Early thoughts

Horrific outcome tonight. Mass collective action is probably the only path ahead for the next year or two at least. Early thoughts: The number one contingent most responsible for Donald Trump winning is people (not necessarily whom the media expected) who voted for Donald Trump. Don’t blame others first. (This wasn’t third parties and wasn’t about young people.) Second most responsible: All who systematically disenfranchised and suppressed voters over decades or didn’t do much to stop it.

I’ll leave for another time the rest of my reaction but the third most responsible group are the people whose strategy failed tonight as it has failed so many downballot races over the past 22 years. I don’t know what the future direction of the Democratic Party is – but it can’t be more of this. The environment, the economy, and our democracy (including human rights and civil liberties) seem to have gone off a cliff tonight, and I guess we’ll have to assess what the hell happens next to resist that.

Displaced anger

Pretty weird how many non-Millennials who support Clinton have decided to attack Millennials for their presidential voting preferences when Millennials are literally the only age demographic with more than 50% support for Clinton across most polling. Maybe first go figure out why 35-48% of your own generations are voting for the candidate of the white supremacists and *then* come back and talk to us about this / apologize. (If you’re 50 years or older, more of your peers outright plan to vote for Trump than for Clinton, by varying margins by generation.) This attitude is not a productive way to garner Millennial votes … or even get young voters to show up for any of our candidates this November.

Anyway, folks, Arsenal for Democracy is back in production — because the entire rest of political media is hostile to our generation.

Hair splitting vs fact checking

For all the complaints about Trump seeming impervious to all fact-checking, it doesn’t help very much when fact-checkers at major newspapers of record solemnly announce that Bill Clinton never signed NAFTA on the grounds that George H.W. Bush signed the preliminary agreement and Bill Clinton signed the implementing act of Congress’s vote to ratify it (which he had lobbied heavily for as president). Absurd hair-splitting technicality arguments don’t strengthen fact-checking.

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Op-Ed | Trump’s Foreign Soulmates

Alexei Bayer and Bill Humphrey for The Globalist: “Look at commodities-export strongmen like Chavez and Putin if you want to understand Trump.”

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Foreigners see Donald Trump as one of those outlandish characters the New World periodically produces and then thrusts upon the international stage.

It is, however, far more than a bewildering one-man show. The rise of Trump underscores that we are witnessing a split of the United States of America into two distinct nations.

It is, perhaps, a return to form for a country that has often split politically (and once militarily) between its economically developed regions and its farm- or mineral-driven regions.

One of those two nations remains closer to the image that America has projected toward the outside world for nearly two centuries – an industrialized, highly innovative nation and a modern society that is open, liberal, tolerant and democratic.

The other America is once again displaying the characteristics of a commodity-exporting nation, as it did for much of U.S. history.

Poor role models worldwide

It is therefore only logical that — in order to understand Trump and above all the folks who cast their votes for him – it is fitting to look at other modern commodity-export-dependent nations, such as oil-rich Russia, Venezuela and so on.

Commodity exporting nations are a mess everywhere – from Algeria and Azerbaijan to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

They live off the distribution of free-flowing revenues which require a strong state. Friends and family of those who control the distribution obviously get a lot more. These nations tend to be ruled by charismatic strongmen who safeguard the interests of their cronies while feeding nationalist rhetoric to the masses.

Naturally, the masses hate immigrants and outsiders, because they represent additional mouths to be fed by crumbs from the strongman’s table. They are full of disdain for neighbors who aren’t fortunate enough to have natural resources in their soil.

Commodity exporters don’t need representative democracy, appointing their leaders by popular acclaim and very often for life. Read more

Baseline goals

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

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“Bernie Sanders invokes FDR in explaining socialism as ‘foundation of middle class'” – LA Times:

“The next time you hear me attacked as a socialist,” Sanders said, “remember this: I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own means of production. But I do believe the middle class and working class of this country who produce the wealth of this country deserve a decent standard of living, and their incomes should go up and not down.”

 

Is there a delegate firewall against Trump? Maybe not.

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A week or two ago, FiveThirtyEight posted a really elaborate procedural and statistical case arguing there may be Blue State firewall against insurgent conservative candidates like Trump (or Carson).

It would take too long here to explain the case fully, but the gist is this: First the calendar order places a bunch of Blue States relatively early (e.g. Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island). And second most of these particular states (e.g. New York) will award Republican delegates by Congressional district instead of statewide (which gives a huge delegate-per-voter bonus to states with dramatically fewer Republicans, since Congressional districts are drawn by population not number of Republicans). These factors both combine to give an early boost to delegates from Blue States.

The piece then argues that various insurgent candidates will be disadvantaged by this, to the benefit of a Bush or Rubio type establishment-backed candidate. While that might be true for a Ted Cruz, and maybe even Ben Carson, it’s not clear to me that’s necessarily true for some of them, particularly Donald Trump.

The two main flaws I see with this theory (of the firewall, not the math) after thinking about it since the article came out are:

First, it presumes that the remaining Republicans in very Blue States aren’t extremists themselves, which might not be true. It takes a lot of dedication to The Cause to remain registered R in a very liberal place. Maybe they’re Jeb Bush Republicans. But maybe they’re Ted Cruz Republicans. Even likelier, in my view? They’re Trump Republicans, which means whatever you want it to mean — hard right or moderate — because he’s running as the populist who is exactly what you want him to be. And that brings us to the other flaw.

Second, it presumes that genuinely moderate northeast Republicans don’t view Trump as one of them more than as a hard-right White Knight. For the record, I don’t think Trump is all that liberal, but if you really wanted to convince yourself he was a moderate New York City Republican on most issues, you easily could. (Especially based on his pre-campaign track record as a literal New York City Republican who was pro-choice and pro-universal healthcare.) I expect him to do quite well among Republicans in a lot of liberal northeastern strongholds.

As a result, I think that the delegate system aspect identified by FiveThirtyEight might not be a firewall against Trump but rather his coronation. Plus, I also think there are a lot of southern states and rural-Red but overall Blue-leaning northern states that will vote even earlier in the calendar, so we might not even make it to the end of April (to see what the supposed firewall states do) before this is wrapped up.

Ted Cruz wants us to bomb more civilians

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft. (U.S. Air Force photo/Lt Col Leslie Pratt via Wikimedia)

MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft. (U.S. Air Force photo/Lt Col Leslie Pratt via Wikimedia)

Think Progress — Ted Cruz’s horrid quote on combating “radical Islamism” after the Paris attacks…

It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life.

 
1. I wonder where he thinks we have pursued a zero-tolerance-for-civilian-casualties air campaign policy. Certainly not against ISIS.
2. He emphasized “targeted airstrikes” as part of the problem. Does he want old-fashioned carpet bombing?
3. Responding to terrorism with “utter disregard for innocent life” by bombing civilians seems like the route to a pretty big and unending cycle of violence.

What a hot take, Ted.