71 replies to this topic

[caltrek]

 

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I have to wonder when all these groups are going to realize that the middle class, upper middle class and poor have more in common with one another than the rich. A wage slave is still a wage slave regardless of comfort level. We're all one class and the Trump election is a perfect example of infighting for the benefit of the rich.

 

 

In a non-Marxian sort of way, this is exactly the theme of my discussions of false consciousness.  It helps explain why a tiny minority can guide the course of entire society, even in an age where information is otherwise widely available to all sectors.

[caltrek]

Yes, I know.  The interview below can be seen as Hillary deflecting responsibility for her loss away from her own incompetency.  Still, I am so tired of hearing stories about John Kerry making similar complaints in whispered conversations between he and his personal friends.  Personally, I like that Hillary at least has the guts to tell us in public that our new emperor is not wearing the clothes of a legitimately elected president.  For that reason, she deserves an audience. 

 

It is not a question of whether Hillary was entitled to be president no matter what.  It is more a question of whether voters were entitled to have elected the candidate of their choice.  This is particularly true of her complaints regarding voter suppression. After all, what is fair about agreeing to a system whereby the Democrats must always have at least a five point or more advantage over their opponent before they can be elected into office?  

 

...and if that is allowed to stand, who is to say that in the future that minimum margin will grow to 7, or 10, or 15%?

 

Hillary Clinton on Trump’s Election: “There Are Lots of Questions About Its Legitimacy”

 

http://www.motherjon...its-legitimacy/

 

 

A year after her defeat by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton says “there are lots of questions about its legitimacy” due to Russian interference and widespread voter suppression efforts.

 

In an interview with Mother Jones in downtown Manhattan, Clinton said Russian meddling in the election “was one of the major contributors to the outcome.” The Russians used “weaponized false information,” she said, in “a very successful disinformation campaign” that “wasn’t just influencing voters, it was determining the outcome.”

 

Republican efforts to make it harder to vote, through measures such as voter ID laws, shortened early voting periods, and new obstacles to registration, likewise “contributed to the outcome,” Clinton said. These moves received far less attention than Russian interference but arguably had a more demonstrable impact on the election result. According to an MIT study, more than 1 million people did not vote in 2016 because they encountered problems registering or at the polls. Clinton lost the election by a total of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

 

“In a couple of places, most notably Wisconsin, I think it had a dramatic impact on the outcome,” Clinton said of voter suppression.

 

Wisconsin’s new voter ID law required a Wisconsin driver’s license or one of several other types of ID to cast a ballot. It blocked or deterred up to 23,000 people from voting in reliably Democratic Milwaukee and Madison, and potentially 45,000 people statewide, according to a University of Wisconsin study. Clinton lost the state by fewer than 23,000 votes. African Americans, who overwhelmingly supported Clinton, were more than three times as likely as whites not to vote because of the law.

[Unity]

Yeah, I think it was a combination of factors including Russian meddling, but I did not know the impact of voter suppression until now.  It doesn't surprise me though.  The Republicans have the older generation and once they die off there will be a big swing to the left and they're doing everything in their power to defer that as much as possible into the future.  I think you're also seeing people becoming more economically conservative and fearful as America begins its decline.  It's really sad.  Neoliberalism has a chance of working with time if we can get the population down, but it looks like the progress that made the world great over the last 300 years is slowing as we hit limits to growth.  I'm worried that too many poor voters will increasingly become insular in their thoughts and outlook on the world as economic growth slows in the developed countries and a backlash occurs against free trade, etc

[caltrek]

 

 

and a backlash occurs against free trade

 

Yes, I think this is an issue area that the proponents of "neoliberalism" may need to carefully re-think.  Free trade may be a good way to keep consumer prices down, but it sucks if it means you lose your relatively high paying factory job and are reduced (if lucky) to minimum (or near minimum) wage jobs in the service sector. In such case, it may very well mean a net reduction in purchasing power, not to mention the hurt to one's pride that results from lay offs.

 

Perhaps some level of protectionism is in order?

[caltrek]

This was originally cited in the I'm not Racist thread, but I think it certainly fits well in this thread.

 

White-on-White Voting

 

https://www.nytimes....ite-voting.html

 

Introduction:

 

(New York Times) Dravosburg, Pa., is a small — population 1,746 — working-class suburb that lies along the Monongahela River 10 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. If we want to understand what actually propelled Donald Trump to victory last November, presidential voting patterns there provide a vital clue.

 

In 2012, Dravosburg backed Barack Obama over Mitt Romney 441 to 312, or 53.4 percent to 44.8 percent.

 

Four years later, the men and women of Dravosburg abandoned their Democratic loyalties and backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, 56.3 to 41.1.

 

What is so interesting about this working-class community, with its strong ties to organized labor? It is one of thousands of white enclaves across the nation that provided Trump with his margin of victory.

 

The election of Donald Trump revealed that in some of the nation’s whitest municipalities and counties — the communities arguably most insulated from urban crime, immigration and gangs — Trump did far better than Romney had done four years earlier.

[rennerpetey]

What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began

His 2013 visit paved the way for a scandal that shook the world.

Source: Mother Jones

 

It was late in the afternoon of November 9, 2013, in Moscow, and Donald Trump was getting anxious.

 

This was his second day in the Russian capital, and the brash businessman and reality TV star was running through a whirlwind schedule to promote that evening’s extravaganza at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall: the Miss Universe pageant, in which women from 86 countries would be judged before a worldwide television audience estimated at 1 billion.

 

Trump had purchased the pageant 17 years earlier, partnering with NBC. It was one of his most prized properties, bringing in millions of dollars a year in revenue and, perhaps as important, burnishing his image as an iconic international playboy celebrity. While in the Russian capital, Trump was also scouting for new and grand business opportunities, having spent decades trying—but failing—to develop high-end projects in Moscow. Miss Universe staffers considered it an open secret that Trump’s true agenda in Moscow was not the show but his desire to do business there.

 

Yet to those around him that afternoon, Trump seemed gripped by one question: Where was Vladimir Putin?

 

[rennerpetey]

“Why the Hell Are We Standing Down?”

The secret story of Obama’s response to Putin’s attack on the 2016 election.

Source: Mother Jones

 

CIA Director John Brennan was angry. On August 4, 2016, he was on the phone with Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, the security service that succeeded the KGB. It was one of the regularly scheduled calls between the two men, with the main subject once more the horrific civil war in Syria. By this point, Brennan had had it with the Russian spy chief. For the past few years, Brennan’s pleas for help in defusing the Syrian crisis had gone nowhere. And after they finished discussing Syria—again with no progress—Brennan addressed two other issues, not on the official agenda.

 

 

First, Brennan raised Russia’s harassment of US diplomats—an especially sensitive matter at Langley after an undercover CIA officer had been beaten outside the US embassy in Moscow two months earlier. The continuing mistreatment of US diplomats, Brennan told Bortnikov, was “irresponsible, reckless, intolerable and needed to stop.” And, he pointedly noted, it was Bortnikov’s own FSB “that has been most responsible for this outrageous behavior.”

 

Then Brennan turned to an even more sensitive issue: Russia’s interference in the American election. Brennan now was aware that at least a year earlier Russian hackers had begun their cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee. We know you’re doing this, Brennan said to the Russian. He pointed out that Americans would be enraged to find out Moscow was seeking to subvert the election and that such an operation could backfire. Brennan warned Bortnikov that if Russia continued this information warfare, there would be a price to pay. He did not specify the consequences.

 

[caltrek]

It is getting pretty sad when the partisans and the racists don't even bother to hide the reasons behind their attempts to subvert democracy.

 

Top Republican Official Says Trump Won Wisconsin Because of Voter ID Law

 

https://www.motherjo...f-voter-id-law/

 

Introduction:

 

(Mother Jones) Election officials and Democrats in Wisconsin have repeatedly argued that the state’s strict voter ID law allowed Donald Trump to win the state in 2016 by keeping thousands of voters—predominantly in Democratic-leaning areas—from the polls. Now a top Republican official in the state is saying the same thing.

 

“We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November ’16 election,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law in court, told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna on April 12. “How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?”

 

The law, which went into effect in 2016, required specific forms of government-issued photo identification to vote. In a cover story last year, Mother Jones reported that the law kept tens of thousands of eligible voters from the polls and likely tipped the state to Trump. A federal court found in 2014 that 9 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin did not possess the identification necessary to vote. In a University of Wisconsin study published in September 2017, 1 in 10 registered voters in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County who did not cast a ballot in 2016 cited the voter ID law as a reason why. That meant that up to 23,000 voters in the two heavily Democratic counties—and as many as 45,000 voters statewide—didn’t vote because of the voter ID law. Trump won the state by 22,000 votes.

 

African Americans, who favored Hillary Clinton over Trump by an 88-to-8 margin, were three times as likely as whites to say they were deterred from voting by the law.

 

 

[caltrek]

The following linked article was found by StarspawnO and originally placed in the Business and Politics News and Disacussion thread.

 

 

http://www.pnas.org/...nt/115/19/E4330

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

 

“Why the Hell Are We Standing Down?”

The secret story of Obama’s response to Putin’s attack on the 2016 election.

Source: Mother Jones

CIA Director John Brennan was angry. On August 4, 2016, he was on the phone with Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, the security service that succeeded the KGB. It was one of the regularly scheduled calls between the two men, with the main subject once more the horrific civil war in Syria. By this point, Brennan had had it with the Russian spy chief. For the past few years, Brennan’s pleas for help in defusing the Syrian crisis had gone nowhere. And after they finished discussing Syria—again with no progress—Brennan addressed two other issues, not on the official agenda.
 
 
First, Brennan raised Russia’s harassment of US diplomats—an especially sensitive matter at Langley after an undercover CIA officer had been beaten outside the US embassy in Moscow two months earlier. The continuing mistreatment of US diplomats, Brennan told Bortnikov, was “irresponsible, reckless, intolerable and needed to stop.” And, he pointedly noted, it was Bortnikov’s own FSB “that has been most responsible for this outrageous behavior.”
 
Then Brennan turned to an even more sensitive issue: Russia’s interference in the American election. Brennan now was aware that at least a year earlier Russian hackers had begun their cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee. We know you’re doing this, Brennan said to the Russian. He pointed out that Americans would be enraged to find out Moscow was seeking to subvert the election and that such an operation could backfire. Brennan warned Bortnikov that if Russia continued this information warfare, there would be a price to pay. He did not specify the consequences.

I explained all this on the first page. Democrats royally fucked up by putting every last resource they had behind Clinton and Clinton alone while simultaneously promoting the most extreme GOP candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dems deliberately kept American cybersecurity low and paid off social media sites to lower their vetting from Russian and Chinese sources because they knew that they would do their best to prop up the worst possible candidate. It's not that the Dems entirely created the Russia block— that group of subversives already existed— but that they prevented anyone from doing anything about it out of the hope it would help Clinton win by helping to brand Trump as a foreign-helped proto-fascist demagogue. It backfired because he actually is such a thing and he wound up winning. 
 
God only knows how it plays out in 2020. The Dems probably think that maybe it'll work this time around, but maybe not. But there's no doubt that the right wing has co-opted meme culture. Hell, even Anonymous's YouTube channel now promotes solely traditionalist conservative Christian viewpoints. This wasn't much of a thing back in 2016, AFAIK. There were some rightist channels that had a bit of notoriety, but outside of InfoWars, they were largely overlooked or relegated to fringe conspiracy theories.

[caltrek]

^^^I tend to be at least skeptical of this line of analysis.  I think it is more complicated than that.  I think there is also the problem of being accused of presenting information for purely partisan reasons. So, yes they were hoping that Hillary would win. Yes, it backfired when she did not.  Yes, it also backfired that folks thought Trump might be the weakest Republican candidate and therefore the one to be preferred.  That second point was stupidity at its peak.

 

Still, the alternative would have been to be accused of fabricating an argument out of purely political motivations.  Even today, that is the counter argument presented by the Trumpians. They have managed to capitalize on the cynicism and distrust of government by substituting a pathological liar that they then follow as if he were some sort of God appointed savior. Yet, the Democrats still struggle to overcome that counter-narrative. Fox News, Breitbart, even the National Enquirer. These media outlets are there to support the counter-narrative.   How to penetrate the cocoon.  Picking sides within that cesspool does not seem like a very good strategy.  Donald Trump versus Ted Cruz all over again.  Somehow both Trump and Cruz and their respective allies need to be removed from the national stage through legitimate democratic means.  How to do that remains a problem.

[caltrek]

Could Anything Cause the GOP to Drop Donald Trump?

 

https://www.counterp...o-dump-trump-2/

 

Introduction:

 

(Counterpunch) The mind boggles at the fact that, even with Hillary Clinton for an opponent, Donald Trump won in 2016.

 

According to the most reliable polling data, some forty percent of the electorate still supports him.  This is even harder to process.

 

How could Trump not embarrass even the most doltish voters?   How could they not care that, day after day, he adds to a mounting pile of evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is corrupt, ignorant, incompetent, out of control, and, despite formidable competition, the worst president in modern times?

 

The short answer is: because nearly all of Trump’s remaining supporters identify as Republicans.

 

They are not all stupid or vile or non compos mentis.  Most of them are, in fact, of sound mind.  Many are good and considerate people, able to carry on conversations and to negotiate their ways through life’s vicissitudes.

Photo by kelly bell photography | CC BY 2.0

[TSM]

Could Anything Cause the GOP to Drop Donald Trump?

 

https://www.counterp...o-dump-trump-2/

 

Introduction:

 

(Counterpunch) The mind boggles at the fact that, even with Hillary Clinton for an opponent, Donald Trump won in 2016.

 

According to the most reliable polling data, some forty percent of the electorate still supports him.  This is even harder to process.

 

How could Trump not embarrass even the most doltish voters?   How could they not care that, day after day, he adds to a mounting pile of evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is corrupt, ignorant, incompetent, out of control, and, despite formidable competition, the worst president in modern times?

 

The short answer is: because nearly all of Trump’s remaining supporters identify as Republicans.

 

They are not all stupid or vile or non compos mentis.  Most of them are, in fact, of sound mind.  Many are good and considerate people, able to carry on conversations and to negotiate their ways through life’s vicissitudes.

 

Photo by kelly bell photography | CC BY 2.0

My only explanation is that some people were just born with a broken bullshit detector.

 

Forget about all the politics, just listen to him talk.  He's obviously an idiot and a liar.  It wouldn't matter to me if politically he agreed with everything Bernie Sanders does.  I'd still have never voted for Trump because one only needs to listen to him for a few minutes to know he's untrustworthy.  

[caltrek]

This Is the Stunning Reason Why the FBI Waited Until 11 Days Before the Election to Announce It Was Reopening the Clinton Email Investigation

 

https://www.alternet...t-was-reopening

 

Introduction:

 

(Alternet) An analysis from the Intercept reveals that buried inside a 568-page report from the Justice Department is an explanation as to why the FBI announced an investigation into a new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails 11 days before the 2016 presidential election.

 

According to the Intercept:

 

At least three senior FBI officials suggested in interviews with the Inspector General that the bureau was so overwhelmed that fall with frantically investigating the suspected Trump-Russia ties that the new Clinton emails simply took a backseat. Ironically, the urgency of chasing Trump’s possible ties to the Kremlin may have helped topple his opponent.

 

“It was Russia, Russia, Russia all the time,” then-FBI director James Comey told the Inspector General.

 

“[W]e were consumed by these ever-increasing allegations of [Russian] contacts and coordination and trying to get operations up, and following people,” FBI agent Peter Strzok said.

[caltrek]

Path for Kobach Grand Jury Investigation Cleared

 

https://www.courthou...gation-cleared/

 

Introduction:

 

(Courthouse News) – The Kansas Supreme Court cleared a path Thursday for a grand jury investigation into allegations that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and other election officials mismanaged the 2016 elections.

 

A citizen-initiated grand jury petition accuses Kobach, who won the Kansas GOP gubernatorial primary, of “being grossly neglectful” of his election duties and “preventing qualified electors from voting.”

 

Kansas is one of just six states to allow citizens to petition for a grand jury investigation. Steven Davis, a Lawrence, Kansas resident who unsuccessfully ran for a state House seat in this year’s Democratic primary, filed the petition in August of last year.

 

Douglas County Judge Peggy Kittel dismissed Davis’ petition, calling the allegations too general. But in June, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that the petition did not require specific claims and could move forward.

 

In the 31-page ruling, Chief Judge Karen Arnold-Burger said a grand jury petition is meant only to investigate possible crimes and does not require specific facts.

[caltrek]

It’s Time to Stop Freaking Out About Polls Being Wrong

 

https://www.motherjo...-jones-podcast/

 

Introduction:

 

(Mother Jones) Since Trump’s surprise win in 2016 forced virtually everyone in politics and the media to question everything they thought they knew about predicting elections, there’s been a constant conversation among politicos about how the polls were oh so wrong. (Don’t even get them started on that damn New York Times needle.)

 

But that all misses the point, as Micah Cohen may be getting just a little tired of explaining. Cohen is the managing editor at FiveThirtyEight, one of the most respected names in the poll-analysis and election-forecasting business. Since 2016, he’s also been in the business of defending polling itself.

 

We recently hosted Cohen on the Mother Jones Podcast to talk about the midterms, whether we can trust polls anymore, and how maybe, just sometimes, we in the media are part of the problem.

 

“Look,” he says, “maybe people think I’m biased in answering this. I’m normally a very conciliatory person and I like to admit mistakes when I make them. [But] the polls were not really wrong in 2016.” 

 

He adds:

 

Anybody who pretends that polls are this exact instrument is lying to you. Polls are better than any other tool we have to measure how Americans feel about politics. They’re certainly better than your average political pundit. But they’re not all that precise. So do I think the polls were wrong in 2016? Well, they were off in a couple states. But I think the fault is much more with the media, who was acting as though a Clinton victory was assured based on those polls, when they should have been saying, “Hey, Clinton is up, but this thing is pretty close. And it could go either way.”

[caltrek]

Why it could be much harder to steal the vote in swing state Pennsylvania

 

https://www.alternet...te-pennsylvania

 

Introduction:

 

(Alternet) Pennsylvania, the 2016 battleground state where many counties refused to conduct a presidential recount, has settled a lawsuit with Green Party candidate Jill Stein and state residents, agreeing to have paper ballot-based voting in place by 2020 and a new audit process to verify vote counts before election results become official by 2022.

 

“It’s a major improvement to have paper ballots,” Stein said Thursday. “That’s really critical. And it’s really important that we be watchdogging this, and that the issues of transparency and accountability be paramount. And [that] we constantly be measuring [what unfolds] against a very high bar for transparency and accountability.”

 

The settlement comes two years after one of the most frustrating post-presidential election efforts to attempt to verify the outcome, where an unconventional candidate trailing in pre-election polls, Republican Donald Trump, had, in fact, won the three closest-margin states, according to the preliminary unofficial results in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

 

…As Thanksgiving approached in 2016, the Greens’ call for recounts led more than 160,000 people to make online donations exceeding $7.3 million and recruited 10,000 volunteers. Recounts were launched, after paying multimillion-dollar fees, in Wisconsin and Michigan—although the Trump campaign and GOP in Michigan won a court order to shut down that state’s recount. Wisconsin completed its recount, but it was not the statewide hand-count sought by Greens. (Some locales used paper ballot scanners.)

 

However, Pennsylvania proved most obstinate. Even though the Greens got started late with collecting signatures required in every jurisdiction to file, its recounting effort was stymied by 16 counties using paperless voting machinery with no verifiable record of votes cast—which meant no recount was possible—and very high barriers for a candidate seeking redress.

 

Photo Credit: Niyazz / Shutterstock

[caltrek]

Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote

 

https://www.project-...=featured&a_ps=

 

Introduction:

 

(PNAS) 

 

Significance

 

Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were “left behind” economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a college education. Using a representative panel from 2012 to 2016, I find that change in financial wellbeing had little impact on candidate preference. Instead, changing preferences were related to changes in the party’s positions on issues related to American global dominance and the rise of a majority–minority America: issues that threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status. Results highlight the importance of looking beyond theories emphasizing changes in issue salience to better understand the meaning of election outcomes when public preferences and candidates’ positions are changing.

 

Abstract

 

This study evaluates evidence pertaining to popular narratives explaining the American public’s support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election. First, using unique representative probability samples of the American public, tracking the same individuals from 2012 to 2016, I examine the “left behind” thesis (that is, the theory that those who lost jobs or experienced stagnant wages due to the loss of manufacturing jobs punished the incumbent party for their economic misfortunes). Second, I consider the possibility that status threat felt by the dwindling proportion of traditionally high-status Americans (i.e., whites, Christians, and men) as well as by those who perceive America’s global dominance as threatened combined to increase support for the candidate who emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past. Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.

[caltrek]

Did Michael Flynn Try to Strike a Grand Bargain With Moscow as It Attacked the 2016 Election?

 

https://www.motherjo...robert-mueller/

 

Extract:

(Mother Jones) In early December, special counsel Robert Mueller, in preparation for the upcoming sentencing of Michael Flynn, submitted two memos outlining his recommended punishment for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser. The documents noted that Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, deserved no prison time for his felony because he had provided “substantial assistance” to Mueller’s investigation and several other ongoing criminal probes. And one of the memos tantalizingly noted that Flynn had aided Mueller’s “investigation concerning any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J Trump.” The memo does not specify what information Flynn provided on this topic, but perhaps he told Mueller about the Russian contacts of a key Trump campaign official: himself.

 

In February 2017, the Washington Post reported that Flynn had “a series of contacts” with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in 2016 that “began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition.” 

 

…Had Flynn privately met or communicated with Kislyak during the summer or fall, it would mean Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States. Such an interaction could signal to the Vladimir Putin regime that Trump didn’t mind the Kremlin’s interference in the election and would be willing to work with Moscow despite its efforts to subvert the US election. And if Flynn held such conversations with the Russian ambassador, this could have bolstered the Kremlin’s preference for Trump over Hillary Clinton and provided Moscow with further incentive for intervening in the 2016 campaign to assist Trump—especially if there was any talk of a sanctions-for-Syria deal or other policy aims desired by Putin. (Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, a top Republican supporting Trump, met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016, including in September in his Senate office.)

 

…Another major question yet to be resolved is whether Flynn indeed was gabbing privately with Kislyak while the Kremlin was attacking the United States—and whether such communications might have encouraged the Russians to carry on with this assault. Mueller—or Flynn—would provide a great service if he could supply an answer to that.