Trump’s Lies
Republican Party
Election Results
Oakland, California
| Hillary Clinton | 87.76% |
| Donald Trump | 4.63% |
| Jill Stein | 3.76% |
| Gary Johnson | 1.36% |
Berkeley, California
| Hillary Clinton | 88.27% |
| Jill Stein | 4.46% |
| Donald Trump | 3.17% |
| Gary Johnson | 1.35% |
Alameda, California
| Hillary Clinton | 78.04% |
| Donald Trump | 13.04% |
| Gary Johnson | 2.58% |
| Jill Stein | 2.52% |
-- Robert Gammon, "Trump Only Got 4.63% of the Vote in Oakland," Oakland Magazine, November 28, 2016
The Right Way to Resist Trump
Luigi Zingales in the New York Times:
Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president, the Berlusconi parallel could offer an important lesson in how to avoid transforming a razor-thin victory into a two-decade affair. If you think presidential term limits and Mr. Trump’s age could save the country from that fate, think again. His tenure could easily turn into a Trump dynasty.
Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different. . . .
The Italian experience provides a blueprint for how to defeat Mr. Trump. Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr. Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi (albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders, not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste. . . .
Democrats should also offer Mr. Trump help against the Republican establishment, an offer that would reveal whether his populism is empty language or a real position. For example, with Mr. Trump’s encouragement, the Republican platform called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which would separate investment and commercial banking. The Democrats should declare their support of this separation, a policy that many Republicans oppose. The last thing they should want is for Mr. Trump to use the Republican establishment as a fig leaf for his own failure, dumping on it the responsibility for blocking the popular reforms that he promised during the campaign and probably never intended to pass. That will only enlarge his image as a hero of the people shackled by the elites.
Finally, the Democratic Party should also find a credible candidate among young leaders, one outside the party’s Brahmins. The news that Chelsea Clinton is considering running for office is the worst possible. If the Democratic Party is turning into a monarchy, how can it fight the autocratic tendencies in Mr. Trump?
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Comey and Emailgate
When an election is close, you can blame pretty much anything for your loss. There are dozens of people, events, and movements that can make a difference of 1 percent or so. In this election, you can blame Hillary Clinton, Berniebros, Facebook, Jill Stein, neoliberalism, the DNC, white racism, CNN, Obamacare, or anything else you want. They all deserve a share of the blame, so pick your favorite and go to town.
As for myself, I blame Emailgate. In a purely abstract way, I almost admire the ability of Republicans to elevate a self-evident molehill into a groundless smear on Hillary Clinton for the tenth or twentieth time and still get anyone to pay attention to it. [ . . . ]
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Why He Misses George W. Bush
"Why I Miss George W. Bush" -- Mehdi Hasan in the New York Times, November 30, 2015:
Minorities matter — in general, if not primary, elections. A study commissioned by the Republican National Committee in the wake of Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat noted how “many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.†To be sure, Muslims constitute just 1 to 2 percent of voters in the United States, but in 2000, when the presidential election turned on just 537 votes in Florida, more than 46,000 Muslims in that state voted Republican. In the view of the influential conservative activist Grover Norquist, “George W. Bush was elected president of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote.â€
Mr. Bush’s foreign policy may have harmed Muslims abroad, but at home he courted Muslim-American voters and refused to lazily conflate Islam with terrorism. Mourning Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith remarked: “I never thought I would ever long for Ronald Reagan.†I recognize the sentiment, as I listen to the irresponsible Muslim-hating rhetoric of the current crop of candidates.
I never thought I’d say it, but now I long for the Republican Party of George W. Bush.
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