Changing places, left and right
Commenter “mollyNH” writes about the 2016 election:
It was all so tantalizingly close for the Left…
“Tantalizingly close” is one big reason this election has been so very difficult for the left, and why the right isn’t just happy but is stunned at the fact that, when it least expected it, it now has control of every branch of government (because it is poised to control SCOTUS, too). The shock and reversal has been immense for both parties, although one is sad and one is happy.
This was the strangest election of my lifetime. And not just because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were both very unusual candidates.
It was strange and curious—and extremely stressful—because nearly everyone was predicting the death of the GOP. Some thought the death was coming (or even was already here) because Trump would lose, Hillary would win, the Senate would be in Democratic hands, and the Supreme Court soon would be. There would be horrible recriminations and blame on the right. Some thought the death was coming (or even was already here) even if Trump won, because he would drive a stake in the GOP’s heart—or already had done so, just by his candidacy.
But it turns out that, as with Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the GOP had been greatly exaggerated. In fact, I don’t think the party has ever been so healthy (well, maybe not actually healthy, but giving the appearance of health) in my entire lifetime. Reagan as president had to contend with either mixed or Democratic Congresses for his entire presidency (see this). The Contract with America in the 1990s, which returned Congress to Republican hands for the first time in ages, happened with a Democratic president on board.
So not only did the party not die this year, it seems unusually robust, at least at the moment. It holds the presidency, both houses of Congress, probably SCOTUS in a while, and most of the statehouses and governorships.
And it’s the Democrats who are looking sickly. No wonder they don’t know what hit them. Nor, it seems, does anyone else, the reversal in perception is so enormous. Oh, we don’t lack for theories. They explain Trump’s victory, perhaps. But they don’t explain the scope and breadth of the reversal.
It’s as though everyone was keeping a vigil by the deathbed of someone who had been shot and was dying. That someone was the GOP. They were hearing the death rattle in the throat and were waiting for the final moment, heads bowed. Some had tears streaming down their cheeks. Some were secretly (or maybe not so secretly) happy, because they felt that the person on the bed had wronged them terribly.
But all knew it was very near the end.
And then suddenly the person jumped up.
Not just jumped up, but started tap dancing and chuckling.
And the mourners looked back at the bed, and lying there was (and is) another very ill person…and they recognize that person as the shooter.
Very odd.
Now, it’s one thing to say Trump will win, and to be correct. Quite a few people did that, although the great majority did not. And even someone like me, who did not predict a win for Trump, gave him about a 1 in 3 chance of winning during the last month or so of his candidacy. But I never really thought that we’d get Trump, plus a completely Republican-dominated Congress, so many statehouses, and retention of most of the majority in the House with just six seats lost there.
And not just that, but Trump is currently making nicey-nicey with the “establishment” he so reviled, and they are in a minor lovefest with him.
Don’t for a moment consider that all of this means that the Democrats (or in particular the left) are goners and that the Republicans have won. The GOP is riding high right now. But if it doesn’t get results, the public will turn on it just as it has turned on the Democrats, who once thought they were riding so high it would never end.
The Gramscian march is still the province of the left, for example, although propaganda can be overridden by the very real changes (for good or ill) that actually affect people in their actual lives. But those good changes have to happen during the next four years, or people will turn on those who promised them what they could not (or would not) deliver.
“The Lord looks after fools, babes and the United States”
Otto Von Bismark
“I never really thought that we’d get Trump, plus a completely Republican-dominated Congress, so many statehouses, . . . ” [Neo]
IMO Trump and the GOP Senate are short-term results. The overwhelming dominance of Republicans in state legislatures and governorships is, however, the result of long term trends.\; they didn’t just happen overnight.
IMO it’s this convergence of short and long term trends that makes this point is time a rarity. Now, as you point out, Neo, let’s see what Trump and the Republicans do with it. So far, I have been mostly pleased with Trump’s cabinet announcements; let’s see if he can motivate the establishment to shed its RINO skin and actually work for conservative principles.
I second that this was the strangest election of our lifetimes. I remained skeptical up until election eve that djt could win and the gop would retain control of the senate (which was my greatest concern). If Trump can work well with the gop controlled legislature and keep a few of his promises we may see significant senate gop senate gains in 2018.
Lots of talk about black swans lately, Trump will not have smooth sailing during the next 2 years. Plenty of known problems ahead and there are always unknown unknowns on the horizon.
Just a bit of rain for the GOP parade (if any) here:
As neo points out, the Republican Party “seems unusually robust, at least at the moment. It holds the presidency, both houses of Congress, probably SCOTUS in a while, and most of the statehouses and governorships.”
But the Trump victory was fueled by deep-rooted disgust with both the Democrat and Republican Party leaderships. If Republicans wish to savor this taste of power, they’d best bear in mind and take to heart that disgust, and take very seriously the peasants with pitchforks banging at the gates.
Otherwise, the Democrats will come storming back with a furious vengeance, and they’ve still got the enemedia and Hollywood and academia very much with them. I dare suggest the Republican side will not get a second chance — there will be no room for error. The dark side will play for keeps now.
(Actually, I was moved to comment as I did *before* I read all the way to the end of neo’s post. Had I not been so impetuous, I’d have seen neo making pretty much the same point as did I:
“Don’t for a moment consider that all of this means that the Democrats (or in particular the left) are goners and that the Republicans have won. The GOP is riding high right now. But if it doesn’t get results, the public will turn on it just as it has turned on the Democrats, who once thought they were riding so high it would never end.”)
Yes, a complacency that imagines that mostly clear sailing lies ahead would prove to be a fatal mistake. The war is far from over, at best only a battle has been won.
Nor have the fault lines within the right ceased to exist. The ‘happy, happy-joy, joy’ will quickly fade away should actual changes that threaten the status quo begin to manifest.
The left’s coming attacks on Trump and his administration shall make it’s “Bush-Hitler” meme look like puff pieces.
<b<"Yes, a complacency that imagines that mostly clear sailing lies ahead would prove to be a fatal mistake. . . . The left’s coming attacks on Trump and his administration shall make it’s “Bush-Hitler” meme look like puff pieces. [Geoffrey Britain @ 5:21]
GB,
It’s that latter point that, at least for now, that IMO prohibits any myth of clear sailing. Trump is, if nothing else, a realist and I’m sure he is very aware of the verbal challenges already raised by Schumer and the Dems and by various interest groups nationwide who already claim to be organizing to oppose him,
I don’t think any preconception of clear sailing is even possible now. If it occurs, it will be several years down the road when the administration is euphoric over several successes and the public tumult has died down somewhat. That’s when the specter of complacency will most likely appear, and that is when it will be most damaging.
I was visiting a business associate today. He runs a small ISO registered and certified calibration operation maybe 6 employees all told; tedious time consuming work requiring high precision and an overwhelming amount of paperwork and documentation as well as regular audits.
The field was touted as a virtual wheel of fortune a decade or so back: Buy a $100k ring gauge calibration machine and rack up $25k of billings over the weekend. Yeah … Lots of people took up the offer, and as the supply went up … well …
So there he is, trying to scrape by and pay himself and his wife and his son, and his sister-in-law and a book keeper and a niece and other somebody or two … but, he has to to all the hard stuff and all the thinking.
So today he looks at me, and says relating to the second round of now appearing Obamacare driven insurance rate increases: “I just got notice that my health insurance is going up $600 a month. ”
He was looking for advice, and I had none to give. I simply told him that he could decide not to pay.
But he is a law abiding type who would save society even if it meant his own enslavement, and says that in the case of a catastrophe he needs insurance.
So I told him that at least he got the president he wanted, and if that didn’t work then to hell with it, it was not worth saving.
But he’s the kind of guy who cannot compute that kind of reasoning. He’d save Hillary from drowning if it killed him.
So I began thinking … what if Hillary had been elected?
And what if not only was there no chance whatever of Obamacare’s financial rape of independently employed persons and those on medicare being repealed or radically modified, but that it would only get worse?
What then? Then, what Johnathan Gruber intended and the American Snowflakes, and the Democrat Party Client Class, and the self-dealers of the coasts all craved, would be realized.
The final harrowing and dispossession of the traditional American middle class would be an absolutely done deal and at hand; done in the name of a pan-sexual polymorphous perverse, redistributive social justice ideology … whereas now the corpse still has some chance of recovery.
If Hillary were elected there would be no standard political option. He would pay $1,200 a month for a “insurance” with a 6 or 7k deductible, or go out of business and perhaps lose his house, or go to jail.
The price of social progress and justice and “how we care for each other” as Obama said, don’t you know.
The craven Justice Robert’s types prove that no one in an official capacity would offer any resistance. They can easily be rolled in the name of saving their own feedbags and social place.
Hillary and the left showed that its aim was in fact, as many of us have been saying all along, as Obama crowed, and as Will Rahn came to admit: a fundamental transformation of both American life and America itself. They proved, in Rahn’s words, that liberals, ” … like colonial administrators would talk [and think] about [Middle America as] a primitive inland tribe that interferes with the construction of a jungle railway: They must be pacified until history kills them off.”
I don’t think that the average Trump voter realizes even quite now that the average liberal voter wanted – in the final analysis – him dead and gone, and his life efforts appropriated and cast to the winds.
Perhaps they did not want it in any explicit and icky I-have-to-take responsibility way, but that wanted it . They wanted it in a nice, cleanly managed, programmatic and directed social evolution kind of way; a way where retrograde types are nudged out of existence by supposedly impersonal forces that just have to be respected come what may.
As Neo pointed out: millions are enabled to sneak across the border, and are set up with benefits; manufacturing is exported wholesale; financial misdeeds are underwritten by taxpayers … but it all just the wheel of history, don’t you know.
Nothing personal.
So when some poor sap cannot even run a crappy little business because earning a crappy little income will impoverish him and subject him legal liabilities that he cannot possibly meet … what then, in a Hillary world, is such a man to do?
“Skinning it” is right. Though if there were a more alarming term I would endorse that one too.
“and [an]other somebody or two … but, he has to [d]o all the hard stuff and all the thinking.”
Too bad there is no editing function.
Of course, I could always focus on what I am doing in the first place … but that’s too hard.
DNW:
There’s a preview function, though.
I was surprised that HRC didn’t defraud the vote even more.
We’re already reading about Clark county ( Las Vegas, Nevada ) polling districts with vote tabulations 170% of the registered voters.
Trump “lost” Nevada because of Reid’s political machine. The state started out red and by the end of the machine’s machinations Nevada turned blue.
Michigan went strongly for Trump. Fraudulent tablulations within Detroit — which are now pulling into view — were not enough.
Wisconsin was not deemed to be in play. So the Democrat machine in Milwaukee failed to throw enough fraud into the mix.
It’s notable that Wisconsin was called for Trump before Michigan, yet Trump’s lead in Michigan was larger.
We had the President instructing illegal aliens to vote in the days immediately ahead of the election. I have no doubt that many did so. It would be a crime without sanction.
It’s pretty much a given that Donald Trump will prove to be a much more effective president than Ronald Reagan.
1) GOP Congress.
2) His personality type: Emperor.
He’ll be astoundingly pragmatic.
This is something that we haven’t seen since Eisenhower.
3) He will fire dead wood at a tempo wholly unlike any president since Truman.
His current line-up is tip-top. He’s going with executive experience and aligned political beliefs.
BTW, Romney would be a poor pick as SoS. He should be kept on as ‘of counsel’ like Rudy.
The ideal SoS would be a fellow with outstanding negotiating skills — and not associated with the #NeverTrump campaign.
The SoS is in charge of Visas. Illegals by way of over-stayed visas will HAVE to be addressed — right out the gate.
We should expect to see the Treasury going after cash transfers to Mexico. I would expect to see a 15% withholding, funds recoverable when the sender files his income taxes.
I’d expect the Trump administration to stop labelliing military aged males as minor children.
Illegals are brought to the border by CRIMINAL GANGS. They extract a ‘tariff’ on every soul transiting their turf. Yes, these are the same gangs that traffic in narcotics.
And, yes, Muslim fanatics are known to be coming into the USA via Mexico and points south.
Yeah, I was surprised too … on the morning after election day. I knew that there were a lot of us totally PO’d with the political situation as it appeared to be … I just never would have thought there were enough of us to swing the election.
This election was akin to a horse race, an antsy night, indeed
My biggest hope is that Isis will be obliterated, so much blood flowing there the latest victim a 100 Yr old Muslim man who was spiritual and a total pacifist & they accused him of witchcraft . What good is the EU. Kerr y Obama. Hillary & all these impotent globalist s who get out maneuvered left
& right by third world ers with 4 th grade educations, but they love to grovel before those types, salves their malformed conscience. I guess. I have hope for the near future, I guess the younger ones will have to bear the long haul.
@DNW trump promising to repeal O C. Hope your small business friend can hang in there
I am watching his Michigan rally & he is a good ” reader ” of people seems to know just what to say to play the crowd.
He connects with the average person, even though very wealthy.
I doubt that anyone imagines that this is forever. I commented elsewhere that pendulums function in accordance with physical laws–and politics are like pendulums. They will surely swing; the only unknown is the period.
So, there is a period of finite, but unknown duration to turn the direction of the country. And here another observation comes to mind from one who has served in aircraft carriers. Once in motion, and up to speed they are very hard to stop; and it takes serious effort to change direction. When a carrier does make a serious change in heading at high speed it heels alarmingly; and items not properly secured will fly about. An analogy could be drawn with the political order. The ship of state must be secured for heavy maneuvering; it must be slowed or stopped quickly; a new course established, and acceleration toward flank speed on the new course commenced quickly so that future change will be difficult.
I sense that Trump understand this; if in less nautical terms.
Great essay, neo.
Now our side has to produce.
It would be swell if we can be a nation of laws.
We’re still not doing stuff right… we need to find better counters to dem propaganda or we will have demographic problems down the line.
As Rush always say’s “the left is way more fun when they’re out of power.” What’s coming is going to make the protest movements of the past look tame. They began gathering momentum when the perfect storm arose at Standing Rock. (A no win for the right) Two sacred cows of the left; Native American justice and anti-fossil fuel environmentalism combined to halt the oil pipeline. Next on the agenda will be the “women’s march” on DC the day after Trumps inauguration. Brace yourselves folks.
Two days before the election, I think here (because I don’t I comment on politics anywhere else) I said “It wouldn’t be an upset if everyone predicted it,” and gave as my primary rationale the underestimated hatred of the MSM, celebrities and elites, and for the politically correct. I said it was an “anti” election, and whereas many were anti-Trump, many were also strongly anti-Hillary, but underreported because if you expressed any reservations, say on Facebook, nothing but vicious namecalling would result.
I was quite confident Trump would win. As a regular at Drudge and Beitbart, Ace of Spades and a few other blog sites we kept the faith. What millions of us knew (or believed) Hillary is desperately ill. Millions of Americans like myself absolutely had no doubt that not only did Hillary not have the stamina to be president, but lacked the mental health to hold the office. This was her Achilles heel, her over-all health was in the end what bought Trump the extra African American votes, the extra women’s vote, the most valued of all the crossover Democrats.
Millions of us knew that it was not her lack of planning or will that kept her off the road in the waning days of the campaign, but her health. Her health was the same reason they did not fill stadiums to capacity for fear of a collapse. ALL media did a very poor job of actually covering Hillary’s health issues. But millions of Americans knew.
Trump is politically brilliant. His “Thank you” tour is brilliant. No one has done that, to connect with the Deplorables of Hillary, and thank them. His audiences are large, enthusiastic and committed. He infuses them with vigor and optimism in an unbelievable way. And his audiences these days have not been nerdy pajama boys swooning before fake Greek pillars, but American salt-of-the-earth types. Of all colors. Who sneer at microaggressions and safe spaces for the baby collegians to huddle in. Who work hard, when they work.
The Tea Parties couldn’t hack it, they were too few, too elderly, despite their proper concerns for less government, less taxes, less regulation. It took Trump to stride onto the stage and address their passions and disappointments in a very strong clear and persuasive way. None of his adversaries, GOP or Dem, had his vigor, his financial independence, his voice. “Crooked Hillary” will echo for some time.
By putting the lie to the MSM, he has already done America a great service.
But he will be in as much danger as the Gracchi brothers that tried to reform Senatorial Rome; they were murdered.
“The worst part is that Trump is getting other Republicans to excuse his actions by throwing out the party’s entire nominal ideology. … Isn’t the Republican Party supposed to be the party of free markets? Well, not any more. … Trump’s message is that the free market fails every time. So what is it that is going to succeed every time? Why, the personal deal-making prowess of Donald J. Trump, that’s what! “
http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/09/donald-trumps-ideological-gutting-of-the-republican-party/
Big government is our problem all around. Very skeptical that this stops the G-March much, if at all (and may well accelerate it).
But trump can do no wrong in many quarters, at least for those who cannot compute that kind of reasoning.
The “conservative” media and many other “conservative” voices can compute very well, and it is why they are so willing to forego much of what they claimed over the years.
I doubt they’d go as far as let someone drown out of political beliefs and animosity (well, perhaps the gulag prison guard types would), but, evidently, not so trump himself, who now walks back his “Lock Her Up” pledge…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qiI8amIgps
Oh, and trump even went so far as saying that obama’s “been doing great”. Well, he’s been cooperative with trump, one can suppose.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/09/donald_trump_defends_president_obama_hes_been_so_nice.html
At the same time trump promises a five year ban on lobbying for his cabinet members. Not sure how he plans to enforce that, but we’ll see.
Like for much of his campaign, trump has been mutable on many issues, and at best, he is a mixed bag.
At some point, he will have a track record, and will become somewhat more “predictable”.
So, skeptically hopeful, as he has surprised in some ways, but hasn’t in other (not so great) ways.
We’ll see.
We see how the fringe on the left act…
“Like the pack of wild children in “Lord of the Flies,” “
While this article entirely ignores any parallel on the left, the fringe on the right is not immune to the same, to the extent that conspiracy theories and wild facts are ignored, only if it fits our purposes.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/09/donald_trump_defends_president_obama_hes_been_so_nice.html
Seems that my last comment was blocked, try again without the link….
Darn it, seems I his submit too soon, meant to post…
If we ignore it long enough, it becomes “lore”… google “Ace lies politics lore” and read his article.
Each time one side gains control, I start seeing the epitaph for the other side being written. I’m learning to just ignore epitaphs until the body is cold.
With some comments it appears that the Second Coming has occurred.
T:
“let’s see if he can motivate the establishment to shed its RINO skin and actually work for conservative principles.”
The GOP won (this round) on election day. Conservatives lost.
Neo:
“The Gramscian march is still the province of the left”
And the province of the Left-mimicking alt-Right.
It needs to become the province of the Right, but comments here illustrate conservatives continue to insist on passing the buck on activism to the GOP, which caused the problem in the 1st place.
<b<"Yes, a complacency that imagines that mostly clear sailing lies ahead would prove to be a fatal mistake. . . . The left’s coming attacks on Trump and his administration shall make it’s “Bush-Hitler” meme look like puff pieces. [Geoffrey Britain @ 5:21]
If the MSM keeps up its attacks on Trump – blowing every move he makes into Hitler on the march – I think they are going to be slitting their own throats. They seem to be doubling down on their run-up to the election bias.
They are part of the swamp that needs to be drained.
Big Maq –
“At the same time trump promises a five year ban on lobbying for his cabinet members. Not sure how he plans to enforce that, but we’ll see.”
It’s possible that he plans to include something in the stuff that members of his cabinet will sign before they officially get the job. Something similar to the one-year non-compete clause that one of my previous jobs had would probably do the trick.
@Junior – look, I’m all for it, but there is much space between what is promised and what actually happens. I’d prefer some kind of legislation that addresses pre and post senior government positions. Actually, I’d include into term limits lobbying and related positions (e.g. RNC, DNC chairpersons), and I’d also include state and local as part of the count, with the aim to eliminate, as much as possible, career politicians.
It may be surprising, but I’d much prefer people like trump who had to deal with the private sector and been impacted by government in their pursuit of building a business (and all the benefits that provides – i.e. job creation, value creation).
I never had much positive about either clinton, precisely for this reason.
Dr. Frog says:
Trump is politically brilliant. His “Thank you” tour is brilliant. No one has done that, to connect with the Deplorables of Hillary, and thank them. His audiences are large, enthusiastic and committed. He infuses them with vigor and optimism in an unbelievable way.
Yes, and combined with his personal intervention at Carrier, and the rally he held there as part of his brilliant tour, he seems to be on a roll. What his actual policies will be, how he will get a congress in the pay of lobbyists to go along, and what he will use for money to fund his works projects remains unanswered for now.
Dr. Krauthammer has this to say about it:
The mini-interventions are working but there’s a risk for Trump in so personalizing his coming presidency. It’s a technique borrowed from Third World strongmen who specialize in demonstrating their personal connection to the ordinary citizen.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442902/republican-congress-policy-donald-trump-tweets-theatrical-interventions
His current line-up is tip-top. He’s going with executive experience and aligned political beliefs.
BTW, Romney would be a poor pick as SoS. He should be kept on as ‘of counsel’ like Rudy.
The ideal SoS would be a fellow with outstanding negotiating skills – and not associated with the #NeverTrump campaign.
&&&
Well that didn’t take long.
Trump has selected a SoS with outstanding negotiating skills, not associated with the #NeverTrump campaign, and whose personal back ground is entirely on target: the oil business and Russian relations.
Rex Tillerson is pretty much a dream candidate for SoS.
He knows the ummah, too.
“He will also be paired with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as his deputy secretary of state, one of the sources added, with Bolton handling day-to-day management of the department. ”
NBC
Foggy Bottom is beginning to clear up.
This seems contrary to “draining the swamp” and a five year ban on lobbying…
“Trump exploring legal options to give Ivanka, Kushner roles in his administration”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-exploring-legal-options-to-give-ivanka-kushner-roles-in-his-administration/article/2609380
Raise more questions than it answers about keeping an arm’s length distance between trump as president and his businesses.
All will be perfectly legal though, just like the clinton foundation donations, and bill’s anomalous / enormous fees for speaking engagements while hillary was SOS.
.
Maybe it is only me who would go the extra step to make sure there wasn’t even the possible appearance of impropriety.
Sadly, that kind of ethic doesn’t seem to hold much value anymore.
Blert:
And the yuge unicorn leaves gilded skittles wherever he goes. It’s all good from here to forever.
OM
I’m glad you’ve finally joined the Trumpian ranks.
Blert:
Satire