The Great Divide

by cgrotke | Politics | 1491 Views

The US has elected Donald Trump.

Comments | 6

  • Submitted by KAlden on November 9, 2016 at 5:34 am

    Lots of words would fit

    Lots of words would fit waking up to this horrific news this morning but these song lyrics seem particularly fitting.”It’s the end of the world as we know it”
    We let hatred and ignorance and fear win this election and for that this country should be very ashamed.

  • Submitted by cgrotke on November 9, 2016 at 5:49 am

    An election unlike others

    Good morning everyone. Get a good night’s rest? I went to sleep at about 3am and am up again.

    This seems like an election that will be discussed and dissected for decades. I watched PBS commentators last night go from being happy to quickly report a Clinton easy victory based on all scientific data and polling, to being confused, to depressed, to soul searching and deep questioning by the late evening.

    Judy Woodruff cracked at one point. “What do they want?”she asked her fellow guests. “Voters like Obama by 55% but they just voted against continuing his policies!”

    This led to a long list of possible culprits:

    – voters lied to pollsters
    – pollsters missed voters
    – Bernie supporters caused it
    – Putin influenced the election
    – It was Comey!
    – maybe we’re out of touch insiders?
    – GOP had a good ground game
    – wikileaks!
    – Clinton ran a poor campaign
    – Not a year for incrementalism

    I heard young people blamed. I heard uneducated white women be blamed. I heard black and latino men get the blame.

    Then it got kind of morbid as they started doing the final math and realize that Clinton was boxed in and likely to lose.

    “I call this election for Vladimir Putin,” said David Brooks in an attempt to lighten it up.

    Others shouted from talking of various races and candidates to how America has a system of three branches of government, with checks and balances….

    They’d cut to the decorated-like-a-winner room with Clinton supporters, showing a silent crowd waiting for… something. Clinton didn’t concede. PBS talked of how sad it was for her, wanting and working for this since 2000. They said it was’t like being defeated by Obama, who was a really good politician. No, she was trounced by Trump, which must really sting, they said. They added that it was a repudiation of the Obama years, too.

    You could see the columnists on the panel trying to work out their next stories. David Brooks and Mark Shields kept floating theories… sort of trying them out with the others to see if the argument held. Brooks pointed out that this was in line with elections around the world that have been reactionary to the past few decades of globalism.

    They seemed to settle in on Trump being like Berlusconi in Italy. A nutty, media-empire fascist that stayed in power due to confusion of his opponents.

    There were occasional reports of world markets tanking as contrast to all of this.

    The soul searching analysis was quite interesting – how did we miss this so badly? was the essence. They had some good insights that would have been better to have had a month ago – maybe we’re not talking to the right people? Maybe we’re out of touch? Maybe we see things through insider lenses?

    As the night wrapped up, most agreed that they’d be waking up in an entirely new world.

    • Submitted by KAlden on November 9, 2016 at 6:28 am

      Lots of Bernie supporters

      Lots of Bernie supporters ended up coming over to Hilary- not exactly supporting her but voting for her because the alternative was so unimaginable. I think we can put the DNC at the top of the list of who’s to blame. Right from day one they put all their proverbial eggs in the Hilary basket. They gave no support to Sanders at all and, in fact, as we learned- did their best to make sure he didn’t get the nomination. Instead they supported a candidate who couldn’t beat Trump. A candidate who was disliked, distrusted, came armed with a lot of baggage ( whether it was true baggage or not didn’t really matter). She offered nothing but more of the same. I think had Bernie been treated as a viable candidate by the Democratic party and allowed a fighting chance to be the nominee we would be looking at a very different outcome this morning.
      And, now we see all these calls to fight! to organize! to affect change! Where were all these people when we had a candidate who wanted to do all of those things? Now we have to figure out how to survive having a fascist, racist, sexual predator for the leader of this country. Maybe we got exactly what we deserve?

      • Submitted by cgrotke on November 9, 2016 at 7:45 am

        Not Nadered

        It did seem like the DNC put their eggs in the wrong basket. No way to know, but would the results be the same if it had been a Trump-Sanders contest?

        Where were the people? The most ardent Clinton voters I knew personally didn’t have lawn signs or do organizing for her. They seemed to rely on hoping, wishing, and assuming we’re better than this. They saw Trump as Hitler and could not believe that Hitler could be elected.

        The cynic in me says they were too busy playing with Facebook and patting themselves on the back for not being a deplorable. But the realist says it was the DNC and Clinton campaign that blew it. Appeal to the left in primaries but then tack right for the general… it doesn’t work. And neither does collusion.

        A follow up is – does the left regret not pushing Obama harder to roll back torture, spying, drones, nuclear weapons, and presidential power overreach in the last 8 years? He didn’t want to look backwards. Now Trump has all these tools to play with.

        Lise and I are currently choosing songs for our radio show tonight on WVEW at 7pm. 107.7 fm. We’ve found some interesting musical commentary on where we are and where we might be headed.

  • Submitted by cgrotke on November 11, 2016 at 6:28 am

    New analysis

    New thought. This election was like the OJ trial.

    The prosecutor, Marcia Clark/Hillary Clinton made a case using facts, laws, process, rules, evidence…

    The defense, Johnny Cochran/ Donald Trump, told the jury to ignore all evidence and send a message.

    The jury sent a message, regardless of the bloody gloves.

    • Submitted by spinoza on November 11, 2016 at 6:49 am

      A Piece of It

      You’re closing in. Shows the poison of celebrity, and complicity of media. Need to add- from same era- Rodney King. How inured we are to our institutional racism.

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