In a Trump world… What happens next?

In a Trump world… What happens next? November 9, 2016

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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Any thoughts? How does this work (or not) in the US, internationally, in Europe, and indeed on this island?

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1. Starkadder - November 9, 2016: “At a minimum, Republicans are going to do incredible violence to President Barack Obama’s accomplishments. The bookend to his remarkable political story will be that he is replaced in the White House by a man who tried to delegitimize him by leading the birther movement. Trump will almost certainly abrogate Obama’s international climate agreement and the global powers agreement preventing Iran from creating their own nuclear arsenal. Republicans will send Trump legislation undermining Obama’s legacy everywhere they can find congressional majorities to do so, and Trump will sign those bills. Republicans don’t know how to repeal Obamacare, let alone replace it. But they will try.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/138587/republicans-pulled-country-world-abyss

You don’t have to have any special love for the United States and its people to think they deserve much better than Donald Trump, just like the Indian people deserve a far better leader than Modi.

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2. eamonncork - November 9, 2016: This is obviously a very exciting time for the left. What Clinton’s defeat shows is that there is a disillusionment with elites. In the US this took the form of a vote for Trump but in Europe it will obviously take the form of a revolt against neo-liberalism and austerity. Indeed one of the striking things about Trump’s supporters was the populist nature of their rhetoric, the targets of their anger were the same bugbears against whom anger can be harnessed in this part of the world to remodel society in a more just direction.
And so on and so on and shooby dooby dooby.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: I don’t think anyone has responded to this with that sort of stuff here – anything but. Wouldn’t it make more sense if one feels the need to have that sort of argument with people to take it where people actually hold those views?

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: I know I’ve joked about “the left should support Trump” crowd, but as WBS says, I don’t think any of the CLR’s regular posters see any good in a Trump presidency.

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eamonncork - November 9, 2016: In other words fuck off we don’t like your type round here. Point taken.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Absolutely not the point. But just making clear that here on this site filled apparently with old white males, your words, not mine, people do not hold that view, at least none expressed so far do. And fergal has a particular point below that unlike Brexit where such rhetoric did come out in advance and a range of parties supported it despite the obvious material conditions predicating against a win for the working class in a Tory ukip Brexit no one I can think of argued for a Trump win as a serious way forward. That is a crucial functional difference. I’m all for provocative indeed defended your right to that a week or two ago against some one actually calling for you to eff off – but I do think sniping against people who hold largely the same views as yourself is a bit mean spirited.

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eamonncork - November 9, 2016: It’s precisely what you meant. And there will be plenty of people on here making the points that you say no-one will make. It’s happened already.
Mean-spirited? If you ever get time, have a look back and tally up the posts attacking Clinton and the ones attacking Trump and see what that tells you about who the animus of the CLR was directed against during the election.
What a catalyst you turned out to be.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: No its not what I meant, and I don’t know why you seem.unable to take me at my word. As to posts attacking Clinton vs Trump, I’ve never written a post attacking Clinton so I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Indeed a quick scan of recent posts has me attacking the alt right and trumps connection with same and making the point that was a qualitative difference from previous campaigns and candidates ie attacking Trump. I attacked peter thiel for his support and more for trump, I attacked the trump candidacy in the piece on ken bone (you liked that one, you told me so yourself), I attacked trump in another for his hyperbole, in another I examined Michael McDowell’s critique of trump agreeing with it, on another I pointed out that the trope working class = trump supporters was overdone and wrong, in another I attacked trump and real clear politics over the’ locker room’ tape and this gets us to october 18 where i attacked his threats to lock clinton up. Ie, in hardly more than two or three weeks every post on the us election by me has been critical of trump. And your last line of the comment I respond to here is yet another mean spirited attack, I’ve never said I *was* a catalyst, at best I’ve hoped to offer a view as regards how awful Trump is and why i personally would if there vote dems, but really to see it as more than that is to assign absurd weight to this site.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: It’s happened already.

Source for this factoid?

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depps - November 9, 2016: A Trump win is hardly a good thing for the left (or for the vast majority of people for that matter) but it does show that there are large chunks of the population all over the developed world who want change and are sick of the established order of things. Right now, in the major anglophone countries at least, seem the populist right is better at harnessing that desire for change but that doesn’t mean that the opportunity for the left to do the same isn’t there – the Sanders candidacy shows that and many on here probably believe that had it been Trump v Sanders then Sanders would have won (at least I do anyway).

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ejh - November 9, 2016: I owe you fifteen euros. If you want it, I’m on Twitter at @ejhchess.

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CMK - November 9, 2016: Clinton was such a poor candidate she couldn’t even beat a scumbag like Trump. Before ripping in to all and sundry it might be worth reflecting on that fact. She couldn’t even beat Trump! Trump of all people.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: That is a solid point, here’s a man who ran no ground campaign worth the name, is a self declared predator, was responsible for a rupture in his party and still Clinton significantly underperformed. I’ve no doubt misogny had some part to play but I’m unconvinced that was the totality, looking at her ratings she was very unpopular ( and just on that when secretary of state she had very strong ratings ). Again this slate piece is thought provoking

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/the_democratic_party_establishment_is_finished_after_trump.html

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Joe - November 9, 2016: Yeah, but, I dunno. Would anyone else have beaten Trump? I’m reading on social media people saying Sanders would have beaten him – personally, I doubt it.
Trump ran no ground campaign worth the name. But the campaign he did run, won him the election. And the campaign he ran made him the headline day after day. And he was the topic of converation everywhere for months on end. I hoped that would end today – but now he’ll be the topic of conversation for probably eight more years. In the immortal words of yourcousin, FUCK.

I recall Barack Obama at a presidential dinner (or whatever those annual black tie yokes are called) doing one of his ‘comedy’ turns, two or three years ago. Trump was in the audience and Obama savaged ‘the Donald’. It was ‘the Donald’ this and ‘the Donald’ that. And everyone thought it was hilarious that this gobshite (‘the Donald’) apparently thought he could be president. But looking back now, what did that do except give ‘the Donald’ publicity. Even though he was a loon outrider in the GOP, he was the focus, he was what people were talking about. In hindsight, Barack, maybe it would have been better to ingore him than to shine a light on him like that?

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: I feel much like you do, Trump seems to have had a dynamic all his own. Perhaps others would have won, we’ll never know, but I’m a little sceptical and your point re no ground campaign is very persuasive. I’ve thought about that dinner and I’ve wondered how much his roasting pushed him further into the fray or kept him going?

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Michael Carley - November 9, 2016: If the Democrats were going to lose anyway, would it not have been better to have a candidate who energized a movement, and had a platform worth something?

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sonofstan - November 9, 2016: you know what? I don’t have a TV, and I’ve listened to relatively little radio over the past few months. Most of my info about the campaign has come from the written word. Over the past few days however, I’ve been exposed a little bit more to the Trump thing and it’s easy enough to see why lot of people would vote for him. He’s amusing, in the slightly scary way that your wild uncle might be, and he sounds like he means it, and when he makes mistakes, as he does all the time, he semi- owns up but also makes fun of those acting shocked. That’s how most people who don’t have an MBA deal with professional screw-ups. Hillary, on the other hand, does not inspire a sense of anything much apart from a vague fear that you might have to sit next to her at Thanksgiving.

Crude, I know, but let’s not pretend that the great democrat victories -Kennedy, Clinton, Obama – weren’t equally personality driven.

I agree with Joe as well; the constant sneering from an establishment so alienated from the experience of “ordinary’ americans did him nothing but good.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: One moment that resonated with me was the debate where he was asked to say something he admired about HC. For a moment he was utterly charming – and it struck me that if thered been more of that he’d have been a more likeable character. But he didn’t need it and as you say for some he came across just fine.

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CMK - November 9, 2016: Since I am active on the Irish Left I must therefore carry, forever, the burden of my guilt in bringing Donald Trump to the White House, despite it being nearly 20 years since I set foot in the US.

So, with that in mind, perhaps I can offer three points as to why Clinton didn’t win:

– she said nothing about college tuition fees. The ordinary aspiration to a college education in that land of opportunity leads millions into livelong debt. Bernie had something to say, Clinton had nothing.

– she could have supported 15 dollar an hour minimum wage jobs. That might have tempted some of the Latino and African-American vote out for her since these are the groups who stand to benefit from this.

– she could have put forward some healthcare proposals and bring up to the rest of the developed world. Again nothing.

Paragraph 1 of page 1 of ‘Extremely Tepid Social Democracy for Dummies’ could have provided a programme to beat Trump, but even that was a bridge too far for Clinton. She and the DNC drew precisely no lessons from Bernie’s run. None. Not a single one. Hopefully, the Democrats implode and a replaced by a genuine workers party.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: I’m.dubious about the latter happening anytime soon but without doubt she ran a remarkably centrist campsign

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CL - November 9, 2016: “The model was used to direct the activities of a ground operation that was unprecedented in GOP history, including 315 field offices staffed by 6,012 paid employees and fellows.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/rnc-model-showed-trump-losing-231074

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3. sonofstan - November 9, 2016: ok one prediction. He’ll be a very bad president. Not in the sense that he’ll do bad stuff, but in the sense that he won’t do anything much or what he does, he’ll do badly. The crucial factor is how the GOP in congress deal with him.
Like the Brexiters who were unable to deal with their success, he may not know what to do with it. And when he can’t do the stuff he promised…

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: ” The crucial factor is how the GOP in congress deal with him.”

I have a nasty feeling many of those Republicans who’ve previously opposed Trump will rapidly come round to his side. Nothing succeeds like success, and Trump has scored a big success.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: I have a feeling his rhetoric will be bombastic and ridiculous but the actual policies will tend towards moderate to ‘conservative with a small “c”‘. Foreign policy will see him face resistance from Generals and Admirals who will tell him his grand strategy is foolish and unworkable. He will compensate with Navy SEALs and CIA missions.

In sum, I expect this will be similar to the Reagan years.

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Gewerkschaftler - November 9, 2016: Possibly. But Reagan was at the beginning of a phase of neo-liberalism and the end-game of the Cold War. The current political and economic situation of ‘the West’ is much more threadbare.

Or he could lead the US and the world into a very dark place. All the components for at least and Orban-like government are there, if not something more in the direction of a kind of fascism.

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4. Brian Hanley - November 9, 2016: I have no idea what’s going to happen. What has happened is that a man who is a multi-millionaire, who has a vicious record of evicting people from their homes and being anti-union, who called Mexicans ‘rapists’, who defended the cops unquestionably, who is an open abuser of women, has won the presidency of a superpower. He has done so with the support of all kinds of right-wing loons- who will now think that they have won.
Though Eamon might be being provocative there is a certain type of left-winger who tends to see the positive side in these things. I’m not one of them.

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: At the risk of sounding like a left-wing Oswald Spengler: are we seeing the end of modern liberal democracy? All over the earth authoritarian populists-often racist- are coming to power or influencing key policies- Farage, Putin, Netanyahu, Modi, Orban, Le Pen, Wilders, Rodrigo Duterte
and now Trump.

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Gewerkschaftler - November 9, 2016: Precisely – it’s not confined to Trump – it’s a world-wide phenomenon, and is due to the inability of the the broader anti-establishment left to provide a programme that many of the alienated voters would vote for, or when they have such a programme they are systematically excluded from electoral processes.

Zizek doubted that a kind of fascism could develop in the US. I have to say I’m not so sure. But with Brian I’ve no idea what will come out of it.

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Paddy Healy - November 10, 2016: I Agree, Brian
This development is at the extreme of seriousness. While Trump is not Hitler developments in US are terrifyingly reminiscent of Germany in the thirties.
The stuff about immigration is the least likely to happen in general because it over supplies the market with cheap labour.(Business Academics backing Trump have said so in public) He may take measures against a limited section for demagogic purposes.
His main thing is to reduce taxes on the rich and corporations, to reduce welfare at home ,and to force all erstwhile allies abroad to agree to a “USA FIRST” agenda. Underminig the ability of EU to compete with US in world trade is a high priority.-forcing other Nato powers into increased military expenditure is part of this agenda
Sounds like the lead-in to the Second World War???
The affect on the Irish Economy is being played down here
TRUMP’S PROTECTIONISM and Corporation Tax reductions THREATEN IRISH JOBS-SELECTIVE TARIFFS ON IMPORTS FROM EU TO USA TO BE IMPOSED, USA Corporation profits tax to be reduced to 15%

Reclaim our Economic and Political Sovereignty

FF, FG, LAB COMMITTED THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. THEY PUT OUR DESTINY IN THE HANDS OF OTHERS by over-reliance on FDI for decades and privatisation of any potential to develop modern indigenous industry(Eircom). The Fiscal Treaty leaves Ireland powerless to deal with the consequences.
The effect of the 12.5% CT in attracting FDI and keeping it here is gone. The Irish elite will attempt to get a special deal by grovelling to Trump

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Paddy Healy - November 10, 2016: Just To ADD: The dalliance of TRUMP with Russia(PUTIN) is probably part of the agenda of pressurising EU and others(Japan, China) to make concessions to the US in Trade, geopolitics, military funding etc. ” If you don’t play ball with me, Ill start playing ball with your enemies”. Plus ca change, Plus c’est la meme chose!!!

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5. makedoanmend - November 9, 2016: My head has exploded. Twice.

(Whereas a Clinton win would just have resulted in a slow melt – Dali style.)

I just wonder if some of the so-called Liberal credentialated class will come blinking from their bunkers? – Brexit, now Trump

The likes of Paul Krugman are doing the ga-ga thing and calling all non-Clinton voters dumb, bigoted, etc. He has plenty fellow carpet baggers screaming the same song.

Can’t help thinking that what remains of the Left can make out of this. Gramsci (stuggling to be born quote) just used on an US site.

Interesting times.

Time for reflection? and holding one’s tongue?

[I thank the stars that Hope has died, though.]

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6. fergal - November 9, 2016: Wouldn’t it be great if we had a real business person to run the place? If only we had people with business experience in government. Be careful what you wish for…..Will Michael O’ Leary do a Trump in the Aras?
Who knows what will happen next-if Trump is a fascist,does this mean the rest of the world will need to decide its camp- resistance or collaboration ?
I see what Eamoncork is saying but I haven’t read anything like it on CLR….however it most definitely did happen for Brexit- people claiming that it was some kind of victory for the left..tell that to the family of the poor Polish guy who was killed a few weeks ago in England..

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: +1

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ejh - November 9, 2016: it most definitely did happen for Brexit- people claiming that it was some kind of victory for the left

Howver, the proportion of leftwing people saying that, compared the proportion of leftwing people who considered it a disaster, was tiny.

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fergal - November 9, 2016: Correct ejh- but all of aaa/pbphere were Lexiteers, were they not?

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Joe - November 9, 2016: And the WP too, I think.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Yes not one of their finer moments

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7. RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: Ah, shit.

He also has a Supreme Court nomination in the bag, and he will most likley get one or two more nomination opportunities during his term.

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8. makedoanmend - November 9, 2016: Head in full Dali melt mode now, and I haven’t even picked up all the exploded bits.

And does anyone really think a Clinton presidency would have resulted in anything different?

Really?

4 more years of neoliberalism is better than what….?

Slow boiled is better than deep fried?

Tony Benn said that every generation has to fight the same fight (in changing cirsumstances). The gauntlet was thrown down long ago.

I take these results as clarifying moments. The workers not coming on side? Well, what is the Left (feck liberalism) going to do about it?

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yourcousin - November 9, 2016: “And does anyone really think a Clinton presidency would have resulted in anything different?”

Than the last eight years? No. Better than the eight before that? Yes.

“Really?”
Yes.

“4 more years of neoliberalism is better than what….?”
Fascism

“Slow boiled is better than deep fried?”
If you’re a lobster, yes. And equally true if you’re the person eating the lobster.

I will be honest. My 7 year old and my wife are both genuinely scared of Trump. I’m not looking forward to breaking it to him this morning. I despise the politics of fear. I didn’t think anything could a damper on the week before pheasant opener, but this has.

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makedoanmend - November 9, 2016: Fair enough.

But I can’t get all that afraid anymore. Tomorrow’s another day and the Trumps, Mays and Le Pens will all be around because there is something profoundly wrong with the body politic in the West. Circa 40 years of pandering to the business-corporate nexus brought us here, and that ain’t going away any time soon.

The “I’m goin’ to get muscular with Russia” Clinton and declare a “no fly zone” in Syria was pretty scary shit too. Not much into playing nuclear chicken.

I suppose each of us finds the our own threshold of what is frightening.

best

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: I think fears of a deliberate nuclear are overstated. Russia and US are much closer than generally realised – diplomatically and otherwise, and Clinton was long locked into that process, Trump? I don’t know, he seems much more intemperate to put it mildly.

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makedoanmend - November 9, 2016: She made the statements during the debates. She refused to back away from them afterwards. Her actions as secretary of state and her hawkish cronies can’t be ignored either. Would she have played with fire? Who knows. She decided to play that hand during the election.

Many nations have had diplomatic ties and went to war, and some didn’t have sanctions levied against them and so-called war games being played along their borders on a regular basis before war ensued. Anyhow.

However, my intention in not to play the “my neo-liberal candidate is less vile than yours”. I’m not playing the Liberal game either: re Trump, like Bush, is so bad that anything is preferable. Obama has been a neo-liberal economic and war hawk just like Bush. They’re all vile and hurting the common working person.

Trump is just the latest incarnation of the beast – and I believe he won’t offer any crumbs of comfort to anyone, anywhere.

That might be clarifying – or maybe it won’t.

People voting for Trump and Brexit is, however, clarifying to some extent. What to make of it beyond projection?

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yourcousin - November 9, 2016: I’m not scared for myself, but a 7 year old should not be scared of a politician. And unfortunately for all of us we will see if the next 4-8 years will be as bad as the last eight years.

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Joe - November 9, 2016: “I didn’t think anything could a damper on the week before pheasant opener, but this has.”

Couple of people on tea break this morning said Trump will be shot. Then others said no he won’t cos all the people with guns are on his side.
To my shame I never thought of you, yourcousin.
(Dear Feds, the above is just a silly joke.)

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yourcousin - November 9, 2016: I would never, ever, ever threaten anyone, let alone my president with violence. That being said I’m going to make an investment and get some of my firearms engraved with, “this machine kills fascists”. You know, just in case.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: If Trump dies or is impeached, he will be replaced by Mike Pence.

I would hope people would think long and hard about that possibility before they make any significant decisions.

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Joe - November 9, 2016: “I would never, ever, ever threaten anyone, let alone my president with violence.”
“get some of my firearms engraved with, “this machine kills fascists”.”

Ah come on now yc. It’s one thing shooting pheasants but calling them all fascists? Pheasants have feelings too y’know.

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9. botheredbarney - November 9, 2016: Trust not in opinion polls. Many people confronted by polls interviewers do not give considered opinions. Election votes are the only sure guide to what people think about issues and personalities. Most punters don’t vote for ideas; they vote for issues and personalities.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: People are lying to pollsters. Quite simply, you can no longer trust an opinion poll where one option is seen as ‘beyond the pale’.

Funny, I came across a description for a phenomenon like this in social psychology: normative clear-sightedness. This is where people express values and opinions which they apprehend are acceptable to the majority or to ‘experts’, whilst not actually believing in those values or opinions.

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Joe - November 9, 2016: Were the exit polls wrong as well?

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10. Joe - November 9, 2016: Surely the first thing to happen next will be the CLR old white male celebratory dinner? I nominate myself to propose the toast to our great leader WBS for being the best catalyst ever.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: :). My apologies to any non OWMs!

Meanwhile for an excoriating take from slate how about this?

A lot to think about…

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/the_democratic_party_establishment_is_finished_after_trump.html

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11. yourcousin - November 9, 2016: FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

GODDAMN FUCK.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I know I say that extra parliamentary organizing is where it’s at, but GODDAMN.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: +1

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12. 6to5against - November 9, 2016: Its not just a question of what Trump will do. Its a question of what the Republicans in congress will do. Healthcare will be slowly dismantled. More anti-union laws. Reduced taxes on wealth and high incomes. Corporate regulation dismantled.
And meanwhile he’ll be stoking up the mob to keep all resistance in line.

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13. Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: TRUMP TO REDUCE AMERICAN CORPORATION TAX RATE TO 15%
Full Discussion http://wp.me/pKzXa-xK
AFTER BREXIT AND TRUMP ELECTION:
Irish Economy and Irish Jobs are in Deadly Danger.This is due to growing dependence on foreign direct investment fostered By FF, FG and Labour and the Irish Elites over more than 50 years.
THEY COMMITTED THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL OF THE IRISH PEOPLE. THEY PUT OUR DESTINY IN THE HANDS OF OTHERS
TOTAL DEPENDENCE ON MULTI NATIONALS, THE EU FISCAL TREATY, PRIVATISATION OF STATE COMPANIES, HAS LEFT IRELAND WITH ZERO SOVEREIGNTY. EIRCOM SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED INTO AN IRISH NOKIA WITH 50,000EMPLOYEES, NOT PRIVATISED
RECOVERY OF IRISH SOVEREIGNTY IS CENTRAL TO DEALING WITH THE OUTCOME
MULTI-NATIONALS PROVIDE 90% OF IRISH EXPORTS AND 57% OF VALUE ADDED IN THE IRISH ECONOMY!
US investment in Ireland totals $310bn
As a destination for US investment, Ireland is bigger than Latin America and China

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RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: “TRUMP TO REDUCE AMERICAN CORPORATION TAX RATE TO 15%”

I saw this and I began to laugh hysterically. I bet the cabinet are having a very grave meeting about this very issue.

Says everything about this country.

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CMK - November 9, 2016: Less than 450 companies pay nearly 88% of Irish corporation tax – if a portion of those were to relocate their taxable operations to the US that could have big consequences. Apple et al might judge it better to make friends with Uncle Sam and not fall out over a few measly percentage points on corporation tax. With that an Brexit it’ll be a tough few years (‘keep the recovery going……,’).

Someone made the point, I don’t know if it was here, that for all of the talk about an ‘small, open economy’ there are almost no contingencies drawn up or in place for when a exogenous shock like Brexit or a Trump presidency. We’re back to making plans on the backs of envelopes in Ministers’ constituency offices.

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Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: Serious Contingency Plans require the Irish Government to have significant sovereignty. In the various EU treaties culminating in the FISCAL TREATY, effective sovereignty was given away. Serious contingency plans would have to be sanctioned by EU-even “back of envelope” measures.

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14. Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: Marxist Economist Michael Roberts
Donald Trump and the Poisoned Chalice of the US ECONOMY

Donald Trump and the poisoned chalice of the US economy

“But it is still the economy, stupid. Trump has been handed a poisoned chalice that he will have to drink from: the state of the US economy. The US economy is the largest and most important capitalist economy. It has performed the best of the largest economies since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. But its economic performance has still been dismal. Real GDP growth per person has been only 1.4% a year, well below levels before the global financial crash in 2008. It’s a story of the weakest economic recovery after a slump since the 1930s.”

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15. 6to5against - November 9, 2016: The supreme court nominations are going to be very interesting. For decades the right have used abortion rights as a wedge issue, gaining power on a pro life platform and then using that power to push right wing economic policies. The structure of the supreme crt have allowed them to do this over and over without ever having to deliver a ban on abortion.

But that could end now.

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16. irishelectionliterature - November 9, 2016: For some reason everyone is avoiding the American lad in the office

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: His surname is…Trump? 😉

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irishelectionliterature - November 9, 2016: No but as I’ve mentioned before we often assume US work colleagues have roughly the same values as ourselves. On previous work trips to the US I’ve been chatting to people I’d known work wise for years and thought them very pleasant only to find that they were gun toting Born again Christian right wing lunatics.
The lad in work could have voted for Trump but nobody is discussing it with him…. where everyone else here is going WTF? at the result

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17. libby - November 9, 2016: Well now Gerry Adams has a direct line to the White House seeing as president elect Trump attended SF fundraisers in the past.

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18. FergusD - November 9, 2016: Will Trump herald a period of rowing back on free trade/deals and a move to protectionism? Will he be able to scrap TPP and TTIP and NAFTA or will te establishment control him? It seems to me that Brexit, Trump, the advance of the “populist” right in Europe all seems to fit with protectionism rather than “free trade”. 1930s here we come?

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Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: The catastrophic effect of Trumpp Election, Brexit,
(OECD)BEPS, EU CVT on Irish Economy is being Played Down.
ALL ATTRACTION due to 12.5% TO MULTI-NATIONAL COMPANIES TO COME TO IRELAND OR TO STAY IN IRELAND IS GONE. FDI is the lynch pin of the Irish Economy due to total surrender of Sovereignty and privatisation of such as Eircom and other state companies by FG-FF-Lab

Reclaim our Economic and Political Sovereignty

FG Senator Billy Lawless (Chicago) on Radio SO’R:) “Concerned about Trump policy to bring jobs back from tax havens to Amrica-worrying Time for IDA-260,000 driving licences issued to undocumented Irish recently-will undocumented be affected by anti-immigration policies?-I have contacted the department of Foreign Afairs”-Billy Lawless

He will bring his protectionist policies to bear on TTIP etc
But he will replace it with something more favourable to American Business
The immediate effect of his protectionist policies would be to restrict imports to the US and/or impose tarifs. This would increase the pressure on multi-nationals to relocate to US and seriously effect Irish exports

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19. FergusD - November 9, 2016: Interesting article here about “secret” Trump voters:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/voters-repudiate-clinton.html

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Joe - November 9, 2016: Colleague in work today musing on ‘secret’ Trump supporters here. As she said, everyone you talk to here is horrified at the idea that Trump won. But surely if the majority of American voters voted for him, there has to be a fair few over here who would too. We’re not that different from them, are we?

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irishelectionliterature - November 9, 2016: It’s like when everyone was giving out about FF winning another election and you know that there were FF voters there as there had to be!

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Very true

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Gewerkschaftler - November 9, 2016: Good article.

“he will be a Jimmy Carter cubed in Berlusconi packaging”. Let’s hope that’s as far as it goes. That we can survive.

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20. eamonncork - November 9, 2016: After Republican Donald Trump captured the 270 votes needed to secure the presidency, former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke took to Twitter to thank one person in particular: Julian Assange.

“GOD BLESS WIKILEAKS – Julian Assange is a hero -> America owes this man one thing -> FREEDOM!!!” tweeted Duke alongside a photo of Assange. “Thank you, sir – THANK YOU!”

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eamonncork - November 9, 2016: From the Boston Globe. Credit where credit is due.

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Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: Can we have the Ku Klux Klan grand wizard speaking at the Joe McCarthy Summer Scool at Doonbeg Trump Centre?
Other speakers:
Opening Address Squireen Noonan with Frances Fitzgerald on Harp
1 Nigel Farrage- My Brexit experience helped Elect The Donald
2 Vice-President PENCE -Don’T Repeal the 8th
3 Richard Bruton-Memories of William Martin Murphy, General O’Duffy, Mussolini, Franco
4. Brendan Howlin-How I abolished Right to Free Trade Unions and Restricted Freedom of Association under FEMPI- PresidentTrump can learn from us!(I am available)

Guest of Honour President of U.S.A

JOE MULHOLLAND ! GLENTIES:MATCH THAT!
Beats Mary Finan and Colm McCarthy!

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: Assange has been openly pro-Trump for several months, even sitting on damaging Clinton leaks until Sanders was gone and only Trump could benefit:

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10/19/wikileaks-why-is-assange-helping-trump/

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: what irks me is that if he genuinely wanted Sanders he could have – problematic as it is, released the stuff way back when but he didn’t. I find that inexplicable if the purpose of the exercise is to shift matters in a more progressive direction. And Sanders for all that he had problems too was clearly the most progressive candidate with a shot at the presidency.

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: Assange is a power-worshipping rat. I hope he ends up behind bars.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: It sure looks that way.

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21. yourcousin - November 9, 2016: Eamonncork,
Someday I will buy you a beer and a cigar sir.

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22. the west is red - November 9, 2016: Anne Applebaum has declared that this is the end of NATO and one Australian foreign policy academic (who supported Clinton) is complaining that Trumps non interventionist foreign policy will allow the DPRK to hit the west cost of the USA by 2020. The liberals brains cant compute what has happened. All that was solid has melted in to air.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: The rollback of agreements with Iran and poss Cuba, climate change denial…hmmmm. And I’ll believe the end of NATO when I see it. Particularly given the proposed names for Sec of State Bolton, Haas etc

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: No possibly about Cuba at all – the CRAF start tactical defensive exercises from 16th. Trump has said he will tear up agreements .

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Ed - November 9, 2016: Of all the things I’d expect to go by the wayside, a ‘non-interventionist foreign policy’ is number 1 on the list. The last thing you would expect from a right-wing, xenophobic politician is that they would call the troops home and start winding down the empire. Aside from his personal desires, that would mean going up against the Pentagon and the CIA, along with all their placemen in the two major parties, their corporate backers and allies, think-tanks and friendly journalists, which is probably the biggest concentration of power in the US behind any single cause. The US ruling class might tolerate plenty of racism or even a dose of protectionism but they’ll raise havoc before allowing any president to follow a ‘non-interventionist’ line abroad.

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yourcousin - November 9, 2016: So we went from the deep state opposing Trump and would not let him win to now they let him win but won’t allow him to do other things? How about we acknowledge the maxim of, “the people have spoken, the bastards” and recognize that “the people” made a choice and that all this “deep state who control everything from behind the curtain” are not as all powerful as folks like to think.

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Ed - November 9, 2016: When did I say anything about the deep state not allowing him to win? Can you quote back any words to that effect? I think it’s pretty obvious from the run-up to the election that the foreign-policy establishment in the US didn’t want Trump to win, he was too unpredictable, too erratic for their taste. They did their best to stop him—all those people from Kissinger to Wolfowitz lining up to oppose Trump—but to no avail; they weren’t in any position to determine the result of the election. Now that he’s president, they do have a lot of power to bring to bear in the unlikely event that he tries to put a ‘non-interventionist’ foreign policy into practice.

The US foreign-policy machine is a massive concentration of power; it employs millions of people, it has a budget stretching into many billions of dollars, it has bases and embassies and safe houses and secret prisons all over the world. You don’t just turn a machine like that on or off at your convenience, even if you’re the president. Trying to get anything done from the White House while being completely at odds with the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and all their backers would be extremely difficult. Most of the Republican Party is hostile to a ‘non-interventionist’ line so Trump wouldn’t have any support from them. I don’t think he has any serious plans to do so anyway, he made a few off-the-cuff remarks about pulling back from overseas commitments but it’s not like he has a worked-out programme or vision.

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Ed - November 10, 2016: Reading this comment back this morning the tone is probably unnecessarily tetchy: to be clear, I’m not talking about the ‘deep state’, people operating behind the scenes and getting up to all kinds of nefarious schemes. I’m talking about the foreign-policy establishment which is out there in full public view; the CIA is part of that of course, but so is the State Department and the Pentagon, and there’s nothing very secret about what they do or what they stand for. If anyone tried to shift the US towards a non-interventionist foreign policy, they might apply some pressure behind the scenes, but they’d also campaign hard against it in public.

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yourcousin - November 10, 2016: I had meant to respond earlier but I’m very distractable (squirrel!). I should have phrased my response to your earlier comment differently. So to you I apologize I should have been clear that I was addressing a more generalized theme not you specifically, your comments were/are intelligent and inciteful.

My larger point is that the state has confines on it that are not easily broken, especially when it comes to domestic affairs.

Aside from self promotion Trump doesn’t have an ideological pre disposition. Non intervention/myopic isolationism today, ? Tomorrow.

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23. 6to5against - November 9, 2016: Very parochial of me, but I’m wondering how long until we see a ‘no pay rises possible because of ‘uncertainty’ following Trumps win…’ story. I’m guessing there’ll be at least one tomorrow. But plenty by the weekend.

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Paddy Healy - November 9, 2016: Look Out For Colm mcCarthy Column in the Sunday Indo. This is too serious for Eoghan Harris!

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Yep +1 6to5

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24. RosencrantzisDead - November 9, 2016: On the bright-side, Martin Shkreli said he would release some of the Wu Tang Clan tracks he has been hoarding if Trump won.

He has been delivering (sort of):

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Joe - November 9, 2016: Great. Maybe Martin Skrtel will bite the Donald’s legs too.

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25. CL - November 9, 2016: “Meanwhile, a person who spoke to the Trump campaign told POLITICO that the aides have also discussed tapping Sarah Palin for Interior Secretary. Trump has said he’d like to put Palin in his Cabinet, and Palin has made no secret of her interest.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/who-is-in-president-trump-cabinet-231071

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26. sonofstan - November 9, 2016: probably too soon….

but i imagine the inauguration will be a monumental kitsch fest. And possibly quite funny. Ted Nugent on the roof of the capitol a la Brian May at Buck House?

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CL - November 9, 2016: Crazy shit time.
https://boingboing.net/2016/11/07/this-remix-of-ted-nugent-grab.html

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Joe - November 9, 2016: Yep the inauguration will be a great chance for those of us with ubercool tastes in music to laugh again at those who don’t.
“They laughed at my taste in music. Then I put my finger on the nuclear button. They’re not laughing now.”

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Ed - November 9, 2016: Ted Nugent from his earlier, trippy-hippy incarnation:

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27. gendjinn - November 9, 2016: Those who were telling us of Clinton’s inevitable victory are now telling us that Sanders would have lost even worse.

Bull shit. Sanders would have wiped the floor with Trump. It would have been a route and good progressives like Russ Feingold would have won.

Those of us who were right about Clinton are right about Sanders. Those of you who were wrong about Clinton you need to shut up and listen. Or continue to lose.

It is precisely the same story as Gore v Bradley, Kerry v Edwards and now Clinton v Sanders. Each time I watched the DNC choose to lose with the centrist candidate over victory with a lefty. So they will do the same thing in 2020.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: A couple of thoughts, I don’t disagree Clinton was weak, but… she and Sanders went through a process in the Democrats. I’m not a member of that party, and I’m guessing you’re not either, though I could be wrong and am open to correction. In any event the process was open enough that Sanders didn’t do well enough to get sufficient votes and was willing to accept the verdict. And that’s no small thing, a party does have the right to organise itself as it sees fit, even if we disagree with the way it organises itself.

I don’t think it is as self-evidently clear that Sanders would have won, and in any event although Sanders platform was better than hers he was still constrained by the nature of the Democratic Party which is in many respects like a somewhat more liberal version of FG.

But more to the point, why is it that in the majority of occasions when given the option to vote for Democrats of progressive and whatever stripes, signed up to the same programme as Sanders etc, voters overwhelmingly went for more right wing candidates from the Republicans? I don’t believe that that was simply a wish to punish the Democrats for not having Sanders as nominee and if the wish was to punish Clinton then that was clearly acting against their own self-interest even if only marginally. Or why not vote for the GP candidate?

I’m not dismissing your overall point that the Democrats took the ridiculously safe route (though Edwards? That’d be a whole heap of trouble I’d have thought) on various occasions, but even left wing Democrats are still Democrats, still signed up to a centre/centre right programme that again wouldn’t look out of place in FG.

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sonofstan - November 9, 2016: Free tuition? $/€ 15 minimum wage?

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Apologies but do you mean Clinton supported those or didn’t? I’ve gone looking and it kind of appears she supported raising it to 12 dollars, free tuition is a bit more murky she seems to have sought free fees of those under 85k pa and that going to 125k pa by 2021 with community college free for students.

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sonofstan - November 9, 2016: No but I understood you to mean ‘even left wing Dems’ wouldn’t look out of place in FG and I was suggesting that these two Sanders policies certainly would

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sonofstan - November 9, 2016: But I see what you mean now; they signed up to the programme the HRC ran on in the GE

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: I’m perhaps over-egging it a little. But to me at best the Democrats are a bit like an FF with a mildly social democratic wing and with a conservative wing as well. Which actually sounds precisely like FF now I think of it. Though I think the liberal aspect is more FGish in a way. But my point is that it is a camp which sits most precisely on the centre centre right and that functionally (as with the much vaunted FG social democrats of the 80s) their ‘left’ wings influence is negligible on the direction of things.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: And not just signed up to it. As late as yesterday Sanders endorsed Clinton.

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CL - November 9, 2016: ‘.
“the problem that surfaced on Tuesday night was much bigger than polling. It was clear that something was fundamentally broken in journalism, which has been unable to keep up with the anti-establishment mood that is turning the world upside down….
You have to wonder how different the coverage might have been had the polls, and the data crunching, not forecast an almost certain Clinton victory. Perhaps there would have been a deeper exploration of the forces that were propelling Mr. Trump toward victory, given that so much of his behavior would have torpedoed any candidate who came before him….

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gendjinn - November 9, 2016: WbS,

I am so seriously frustrated with your comment. Respect you but jesus you are displaying staggering ignorance of the shite over here. Seriously. The DNC cheated. The various wikileaks remove any and all doubt about every shady thing they did from debate and primary schedule, to astroturfing the liberal blogs.

This cycle was the most extreme but in both the Kerry/Gore primaries the very same shite happened, with the same rationalisations, betrayals and ultimately defeats.

This cycle is the THIRD time I am making the same arguments and same predictions to the same set of American idiots, that go on to make the same mistakes and then blame the left when their shitty, shitty candidate loses.

Sanders wins MI/PA/OH. That is the election. Clinton is loathed there for NAFTA. Sanders is not.

Go look at my Oct25th comment on the US Election thread on battleground states and the 2 to 4% shy trump vote. Now tell me you know more about what is going on here than I do.

Peace brother I’m off to smoke a very big bowl.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Thankfully I’m not frustrated, just puzzled to keep hearing stuff about them as if they’re a social democrat party just champing at the bit to released their true nature. They’re not, they never have been. They’re a coalition of liberals, some progressives, a sliver of radicals who hang on in there for God knows what reasons, some conservatives. And the corollary of that is that there’s a receptive section of the electorate just waiting for those arguments to be made to them. But is there? I’m unconvinced.

Sure, they used the machine. What on earth do you expect? Seriously, gendjinn, the Democrats aren’t even the British Labour Party. They had a candidate, as YC notes, who was regarded as their standard bearer. But you seem to think that they’d switch across to Sanders. But why? His ideology isn’t shared by the majority of them. Milk and water as he may be in European terms he’s waaaay to their left. He’d been in the party a wet weekend. Still he fought a great fight, did amazingly well. Can you genuinely think of an equivalent in say FF or FG, someone in the party two years coming in and becoming leader with a programme well to the mainstream of that party’s left and all this when there was a Tanaiste or equivalent supported by that party waiting in the wings as anointed leader. I mean we have to approach this not from emotion but from the actual material base.

Again, I’d love to know if through these cycles you’ve been involved in the Democrats directly, canvassing, as a member, manning phone banks etc? Because I first met Democrats in the late 1980s in NYC and it was obvious even in that most liberal of cities that they weren’t social democrats, at least not as I recognised them and functionally were centre centre right. I’ve met leftish Dems but sfa left wing Dems if you see the distinction.

And look at your evidence that Sanders would be better. It’s completely hypothetical. We literally have no way of knowing how he would fare in an actual contest against Trump. None at all – it’s simply too complex to be certain. Perhaps he would have done okay, perhaps he wouldn’t but there’s simply nowhere near sufficient certainty for you to argue as you do that he would have won. And I also wonder about a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and how that plays in a US where liberal is a dirty word. And just a thought. A friend of mine was in Brooklyn last night and attacked verbally by some passersby who were Trump supporters who screamed ‘f*** you you f*** liberal c*** and f*** you and your family’. I don’t know. That level of antagonism strikes me as being indicative of deeper rooted processes that make the idea of Sanders winning a lot less clear cut than you attempt to present it.

I think you keep making the same arguments because fundamentally you keep thinking that the Democrats are something that they’re not and because you think that because you feel passionately that there is only one path forward therefore they should.

But they don’t. And complaining that they don’t do it, or they use the machine to keep them as they are is missing the point completely. They don’t change because like FF they fundamentally don’t want to, don’t see the reason to and don’t believe in what you think they should change to.

I’m not saying they can’t change, but that takes time, a lot more than one election or two. It’s like asking FF to become a left wing party. Possible. But enormously difficult. I think the chances in the future aren’t bad. But they’re not great either for such a change. Perhaps a party split, though that could leave us in a situation like Canada with the NDP always rather marginal and power swapped between Liberals and Conservatives. But one way or another there are massive structural issues in relation to left candidates. The two party system itself, the antagonism to liberalism let alone social democracy or socialism, a massively corporate media, certain tropes in the US identity, racial and other divisions, the sheer size of the US alone, the tension between federal and state competencies, the strength of the right. Everyone of these and many more make your certainty just seem implausible.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: And just to add one thing. You keep seeming to assume that I’m pro Democrat. Anything but. I think they’re a massive problem, and only in a contest like this against someone like trump would I countenance voting for their candidate.

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gendjinn - November 11, 2016: wasting my time.

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: gendjinn, you have both my respect and my solidarity. I can’t imagine what it is like there at this moment. I don’t know what it must be like to face into four years of this. But… if you make statements here it’s reasonable that they be engaged with – or why make them in the first place.

Secondly you’re not the only voice on here from the US, or indeed the only one I know. We have YC who was born and lives there and is of the far left. I’ve friends in NYC, a lot, one of whom I mentioned the other night was verbally attacked by Trump supporters. She is born and lived in the US, her partner is Irish. She and her family supported Hillary hugely – they’d be left of centre voters in Ireland, there they support the Dems.

My point being that making assertions as if they’re the last word is problematic because you’re not the only voice from the US and others I respect as well take a different view. Some take a radically different view. And they’re there too. Why are they to be dismissed, why is YC wrong or my other friends wrong and you right? They can marshal evidence too (though no one by the way I know is blaming the left at all. Anything but. I think the penny is dropping that Clinton was in trouble from the off. Just no one including the Reps knew it).

And if you do make assertions they have to be backed up by some evidence, particularly counterfactuals. Sure, maybe Sanders would win, if he were nominee. I’m not denying that. I’ve not denied that. But with an Obama led democrats, with Hillary having the weight she had in the party, with the manner the machine works, with x y and z factors including then intrinsic conservatism of the Dems to get to the point where he was nominee is so problematic that it’s hard to see how we can place any weight in the idea from the get go.

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yourcousin - November 9, 2016: Who here is as lobbying for Clinton? I guess I’m surprised that folks are surprised that the Democrats favored a Secretary of State, a former senator, and wife of former president over a carpetbagger who literally joined the party for less than two years.

I hope your hubris helps sustain all of us during the coming administration.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: I guess I’m surprised that folks are surprised that the Democrats favored a Secretary of State, a former senator, and wife of former president over a carpetbagger who literally joined the party for less than two years.

A ‘brave’ position to take on a candidate who just lost to the US remake of Screaming Lord Sutch. She lost to a less experienced candidate in the ’08 primaries too. It could be that a lot of her experience comes with some pretty hefty political baggage.

And there is data showing us that she could not get Democrats out to vote. A large party like the Democrats gets to be snide at little leftists like us because they can win elections and understand the ‘practicalities’. Yet, the walking, talking embodiment of this just lost to a man who felt th need to make several media statements on the size of his penis.

Might mull that over before you excoriate people who excoriate Hilary.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: Its not for me to speak for yc but two thoughts, firstly he’s not a Clinton or Dem supporter, and he’s not saying the above quoted approvingly , secondly the point he’s making is one I too have been making, tgat political parties have their own internal dynamics that can overwhelm other factors. On paper Clinton seemed almost overqualified and yes in 2008 she lost to Obama and yes that should have been a warning but on the other hand Obama was near sui generis. But a broader point is that its pointless for those of us who are not members of a party and I do not think any of us here are Dems to demand it does x or y according to our wishes. This isn’t to say we can’t criticise or critique but it is to say we need to appreciate things for what they are not what wed like them to be. A third thought, that’s rather mild of yc on the scale of excoriation isn’t it particularly given the tone of the original comment being responded to.

Finally let’s also note two further things – only one person as far as I know here prior to the vote expected Clinton to lose. I didn’t, thought it might be tight but thought she was safe. Also appears she won the most votes. Neither of these undermine the thesis she was a hugely flawed candidate, both yc and myself have argued this too from the off but wishing the dems to have done much different is really to ask the dens to be a very different party to the one they actually are.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: And just to add in the line of my work every year I meet young Democrats who have worked in Washington or state capitals. They’re lovely folk but you and I are off the scale politically compared to them, talking to one last year who’d worked for the party directly he was openly bemused by how socialist (sic) the RoI was mentioning benefits services etc and to him Europe generally was ‘worse’, he wasn’t against this but felt it went a bit far – though perhaps tellingly he was in awe if the ‘free’ fees. That us largely what one is dealing with and that tells us how much sanders achieved to get a foothold but it also underscores why myself and yc are a bit baffled at people seeming to think a party with active members like that would just turn left

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: By the by, I tipped Clinton to win on the basis of the opinion polls and meta analysis of same. I did say that they were wrong on the Brexit vote. The polls were catastrophically wrong on the result, but it was clear throughout the campaign that people were not motivated to vote for Clinton. If anything, the threat of ‘the Donald’ was the only spur. This was not a sensible campaign position; if it was successful, it would be in spite of itself.

To be honest, I am intrigued as to what grounds people had for saying Trump would win (apart from a funny feeling or something a fortune teller told them). People were saying that a good ground game would give Clinton an extra 2% and that the early voting returns/exit polls had Trump down by about 10%.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: Agreed, that was me as well. And I think you’re right there was no real motivation. Even her run in 2008 was more weighty than this one.

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yourcousin - November 10, 2016: What I’m still trying wrap my head around is the core concept of your argument. It is a fact that Bernie was in the party for less than two years and has indeed left them after his run for president. It’s also a statement of fact Hillary was all those things I wrote. So what am I supposed to mull over? My surprise or your surprise? It’s also worth noting that Democrats have only ever won third terms twice in the entire history of our country. So playing the odds she had that going against her as well.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: No surprise on my part. The only mention of surprise came from you.

You are rather uncertain about what you mean so you can hardly blame me if I have you wrong.

If you only intended to make a series of trivial, uninteresting, descriptive statements without any implication whatsoever in response to Gendjinn (or if that is your position now) then there is little to discuss. You might concede that all of my statements are true also.

Although, very few would ever believe that was your intention.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: That’s a bit harsh RiD, yc is making pretty much the same case I am making and from an equally left position, the Democrats were near enough inevitably going to select Clinton given structural and political calculations. I have to say I kind of despair when we all seem to fall into the mistake of finger pointing about stuff like this. Sure the Dems should have selected Sanders, but they couldn’t because he was too far to their left. Clinton was a safer bet for them and represented the ‘mainstream’ of that party. Why what yc and myself are saying is so objectionable escapes me. Centre right and right polity and parties select centre right and far right candidates and sideline leftist. Where is the surprise?

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: Why is gendjinn’s point objectionable? ‘A different candidate would have won’ is a statement which there is some support for.

And who is saying they are surprised? The Democrats have a habit of picking lacklustre centrist candidates, but they do so because they believe these candidates are the key to winning. That belief is no longer justified or at least is rather tenuous.

Saying ‘what did you expect’ is a bit rough itself when people are so bitterly disappointed.

And why should experience matter over other factors? If it did, the Republicans should have run Newt Gingrich in every single Presidential campaign since 1996. But they do not because Gingrich is a bastard and they know it.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: no, I’m not saying gendjinn’s point is objectionable – I asked why by contrast YC and my points are so objectionable, but I do think the certainty with which he presents it isn’t supported by the evidence.

In fairness, the Democrats won the last two elections with rather centrist candidates. This is the first one in twelve years they’ve lost. That’s not the worst track record for a party of government. But again the point about surprise isn’t about the Democrats losing, it’s about people thinking they’re anything more progressive than a centre right party. A liberal centre right party, sure, but a centre right party nonetheless.

And in relation to ‘what did you expect’ it is gendjinn who has for weeks now being saying how wretched Clinton is and how there was no onus on people to vote Democrat that indeed looking beyond the Democrats was necessary to break the mold. Oddly enough in any context other than the Trump I’d be 100% be behind.

Finally, I’m not saying experience should matter, nor is YC. The point is that for the Democrats, for the media, for pundits, for the Republicans who were having a shit fit as recently as a fortnight ago as they thought Trump would lose them the Senate and possibly see massive losses in the House, the experience qualification of Hillary was seen as a real bonus for her.

I can’t help but think we’re very slightly at cross purposes in this discussion when in fact we all of us broadly agree Democrats useless, Clinton flawed, Sanders better, Trump a disaster.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: As I said in response below, if the post I responded to was just a series of descriptive statements then there is little to discuss. Nevertheless, they omit some very pertinent information.

While I can understand the Wittgenstein-style anthropological approach to the Democrats (their understand of reality is just different), they are still a party who express a desire to win elections. That typically involves picking candidates that people want to vote for. That Clinton was disliked by many and despised by some is another uncontentious statement. That she had rather poor approval ratings (as did Trump) is also true. If you want to win elections, you might look for a candidate that people like, and a candidate who does not deter your leftwing and swing voters.

In light of this, the claim put out (elsewhere, not here) that the Dems could never have won this election rings false to me. And this is what Gendjinn was talking about.

Finally, we are on the sidelines here, but that does not mean we are incapable of seeing what things are going wrong. There a plenty here that would be poor soccer players but are well able to criticize a manager for poor tactis or player choice.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: I don’t know if the Democrats could have won this election – I think cmks point re Clinton clearly adopting more populist policies or attempting to seriously engage with rust belt states might have done it, but that’s a different discussion. Actual politics and parties we both know and genjdinn wasnt saying it as a possibilty but as a racing certainty that Sanders would win. Perhaps but the Democrats as a party structurally etc weren’t going to go for it. And ideology does matter too, its not anthropology to see it as centre right, that’s it’s basic political position. Again, do you think it likely an Irish party of similar ilk would take on a candidate like Sanders just to win? FG with I’m searching for a name but say Catherine Murphy at a stretch?

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6to5against - November 10, 2016: Isn’t it a mistake to view the Reps and Dems as being akin to Irish parties? I think they are each far more broad and less fissiparous than any Irish, or European party would ever be.

The dems contain within their ranks plenty of people who would be European social democrats, as well as people who would here be more in tune with FG or FF. And those people don’t seem to worry about the lack of ideological unity in their party. Instead they work to drive their own agendas through the party apparatus, trying to affect, for example, the party platform before elections -as Sanders did at this years convention.

I think any genuinely progressive future for the US will come about in this way. Its essentially entryism writ large, openly accepted as such by the party hierarchy and coming from several directions at once.

And for president, the selection of a candidate is open to the public, so you really can’t compare it to candidate selection here. Nobody seriously argued that Sanders couldn’t run just because he was new to the party. Similarly with Trump. But they had to face the political reality that as newcomers they had little control over the party apparatus and they suffered for that. Trump got through, sadly. And sadly, Sanders didn’t.

I don’t like the outcome, but I think I prefer the system to one where parties of the left split into micro-groupings and fight each other more than they fight anybody else.

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RosencrantzisDead - November 10, 2016: Fianna Fail were mooting a basic income for everyone not so long ago. I remember the Greens (they are the only ones coming to mind) pushed that in ’02 and were called headbangers.

The Tories switched from opposing the NHS and the Labour policies of the 40s to supporting them and claiming they would manage them better. They switched back 40 years later, of course.

I am not going to put words in gendjinn’s mouth but I think s/he is attacking the belief posited by Democrats (and media supporters like Paul Krugman) that only a centrist can prevail. I tend to agree, the ground is shifting under both parties in the US and, a bit like a company that adopts new technology, the first party to realize this and hatness it will reap massive dividends. The Democrats had the advantage but squandered it.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: 6to5, yes, absolutely, they’re not absolutely similar. But we can look at their policy programmes and we can make some judgements based on that. This is, I think, instructive even if slightly tongue in cheek and points to how a sort of social liberalism can encompass parties that some wouldn’t see at all as being close:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/how-conservative-would-uk-conservatives-be-us/312573/

There are class and other issues that would make me think in some respects some parts of the Dems are closer to say Labour parties. But in other ways… I don’t know, gendjinn isn’t wrong about elites and so on.

I just don’t know what is the best way forward. Building a federal US party of the left like the NDP seems almost beyond a challenge. Entryism as you describe is good but it’s so big and amorphous and its eaten other parties before that I wonder if that’s a feasible strategy. Though, I have some hope that things may change in the next ten or fifteen years due to younger people and those engaged with Sanders etc.

That’s true re Presidential elections, though some primaries are locked down to registered members and others are open etc. It’s a mixed bag. And I’d echo your point entirely re Trump and Sanders, indeed I wonder why Trump got through – perhaps because he was longer associated with the right than Sanders with the Democrats.

RiD no dispute that parties shift position on individual policies but we can ascribe political positions in broader terms to them by examining those policies as a whole. You and I don’t expect left parties to jump to being hard right parties or vice versa. More centrist parties are a bit different a little bit vaguer, Irish labour is on a long march to the right of centre as distinct from centre right on present evidence. But once it was the most left wing significant component in the political system. But take a local example, both FF and FG have resisted efforts to rebrand by some within them as social democrat – that’s a step too far. Those are parties of the centre right and right of centre, and interchangeably so, even if some of their members might have muted mild social democrat instincts.

I genuinely don’t know if only a centrist can prevail. It’s possible, or its possible a more left wing candidate might prevail. That is not my argument with the thesis put forward. My argument is that the Democratic party itself is simply not going, is not conceptually or politically equipped, at this point, perhaps soon, but not now, to put forward a self-declared socialist as candidate (really a social democrat though I think he’s done more than some service in getting the ‘s’ word out in the US political mainstream again even marginally). That’s all.

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28. CL - November 9, 2016: “Immigration Canada’s website has had so many requests in the early hour that the site completely crashed, giving its users an error message.”
http://heatst.com/politics/canadas-immigration-site-crashes-as-liberals-panic/

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29. CL - November 9, 2016: Hillary speaks, LIVE.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/watch-live-hillary-clinton-speaks-election-loss-article-1.2866009

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30. Alibaba - November 9, 2016: What to make of the conciliatory speech of Trump on accepting the Presidency. Despite having threatened to jail Clinton should he suceed, he came over fawning at her great fight and the debt owed to her. There was an American comedian (whose name I can’t remember) who explored the notion that new Presidents would be invited to a 15 minute video watch before their announcement. This showed JFK being shot from an unknown angle. Just saying delightfully eh? Clinton knows where the bodies are buried and won’t be messed around with or maybe that’s my daft notions anyway.

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Aonrud ⚘ - November 9, 2016: Bill Hicks:

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31. makedoanmend - November 9, 2016: Corbyn comments:

“Many in Britain and elsewhere will be understandably shocked by Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the rhetoric around it and what the election result means for the rest of the world, as well as America…

After this latest global wake up call, the need for a real alternative to a failed economic and political system could not be clearer.

That alternative must be based on working together, social justice and economic renewal, rather than sowing fear and division. And the solutions we offer have to improve the lives of everyone, not pit one group of people against another.

Americans have made their choice. The urgent necessity is now for us all to work across continents to tackle our common global challenges: to secure peace, take action on climate change and deliver economic prosperity and justice.”

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/11/09/jeremy-corbyns-response-to-trumps-victory-is-a-welcome-dose-of-reality-opinion/

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32. Tomboktu - November 9, 2016: A ceiling has been broken in this election: Trump's election shows that even the Presidency can be an entry-level position.

— Eoin O'Dell (@301N) November 9, 2016

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33. sonofstan - November 9, 2016: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/trump-victory-clinton-sanders-democratic-party/

Agitate, educate, organise

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34. Starkadder - November 9, 2016: Gewerkschaftler:
“Precisely – it’s not confined to Trump – it’s a world-wide phenomenon, and is due to the inability of the the broader anti-establishment left to provide a programme that many of the alienated voters would vote for, or when they have such a programme they are systematically excluded from electoral processes.”

When was the most recent time a progressive/liberal government won power? I’m thinking of Justin Trudeau in Canada.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: And he’s kind of compromised too. Though perhaps I’m being unkind.

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Gewerkschaftler - November 10, 2016: Probably not Trudeau. Same standard-issue neo-lib, building ‘me-to’ surveillance powers, just better packaging. Rather like Renzi.

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35. sonofstan - November 9, 2016: I’ll shut up now, but feargal Keane was in New York talking to Clinton supporters leaving their ‘victory’ party and one woman was giving out angrily about being ruled by ‘uneducated white men’. Well, at a time when the vast majority of American voters were ‘uneducated’, they delivered 4 victories for FDR.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Though the new deal wasn’t great for African Americans.

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Dr. X - November 11, 2016: The Civilian Conservation Corps was racially integrated, though, wasn’t it?

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: Broadly speaking I think the ND assisted as a side effect – there was no push to roll back segregation or the legal frameworks of oppresdion , where it assisted was in easing matters more generally for workers I’d think but not in clear specific approaches tailored to the needs of African Americans. In fairness African Americans engaged with it thoroughly where they could but in southern states control of and engagement with remained largely in white hands .

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CL - November 11, 2016: “to push their legislative programs through Congress, the New Dealers sold their souls to the segregated South….
During his first six years in office..Roosevelt repeatedly let the Southern bloc write discriminatory provisions into his programs…
Southerners on the Senate Finance Committee cut farm laborers and domestic servants out of the Social Security Act because it simply wouldn’t do to have white families paying taxes on their black maids…”

But:
“just a few years after Roosevelt’s death, Jim Crow began to come tumbling down, shattered by a social movement that had been invigorated by the promise, if not necessarily the practice, of the New Deal era.”

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36. Starkadder - November 9, 2016: The public reaction in Ireland ?

I saw a group of sad-looking teenagers on a bus this morning. They were almost completely quiet-none of the usual laughter or gossip. Two of them were whispering about “the monster is now President.” Now, I suspect they weren’t keen on heading back to school, but still….they all looked absolutely crushed.

Everyone at work was saying “It’s a shame about the US”, as if some beloved friend had died.

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Yeah, I was amazed by the number of people who expressed similar opinions. It’s a bit like the aftermath of the Brexit vote, but I think this has worried people a lot more. Can’t say I blame them.

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Starkadder - November 9, 2016: Hmm…among older Trump voters, there may be the desire to lash out at younger people, and deliberately disregard problems that may affect future generations (i.e. climate change). They “Hey, Kids, get off my Lawn” effect?

This article, written at the time of Brexit, is worth noting:

“This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise, that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US. Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that chimes more closely with people’s private experiences. The discovery of the ‘Case Deaton effect’ in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support for Trump.”

http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Very possibly re that desire. Excellent quote.

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37. CL - November 9, 2016: “Political shocks like the election of Trump can produce apocalyptic forebodings that in retrospect turn out to be misplaced or exaggerated. But, in this case, grim expectations about the future may be all too justified and unlikely to evaporate…
the high days of liberal capitalism since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, which continued despite a battering from the financial crisis of 2008, are finally finished…
from the 1980s on, the mainstream left in Britain, France and Germany abandoned socialism for liberal free market capitalism as the proven recipe for human happiness, which meant that after 2008 they had no alternative system to advocate and could no longer provide a credible vehicle for protest….
unfortunately, in the case of the US election, the first gloom-filled predictions may be the most accurate…
The US media in particular is so much part of the political class that it had become an echo chamber in which it heard only its own views…
With Donald Trump soon to be in the White House, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that the world has just become a lot more dangerous place.”-Patrick Cockburn
http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/trumps-election-marks-the-end-of-liberal-capitalism/

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WorldbyStorm - November 9, 2016: Love Cockburn CL thanks. Just re the us media slate.com had a piece in its writers voting patterns, IIRC 2, count em 2, for Sanders in the primaries, one John Kasich, one write in none Trump republican and all others for Clinton. Insanely homogenous though in fairness at least they said it publicly – and what kills me is the attitudes are pro college fees, not really pro an NHS, liberal but as I’ve said elsewhere FG like, mention of class but utter insulation from it, etc, etc.

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Alibaba - November 9, 2016: So well said by Cockburn:

‘It is an age not just of disintegration but of extremes, with proponents of the status quo either weakened or discredited, as shown by the Brexit vote in Britain. The beneficiaries are mostly on the right … who can plug into resurgent loyalty to the nation state in the wake of discredited globalisation.’

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38. Starkadder - November 10, 2016: I wonder will this be one of the Reagan-era documents Trump digs out and looks at when he takes office?

Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of national crisis such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a US military invasion abroad.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=IbFXs7_LutMC&pg=PA358&dq=%22national+opposition+to+a+us+military+invasion%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7v4aL7pzQAhUJIsAKHVT8CU0Q6AEINTAB#v=onepage&q=%22national%20opposition%20to%20a%20us%20military%20invasion%22&f=false

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39. Ed - November 10, 2016: Two pieces from before the election that now seem uncannily prescient. One is from Michael Moore; I saw it being referred to at the time but didn’t get around to reading it, but he really had a sound grasp of what was going on:

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

The other is from the editor of Current Affairs, a new-ish left-leaning site in the US, and it’s so accurate as a prediction of how the campaign would go that I’d say the author’s name is well worth remembering and keeping an eye on in future:

http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-means-a-trump-presidency

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Ed - November 10, 2016: Following on from those: I think I said here a couple of weeks ago that I still expected Clinton to win, despite her own obvious flaws, because Trump was a terrible candidate, but it would be closer than it should be. I now think it was wrong to brand Trump as a terrible candidate, or at least a worse one than the Republicans have nominated for the last two elections; I thought the extra problems he would bring—erratic, undisciplined; says the first thing that comes into his head; says stupid, offensive things that alienate whole groups of voters—would outweigh the advantages—above all, the ability to pose as a maverick, an outsider, someone who wasn’t part of the Washington machine. It now seems clear that was wrong; the phony ‘outsider’ schtick won out over his shortcomings (and the shortcomings were seen as positives by some of his voters). But the biggest factor seems to have been the drop in the Democrat vote compared with 2008 and 2012; that was much more important than any surge towards the Republicans. Running a campaign based on the message ‘the status quo is fine, vote for us because the other guy is monstrous’ just didn’t work.

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: Great links to Moore and other one. I just don’t know if the Democrats have it in them to internalise what has happened to them this week of the capacity to turn left.

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40. Gewerkschaftler - November 10, 2016: The nerves of some of our US comrades are understandably still very raw – mine would be in their position – understanding and a bit of compassion is I think necessary.

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6to5against - November 10, 2016: And as Moore points out, it is important to remember that a majority of people voted for the more progressive candidate – however flawed she might be.

I lived in the US for years and loved it there. No people should be judged by its country’s politics. I’m certainly glad Ireland isn’t.

And another thing to remember is that when you look at local politics around the US, it can be a lot more progressive than we see from here. Certainly when I worked in them, SF schools were a wonderful public resource, and far better funded than the Irish equivalents.

Plus, even if they have launched Trump on the world, they’ve also given us this:

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WorldbyStorm - November 10, 2016: That’s a fair point GW. I’ve heard some grim stories about abuse on the streets from friends there the last day or two.

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41. Starkadder - November 11, 2016: “The time for complacency is long gone.So too is the time for cowing to the hurt feelings of those who were willing to fire at the elite directly through the stomachs of their neighbours. Every effort has been made to sympathise with their distress at perceived loss of privilege that is felt, wrongly, as prejudice. The media on both sides of the pond has fallen over itself to consider whether the boiling bigotry on display might somehow conceal “legitimate concerns.” Somehow, the concerns of working-class people are only considered legitimate when they reflect a reactionary strain that does not threaten vested interests.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2016/11/election-donald-j-trump-4

Laurie Penny hits the nail on the head. The white working-class men who support Sanders, Corbyn and the Anti-Austerity Alliance don’t exist as far as much of the media are concerned.

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: Yes. This is a big problem, a media that only is interested in extremism and ignores all those who don’t have reactionary views. Also we have to work out how to engage without losing our souls. Also let’s keep in mind that Trump etc got significant votes from ‘middle class’ folk, perhaps one stunning stat is that 53 % of white women voted for him. Of course, (and here I’m very deliberately channelling gendjinn because fundamentally he’s right on this aspect) wouldn’t it be great if there were much better alternative candidates and formations in opposition to the likes Trump. But it will take time to get to there.

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42. Paddy Healy - November 11, 2016: FLOOD OF JOBS OUT OF IRELAND-TRUMP ADVISER

Reclaim our Economic and Political Sovereignty

IRISH TIMEs TO-DAY:Stephen Moore, senior economic adviser to Mr Trump, said the centrepiece plan of the new Washington administration was wooing back multinationals with radical business tax cuts.
“I believe that when we cut these tax rates – we’re going to cut our business tax rate from roughly 35 per cent down to roughly 15- 20 per cent – if you do that you are going to see a flood of companies leaving Ireland and Canada and Germany and France and they are going to come back to the United States,” he said.
“It is going to have a very high impact on jobs.”

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Gewerkschaftler - November 11, 2016: That could indeed work.

If the conman offered Krapple 10-20% effective on taxes on the capital they’ve stashed outside the US due to Ireland’s corporate tax-avoidance schemes, they might go for it. Even if they had to promise to relocate assembly from Ireland as quid-pro-quo.

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Alibaba - November 11, 2016: Economically the movement of manufacturing capital abroad for cheaper wages has been a particular trend over the past three decades, as has the search for international markets through Trade Agreements. Can Trump (and the Republican houses) do anything about these? Possibly. But it may be in the longer term at the expense of US capitalist rates of expansion. For example, by lowering the rate of tax on corporations they might make entice corporations to repatriate their enormous profits rather than do deals with client countries like Ireland. Well easier said than done, I think.

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: I’d tend to agree. For example, companies might go back, but… a four year window is actually fairly short for them. And there are other factors. Aspects of the Trump programme such as it is may cause them issue in other areas. Oddly I’d hesitantly suggest that post-Brexit this state is in a better position (in the context of this discussion, not in terms of what I think is a political good) in terms of offering an English language in to the EU.

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43. Gewerkschaftler - November 11, 2016: First in line for Trump’s Berlusconism is his relationship with Deutsche Bank.

The effectively bankrupt financial zombie owes $14Bn in fines to the US government. Now Deutsche Bank was the only bank that would lend the conman money in the end, after he burnt all the others down, and he refused them repayments. Trump owes them north of $4Bn.

Trump is now CEO of US Inc. – could there be any emerging synergies here, I wonder? 😉

Further details here at The Intercept.

His presidency could be seen as a gambler’s long-shot to save his commercial empire. I’m sure that’s a good part of what motivated him.

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44. Gewerkschaftler - November 11, 2016: Every time I read about Zuckerberg my gorge rises.

For a full year, the tech industry had collectively railed against the xenophobic, bigoted, and anti-science tenor of candidate Trump, displaying a political consensus so strong that the only public outlier – Pay-Pal co-founder Peter Thiel – became the target of a shunning campaign from industry insiders. Even the generally apolitical Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebuked Trump and his supporters’ “fearful voices talking about building walls”.
.
But on Wednesday night Zuckerberg had a new message. “Feeling hopeful,” read the tag on a photograph Zuckerberg shared of himself and his infant daughter watching the election returns. In the caption, he wrote that “creat[ing] the world we want for our children” was “bigger than any presidency”. The accompanying emoji displayed wide, happy eyes and an eager grin.

And every time I hear about people organising against Trump on a ‘private’ Facebook Group, I just put my head in my hands.

Related to Paddy’s comment.

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Ed - November 11, 2016: Those clever Democratic-supporting liberals who thought you could leave behind the old-fashioned unions and embrace Silicon Valley as your natural constituency looking very smart now, eh? Union membership is still the best predictor that a white working-class American will vote Democrat. They’ll still be standing when all the tech-industry weasels are bowing and grovelling and offering to design a funky app for identifying illegal immigrants.

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: +1 to both your comments. They forgot the cardinal rule, direct personal engagement in workplaces, streets etc. There is no substitute and it is hard work. I really hope this torpedoes all the elections will be fought on social media line. As to Z – stuff him. He’s okay, insulated by privilege. Everyone else though…

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45. CL - November 11, 2016: ‘one of the leading Irish-American Republicans, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, looks set to lose his job after clashing with Trump during the campaign’-Fiach Kely, Irish Times, Nov 9

‘Trump’s transition team is staffed with long-time Washington experts and lobbyists from K Street, think tanks and political offices…
Establishment Republicans and allies of House Speaker Paul Ryan expect Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda to drive much of Trump’s administration, as Ryan has been working to promote it for years in the House and has even toured the country touting it.’
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/politics/donald-trump-transition-drain-the-swamp/

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46. CL - November 11, 2016: “It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy….

Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home.”
http://www2.nybooks.com/daily/s3/nov/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival.html

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47. Starkadder - November 11, 2016: On a related topic…can somebody give me some advice? I know this girl on a films website and consider her a platonic friend. She loves Japanese cinema and British theatre. She’s a wonderful person.

She’s just posted up a huge piece to me about how ” Hillary and the Saudis created ISIS”, how “The Hillary team with controlled the federal government”, how Trump “is a oaf but he lets open the possiblity of change for the better”, Putin wants “world peace and worldwide social justice” and how she believes everyone except Alex Jones and Russia Today are lying to the world.

How do you respond to that? It’s like your best friend unloading a two
hour hymn of praise to L. Ron Hubbard. How do I respond? Is there any way I can talk some sense into her?

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WorldbyStorm - November 11, 2016: Its very tricky, I had a similar enough conversation today with someone in work who is in all other respects sound, it really depends I think, do you try to put in counter arguments occasionally or do you agree to disagree. A lot depends on what you want, a friendship you value to continue, a greater sense of openness you equally value even st the risk of the friendship, or a commonality that you value which may not be part of this friendship at this rate. Maybe putting it that way it might help?

I’ve a friend who would be right wing, though not a Trump, US republican, part of our friendship is just knowing there’s stuff we won’t agree on but finding the stuff we do agree on and also having despite different ideologies shared senses of humour and kind of a courtesy. And fundamentally we like each other. But I’ll bet there’s people with similar views to his or even less pronounced views I couldn’t stand. And then there’s people who I agree with 100% who I just don’t get on with and vice versa. I think personality plays a lot there in what works and what doesn’t.

I had another friend from a different work about fifteen years ago, and we got on really well, but as time went on I realised he was kind of not so much racist but there was always a group who he’d comment on – single mothers for example, or later immigrants. I tried the countering his arguments stuff with facts but it didn’t work. He didn’t want to know (my Gran was a single mum in the forties and I’ve a number of friends who are immigrants but none of that got through). Initially it was low level enough to think it was unthinkingly repeating the media tropes but as time went on it got so bad in the end I just stopped communication – i figured he had to have someone to blame in his life and any successive group would do and it was getting more and more toxic .

But friendship is important and I’d always be loath to lose someone if it can be avoided. So perhaps this is a phase.

Probably best I don’t discuss the people who were adamant there were no Moon landings 😉

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48. Starkadder - November 11, 2016: ” friendship is important and I’d always be loath to lose someone if it can be avoided. So perhaps this is a phase.”

Might be best if we keep the friendship going and keep most politics out of it. Maybe she’ll realise the non-Putin side can’t be so bad if she can maintain a friendship with one.

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49. Starkadder - November 12, 2016: There are two letters from Thursday’s Irish Times that I feel are worthy of analysis.

The first, from Edward Horgan in Limerick, suggesting for Enda Kenny to resign for ” not appropriate for senior Irish politicians to intervene in the democratic process of foreign countries,”. Enda’s crime? Criticizing Donald Trump’s racism.

The second is by veteran right-wing activist,Kieron Wood, saying that Trump’s victory “ensured that the US supreme court will stay pro-life for the foreseeable future. Now for the battle here to retain the Eighth Amendment.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/american-revolution-coming-to-terms-with-donald-trump-the-president-elect-of-the-united-states-1.2861710

So the anti-abortion lobby will be encouraged future by Trump’s victory.

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CL - November 12, 2016: In the matter of racism Enda Kenny may have ‘dirty hands’.

“The familiy of Patrice Lumumba, the assassinated first Prime Minister of Congo, have demanded an apology from the Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who called the revered African liberation hero a ‘nigger’ in a racist joke.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/sep/15/world.race

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