Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[mikeh]

I do not claim that the content she (may have) desired to keep hidden had anything to do with Benghazi. Or with any other specific topic, publicly known or not. I only say that the logical reason for mass deletion is to conceal something - perhaps things that are innocuous but personal.

 

At times I have had thousands of emails piled up in the deleted items folder at my job. It never once occurred to me to go in and delete them all in mass and wipe the space. This is something that is done for a reason. I don't claim to know HRC's reason, or to know that it was malicious. But I do think there is a reason.

A staffer directed another staffer, several months before the subpoena, to delete a bunch of personal emails on a server that was, unwisely, being used for government business and personal business. The second staffer dropped the ball and didn't get around to it until after the subpoena, which was aimed at government emails, not personal ones. So either the former Secretary of State, a lawyer fully attuned to politics in Washington, committed a felony or this explanation is correct. So Hilary didn't even direct the deletion: a staffer did.

 

For a number of years I have been very reluctant to delete emails from my work account. I do delete some, but at last count I had over 15,000 emails in my inbox and about 8,000 in my set box. I doubt that I get more than a tiny fraction of the emails someone like Clinton gets, and I very much doubt that she had the time or the inclination to go back over her emails and scrub incriminating ones. Do you have any idea how long that would take?

 

Btw, once I delete emails, I will do a mass emptying of the deleted box and, frankly, don't understand why one would not. I don't put emails into the deleted box unless I want to delete them.

[Al_U_Card]

 

Btw, once I delete emails, I will do a mass emptying of the deleted box and, frankly, don't understand why one would not. I don't put emails into the deleted box unless I want to delete them.

Deleting just means that the "marker" for the file is removed. The data remains on the hard drive until it is over-written because that marker was keeping the data from being over-written.

Do you then "bleach" that space on your hard-drive so that recuperation of that deleted material, by any means, is impossible? If so, why?

[kenberg]

As for Weiner: wtf? There has been zero....zero....suggestion that there were ANY emails on his computer, from or to Clinton, that hadn't been disclosed or that should have been disclosed.

 

This glides past my point. I am not at alll arguing that HC should be jailed. I am not sure I should take the space to restate it but here it is:

 

When the trouble came up, her best approach, as a candidate, would have been to decide, announce and insist that this entire issue was to be fully dealt with immediately in the most open and cooperative way possible. This should have been done in a way that it would have been impossible for any emails of hers to arise as a issue later in the campaign. As a candidate, rather than as a lawyer, she wants the issued dead, totally dead. No resurrection. So that is what she should have done when the problem arose. Much earlier, she, or HA, needed to organize the office much better. Right now I am searching for a file on my computer that in some unexplained way seems to have disappeared. I can't explain where it went. And, for a while, after a hard drive crashed I was doing some work on Becky's, but the timing is wrong for that to be the explanation. But except that it will take a little work for me, nobody cares. The idea that the Secretary of State, or a Senator, or a presidential candidate, sets up her email files so that an aide stores them on her husband's computer is just weird.

 

So wtf may apply, but not as you intend. My reaction was "Hillary's emails were stored by HA on AW's computer and then she forgot? WTF? Is this any way for a major figure to run an office?"

 

I know you are a lawyer, I am a mathematician. Sometimes people say to me "You don't seem like a mathematician." They mean it as a complement and, really, I take it as such. Much of the defense of Hillary's email problem sounds like a legal defense. A legal defense is fine if a person is in court. If mathematics is needed, hire me. If a legal defense is required, hire you. If you are running for president, a different approach is needed.

 

While I am on this last point, I realized that part of my dislike of DT is that he sounds like a real estate person. Just as I mean no offense to lawyers or mathematicians, I mean no offense to real estate people. But a few years back we were helping someone with a house purchase. We went to see a house where the ad said wall to wall carpeting. The only carpeting was on the stairs. Bill Clinton might say "It depends on what the meaning of 'wall' is". A lawyer might say "Well, there is a wall at the side of the stairs and a wall at the top of the stairs, so this is wall to wall carpeting". The real estate guy's answer when I pointed this out was, essentially, "So? What's your point?" I am working on a mathematician's answer. I think "Oops, sorry, I will see to it that the ad is fixed" would be nice.

[Al_U_Card]

A quick refresher on the e-mail deletion, from the excellent analysis by Steve M.

 

 

The preservation order included a provision that ought to have turned off the 60 day policy that Mills had ordered as well as further deletions. The Benghazi Committee issued a subpoena the following day for documents pertaining to Benghazi.

Williams and Connolley do not appear to have notified Platte River of the preservation order until March 9, nearly a week later, when, according to the FBI report, Mills sent Platte River an email to which a notice from Kendall was attached. The language of Kendall’s notice was not disclosed in the FBI documents and it is therefore not possible to determine whether the notice exactly tracked the requirements of the order from the Committee.

Prior to notifying Platte River of the preservation order on March 9, Mills had already initiated contact with Platte River by email and telephone, including an attempt to inventory pst files on the PRN server, Pagliano Server and various backups on or about March 5. The FBI 302s document multiple different pst files related to the Hillary archive, all of which appear to have been extant at the time of Mills’ contact with Platte River on or about March 5, including the following files mentioned in the FBI 302s: “HRC archive – complete.pst”; “hrcarchive@clintonemail.com – HRC archive.ost”; “export.pst”; “HRC.gov.email.Archive.pst”; “HRC.gov.emails.pst” and “HRC gov emails.pst”. Doubtless, there were others. Pst files then existed on both the server and backup. The FBI 302s also noted the existence of a pst file for Huma’s yahoo and gmail accounts (“huma-gmail-yahoo.pst”), but did not discuss the pst file for Huma’s clintonemail account.

On March 5, there were three emails to Platte River about the Clinton server. The sender of the emails is not identified in the FBI 302s, but it seems likely that Mills was involved in one or more of the March 5 emails.

Platte River work tickets revealed that PRN employees traveled to the Equinix facility in New Jersey on March 7-8 to examine the predecessor server and backup then in storage at Equinix (Pagliano Server), following which they “confirmed” to Mills that there were no pst files remaining on the server. This server was later turned over by Kendall to the FBI on August 12, 2015.

On March 9, Mills sent an email to Platte River and employees, including Combetta, in which preservation instructions from Kendall were attached. In his February 2016 interview, Combetta denied knowledge of the preservation order, but in a subsequent interview in May 2016, Combetta admitted knowledge of the preservation request, saying that he interpreted it “as meaning he should not disturb CLINTON’s email data on the PRN server”.

Platte River work tickets show that Combetta did further work for Mills on March 10 and 12. Combetta’s implausible explanation to the FBI was that “MILLS did not have an account on the Server and he could not recall what work he might have done for MILLS” and that “MILLS occasionally contacted [Combetta] with problems related to her personal email account, so the work tickets may have been of that nature”.

On March 19, the Benghazi Committee formally requested that the Clinton server be turned over to an independent third party for examination of the supposedly “non-work-related” emails.

On March 25, Mills and/or Kendall sent two emails to Platte River and had a conference call with Platte River. According to the 302 for Combetta’s February 2016 interview, one of the March 25 emails referred to “backups”, a reference which Combetta purported not to recall. This reference was omitted from the FBI report itself. The FBI 302 went on to state that Combetta was advised by his attorney not to “answer any questions related to conversations with KENDALL based on [his] protections under the Fifth Amendment”. In his May 2016 interview (after receiving an immunity agreement), Combetta stated that “he could not recall the content of the call or the reference to backups in the email”. In the FBI Report itself, Combetta’s refusal to answer questions on his discussions with Mills and Kendall was incorrectly described as a refusal based on assertion of attorney-client privilege, but the interview notes attributed the refusal in the February interview to invocation of the 5th Amendment and lack of recollection in the May interview.

Platte River server logs show that on March 25 (presumably subsequent to the conference call with Mills and Kendall), the Platte Admin account was used to modify multiple mailboxes associated with Hillary’s emails (H, HDR29, and HRC Archive), with the HRC Archive mailbox being completely removed from the Exchange server. The changes on March 25 were described in the 302 as follows:

[Combetta] believed he had an ‘oh ***** moment and removed the HRC Archive mailbox. He also changed the mailbox retention policy from 30 days to 1 day, and cleaned the mailbox database because MILLS previously requested in late 2014 or early 2015 he change the retention policy for CLINTON and ABEDIN’s existing and ongoing email to 60 days. He removed the HRC Archive mailbox manually because all content in the mailbox was older than 60 days. [Combetta] changed the deleted items retention policy from 30 days to 1 day to ensure no email outside of the 60 days remained on the server and executed the Clean-MailboxDatabase command to clean whitespace within the database, similar to running a disk defragmentation. [Combetta] also enabled Circular Logging, but did not recall why he did so in this instance. He typically enabled it when importing email because Microsoft Exchange logs contain email that hasn’t been committed to a database. Circular Logging reduces the log file size by forcing Exchange to commit data to the database immediately,

Two days later (March 27), Kendall sent a letter to the Benghazi Committee, in which he made the surprising announcement that none of Hillary’s emails from her tenure at State Department remained on either the server or backup (thereby rendering moot their request for examination of the server):

[billw55]

A staffer directed another staffer, several months before the subpoena, to delete a bunch of personal emails on a server that was, unwisely, being used for government business and personal business. The second staffer dropped the ball and didn't get around to it until after the subpoena, which was aimed at government emails, not personal ones. So either the former Secretary of State, a lawyer fully attuned to politics in Washington, committed a felony or this explanation is correct. So Hilary didn't even direct the deletion: a staffer did.

 

For a number of years I have been very reluctant to delete emails from my work account. I do delete some, but at last count I had over 15,000 emails in my inbox and about 8,000 in my set box. I doubt that I get more than a tiny fraction of the emails someone like Clinton gets, and I very much doubt that she had the time or the inclination to go back over her emails and scrub incriminating ones. Do you have any idea how long that would take?

 

Btw, once I delete emails, I will do a mass emptying of the deleted box and, frankly, don't understand why one would not. I don't put emails into the deleted box unless I want to delete them.

Yes, this explanation is plausible.

 

More recently, our IT department set retention periods on email folders. Deleted is two months, so I no longer accumulate large numbers. Sent items are one year, currently mine says 4004.

 

The other thing that occurs to me is that deleting emails and scrubbing the server might not work very well. Every single email will also exist elsewhere, in somebody's sent folder, etc. Surely the FBI must have looked for the "missing" emails in this manner. I wonder what they found.

[jogs]

Because re-training is the only hope for those folks.

Would you hire a retrained 50+ senior rather than a younger employee? I think not.

Trump cannot deliver on a promise of restoring the past to the present.

 

Trump is attempting to slow the process down. Trump can't save all the jobs. HRC isn't interested in saving any of the jobs.

 

 

Still HRC would have won if she had campaigned in the swing states. Trump showed those states he cared. HRC didn't care. She thought she was entitled to their votes.

[Al_U_Card]

Would you hire a retrained 50+ senior rather than a younger employee? I think not.

 

 

Trump is attempting to slow the process down. Trump can't save all the jobs. HRC isn't interested in saving any of the jobs.

 

 

Still HRC would have won if she had campaigned in the swing states. Trump showed those states he cared. HRC didn't care. She thought she was entitled to their votes.

Obama was elected promising "hope and change". Little did we suspect that it was that he hoped we would accept what he wanted to change (by appointment and executive order).

Will Trump "make America great again"? According to precedent, it depends on what the word "great" means....and to whom. If previous greatness refers to individual prosperity with no loss of individual freedoms, that would be a step back in the right direction.

[hrothgar]

 

Trump is attempting to slow the process down. Trump can't save all the jobs. HRC isn't interested in saving any of the jobs.

 

 

Here's an alternative view

 

Trump lies a LOT. He lies when he says he cares. He lies when he says that he has a plan to fix anything. He lies when he says that the jobs are coming back.

Moreover, there are a whole bunch of folks stupid enough to believe these lies...

 

For better or worse (it looks like for worse) Clinton didn't pander to rural whites.

Still HRC would have won if she had campaigned in the swing states. Trump showed those states he cared. HRC didn't care. She thought she was entitled to their votes.

 

I don't think that the issue is that Clinton didn't care.

She took some things for granted that she shouldn't have.

All in all, she didn't run as strong a campaign as I would have hoped and expected.

[Winstonm]

Would you hire a retrained 50+ senior rather than a younger employee? I think not.

 

 

Trump is attempting to slow the process down. Trump can't save all the jobs. HRC isn't interested in saving any of the jobs.

 

 

Still HRC would have won if she had campaigned in the swing states. Trump showed those states he cared. HRC didn't care. She thought she was entitled to their votes.

 

I went back to school at age 51 and retrained for a new career. I trained in that career not because it was a first choice but because that is where the jobs were. I had no problem obtaining work beginning at age 52.

 

Trump's claims are outlandish propaganda meant to impress - he is only interested in promoting himself and the Trump brand. To believe him capable of caring about others is to lack knowledge of narcissists.

[Winstonm]

This glides past my point. I am not at alll arguing that HC should be jailed. I am not sure I should take the space to restate it but here it is:

 

When the trouble came up, her best approach, as a candidate, would have been to decide, announce and insist that this entire issue was to be fully dealt with immediately in the most open and cooperative way possible. This should have been done in a way that it would have been impossible for any emails of hers to arise as a issue later in the campaign. As a candidate, rather than as a lawyer, she wants the issued dead, totally dead. No resurrection. So that is what she should have done when the problem arose. Much earlier, she, or HA, needed to organize the office much better. Right now I am searching for a file on my computer that in some unexplained way seems to have disappeared. I can't explain where it went. And, for a while, after a hard drive crashed I was doing some work on Becky's, but the timing is wrong for that to be the explanation. But except that it will take a little work for me, nobody cares. The idea that the Secretary of State, or a Senator, or a presidential candidate, sets up her email files so that an aide stores them on her husband's computer is just weird.

 

So wtf may apply, but not as you intend. My reaction was "Hillary's emails were stored by HA on AW's computer and then she forgot? WTF? Is this any way for a major figure to run an office?"

 

I know you are a lawyer, I am a mathematician. Sometimes people say to me "You don't seem like a mathematician." They mean it as a complement and, really, I take it as such. Much of the defense of Hillary's email problem sounds like a legal defense. A legal defense is fine if a person is in court. If mathematics is needed, hire me. If a legal defense is required, hire you. If you are running for president, a different approach is needed.

 

While I am on this last point, I realized that part of my dislike of DT is that he sounds like a real estate person. Just as I mean no offense to lawyers or mathematicians, I mean no offense to real estate people. But a few years back we were helping someone with a house purchase. We went to see a house where the ad said wall to wall carpeting. The only carpeting was on the stairs. Bill Clinton might say "It depends on what the meaning of 'wall' is". A lawyer might say "Well, there is a wall at the side of the stairs and a wall at the top of the stairs, so this is wall to wall carpeting". The real estate guy's answer when I pointed this out was, essentially, "So? What's your point?" I am working on a mathematician's answer. I think "Oops, sorry, I will see to it that the ad is fixed" would be nice.

 

I read up on this "Weiner" question last night and according to U.S. News and World Report Ms. Weiner printed documents for Hillary from the home computer because it was much faster than the office setup, and Hillary preferred hard copies to reading computer screens. The computer used was a shared home laptop. The only things the F.B.I. "found" were copies/forwards of e-mails that Hillary sent from her office for printing.

 

So, those e-mails were not purposefully "stored" on the Weiner computer.

[kenberg]

I read up on this "Weiner" question last night and according to U.S. News and World Report Ms. Weiner printed documents for Hillary from the home computer because it was much faster than the office setup, and Hillary preferred hard copies to reading computer screens. The computer used was a shared home laptop. The only things the F.B.I. "found" were copies/forwards of e-mails that Hillary sent from her office for printing.

 

So, those e-mails were not purposefully "stored" on the Weiner computer.

 

This is a plausible explanation. Not quite the same as being certainly the true explanation, but plausible. Given that it is so, the casual nature of it is, to me,stunning. I realize AW probably wanted a upscale computer for his hobby, but whether HC was Secretary of State, or Presidential candidate, or just part bigwig, I would expect that here office would have a very good computer, and I would expect that her top assistant would have a very good computer, and that these computers would be dedicated. I guess that's not how they went about it but I remain stunned.

[Winstonm]

This is a plausible explanation. Not quite the same as being certainly the true explanation, but plausible. Given that it is so, the casual nature of it is, to me,stunning. I realize AW probably wanted a upscale computer for his hobby, but whether HC was Secretary of State, or Presidential candidate, or just part bigwig, I would expect that here office would have a very good computer, and I would expect that her top assistant would have a very good computer, and that these computers would be dedicated. I guess that's not how they went about it but I remain stunned.

 

Perhaps you do not remember, but as far back as the mid-nineties Newt Gingrich as Speaker pointed out how out-of-date government computers were. I doubt a lot has changed in that regard. Here is a link to the U.S. News and World Report article.

 

Here is where the emails came from. Because Clinton preferred to read documents on paper rather than on a screen, emails and other files were often printed out and provided to her either at her office or home, where they were delivered in a diplomatic pouch by a security agent. Abedin informed the FBI in April that, like many State Department officials, she found the government network technology cumbersome, and she had great trouble printing documents there, investigative records show. As a result, she sometimes transferred emails from her unclassified State Department account to either her Yahoo account or her account on Clinton’s server, and printed the emails from there. A person close to the case said she does not appear to have ever forwarded emails to her Gmail account for printing.

 

So basically, if you accept this article, the news is that there was no news, and the outrage is that a non-event was elevated by leaks of innuendo and misinformation into a perceived credible problem large enough to make Clinton less favorable than Trump.

 

This very much reminds me of the orchestrated efforts to discredit the sciences of tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who funded those operations didn't orchestrate the basic idea of how to go about discrediting HC.

[y66]

From Obama Reckons With A Trump Presidency By David Remnick

 

...How did he speak with his two daughters about the election results, about the post-election reports of racial incidents? “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. . . . This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. . . . You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

 

For the Democratic Party, these questions have a strategic dimension. After Obama and Clinton, the Party bench is thin. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are hardly young. Obama insisted that there were gifted Democratic politicians out there, but that many were new to the scene. He mentioned Kamala Harris, the new senator from California; Pete Buttigieg, a gay Rhodes Scholar and Navy veteran who has twice been elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana; Tim Kaine; and Senator Michael Bennet, of Colorado.

 

And Obama related the Party’s losses this year to previous setbacks—and recoveries. “Some of my staff are really young, so they don’t remember this,” Obama said. “They remember my speech from the Boston Convention, in 2004, because they uploaded it on YouTube or something, but they might have been fifteen when it happened. Well, that’s the election that John Kerry lost. George Bush was reëlected. Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate, was defeated. The Senate went Republican. The House was Republican. Me and Ken Salazar, of Colorado, were the only two Democrats nationally who won. It was a very similar period to where we are right now. Two years later, Democrats had won back the Senate; I think they had won back the House. And four years later I was the President of the United States.

 

“So this notion somehow that these irreversible tides have been unleashed, I think, surrenders our agency. It’s easier than us saying, Huh, we missed that, we messed that up, we’ve got to do better in how we organize. We have to stop relying on a narrow targeting of our base turnout strategy if we want to govern. . . . Setting aside the results of this election, Democrats are well positioned to keep winning Presidential elections just by appealing to the base. And, each year, the demographic improves.”

 

To put it more bluntly than Obama did, the nonwhite percentage of the population will continue to increase. “But we’ll keep on getting gridlock just because of population distribution in this country,” he went on. “As long as California and Wyoming have the same number of senators, there’s going to be a problem—unless we’re able to have a broader conversation and move people who right now aren’t voting for progressive policies and candidates. . . . All of this requires vigilance in protecting gains we’ve made, but a sense, yes, of equanimity, a sense of purposeful calm and optimism, and a sense of humor—sometimes gallows humor after results like the ones we just had. That’s how ultimately the race is won.”

 

...The Trump era confronted the outgoing President with obvious questions. Who was now the leader of the opposition and of the Democratic Party? What if there were violent racial incidents? Would he step in as a spokesman, a moral voice? Because of the demands of the transition and the tradition of discretion, Obama seemed unwilling to address these issues head on, but, at least in general terms, there was no question that he was now seeing his post-Presidency in a new, if dimmer, light. “I think that if Hillary Clinton had won the election then I’d just turn over the keys,” he said. “We’d make sure the briefing books were in order and out we go. I think now I have some responsibility to at least offer my counsel to those who will continue to be elected officials about how the D.N.C. can help rebuild, how state parties and progressive organizations can work together.”

 

Trump had triumphed in rural America by appealing to a ferment of anti-urban, anti-coastal feeling. And yet Obama dismissed the notion that the Republicans had captured the issue of inequality. “The Republicans don’t care about that issue,” he said. “There’s no pretense that anything that they’re putting forward, any congressional proposals that are going to come forward, will reduce inequality. . . . What I do concern myself with, and the Democratic Party is going to have to concern itself with, is the fact that the confluence of globalization and technology is making the gap between rich and poor, the mismatch in power between capital and labor, greater all the time. And that’s true globally.

 

“The prescription that some offer, which is stop trade, reduce global integration, I don’t think is going to work,” he went on. “If that’s not going to work, then we’re going to have to redesign the social compact in some fairly fundamental ways over the next twenty years. And I know how to build a bridge to that new social compact. It begins with all the things we’ve talked about in the past—early-childhood education, continuous learning, job training, a basic social safety net, expanding the earned-income tax credit, investments in infrastructure—which, by definition, aren’t shipped overseas. All of those things accelerate growth, give you more of a runway. But at some point, when the problem is not just Uber but driverless Uber, when radiologists are losing their jobs to A.I., then we’re going to have to figure out how do we maintain a cohesive society and a cohesive democracy in which productivity and wealth generation are not automatically linked to how many hours you put in, where the links between production and distribution are broken, in some sense. Because I can sit in my office, do a bunch of stuff, send it out over the Internet, and suddenly I just made a couple of million bucks, and the person who’s looking after my kid while I’m doing that has no leverage to get paid more than ten bucks an hour.”

 

The sense that, on the level of politics and policy, there was work to be done (“I know how to build a bridge to that new social compact”) infused the post-Presidential role that he sketched for himself. “I’ll be fifty-five when I leave”—he knocked on a wooden end table—“assuming that I get a couple more decades of good health, at least, then I think both Michelle and I are interested in creating platforms that train, empower, network, boost the next generation of leadership. And I think that, whatever shape my Presidential center takes, I’m less interested in a building and campaign posters and Michelle’s dresses, although I think it’s fair to say that Michelle’s dresses will be the biggest draw by a huge margin. But what we’ll be most interested in is programming that helps the next Michelle Obama or the next Barack Obama, who right now is sitting out there and has no idea how to make their ideals live, isn’t quite sure what to do—to give them resources and ways to think about social change.”

 

He seemed to be returning to the days when he was a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens housing project, on the South Side of Chicago. “The thing that I have always been convinced of,” he said, “the running thread through my career, has been this notion that when ordinary people get engaged, pay attention, learn about the forces that affect their lives and are able to join up with others, good stuff happens.”

 

Every ex-Presidency is marked, of course, by the Presidential memoir, and Obama acknowledged that the genre has been vexed. “My observation in reading Presidential memoirs is that they are very heavy on ‘and then this happened, and then that happened,’ ” he said. He noted that he hadn’t managed to keep a diary in the White House and marvelled at the “remarkable discipline that Jimmy Carter apparently had where each day he was describing what he had for breakfast and what happened here and what happened there.” He admitted that as a writer he could never be as free as he was in his first book, “Dreams from My Father.” “Some of it is just by virtue of decorum,” he said. “If you have meetings with people that they’ve assumed were private and suddenly you’re just spilling the beans, it’s a little bit like telling on an old girlfriend about something.”

 

Shortly after four, following nearly two hours of conversation, Obama got up to call it a day. He would get some rest over the weekend—he played golf on Saturday and Sunday—then leave for the trip to Europe and South America on Monday. Along the way, he knew, his job was to keep offering reassurance, to deny the prospect of apocalypse, just as he had with his staff. This would require some doing, as his successor’s transition team already showed signs of chaotic infighting and of favoring many of the reactionaries, climate-change deniers, and heroes of the alt-right in their midst. On his first stop, in Athens, Obama would give a speech about populism, nationalism, globalization, tribalism, and, by implication, the ominous rise of Donald Trump.

 

Walking out the gates of the White House, I thought about the morning at Arlington. The weather was sunny, crisp, cool; dried leaves, russet and umber, skittered across the walk. It reminded me of Election Day eight years ago, in Chicago. Obama had voted near his house, on the South Side, and then accepted victory that night, flanked by his wife and daughters, in Grant Park. “While the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight,” he had told the crowd of nearly a quarter-million people, “we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.” And he cited words that Abraham Lincoln spoke to “a nation far more divided than ours”: “We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

 

Obama, graying now, more exhausted than he admits, carried the wreath at Arlington to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: “Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known But to God.” As a bugler played Taps, the realization came that in the coming year it would be Trump, formerly of Trump Taj Mahal, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Donald Trump, formerly the host of “Celebrity Apprentice” and the owner of Trump University, in the Situation Room. At 10 Downing Street. At the Élysée Palace. At the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

 

In the speech at Arlington that morning, Obama managed to deliver a political message. And this time he went beyond the call for orderly transitions and praise for “excellent” meetings. He delivered a distinct paean to values that Trump so often dismissed.

 

“Veterans Day often follows a hard-fought political campaign, an exercise in the free speech and self-government that you fought for,” he said. “It often lays bare disagreements across our nation. But the American instinct has never been to find isolation in opposite corners. It is to find strength in our common creed, to forge unity from our great diversity, to sustain that strength and unity even when it is hard.

 

“It’s the example of the single most diverse institution in our country—soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen who represent every corner of our country, every shade of humanity, immigrant and native-born, Christian, Muslim, Jew, and nonbeliever alike, all forged into common service.” His sober cadences gave resonance to words that could have been rote. So did the awareness that just seventy days remained of his Presidency.

 

Here was the hopeful vision of diversity and dignity that Obama had made his own, and hearing these words I couldn’t help remembering how he began his victory speech eight years ago. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he said, “tonight is your answer.” A very different answer arrived this Election Day. America is indeed a place where all things are possible: that is its greatest promise and, perhaps, its gravest peril.

[kenberg]

From Obama Reckons With A Trump Presidency By David Remnick

 

 

 

I am going to pull out a part where I think, but I am not sure, Obaba and I are in agreement:

 

“So this notion somehow that these irreversible tides have been unleashed, I think, surrenders our agency. It’s easier than us saying, Huh, we missed that, we messed that up, we’ve got to do better in how we organize. We have to stop relying on a narrow targeting of our base turnout strategy if we want to govern. . . . Setting aside the results of this election, Democrats are well positioned to keep winning Presidential elections just by appealing to the base. And, each year, the demographic improves.”

 

If I understand him correctly (there are some dot dot dots that make this less certain) BO is not celebrating the improved demographics, he is warning that it is too easy to depend on this. That's my view, at any rate, and it seems as if he is agreeing. I do not look forward to seeing the Republicans becoming the White People's Party and the Democrats becoming the Non-White People's Party. Whichever party would benefit from this, I think the nation would lose.

 

And this got me to thinking more about identity politics, something that I think has become rampant and destructive. Our incoming vice-president has told us that he is "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order". Perhaps we should thank him for his honesty, but I tried imagining John Kennedy saying "I am a Catholic, a liberal and a Democrat, in that order", or Bernie Sanders saying "I am a Jew, a progressive, and a Democrat in that order". It is not just that they did not say such things, they didn't/don't think that way. And if Pence feels the need to make such a declaration, I would hope that his identity as an American would at least make it somewhere onto the list.

 

If someone needs to know my religious beliefs, I don't believe there is a God, at least not a God who intervenes in our lives, rewarding the devout and punishing sinners. I suppose this makes me an atheist, but certainly not in the sense that "I am an Atheist , a whatever is next, etc". There are many reasons why I should not be president, or even a mayor, but I don't think my religious beliefs, or lack of them, are relevant.

 

 

Much more so than at any time I can recall we seem intent on putting ourselves and others into demographic pigeonholes. I do not like this, not one little bit.

[Al_U_Card]

 

This very much reminds me of the orchestrated efforts to discredit the sciences of tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who funded those operations didn't orchestrate the basic idea of how to go about discrediting HC.

 

Sounds like a conspiracy to me.... ROFLMAO

[Al_U_Card]

 

Much more so than at any time I can recall we seem intent on putting ourselves and others into demographic pigeonholes. I do not like this, not one little bit.

But that allows them to discredit/disregard the argument because of its source. An education bolstered by the study of logic, reason and other critical elements would help us address issues that are human and complicated. Oversimplification tends to leave out the vital information required to form accurate and effective opinions and actions.

[Winstonm]

I am going to pull out a part where I think, but I am not sure, Obaba and I are in agreement:

 

 

 

If I understand him correctly (there are some dot dot dots that make this less certain) BO is not celebrating the improved demographics, he is warning that it is too easy to depend on this. That's my view, at any rate, and it seems as if he is agreeing. I do not look forward to seeing the Republicans becoming the White People's Party and the Democrats becoming the Non-White People's Party. Whichever party would benefit from this, I think the nation would lose.

 

And this got me to thinking more about identity politics, something that I think has become rampant and destructive. Our incoming vice-president has told us that he is "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order". Perhaps we should thank him for his honesty, but I tried imagining John Kennedy saying "I am a Catholic, a liberal and a Democrat, in that order", or Bernie Sanders saying "I am a Jew, a progressive, and a Democrat in that order". It is not just that they did not say such things, they didn't/don't think that way. And if Pence feels the need to make such a declaration, I would hope that his identity as an American would at least make it somewhere onto the list.

 

If someone needs to know my religious beliefs, I don't believe there is a God, at least not a God who intervenes in our lives, rewarding the devout and punishing sinners. I suppose this makes me an atheist, but certainly not in the sense that "I am an Atheist , a whatever is next, etc". There are many reasons why I should not be president, or even a mayor, but I don't think my religious beliefs, or lack of them, are relevant.

 

 

Much more so than at any time I can recall we seem intent on putting ourselves and others into demographic pigeonholes. I do not like this, not one little bit.

 

The issue of the merging of state and belief systems is critical. During the vice-presidential debate, Mike Pence demonstrated the appeal of demagoguery by appealing to the emotional aspects of abortion. The emotional appeal is designed to mask the relevant, the role of governmental authority to enact private moral beliefs. Trump, using much more coarse and common language, did the same thing in the Presidential debate. (Coarse, crude public speech is characteristic Trump shares with Vladimir Putin)

 

I believe we are at a critical junction in our history and do not think it overly dramatic to say so. It is not so much the advent of the demagogue Trump presidency but the arrival of the equally dangerous Tea Party (which I admit I underestimated) as well as the continued merger of state power with a private enterprise that has been granted the rights of an individual, giving in essence a very few wealthy individuals control over the processes of democracy itself. We truly are feeling the effects of Reagan's smaller, less powerful government. That power void is being filled by businesses who do not look out for the good of the country but for themselves.

 

The absurdity in all this is that it has led to a U.S. governmental model that is moving closer to one that aligns with the Reagan's arch-enemy - Russia - a tyrannical oligarchy plundered and looted by a handful of insiders.

 

I guess we have reached a point where history is rhyming - populism and demagoguery have been around since at least Socrates days. It is a sad day because it always ends badly. But even though history rhymes, we don't have hum along to the melody and pretend we like the tune.

[nige1]

The issue of the merging of state and belief systems is critical. During the vice-presidential debate, Mike Pence demonstrated the appeal of demagoguery by appealing to the emotional aspects of abortion. The emotional appeal is designed to mask the relevant, the role of governmental authority to enact private moral beliefs. Trump, using much more coarse and common language, did the same thing in the Presidential debate. (Coarse, crude public speech is characteristic Trump shares with Vladimir Putin)

I believe we are at a critical junction in our history and do not think it overly dramatic to say so. It is not so much the advent of the demagogue Trump presidency but the arrival of the equally dangerous Tea Party (which I admit I underestimated) as well as the continued merger of state power with a private enterprise that has been granted the rights of an individual, giving in essence a very few wealthy individuals control over the processes of democracy itself. We truly are feeling the effects of Reagan's smaller, less powerful government. That power void is being filled by businesses who do not look out for the good of the country but for themselves.

The absurdity in all this is that it has led to a U.S. governmental model that is moving closer to one that aligns with the Reagan's arch-enemy - Russia - a tyrannical oligarchy plundered and looted by a handful of insiders.

I guess we have reached a point where history is rhyming - populism and demagoguery have been around since at least Socrates days. It is a sad day because it always ends badly. But even though history rhymes, we don't have hum along to the melody and pretend we like the tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JwmIBSMzSM

[Winstonm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JwmIBSMzSM

 

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. by way of a loss in popular votes?

seems more appropriate.

[Al_U_Card]

Wasn't the electoral college part of the checks and balances to ensure that the more populous states couldn't dominate the smaller ones? (A form of State's rights too.)

[hrothgar]

Wasn't the electoral college part of the checks and balances to ensure that the more populous states couldn't dominate the smaller ones? (A form of State's rights too.)

 

No

 

The two primary reasons that the US adopted the electoral college were

 

1. Fear of direct democracy

2. A component of a broader set of compromises that ensured that the slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for apportioning electors but were still (obviously) disenfranchised

 

Nice to see that your understanding of US history is at the same level as your understanding of Climate Change / 9-11 / the international Jewish Conspiracy / the Freemasons

[Al_U_Card]

No

 

The two primary reasons that the US adopted the electoral college were

 

1. Fear of direct democracy

2. A component of a broader set of compromises that ensured that the slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for apportioning electors but were still (obviously) disenfranchised

 

Nice to see that your understanding of US history is at the same level as your understanding of Climate Change / 9-11 / the international Jewish Conspiracy / the Freemasons

Clearly, the EC was designed for, of and by well-to-do, property-owning white men. That was their time. The fact that the EC still stands is tribute to its effectiveness as a means of ensuring representative democracy, for which it was invented and to which it has evolved. The majority of the states went for Trump and being wrong in both your personal choice and attitude (not to mention so many other areas) makes no difference, fortunately.

[awm]

The story that's usually told about this election involves white working class voters turning out to support Trump. These voters have been "left behind" by the modern economy, and neither they nor their communities have done particularly well over the last sixteen years regardless of which party held power. Trump's blaming of trade deals (partly true) and immigrants (not true) for their situation found a receptive ear and he substantially improved on Romney's performance with these voters.

 

I'm sure that's true, but what's often overlooked is that Trump also won more votes than Clinton from people making over 100k per year. This is rarely discussed because Romney also won that demographic (and by a slightly larger margin). To me this is much more upsetting -- these are people who are doing well economically, very much not "left behind by the modern economy" and also probably better educated and informed. If not out of economic desperation, why did they vote for Trump? More specifically, why did they overlook the many totally disqualifying things Trump said and did? The usual explanation is that "they are Republicans coming home to their nominee" but of course, Trump has many positions that differ from Republican doctrine (he's anti-trade, pro-Russia, shows no respect for the military, not religious, etc). So basically this explanation is that they ignored the racism, mysogeny, and various frauds and scams... as well as overlooking many of his stated policy positions... just so they could put party over country and vote for him based on the "R" by his name. To me this is really disturbing.

 

The alternative explanation seems to be that it was all about Clinton's emails and Comey's letter and "fake news." Likely that stuff played some role, but could it really convince nearly half of voters that they should vote for a guy who seems to say or tweet something utterly repulsive every single day just to keep Clinton out? Hard to believe.

 

To me it seems more likely that the things I find utterly disqualifying (bragging about sexual assaults, anti-Latino and anti-Muslim rhetoric, anti-Semitic tweets, direct links to white supremacists, praise for dictators around the world, stiffing contractors who worked for him, defrauding students at his "university", sexually objectifying his own daughter, insulting war heroes and their parents, refusing to disclose his tax returns or even try to avoid conflicts of interest, etc) simply do not bother more than half of moderately affluent Americans. Really terrifying stuff!

[Al_U_Card]

The story that's usually told about this election involves white working class voters turning out to support Trump. These voters have been "left behind" by the modern economy, and neither they nor their communities have done particularly well over the last sixteen years regardless of which party held power. Trump's blaming of trade deals (partly true) and immigrants (not true) for their situation found a receptive ear and he substantially improved on Romney's performance with these voters.

 

I'm sure that's true, but what's often overlooked is that Trump also won more votes than Clinton from people making over 100k per year. This is rarely discussed because Romney also won that demographic (and by a slightly larger margin). To me this is much more upsetting -- these are people who are doing well economically, very much not "left behind by the modern economy" and also probably better educated and informed. If not out of economic desperation, why did they vote for Trump? More specifically, why did they overlook the many totally disqualifying things Trump said and did? The usual explanation is that "they are Republicans coming home to their nominee" but of course, Trump has many positions that differ from Republican doctrine (he's anti-trade, pro-Russia, shows no respect for the military, not religious, etc). So basically this explanation is that they ignored the racism, mysogeny, and various frauds and scams... as well as overlooking many of his stated policy positions... just so they could put party over country and vote for him based on the "R" by his name. To me this is really disturbing.

 

The alternative explanation seems to be that it was all about Clinton's emails and Comey's letter and "fake news." Likely that stuff played some role, but could it really convince nearly half of voters that they should vote for a guy who seems to say or tweet something utterly repulsive every single day just to keep Clinton out? Hard to believe.

 

To me it seems more likely that the things I find utterly disqualifying (bragging about sexual assaults, anti-Latino and anti-Muslim rhetoric, anti-Semitic tweets, direct links to white supremacists, praise for dictators around the world, stiffing contractors who worked for him, defrauding students at his "university", sexually objectifying his own daughter, insulting war heroes and their parents, refusing to disclose his tax returns or even try to avoid conflicts of interest, etc) simply do not bother more than half of moderately affluent Americans. Really terrifying stuff!

But were they not there in 2008 and 2012 (and b4)? Of course they were. Obama promised hope and change so the "undecided" went his way. As he continued the establishment position, this group of voters went away, leading to the Republican/conservative tendency in all levels of government, over the entre US save the Dem strongholds. Trump is promising his own version of H&C BUT he is seen as not being beholden to or part of the DC establishment.

What is terrifying is the inability of the establishment to understand this reality.

[kenberg]

A couple of days after the election I was playing at the local club. As I sat at a table the lady on my right said (approximately) " I bet Ken was happy with the election" "Yeah" Then I realized, I guess the tone made it clear, that she might be serious. So I said "Oh, if you were being serious, no, I am not". She was being serious. She is intelligent, shows no sign of insanity, dresses well, the club is in a fairly well to do area. We did not get further into politics. I have absolutely no reason to believe she is any sort of white supremacist.

 

This sort of encounter was far from unique.

 

What's going on? I have said a bit about this before but I am not sure I have gotten much traction.

 

Part of it, maybe a pretty large part, is that people used to talk to each other.

 

Another part, and I think it is a very large part, is that the extremes, on both the left and the right, can be very quick to see heresy where others might see differing opinions.If, when a person expresses a view at odds with liberal dogma he is declared to be a racist sexist bigoted xenophobe then of course he might change his views, or he might just shut up, but actually the most likely is he will go find other people to talk to. And so we diverge into warring camps.

 

Most of us are not filled with hate. But we can get aggravated when we are treated dismissively or with contempt. I think that is where a lot of Trump votes came from.