed skeptically. Anti-Semites usually out themselves on a regular basis because they can’t help it. And the late Andrew Breitbart, who was his close friend as well as mine and a loyal if entirely nonpracticing Jew, would not have had a minute’s time for someone who spewed anti-Semitism in private.
- No, the key moral problem with Steve Bannon is that as the CEO of Andrew Breitbart’s namesake organization, he is an aider and abetter of foul extremist views, including anti-Semitic ones. He used the site to promote the alt-right, which has retailed anti-Semitism as well as general outright racism and white nationalism. The distinction may seem like a minor one, but it isn’t; the hatred Breitbart has channeled is too general for it to be singled out for its anti-Semitic content.
Ed Kilgore/New York Magazine:
As the days go by after Donald Trump’s upset presidential victory, he is managing to keep his options open in terms of his basic strategy for governing — and particularly his relationship with a congressional Republican majority that is ready to rock and roll with a legislative blitzkrieg based on the Ryan budget. Perhaps that is because he never gave serious thought to what he would do if he actually won the election. Maybe he just hasn’t made up his mind. And quite possibly he’s just keeping potential opponents guessing. But so far he has not closed off any of the three very different paths I outlined last week: pursuing a sort of chaos administration resembling his candidacy; becoming the unlikely enabler of the Ryan agenda; or trying to remake the GOP into a populist/nationalist party.
What Democrats should keep in mind, however, is that whichever way he goes he is very likely going to betray his white working-class “base” — the people who put him into office — sooner or later. The “later” part is the most certain. Donald Trump does not have the power to bring back the Industrial Era economy he has so avidly embraced. He will not be able to reopen the coal mines, rebuild the manufacturing sector, or repeal the international economic trends that would exist with or without NAFTA or TPP. And for that matter, he has little ability to reverse the demographic and cultural trends most of his voters dislike.
But Trump may betray his white working-class followers more immediately if he does indeed sign something like the Ryan budget into law, rewarding every wealthy and powerful GOP constituency, making the tax structure significantly more regressive than it already is, and gutting a social safety net that poorer white folks depend on as much as do poorer minority people. Add in something like a push toward tighter credit and an abandonment of fiscal stimulus — which congressional Republicans will be urging on the new administration with every other breath — and you could see a reactionary administration that has to rely even more powerfully than the Trump campaign on atavistic cultural appeals to the white working class and the alleged magic he can perform as president. As a New York Times analysis of Trump voters in Michigan explains, there will always be an irreducible Trump/GOP vote that is essentially ethnocentric (or even racist) in nature. But some of the voters are persuadable for Democrats going forward.
John McWhorter/Vox with a contrarian POV (and a reminder Trump and staff are not Trump voters. Also a reminder that to win elections, you need some of them. We can do that, but don’t expect to win most of them):
Rather, the a-holes represent what Will Saletan has usefully called a couple of “baskets” out of five among the Trump voter palette. The case that these people represent the views of the typical Trump voter gets weaker by the day. There was no “whitelash” — fewer whites voted for Trump than for Mitt Romney. And let us not forget how very many of these supposed bigots voted for Obama.
Then they voted for Trump, though — and many can’t imagine why they would have done so given how revolting Trump’s behavior has been. They must have, we suppose, held their noses when voting for Obama but then expressed their true colors when voting for Trump. However, there is a more humane interpretation here, and equally plausible: They were holding their noses voting for Trump.
When a politician’s racism isn’t a deal breaker
Namely, what we have seen is that for a great many voters, Trump’s racism and sexism may have been less than ideal, but they weren’t deal breakers in comparison to other concerns. That is, racism and sexism weren’t a priority to them as much as they are to others.
Is such a person a racist? A mom in central Pennsylvania is attracted to Trump’s promise of change. She and her family may have had problems with employment in the wake of deindustrialization; or, she may see this problem elsewhere and worry about it; or she may be spooked by episodes like ones in San Bernardino and Orlando. “This guy seems really different. Yes, he says tacky stuff about Latinos, black people, and women, but so do a lot of people and, you know, in the end I’m not sure I care whether I’d want him around my daughter. I don’t have to have dinner with him. I wish these jerks wouldn’t show up at his rallies, but I’m not like them. And really, people get too upset these days about words anyway.”
A long tweetstorm collected on electionado by TR Ramachandran on WWC voters , sexism and the election (it finishes at 17I).