I, on the other hand, am still in the slough of depression, right off of High Anxiety Street. Fortunately I see my Therapist next week and she’ll tell me the same thing she always does- “Do you feel like you need medication?”
Not any more, two and a half ounces in Massachusetts!
Some people think I’m a pessimist. This is not true! I don’t see a glass half empty, I see a chance to chat with the bar keep.
And make it a double (hic).
‘Wall Street Plus Identity Politics’ Formula is Over for the Democrats
I’m looking at exit polls this morning. They’re really interesting to study. You can see for example in the white college age women that Hillary only got 6% more of those than Trump did which is sort of unbelievable. Those big numbers you hear on the TV and see in articles about the size of the gender gap, they get those large numbers by including women of all kinds of other situations.
So you’re both getting race and class dropped in. In that sense, the Clintons perhaps believe their own Kool-Aid about the size of the gender gap. Pure gender gap clearly couldn’t be that big and it wasn’t. Moreover, you can see a lot of funny things in the turnout if you pay attention. The best estimate Ive seen of turnout last night was about 55% which means it was overall down.
On the other hand, when you look in specific places it’s pretty obvious that African American turnouts were down. They were for instance down in Detroit and by enough to cause Clinton the state. It similarly – it sure looks like white turnouts in Pennsylvania were up and probably elsewhere. In that sense at some shuffling and a net loss on turnout and that looks to me to have advantaged Trump.
But let me come to what I think is probably the heart of the matter. I think we really are at the end of the classical democratic formula of the Clinton period which was Wall Street plus identity politics. I think this is it. You’re never going to be able to put that humpty dumpty back together again. They are going to actually ask & if the democrats want to win they’re going to actually have to make a strong appeal to working class Americans. Now you know the problem this is going to create. There’s a ton of money in the democratic party. It is not going to sit there and tolerate candidates like Sanders. You know they just really despised and hated. And overall they don’t like Elizabeth Warren either. So we’re now going to have a very interesting situation where you’ve got a top heavy party with cash at the top. Then you have no mass base at all basically or very little.
The Surrender of the Liberal Left to Neoliberalism Gave Us Proto-fascism
The demonization of third parties misses the fact that roots of our current situation are austerity, deindustrialization, and the impoverishment of half the nation.
Democracy Now- 11/10/16 Full Show
Featuring Glenn Greenwald and Bill McKibben.
Actually my Therapist will be very reassuring and tell me it’s ok, a lot of people feel that way, and we’ll spend the rest of the session working on coping strategies (she’s a Cognitive Behavioral Skinnerian, but tolerates my Freudian/Jungian inclinations even though there’s no couch to incline on).
Excuse me. I distinctly remember someone saying “We’re not gonna make it!” I think we made it.
I’m sorry, I over-reacted. At the time it looked very much like we weren’t going to make it.
Yes, well, maybe next time you’ll just wait and see.
And blow the last chance I might ever have to be right?
2 comments
I fervently hope that writer is correct and “wall street plus identity politics” will be gone, i’ll believe it when i see it. From what i’ve read the last couple days, 100% of african-american writers are asserting that it’s all about racism and doubling down on being the identity party for every identity except white heterosexual males.
the Michael Moore article you quote below is interesting. Is he really that stupid and/or deluded? I understand that a manifesto like that should be ambitious, and that asking for only the achievable means getting less than that, but we’re going to get rid of the electoral college only about one day sooner than we repeal the law of gravity.
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Vent Hole