There’s a scene in The West Wing (I know, I can’t help it) where pollster Joey Lucas is debating WH Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman on the meaning of some polling numbers.  Lyman cautions that continued negatives on gun control means they have to “dial down the gun rhetoric.”  Lucas, the woman with the numbers, goes a different interpretive route:

You say that these numbers mean dial it down. I say they mean dial it up. You
haven’t gotten through. There are people you haven’t persuaded yet. These numbers mean dial it up. Otherwise you’re like the French radical watching the crowd run by and saying “There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.”

It feels corny to quote The West Wing, but I can’t find the original story after a hard thirty seconds of searching, so I’ll go with a fantasy text as my source.(*)

We are now watching the Old Guard of the Democratic party play the part of the French radical.  They are going to have to run to find the front of the march so they can lead on progressive issues.  In fact, they’re going to have to run hard, because they’re racing  conservative evangelicals to lead in that space.

Two remarkable things about the election earlier this month and relevant here are:  1) the passage of minimum wage bills in Arkansas and Missouri; and 2) the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons in Florida.  There were, of course, also good outcomes on Medicare, but they were less surprising.  Minimum wage raises in two red states, one of which is “right to work” (AR) and one where “right to work” was defeated after a heavily fought battle (MO), is a pretty significant outcome.  Unions are weak in both states, Democrats can’t be bothered to fight in most of their voting districts – and yet, people are taking actions that look like distinctly blue states and cities.

More interesting, though, is the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons in Florida.  The state constitutional amendment was passed by 65% of Florida voters.  Sixty-five percent.  Think of that.  A state that seems likely to vote 50.1% to 49.9% on drowning puppies, voted overwhelmingly to restore voting rights – to convicted felons!

On neither of these issues did Hillary Clinton take stands that could be called leadership.  Her strongest statement on the Fight for $15 was that she wouldn’t veto a bill for a $15 minimum wage if Congress passed one.  And I’ll spare you guys listening to me talk about the hypocrisy of Clintonists on racial justice and the New Jim Crow.

What we’re continuing to see – through various flip districts, campaigns that ran outside of direct DNC management, or grassroots action is an emerging consensus in support of issues Democrats typically feel a need to dial down.  People are marching ahead on issues that the Democratic consulting and political operative class consider to be losers.

And today we find out that evangelical leaders are planning to show their softer side and take up several classically Democratic issues.  Ralph Reed, of the Freedom and Faith Coalition, responding to the harsh turn of public opinion against what is now seen as the evangelical agenda, says [emphasis mine]:

“Social conservatives need to maximize turnout from the base and expand the map by stressing the softer side of the faith agenda: education reform, immigration and criminal justice reform, and anti-poverty measures.”

Of course, not all evangelicals are moving in that direction.  In fact, some are doubling down on the punitive fundamentals.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, has an interesting Aristotle meets Goldwater phrasing for his moral strategy moving forward:

Very few people anymore are in the middle. Barack Obama brought us to this point more quickly because of the extreme policies that he pushed. Trump, with the support of evangelicals, has worked to move the pendulum back.

In other words, extremism in the face of extremism isn’t extremism, it’s a way back to a balanced center.

Despite the internal disagreement, it’s clear that very serious players in the most hardened corners of the right are moving into classic, DFL-style Democratic territory.  Education, criminal justice reform (which in the age of the New Jim Crow largely means racial justice), and anti-poverty work are supposed to be Dem issues.  But evangelicals see that as winnable territory.

Within the Democratic party, there’s a strange fight happening around the Green New Deal.  The Green New Deal is a combination program of infrastructure, public spending, jobs, and climate change fix – something we might have considered Democratic Party 101 in the not so distant past. And yet, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is rallying  troops in a fight to get these issues onto Nancy Pelosi’s to-do list. (I realize some of this is theater.  And it’s definitely smart politics to pressure Pelosi.  That’ll make it easier for Pelosi to deal with other wings of the party and the broader donor base.  Still, it’s weird to watch, especially as 45* continues to woo working folks and unions with hopes of an infrastructure bill.)

45* is already getting out in front of the Republican black and latinx voter problem with announcement of prison sentencing reform, taking a big swing at the Democrats’ already fairly weak claim on being the party of racial justice.  Evangelicals are getting ready to take on the mantle of fixing our schools, fighting poverty, and economic justice.

And now we get to watch Pelosi, Schumer, and the DNC in a foot race against Ralph Reed to the front of the crowd – to try and lead the people who have been headed in the direction Democrats should have been marching all along.

---

(*) An extra thirty seconds indicates that this is one of those quotes will wind up attributing to all sorts of people, including Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, a forgotten French radical of the 1848 era.  The line attributed to him, by some, is “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”

You love NYC and the USA because you can have lunch and talk to a Croatian girl and a girl from Kenya and a boy from the Upper East Side, and it makes you think of your grandparents.

Have you tried explaining elections to people who didn’t grow up in a country with a rule of law? And elections not rigged and people who weren’t thugs running the place? And election night parties that, however hard fought, are fun and you end up liking the person you bitterly fought against?  And, you trust the outcome? And you eat bad sandwiches and enjoy them because you are exhausted, but safe?

They kinda laughed at me for taking it for granted. Which I wasn’t.  For not having to pay bribes to crooked officials and such. Actually, the Croatian girl got a bit pissed off even talking about it.  You end up apologizing.  Just cause, to paraphrase Aaron Sorkin, paraphrasing someone else, the apology is the price you pay for being alive, rich, and free, all at the same time.

Happy election day.  Oh, my grandparents.  Here’s an image of workers in Crabtree, PA. They are walking out of town to a union meeting.  They had to leave town because the company owned all the property in town and so they met at a farm outside of town. And, sometimes they got in fights there and back. Just saying, we don’t take it for granted.

 

Reopening the National Affairs desk at the In.  Trying to consolidate election day texts.  Politics should be fun.  Please feel free to join in.

So, I just lit a candle at St. Frances de Sales on 96^th Street, between Lexington and Madison. This morning. No shit. Slipped in before the morning mass, dropped some coins.  Said a prayer. After watching part of Trump’s press conference yesterday, I’m not sure, at the moment, what other response is appropriate. This is what a dictatorship looks like.

I haven’t watched a second of cable news since election night. No political blogs. Only the Business and Food sections of the Times.

Yesterday, I gave in to temptation and watched 15 minutes of the Trump press conference and later read some online coverage for the parts I missed. Yeah, this is what a dictatorship looks like, what democracy slipping away feels like. What some thuggish slob looks like when he is almost President of the United States.  A traditionally important and dignified position, not to get all history wonky.

Some people were clapping in the room at random times during the press conference. Tepidly clapping. Uncertain, because it wasn’t appropriate. They were apparently paid staffers, and I assume that their boss was holding up applause signs and waving his arms in the air whenever he wanted a big cheer. I don’t think there’s ever been a press conference with a U.S. president in which people were paid to applaud. In fact, I remember when I was a child, watching a Nixon press conference with my parents and asking my parents why no one was clapping for the president. And they explained what a press conference was.  And their explanation made sense to a five-year-old, but it doesn’t now.

Would anyone bet against Trump having tax-payer-funded employees applauding him when he’s actually president and deigns to do press conferences? Or, maybe worse, they won’t be tax- payer- funded, they’ll be paid by Trump, but afforded all the rights and privileges of a government employee. 

I watched because part of me thought he might, like, say the things that a normal president-elect would say, and that would make me righteously angry.  But, he didn’t do any of that. He’s never going to sound like a president. Or maybe this is what presidents sound like now.

He turned over the stage to a lawyer who provided the legal fig leaves for Trump’s contemptuous dismal of any ethical standards regarding conflicts of interest. As he left the stage, the president-elect pointed to a big stack of folders that supposedly, by virtue of its bigness, indicated how forthcoming he’s being about how corrupt he is. To paraphrase Toby Zeigler in the West Wing, I’d bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that those folders mostly contained blank sheets of paper.

The press conference was like when I was in junior high school and would watch an episode of Dukes of Hazzard and pretend it was a good show. That was actually a fun thing to do for about two episodes and the kind of thing you did before there was an internet. Give it a try sometime. Pretend that the conflicts in the show are real. That the jokes are funny. That Tom Wopat was really trying. Imagine the director saying something like, “let’s do the scene one more time, but this time over Boss Hogg’s left shoulder. Tom, try to see Boss as a human being. The man underneath the white suit.”

Trump’s lawyer apparently provided a lot of details, but the gist of it was that Trump doesn’t think any of the current conflict of interest laws apply to him. His sons will run the family business, and Trump will donate to charity any profits from high-profile conflicts of interest, like that hotel he just opened in Washington, D.C.

The press conference was also like watching pro-wrestling back in the glory days—circa 1977-1988. The wrestlers would pretend it was a real sport. The wrestling magazines would list the top ten heavyweight contenders.  The announcers would make some effort to provide analysis for the matches. “Gonzalez is giving away thirty pounds to Sgt Slaughter. Let’s see how he counters that size advantage.” The interviews were unscripted and, like the president-elect, the wrestlers who were good at it could just roll along in their own bullshit.  And, yeah, I know that Trump appeared on WWE shows a few decades ago. But, to understand Trump, you need to search YouTube for vintage interviews with Classy Freddie Blassie and Luscious Johnny Valiant.

Sadly, I couldn’t be more serious about this.

So, let’s consider that D.C. hotel that the president-elect will continue to own. (First pause to consider how ludicrous that previous sentence is.) He will still own it, though his sons will manage it. He’ll donate any profits to charity. So, the President will continue to have a lease with the federal government. People who have business with the federal government, both foreign and domestic, will stay at the hotel in order to curry favor with the President. Whatever Trump-owned business entity that controls the hotel gets to count business at the hotel as top-line revenue. That entity then gets tax relief of some type for the charitable donations. Are they going to make the hotel a non-profit? Rebrand it as Newman’s Own?

And then, the President also gets the P.R. benefit of handing this money out as charity, which he didn’t have to do by law, but he’s such a great guy. I can already see him handing out oversized checks to the South Bronx Junior Achievement program or the Cedar Rapid FFA. With people being paid to clap.  

So, I’ve just written almost one thousand words about only the first 15 minutes of the press conference. I haven’t even gotten to the president-elect denying rumors that the CIA leaked about him and Russian hoowas. Because, hey, the intelligence community leaking sex stuff about the incoming president is just business as usual for any new administration. Check out the YouTube videos of Eisenhower’s January 1953 press conference where he explains away those grainy photos of him at the Eagle’s Nest in those heady few weeks after VE Day.

This is not the republic that existed from 1776-2016.  This is something different and will require a different language and a different means of political discourse. Trying to assess a Trump press conference by the normal standards for such things is like a film critic trying to decide which season the Dukes of Hazzard jumped the shark.

Or a sports columnist handicapping whether Luscious Johnny Valiant and his brother Jimmy can defeat Tony Garea and Larry Zybysko for the tag team title.

You’ve lost the game the minute you entered it.

Just popping in to record something.  We’ve had discussions about voter identity formation and the ways in which it depends on non-policy intangibles like trust and relatability.  We’ve also had discussions about the ways in which the job of POTUS has been demystified to the point where voters might think vision and force of will are all that are needed.  Early signs that Trump could build a movement and squeak out an electoral win.

Today, someone told me to “go back to [my] latte” when I questioned whether the pack of billionaires Trump is appointing constitutes draining the swamp.  The latte reference, combined with “jagoff” gave me high school flashbacks of being mocked for books, playing the trumpet, D&D, and generally being a ‘fag’.  “Fag” was acceptable then and is useful today to describe the ways in which people can have contempt for your manhood without suggesting you’re gay, or even caring that you’re gay.  (Watch Denis Leary’s Rescue Me episodes where they come to terms with someone who is gay in their firehouse.  They do the commendable work of showing how men can be OK with homosexuality as well as their queasiness about it, but still get to use fag, fairy, and gay to question someone’s underlying masculinity.) Still it’s hard to use “fag” without the needed disclaimers, so I’ll do it sparingly- when I think it’s the clear subtext.  Looking back over various interactions with friends and acquaintances since Trump’s ‘win’, I’ve seen the us verus them undertones:   about the nature of my professional work, references to my hands being soft or used at all, and my consumption choices – all in the service of calling me a fag in some way.

Which brought me back to two Budweiser Super Bowl Ads. If I were man enough to watch the Super Bowl (I treat it as a day off to do my own shit and wander the world free of crowds while people huddle in front of their TVs), I might have been much less complacent about Trump.

The first was for the 2015 Super Bowl, mocking the craft beer world and its devotees:

I’ve spent some time in my career close to, some would force me to say actually in, advertising.  I’ve learned that the best ads are lovingly crafted with an insane attention to detail.  Advertising creatives are masters at loading every frame of a spot with cultural meaning.  Ads like this, which carry such powerful cultural force, should be Zaprudered with every frame under the microscope.  But I don’t have that kind of time, so I will share some quick observations:

• the people drinking Bud are in the presence of hot women in tight t-shirts, the fags drinking craft beer only hang out with their equally wussy guy friends
• the hot women who bring the men beers have strong arms and tattoos (probably from yoga, but the illusion is clear)
• the guys do faggy things with their beers like sniff them and hold them up to the light like they were drinking fucking wine or something
• not only do they require glasses for their sipping and tasting, they even have fancy boards to serve their sips
• they don’t have ‘facial hair’ per se as men do, they have ironic mustaches and side burns cut and waxed into shapes with names and which require “product”
• and they are soft, doughy, fuss buttons
• they are other, they are THEM

Within the industry, the 2015 spot got some static from craft beer makers, but it was generally considered a success.  Interestingly, though, Budweiser’s 2016 spot was titled and themed #Notbackingdown.  The static in 2015 was minor and registered at about 1,000,000th of the impact of a Super Bowl spot, but in 2016, the brand played the role of persecuted regular guy.  This contrived persecution allowed Bud to stand defiantly against an enemy that didn’t really exist.  Where have we seen that before?

The second spot didn’t go after fags as blatantly as the first one, but there’s a clear undercurrent of real men and the women who love them.  (The link works as of this posting, ignore the 50s-era dead signal signal.)

 

• “Not for everyone” – again with the note of us and them, but with the interesting Silent Majority inversion – even though we know we are everyone, we will not be made less so by THEM
• hot women still dig the Bud drinker and are even charmed by the grumpy confused old man who wonders how the fuck this piece of fruit got in his beer
• fruit cup, clever way of talking about beer problems while calling the drinkers fags
• Not imported: is there a more powerful symbol of globalization and the new economy than container ships?
• “Not soft” doesn’t need unpacking.  But if you Zapruder this spot, you’ll see hard hands swinging kegs and cases, and men operating seriously big fucking equipment, not playing with their beer making kits from Whole Foods. No freaking way these guys use product!
• Rock and Roll – cymbals, guitar chords, head-banging – no techno, synth, folk, girls with guitars, ecstasy raves, alt-rock wine-sipping, or turntablist shit here.

We should have seen it.  Donald Trump would totally have approved this ad.

 

This is a short post.

We’re only three days into Post-Republic American, and people are still stumbling through the ruble in some state of shock, rightly focusing on the almost immediate instances of racial intolerance and individual acts of violence that are being  documented all over the internet.  And everyone is bracing for the coming civil unrest and violence on a scale not seen since the late 1960s. As the shock wears off over the weekend, that’s when the night sweats and real Terror will kick in, when—like a gambler who just lost his life’s savings–we realize how much is gone and that we can never get it back.

Or maybe people just turn inward and resolved, and Post-Republic political life will have the dynamism and energy of a one-party state like Egypt.

Regardless of all that please remember in your prayers the social safety net, particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Actually, don’t just pray for them, let your congress person know that you will devote your life to their defeat, if they dare to destroy these programs that have been a pillar of middle class prosperity. If Trump voters really were voting for more stable economic futures for themselves and their families, then I assume they weren’t voting to dismantle the social safety net. Maybe that’s one thing that Trump and Hillary voters can agree upon.

I doubt that Trump has thought about Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid for even five minutes and is only vaguely aware that they exist. I don’t think he gives two shits about them one way or the other.  If someone whispered in his ear that we should extend Medicare to all Americans, he’d be fine with it. But, that’s not what’s being whispered in his ear.

The right wing of the Republican Party opposed Social Security from the start. Opposed Medicare and Medicaid from the start and to this day. (Republicans in the senate and House broke almost evenly on the Medicare vote in 1965, 13 for 17 against in the Senate, 70 for and 68 against in the House.  But, that Republican Party had a large moderate and even liberal wing in the Northeastern states. It was the party of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits and that party hasn’t existed for a very long time.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are square in Paul Ryan’s and the Right’s sites. They’ve been waiting for years for this, and the moment has arrived. Particularly if Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster.

I want to keep this short so just three last points:

• I’ll make no long defense of these program here except to note that Social Security eliminated mass poverty among the elderly, which was a very big problem before Social Security. Thanks to Medicare, the elderly are the only segment of the population that enjoys near universal health insurance.
• The GOP won’t technically destroy these programs. They would leave something in place called “Medicare”, but it won’t be anything resembling the current program, but rather be reduced to some inadequate block grants to states, or health care tax vouchers or personal health savings accounts.
• They’ll say we can’t afford Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid anymore. That they are reforming them to save them; that we have to burn the village to save it. They’ve been saying this about Social Security since 1939 and about Medicare since 1965 and certainly since the Reagan Administration in 1980. And it’s not true. In fact, Reagan proved that lie by working with congressional democrats in 1983 on legislation that ensured Social Security’s solvency to this very day.  These programs are well-managed and stable, but they won’t be if the ruling party in our now one-party country destroys them.

So, whether you voted for Trump or are making personal decisions about what role you will play in whatever resistance movements arise, please insist that your representatives in congress don’t destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

My first listicle! I’m pumped! I’m jacked! Here are things that few people are discussing in the wake of what happened on Tuesday, but that are likely to happen in the next four years.

I’ve taken to referring to the period between 1776 and November 8, 2016 as The American Republic and the period starting November 9 as Post-Republic. I contend that something significant ended on Election Day. This isn’t a good ole Republican v. Democrat spat over marginal tax rates. Election Day was the curtain falling on the system of constitutional government, rule of law, international alliances, and norms of political behavior that held sway during America’s post-war zenith.

I don’t think voters are focused at all on what’s to come. It’s vital to the nation that we have small government conservatives to advance a narrative and policies that check what might otherwise be endlessly expansive government.  But, since Reagan, the right wing of the Republican Party has been on a mission to delegitimize government. To make voters hate it. To make workers of all income levels less secure so that they vote from fear of the future. And, as Grover Norquist once said, “Get it [government] down to the size where we could drown it in a bathtub.” A generous and beautiful metaphor that aptly fits Week One of the Post-Republic.

Here’s my predictions for things that are quite likely to happen in years one through four of the Post- Republic. All of these initiatives are designed to degrade and destroy the government and further inflame economic anxiety among all classes of voters. And change the country in ways that no one considered when making their vote.

Hang it up somewhere so that you can play along and check them off as they occur.

 

• Eliminate the senate filibuster. This is crucial since it will allow the GOP program to mostly advance along majority votes. No more of this 60 votes required crap that the GOP used effectively to stymie Obama’s legislative efforts. There are still a lot of ways for a minority leader to gum up the senate works, and Chuck Schumer is hell on wheels, and a few Republicans like Jeff Flake will break ranks now and again, but a filibuster-less Schumer will be like a teen-aged tennis player from Romania unlucky enough to draw Serena Williams in the first round at Wimbledon—just swinging in the air while the ace’s zip by.

• Destroy private sector unions. Scott Walker will be coming to town and this will surely be part of his remit, like it was in Wisconsin when he went after the public sector unions and also the tenure system at the University of Wisconsin. The decline of unions is the single greatest reason so many blue collar people lack economic security. My father worked for Unity Township in PA for 28 years and was a member of the UAW. You don’t get rich with that job.  No big promotions. No end-of-year bonuses. But, you did have job security.  You could plan ahead and structure your expenses to fit the income.  We lived in Crabtree, PA, not exactly the garden spot of Western PA and drove a car to all our vacations. But, we had economic security.  The fewer workers, at any level, with job security, the more angry voters who will turn against the government, poor people, and foreigners.

• Begin destroying the civil service: Another sinecure of moderately compensated, but stable middle class jobs. Look for Trump and the GOP to drastically accelerate the outsourcing of government services to private, for-profit companies and to provide minimal resources for government oversight. Services to the public deteriorate. Voters can’t get anyone on the phone to help them. Respect for government falls even lower.

• Destroy Medicare. Medicare is the second most successful social program in history, but the GOP has wanted to destroy it since it began in 1968. With congressional majorities they can start the assault. They’ll be careful that the changes don’t affect current beneficiaries or people nearing 62—they don’t want old people taking to the streets of D.C., randomly firing sawed-off shotguns at double parked Lincoln Towncars. But, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s will find their Medicare benefits transmuting into vouchers and health care savings accounts (ask yourself, even if you are affluent, after paying your bills, educating your kids, and trying to self-fund your retirement, how much money do you have left to self-fund your health insurance?)  Most younger voters aren’t paying attention to Medicare now so the objections will be minimal, and, in any event, ignored.

• Destroy Medicaid.All the Obamacare attention is focused on the exchanges, but the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was responsible for the most significant increases in coverage. The expansion is made possible by federal dollars flowing to the states to fund the expansion. In rolling back Obamacare, the GOP can easily eliminate this funding. Millions fall of the insurance rolls, but they are mostly poor people of all races and colors and so most voters won’t notice or care.

• Start to Destroy Social Security. The single most successful social welfare program. We are probably still too close the financial meltdown in 2008 for the GOP to try converting Social Security into a 401(k) plan, but there are lots of ways—raising the retirement age, further reducing benefits, understaffing Social Security offices, maybe means testing so that it’s no longer a universal program—that they can sabotage Social Security.

• Defy the federal courts. It’s highly likely that at some time during the Trump Administration, a federal court will issue a ruling that does not favor the Trump Administration. I’m sure Steve Bannon is already looking for a test case. Trump decides to ignore the court’s ruling. The court reminds him of their decision and he says, “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”  The Trump Justice Department stays silent.  The judge isn’t about to send federal marshals to the West Wing to start serving arrest warrants.  The moment passes. And, few voters even notice.  But the precedent is set for the executive branch to defy the judiciary with impunity. And the rule of law sags and buckles.

• Politicize federal prosecutors. We take for granted that the government’s power to prosecute and imprison people is benign and apolitical.  Much of that due to the exemplary work of bi-partisan prosecutors who take their responsibilities very seriously.  There was a period during the second Bush administration, when Karl Rove was pressuring prosecutors to bring charges for what appeared to be political reasons. The outcry from Republican and Democratic prosecutors, current and former, was quick and unanimous.  Don’t think for a moment that Trump won’t appoint prosecutors who are not as squeamish about going after the Boss’s enemies. It will happened. And most voters won’t even notice it.

• Politicize the IRS. Trump will surely use the IRS to similarly punish his opponents and enemies.

• Exert the power of the presidency in civil courts. Trump routinely uses his wealth to force less wealthy companies and people to spend money fighting him in court.  Although his companies will be in a Mr. Magoo-level blind trust, run by his children, many companies and individuals will find themselves on the receiving end of a law suits brought by a company that bears the name of the President of the United States.

******Bonus Round******

• About that hotel he built in the D.C. Post Office building. In the closing days of the campaign, Trump made a stop in D.C. to unveil his new hotel in the magnificent former D.C. post office building. I’m not aware of a single reporter who asked if he would sell the hotel if elected, since being president and holding a lease with the Government Services Agency is a clear conflict of interest.  Both Hyatt and Marriot, who lost out to Trump in the bidding for the property, filed complaints with the GSA on the grounds that Trump so massively overbid the project, thereby incurring tens of millions of dollars in debt, that they saw no business model by which the hotel could be profitable. Trump will either just make the GSA renegotiate the lease and have taxpayers forgive the debt, just ignore the lease and not make the payments, and/or force organizations and individuals doing business with the federal government to patronize the hotel.  “And, of course, be sure to mention to the Boss how impressed you are with the hotel.”

Good to see you guys on here. Wish I’d kept up the blogging, but work steamrolled me for months on end, so I had to quit. Now that the election’s over, I thought I’d post these perhaps overly granular ideas here.

I posted on Twitter about this, under my other alias — OK, my real name — and might also do so on my other blog and FB page. So maybe the Mister Jones mask is slipping. But fuck it.

Lurking around FB, etc., I’m seeing people — HRC supporters, like me, feeling crushed and angry — saying stuff about “the red states”: how shockingly many there turn out to be, how the red states suck, and should be ashamed, have betrayed the country, how these people will now refuse to even travel to Ohio or Pennsylvania, how horrifying it is to learn how vast and monolithic the hatred is, etc.  . . .

This is one of the many things that I hate. The goddamned Electoral College.

That’s the map these people are looking at, of course: the Electoral College map. And despite being generally “college educated,” they don’t seem to get what it does and doesn’t show about political feeling throughout the country.

I’m amazed to find that because the EC — touted on news-TV because it’s so easy, the map so fun to fill in — generally awards a totality of electoral votes to whoever gets the majority of popular votes in a state, these upset people — and believe me, I feel the upset — think Ohio, say, is in essence monolithically right-wing and California, say, is deeply liberal. And because these people are, in fact, coastal elites, they also deduce that mainly only the embattled coasts voted for Clinton in this election. Most of the rest of the country thus becomes that vast, “red,” monolithic heart- and hinterland out there, shockingly bigger and more hostile to liberal and progressive ideas, to women, to immigrants, than anyone could have thought, and just generally a good place to stay away from.

Which of course only worsens the devastating problem that liberalism already faces: many ordinary Americans believe, with plenty of justification, that coastal elites look down on them and want to push them around. Hence, in part, and in its worst form yet, Trumpism.

But if these disappointed liberals would stop looking at that stupid EC map, which is designed — I mean the EC itself was, at the founding! — to paper over the realities of American democracy, they might begin to get a picture of how the country really feels and acts politically. If you look away from the map, certain facts emerge that make it a lot harder to pull into your little tribal silo and bitch about, say, “Ohio,” or “the country.”

Begin by looking at the country as a whole. These people I’m talking read the EC map as exposing the majority of the country as overwhelmingly rightwing. But hello: she won the popular vote. Not by much, but she did win it.  More voters countrywide wanted Clinton for president than Trump for president.

So there’s another thing to hate about the goddamned EC: if we’d gotten rid of it, we’d have our first female president now, and we wouldn’t have Donald Trump.

Then look at what’s going on in the states. In Ohio, supposedly so horribly “red,” she won 44% of the vote. In California, so blue, Trump won a full third. Clinton won almost a third of the vote in Cambria County, PA, a place I chose to look  at because I’d thought nobody there would vote for her.

But let’s go to New York — so blue, so liberal, and especially, one presumes, truest blue in the southern tier. What’s this? In groovy Brooklyn, one in every five voters chose Trump? He killed in Staten Island — not even close. He took Suffolk handily and almost took Nassau. It’s actually kind of amazing that Clinton won Nassau, a sign of demographic shift.

So are these liberals who now hate Ohio so much that they refuse even to travel there also planning on boycotting the Hamptons? Are they staying out of certain sections of California?

This kind of liberaloid idiocy in political thinking has been encouraged by the very mechanism that has also robbed us — for the second all-important time in sixteen years! — of majority rule in  our choice of president: the God damned abomination that is the Electoral College. This year it’s also robbed us of the first woman president, of sanity instead of madness, and of any hope for some kind of stability, even for progress, in our national politics, the very thing more Americans voted for.

The American people, by the narrowest of margins, chose Clinton for  president over Trump. The Electoral College denies the American people its choice, even as it plays into the anxieties and straight-up snobbism of supposedly intelligent liberals assessing the country’s politics.

Stop showing us that fucking map.

and a way to save it.  I’ve gotten no small number of “happy now asshole?” notes for my continued desire to say something more rich than “racist misogynist xenophobic asshole” to describe the 59,000,000+ citizens who voted for Trump last night.  But I also got an amazing note from a woman with whom I went to HS in Latrobe, PA.  It was in FB messenger so forgive run-ons and the lack of paragraphs.

“Kip, I think that it must be hard living in NYC to understand the trump voter. Must be like living in a liberal bubble. The racism with Trump is a recurring theme in your posts. I agree it is disturbing that he has such hateful followers and thanks to him they feel emboldened to crawl out from under their slimy rocks. I cast my vote for hilary. Last time I voted for a democrat was gore in 2000. In the past few weeks, republicans who I thought were not voting for trump decided that in the end just could not vote for hilary. Most had a specific issue or two that made them look past his disgusting faults – taxes, SCOTUS, national security, late term abortion. None of them want a ban on Muslims. All feel immigration is an essential part of who we are and want a path to citizenship. None of these people are racist. Outside of your posts, I have heard no one talk of racism. I agree it was an issue for me, though. I was in many an argument with a white supremacist on twitter (my husband is a Jew, my daughter dating a black boy). All these Republicans believe he is awful but that hilary is worse. Because they did not like either candidate they voted on issues. Now, I don’t think trump has a stance on any issue – or he has about 5 on every issue. Nor do I trust that he will do anything he says he will. My print is that outside of NYC and other big liberal cities, the racism was never much of an issue . I work with several black men who were voting for trump. When I asked why, they stated economy. To finally get to my point, don’t worry about your white brothers, the same racists that have been there are still there (just louder), 99% of his voters aren’t racist – they had other issues on their mind. And not being racist themselves, I don’t think they believe it is a huge problem with others (right or wrong). My husband shocked me when he voted for trump. He said we can’t afford another 4 years of Obama. The last 8 years we’ve been taxes to death. Due to economy, he’s had 3 pay cuts, no bonuses in past 8 years. He is finally back to his 2008 salary now. We are paying $84,000 a year for 2 kids in college. 6 more years of this to go (sophomore in collegw and my youngest is a senior in HS). Oldest graduates from clemson this year and we start paying for medical school as well. Taxes were his only issue when he voted. He is no racist. I adore your passion, your love of your fellow human beings and wonderful heart. But your liberal friends have to realize that not everyone has the luxury to vote based on issues like that. Remember Michael Moore? This was the big F-you. Let’s just pray we don’t pay for this in such a way that we can’t recover in the next presidency

Tell.your friends that this is hiw common america thinks of NYC liberals. Elitist. Holier than though. Smarter and know better than others. Listen to no one else. If your friends want to know how the rest of America views them