Part of a letter this morning from Patriotic Millionaires:
– Before he beat Hillary Clinton, Trump beat the entire GOP establishment. Our friends in the Republican Party should think very carefully before they start ringing the victory bells. By no stretch of the imagination was this some kind of embrace of Republican ideology, rather it was a full throated rejection of what voters perceive as establishment economics. Given the deplorable levels of economic and political inequality in this country, that reaction is both understandable and on some level entirely predictable.
– Underneath all that anger, a lot of fundamentally decent people are scared to death. That fear is real, its important, and its centered in economics. Fear makes people do crazy, destructive things. Perhaps this will force rational Republican politicians and their Chamber of Commerce allies to face the results of their decades long attack on working people. Maybe just maybe, this radical turn of events will force them to consider slicing the pie differently in the years ahead.
– While voters rejected the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, they embraced a new economic deal for working people. Yesterday, four states voted to raise the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour and another voted to not lower it for younger workers. That’s a 100% victory for “decent wages,” one of the Patriotic Millionaires core values. That is a powerful sign of things to come.
Let’s hope so! (Ed.)
I’m absolutely devastated and horrified by the election result. I’m sure economic anxiety played a role in Trump’s victory (though Clinton actually won the popular, only losing the electoral college.) But there are other reasons for Trump’s victory too. For too long, the GOP has tolerated if not encouraged a paranoid conspiratorial politics that demonises anyone with experience as being a part of the ‘establishment’, and centrist politicians like Clinton as being part of a radical fringe. While Clinton is notably scandal prone, Republicans have exaggerated the severity of the scandals. The Republican establishment failed to unite behind one candidate during the primaries, and didn’t criticise Trump enough, then found it all to easy to endorse Trump when he won the nomination. The Democrats are responsible for nominating a weak and unpopular, albeit experienced candidate, then running a campaign of complacency. They didn’t do enough to appeal to rural and small town whites who feel culturally alienated from them.
I also think that while not a major factor, part of the reason for Trump’s success is that the radical left, largely found on university campuses, has engaged in a culture war against Middle America. They hate the social conservatism, traditional values and cultural homogeneity that still describes life for many Americans. They are glad that the white working class and religion are in decline, and want to hasten their demise. Trump is an overreaction against that. Now most Americans don’t pay attention to the radical left because they are such an insignificant force in mainstream politics, so this isn’t a very important reason. But its certainly worth bearing in mind. (Just for clarification, when I say radical left, I mean some far left student activists and socialist revolutionaries, not Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren- who are best described as social democrats.)
You’re quite right. He’s a dangerous lunatic. And he will surround himself with yes-men and ciphers, plus several corrupt pols. Je cannot achieve what he has promised to acieve. The utterly amazing thing is the number of women and immigrants who voted for him. I deduce that the women quite approve of gropers and sexists amd the immigrants are happy they are in the boat and don’t want any more immigrants arriving threatening to compete with them. Altogether, I sympathize with the way a lot of poor people have been treated, lost their jobs and are ignored by the two political parties, but all the disgusting behaviour says something I hadn’t suspected about the morals, and basic decency of my fellow citizens.