The more I keep looking at this, the worse last night's results keep looking.
For all the fulminating over GOP Obstructionism and the like, the Obama Administration has done some remarkable things, seized some opportunities, and Obama himself has accomplished a lot.
And it's all fragile and ready to blow away.
In the face of congressional intransigence, Obama did a lot through executive orders, like protecting gay workers for federal contractors. The problem there being, of course, that the next executive can (and doubtless will) roll all that back, and probably throw in his own zany ideas.
The signature legislation of the Obama administration was the ACA, a flawed but distinct step forward in providing health care coverage for all Americans. He's fought a major battle to keep the GOP from dismantling it — and now they can, both on an executive and legislative level. What will replace it? Nothing that looks very promising.
The President also acts through the administration. The Justice Dept. has done a lot to fight against local GOP state governments and their efforts to restrict inconvenient minority voting. It's also investigated local problems with police departments and excessive use of force. The Interior Dept. has done a lot to fight against local and federal efforts to open up federal lands — including parks and wildernesses — to exploitation by mining and energy companies. The Energy Department encouraged the use of alternative energy sources. The EPA worked to protect rivers, and to manage coal pollution of the land, water, and air. The Administration has also fought in court over the application of Medicaid funding to organizations like Planned Parenthood.
All that sort of activity also stops in January — and, in fact, probably does an about face.
The President does a lot in foreign policy. He's made accords regarding climate change (that will be quickly tossed out), and signed the deal with Iran (which Trump has roundly criticized).
More importantly, he's taken the chaotic cowboy diplomacy and interventionism of the G W Bush era and tried instead to act like the adult in the room. He's not been perfect by any means, but overall estimation of the US has improved globally.
If Trump behaves as President as he behaved as Candidate, US prestige is about to take a tremendous nose dive. Trade wars will be threatened. Alliances will be shaken. Folk will step into the gaps left.
In short, all the progress, all the hard-fought and rejoiced victories made over the past eight years, are all poised to be wiped out, and replaced with Trump's executive actions, a GOP-led congress' pet programs, and a Supreme Court that will get at least one, and probably more, Trump nominees (not to mention the numerous federal judgeships he will fill).
So, amidst all the gloom, what can Dems do?
First, be helpful. Be kind. Reach out to people who get hurt by the chaos to come. Stand up to bullies and haters who have been emboldened. Give, where you can, to organizations that help others, or that fight in court against injustice.
Second, speak out. As bad things happen, protest. Change hearts and minds. Help the folk who put Trump over the top see what he's doing to them, as well as to fellow Americans.
Third, the House and (especially) Senate minorities face a challenge of deciding where to obstruct, and where to engage with an eye to diverting legislation from its worst implications. They need to work with the majority leadership when Trump goes off the rails (and point it out when it's not seen). And there will be times when they need to take a page from the GOP's own play book and use the filibuster.
Fourth, the Dems (as the DNC and as individuals) need to be looking to 2018 and the local and House elections then. They need to be looking further out to 2020, when Trump is up for re-election. Who is going to face him? How do the different factions within the Democratic party resolve their differences to stand united against an incumbent? Just as importantly, they need to be looking to local statehouse races, because 2020 is a Census year, which means it's when legislative district boundaries will be redrawn.
It will be a huge, uphill struggle, helped to some degree by what I expect to be a litany of Trump provocations. But as this race pointed out, it's not enough to simply be against Trump. People need to be inspired to a vision (and candidates that embody it), to fight back and to win elections. If folk are hungry for "change," the next four years should give them plenty they want to see changed as well.
And remember — demographics are working against that more-rural, less-educated, white Trump base. And even with that, Clinton seems to have actually won the popular vote. We are not a small group standing up against a mass movement. In some ways, this was a very precarious (and unexpected) victory for Trump; the issue is not how we can ever come back, it's how much harm will be done in the meantime.
If the Democrats are smart (always, organizationally, a big question mark), we can fix this. But it's not going to be easy, and there's going to be a lot of pain to a lot of people until we do.
Hopefully the Dems in the Senate have learned the right lesson over the past 8 years and filibuster everything for the next 2 years with the intended statement of they are the last best hope to save the country and the world.
Mind if I share this?
+Josh Mannon It's shared publicly — please feel free.
+Stan Pedzick I think reflexive obstruction isn't the right course, for a variety of meta reasons — but I think it's a tool that will be fitting (if not essential) a lot in the coming years.
My terrible insurance and no PPO option needs blown away fast.
I mentioned this in a share of this post, but I want to mention it here. One reason I made this post is because I kept coming up with new awful thoughts about what this means.
The analogy that occured to me is being in a really bad accident, or getting some debilitating disease. There's the initial "Jeez, this is awful" reaction. But the more you keep thinking about it, the more implications. "Hey. I can't drive myself to the store right now. Jeez, I can't even make it up stairs — where am I going to sleep downstaris. Oh, hell, this is going to cause me problems visiting my mom. Hell, I was going to babysit for Bob and Susan this weekend, this is going to really impact them. And the yard needed mulching, badly. Wait, how am I getting to work? How does long-term disability work? Oh, and there's this constant pain …"
Sure, there's a light at the end of the tunnel — the disease will pass, the bones will knit, the rehab will rebuild strength, etc. This too shall pass. But such a radical shift from what has been is going to take a long time to really "appreciate" the implications of a singular, unexpected occurrence. And until we get over it, there's going to be a lot of knock-on problems we'll have to deal with — lost opportunities, neglected needs, damaged relationships, even major financial impacts. And, doubtless, a lot of unexpected (and unpleasant) surprises.
I agree that the next four years need to be ones of calculated obstruction. Trump won the White House based on people's dissatisfaction with corporate elites. The fact that Hillary took so much money from corporate sources indelibly marked her as a corporate stooge.
But the answer to this problem really isn't Trump. He will probably do what is in his financial best interest, not ours. That's why I agree with calculated obstruction. We need to make sure that he doesn't go so far off the path of progress that we all wind up paying for it.
But the solution to corporate rule wasn't Trump, it was always Bernie. Hillary probably committed her greatest crime by depriving us of a Sanders Presidency. He was the one candidate that polls show clearly beating Trump by double digits.
He was also the one candidate who refused to take corporate money, the one candidate who advocated breaking up the big banks, The one candidate who would have tries to put the checks and balances on the corporations that are needed to continue our democracy. He really was the best solution to fight corporate government.
I agree that we need to plan for the next 4 years, but the solution is not to go back to a party of sold out corporate stooges. Learn from this election. The democrats lost because they walked away from the interests and goals of the average american. They identified themselves as the party of big money bribes, corporate lawlessness, and unfair treatment. This will never be the solution for what ails our government.
I respectfully suggest that everyone take another look at the Green party. Their platform is basically identical to Bernie's. What's more, there is a young voter demographic surge coming in 2020 that just might make it a very viable option. Especially because they won't take corporate money. If you won't take the bribe, you can't be bought.
Lets all learn what happens when we pick the lesser of two evils, and actually pick the greater good next time around. If this election has taught us anything, it's that a candidate who cheats is no match for the voting public. Let's try to get the public behind someone selfless and positive in 2020. Vote Green.
+William Wells I concur that an anger at "corporate elites" and a sense of having the future robbed from them seems to have been a strong note in Trump's victory (and I have to give credit where credit is due for his somehow convincing people that he wasn't one of the "corporate elite").
That said, the assertion that Clinton "stole" the primaries from Sanders has been so overblown that it threatens to distort how the Dems respond to this defeat (I daresay it actually contributed to same).
Beyond that, I still completely disagree that Sanders could have defeated Trump, primary-era surveys or not. He had distinct weaknesses as a candidate both in presentation and in politics, and while he may have stolen some populist thunder from Trump, he would have lost a lot of folk who would hear the "S" word and run, not walk, in the opposite direction.
The Green Party also had its own problems (some zaniness from its lead candidate not the least of it). If it was such a perfect match-up for where the Dems should be / the Sanders position, I would have expected it to have done a heck of a lot better than an asterisk in this election.
+Dave Hill , the primary absolutely was stolen from Bernie. I'm a mathematician, and I can tell you that there were significant exit poll discrepancies, so significant in fact that the United Nations election monitors would not have certified those primary elections.
The standard is no more than a 2% discrepancy between exit polling and official result. Any more is a reason to call the election fraudulent.
13 states had discrepancies of between 8 and 22%, all of them favoring Hillary. Let me tell you as someone who does data analysis for a living (and who has 40 years of experience at it), that is completely impossible without cheating.
What's more, there were no noticeable discrepancies in either the Republican primary races or the down ballot races that were held on the same day, with the same exit polling methodology.
Bottom line, Hillary fixed those primaries.
As to the rest of your post, those are your opinions, and they could be correct. I'm not the oracle of Delphi, I could be wrong about what is needed. I appreciate your input.
+William Wells I'm not a mathematician, but I'll cite http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/upshot/exit-polls-and-why-the-primary-was-not-stolen-from-bernie-sanders.html, https://www.thenation.com/article/reminder-exit-poll-conspiracy-theories-are-totally-baseless/, and http://www.snopes.com/stanford-study-proves-election-fraud-through-exit-poll-discrepancies/ to suggest otherwise.
Actually, you need to read the wikileaks that show Clinton directly coordinating with both the NYTimes and Snopes.
Knowledge is power.
http://heatst.com/politics/wikileaks-times-media-bias/
http://yournewswire.com/snopes-caught-lying-for-hillary-again-questions-raised/
+William Wells , if you trust Wikileaks, you're trusting the Russians not to have doctored any documents.
+William Wells So I've read both the cited articles. I'm not only unconvinced as to your broader charges, but given the other "headlines" running on those pages ("Hillary Clinton Campaigns with Alleged Porn Star and Drug Cartel Mistress Alicia Machado"), I'm not inclined to lend them much credence.
That said, even if everything you accuse both Snopes and the NY Times of doing were absolutely true, what does that have to do with the analysis I mention above. Is it lying? Where? Is it partisan? For these purposes, so what? Is there something demonstrably contractual about what's presented to refute the charge that exit polling discrepancies prove the Democratic primaries were "fraudulent"?
+Harold Chester , we can ABSOLUTELY trust that Wikileaks didn't doctor any documents because they are all digitally signed with DKIM. It's a cryptographic protocol which allows us to validate that the email is unchanged, and that it actually came from the original domain from where it was sent. In other words, Hillary wrote them, and they haven't been altered.
+Dave Hill , I would think that it's interestingly coincidental that the examples of divergent exit polls given in the Times also happened after the infamous Diebold voting machines were widely in use. I don't have any data for those elections, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was other election manipulation happening in those races as well.
As far as the "all the Bernie voters are kids, and kids fill out exit polls" rationale goes, I know a lot of Bernie voters, and they are all grown adults. I'm 57. The fact is that Bernie's support came across different age demographics, lending very little reality to the Hillary Clinton inspired "Bernie Bro" stereotype so often talked about in pro-Clinton media.
Sorry, but a 22% shift between exit polling and official result seems a bit extreme to rationalize away. Considering that we know the Times colludes with the Clinton campaign, even going so far as to get their content okayed by Hillary's PR people, I think that particular article is pro-Hillary propaganda.
+Harold Chester The DNC email leaks appear to be cryptographically sound. There were indications that earlier documents / files released through Wikileaks had been tampered with.
+William Wells Anecdata about all the Bernie folk you know is not convincing, Most of the voters whose opinions I know voted for Clinton, yet here we are.
The data that's been collected indicates that the 18-24 cohort was much larger, in numbers and percent, in the Sanders primary voters over the Clinton primary voters [http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/04/daily-chart-19]. This trend could be seen all the way back to Iowa [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-great-democratic-age-gap/459570/].
That isn't saying that all Sanders supporters were young, it's just to note that there was a distinct difference that could lead to unexpected statistical results.
As to the rest, I think we'll have to leave the discussion there. What we agree on as facts seem to be at sufficient divergence that I don't think it's going to be useful to continue.
Fair enough, I only offered the Anecdata as Anecdate. It still surprises me that divergences of that magnitude could have anything to do with exit polling methodology, especially since there were no such divergences in the down ballot races. Young people vote for Congress too, you know.
+William Wells But, in most cases, with seemingly far less passion about their candidate than was evinced among Sanders voters.
+William Wells , here's one of the instances I was referring to with altered documents: https://grondamorin.com/2016/10/12/wikileaks-is-leaking-doctored-emails-by-russian-hackers/
There was a round of fake emails that came out the day before the stated wikileaks email drop. I strongly suspect that these were easily identifiable as false, for the sole purpose of allowing Clinton to claim that all the emails were false.
They aren't. The Wikileaks emails are digitally signed and can be proven to be original, unaltered, and sourced from Hillary's email account. This is part of that first fake disinformation attempt by the Clinton campaign.