WHERE ARE WE NOW
After this year’s elections we can be sure we still live in a very disunited states. The single most predictive issue yesterday’s voting: President Trump. In states or districts where Trump gets 50% approval, or better, the Republicans generally won. More evidence that the so-called political party is now little more than a personality cult of the Great Trumpster. Where Trump scores less than 50% the Democrats usually won. It appears that Joe Manchin is the only red state Democratic Senator to survive re-election. Failure stalked red state Dems elsewhere, from Florida to North Dakota. Two of the more egregious Republicans lost governor races—Kobach in Kansas and Scott Walker in formerly progressive Wisconsin, now just another Rust Belt state of confusion. Trump’s approval there—48%. Altogether Dems captured at least 7 more governorships.
In Congress there will be more women members than ever before—around 100. There will 31 women in the House serving a first term, 29 of those are Dems.
In all states and most races money was a crucial factor. Democrats out-raised Republicans in many areas and through national efforts for the first time, and we have Trump as the reason for that. You may oppose or loath the man. You cannot ignore him as he dominates American media as no single person ever has or ever should. His slightest tweet, regardless of degree of sense or prevarication, gets spread around until people are sick of it or enthralled. His overweening sense of importance and grandeur drives opponents to take action…the opposite of Jerry Ford or even John Boehner who could barely engender a shrug from opponents. Money will continue to drive American politics as nobody seems to care that market-driven elections are not the best things for Americans, the planet or the future of life on earth. The media are not going to expose any issues around campaign buying…much of that money goes to the media eventually, so….
There are more Democrats than Republicans and independents seemed to have broken for Dems on a national basis. 57% of all senate votes this tie were for Democratic candidates. But those votes are always concentrated in cities and suburban areas of large cities. Doesn’t take many votes to elect a Republican in Montana or North Dakota or other states with little population. Demos so dominate New York and California, closed the vote gap in Texas, so the lop-sided raw vote tallies are cancelled out by our old, pro-slavery rural-state loving constitution. With fewer state houses and governorships in their pocket You can expect the right-wing, constitutional convention plans to recede back into the game closet where they will fester until the next right-wing eruption. Now we can look forward to two more years of Trump campaigning…for himself this time, not just about himself.
A tiny footnote on the lawn-order party that the Repubs used to pretend to be. Not only does the national party condone the shenanigans of a crime family behaving as if government activities are for the good of Trump properties everywhere, the local Republican voters returned two indicted GOP Congressmen to the House. Clearly laws are for black people, immigrants, uppity women…not upstanding white males of the Republican persuasion. For balance, Sen. Menendez won re-election easily in New Jersey which has never been accused of being a state rife with probity.
Jeff Sessions won’t be around long enough to worry about it, but now Michigan makes it ten states that have okayed recreational (and, I must add, self-medicating) marijuana. And then there is all of Canada, joining Uruguay. Seems like a bit of a turn away from the old war on drugs. Just say yes?
Trump? More rallies and nonsense railing. More and more tweets. More paranoia as he purges the Justice Department. Does Mueller have time to make his indictments and report? Will the next wave of DOJ appointees drop all the cases? Can Trump apply sufficient pressure to the New York prosecutor’s office of DOJ to stop the cases there? Still he will face the House of Representatives going after his use of private business for government matters, getting foreign visitors to stay in his properties, etc. There is the climate change lawsuit by the kids…the emoluments lawsuit…and anything and everything to do with Wikileaks and Donald, JR. and Ruskie agents…oh we will spend much time listening to legal experts analyze this filing or that deposition or the next indictment.
Eventually some of the refugee caravan will reach the U.S. border. Will the razor wire be ruled legal? Will the Army stay there and razorwire the whole border in lieu of the wall that Dems will never fund? Will the first rock thrown bring a deadly barrage of gunfire from American soldiers? What will Mexico do? Will DACA die or live? Now that battle will be fought both in Congress and in courts.
Will Trump force a government shutdown in December if he doesn’t get his wall funded? Will the defeated Repubs in the House try to push through his promised next tax cut before they lose power? Will Paul Ryan jump from a sixth floor window to escape having to move back to Janesville? Or will he simply take a position as Dean of College for Bob Jones University…
It is safe to assume there will be no new legislation to kill Obamacare, giving Trump two more years of railing and subterfuge to undermine, he’ll lie and generally target any poor person who thinks he or she has any right to not die from an infection or car crash or stroke. The very idea…who gave poor people the right to live anyway? They’re so easy to replace, what’s their economic value, I ask you?
The culture wars will continue as the new Confederacy tries to force most of the nation to live by its patriarchal, pro-Christian, white-is-right, anti-intellectual prejudices. Like Isis in the Mideast the Trump brand of Confederate nativism and anti-progressive, pro-corporate rancor will become more violent, more desperate, more obvious in its attempts to control and intimidate. “Lock ‘em up” is how the hardcore Trumpers feel about anybody who does not agree with them1. That means more shootings and more bombing attempts and more vans onto the sidewalk as the fringe, unstable, angry, violent, well-armed white males act out what they hear being said by the world’s most powerful white man and his allies on Fox News and at the NRA and all those billionaire-funded “think tanks” that spew out crud to prove how efficient markets are and how honest corporations are compared to liberal politicians. The first sign of natural justice in some years will be if the next Wall Street fiasco begins during Trump’s two-year campaign for re-election. Could be, corporate debt is the new bubble and Trump’s trade inanity is de-stabilizing several parts of the interlocked world economy. It won’t be boring.
- Rebecca Solnit is one of my favorite American writers and here’s her take on the new Confederacy and the on-going, chronic civil war in America: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/04/the-american-civil-war-didnt-end-and-trump-is-a-confederate-president
Here is a second piece by a different writer on fascism as something to fight and not debate:
https://lithub.com/fascism-is-not-an-idea-to-be-debated-its-a-set-of-actions-to-fight/
Veblen21 