I wonder how much of what Trump is doing is just an example of what he would do in a corporate setting. Hostile takeovers, booting out all but the yesmen and “bringing in his own people”, making shady deals with rival businesses (in this case, Russia), pulling some big moves right out the gate to make it clear he’s not your daddy’s CEO, telling better people than himself “you’re fired”, etc. If it is, it really makes the people who voted for him because he was “a successful businessman” look extra stupid.
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He’s doing (or at least trying) to do some of the things he said he would. That’s …admirable? Thing is, what he said was shitty and the way he’s going about it isn’t even successful at being shitty.
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All of it. It all falls in that bucket. That’s why dickhead businessmen suck in gov’t.
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That article about Chavez reminded me of this recent interview with Keith Ellison.
There was this one question and answer that stood out to me:
Ezra Klein
Let me push you on this a little bit. People hear that answer and then what they think is, “But it feels zero-sum to me. It feels that immigrants coming over the border are taking my jobs.” And it’s not always racial. One of my colleagues, Sarah Kliff, she went up to Kentucky. She was talking to people who voted for Donald Trump but were on Obamacare. One of the things they said was, “I’m pissed off about the folks who are poorer than me, who don’t work, and who get Medicaid. They don’t have these high deductibles that I have. They don’t all this cost sharing that I have.”
One of the things that Donald Trump spoke to with great effectiveness is the feeling people have that the pie is only so big, which there are times when it is. For instance, with government programs oftentimes. That what maybe could go to them or could go to their community or could go to their family is instead going to someone else. What Trump did for a lot of white Americans is he came and said, “I’m going to make sure it goes to you. I’m going to make sure these people aren’t coming over and taking it from you.” When you say you need social inclusion, I think what a lot of people hear is, “We’re going to bring in all these folks, and those slices of the pie are going to get a lot smaller.”
Keith Ellison
See, that’s why we’ve got to be in people’s doorways and at people’s VFW halls and we got to be talking to them. Because I would say, you show me a Southern, a white person in Kentucky who voted for Trump and is now worrying about their Obamacare taken away, I’ll show you a person who Democrats haven’t even knocked on their door in years. I’ll show you some people who haven’t been talked to. They haven’t heard the other side of the story. Because I’m going to tell you right now, if they framed resource allocation as a basic issue of scarcity, we going to lose that one. There’s not enough. Obviously you’re going to pick you and your family over somebody you don’t know and have heard a lot of bad things about.
Here’s the reality of it. There is enough in America, man. There is enough. Now, there’s not enough if we give the richest people the lowest tax rates, like the hedge fund managers. There’s not enough if we let some people hoard massive amounts of wealth overseas because of the deferral provision in our tax code. There’s not enough then. If you can get a tax break for your plane and your jet and all that, there may not be enough then. If we had even a tax code like the one we had in 1975, we could make sure that the rich get to keep their money, but everybody else can make it too. Once they got you in the scarcity frame, they got you over a barrel. It’s easy then to work racial, ethnic, gender, age division.
It got me thinking, that even if the trump voters are racist, we can’t make them stop being racist. So we have to try to neutralize their racism such that they stop seeing the rest of us as outsiders and instead compatriots with shared values.
I came up with a motto that kind of embodies that idea: “Prosperity and Dignity for All” - They want to feel respected, we want to be respected and we all want to live more prosperous lives. A slogan ain’t much on its own, but I’m thinking its the right general direction to get the disaffected who voted Trump to vote for a democrat.
#PDA
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But don’t rule out the malice.
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Can we just agree that it is the most clumsily executed coup attempt by the biggest sack of doorknobs in history, and it is scarily close to coming off because Republicans and Democrats in power in the US are a bunch of spineless assholes who’d rather watch their country burn than risk their popularity?
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To us, but sadly not to them…
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I think that’s going to ever-so-gradually change over the next couple of years.
I hope, at least.
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Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
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Watch it happen in realtime:
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During the Bush administration there was a core 35% where no matter how bad the scandal was they were always supportive. These are people for whom being a Republican is a central part of their identity and they will happily pay right wing authors to lie to them about how great Dear Leader is and how evil their fictional enemies are to protect that identity. Those people are hopped up on fear and hate of the other and are way too scared and furious at imaginary visions of Muslims and liberals to ever think. I expect we’re going to see that same 35% never give up. His initial supporters who were just poorly educated and gullible, but not religious Republicans though, they’ll drop off over time.
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35% of the electorate is about 90% of Trump’s voters. And with a few more years to work on disenfranchising the opposition, 35% is likely enough to retain power.
If y’all want any chance at controlling Trump by electoral means, you have to get the non-voting populace to the polls. Can’t do it any other way.
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He got ~28% of all eligible voters, and Hillary got about ~30%. The #1 issue for anyone in the DNC should be voter turnout and combating disenfranchisement because it is the clearest path to reversing results that have installed lazy authoritarian Christians into office at all levels.
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Would the bOING bOIING publishers please expose a public API for the expression of the sentiment “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” 
Thank you!
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Let’s be clear about something. Both the press and the American public spent the past year and a half assigning all things Trump to his stupidity and lunacy. That buffoon is now the most powerful single person in the world. Whether or not he intendeds to stage a coup does not matter. It’s what he’s doing. If he isn’t an evil genius troll and really did just walk into to Republicans’ moral vacuum at just the right time and place to take over without any actual savvy or insight required, be assured that he’s surrounded by sycophants who will use him in his position to deliberately do as bad or worse than what he’d do if left to his own devices.
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Insert my standard rant here about how yet more crooked centre-right corporatists are the exact opposite of what the Dems need if they want to attract non-voters.
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When it comes to Republicans, it’s hard to tell the difference. They often seem functionally identical, so the distinction is moot.
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I wish them luck but history is not on their side even if there is measurable progress.
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I don’t expect an electoral response to actually work. Your electoral system is already heavily rigged, and it’s going to get a lot worse before the midterms.
I just know that it certainly won’t work if they don’t activate the non-voters.
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Its the court of Elizabeth I with Stephen Fry playing Steve Bannon and Rowan Atkinson playing Jared Kushner.
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