The December 3, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 3, 2016

“Donald Trump risks opening up a major diplomatic dispute with China before he has even been inaugurated after speaking on the phone on Friday with Tsai Ying-wen, the president of Taiwan,” the Financial Times reports.

“The telephone call, confirmed by three people, is believed to be the first between a US president or president-elect and a leader of Taiwan since diplomatic relations between the two were cut in 1979.”

“Although it is not clear if the Trump transition team intended the conversation to signal a broader change in US policy towards Taiwan, the call is likely to infuriate Beijing which regards the island as a renegade province.”

Jonathan Chait: “Consider how the world looked eight years ago. The Republicans lost power amid having let Osama bin Laden and his followers escape in Afghanistan, launched a failed war on the basis of misleading intelligence, managed a scandal-ridden administration stuffed with hacks, handed off an economy plunging into the worst crisis since the Great Depression, and had its outgoing president’s approval ratings bottoming out in the 20s. Barack Obama leaves office with a growing economy throwing off wage gains up and down the income ladder, and with a president whose approval rating has risen into the upper 50s. Some conservative intellectuals tried to grapple with their party’s governing failure in the Bush years, but their mental exertions wound up having no bearing at all on the circumstances that brought their party back to power. Sometimes there is no moral, just a bunch of stuff that happens.”

“The party that needs to search its soul about whether it has the capacity to govern competently is not the one out of power. And what should concern Democrats is not whether they’ll get back in power but what will be left of the country when they do.”

Paul Krugman: “Donald Trump won the Electoral College (though not the popular vote) on the strength of overwhelming support from working-class whites, who feel left behind by a changing economy and society. And they’re about to get their reward — the same reward that, throughout Mr. Trump’s career, has come to everyone who trusted his good intentions. Think Trump University.”

“Yes, the white working class is about to be betrayed.”

“The evidence of that coming betrayal is obvious in the choice of an array of pro-corporate, anti-labor figures for key positions. In particular, the most important story of the week — seriously, people, stop focusing on Trump Twitter — was the selection of Tom Price, an ardent opponent of Obamacare and advocate of Medicare privatization, as secretary of health and human services. This choice probably means that the Affordable Care Act is doomed — and Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters will be among the biggest losers.”

Associated Press: Trump voter lost her home to new Treasury Secretary

Despite voter fraud concerns espoused by Donald Trump and his presidential campaign, a new Dartmouth study finds that “are not grounded in any observable features of the 2016 presidential election.”

The researchers specifically looked at two sets of states recently highlighted as potentially problematic: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the subject of ongoing recount efforts) and California, New Hampshire, and Virginia (three states cited personally by Trump).

I guess she is not getting the VA Secretary job after all. And she is right. It is crony capitalism.



Susan Glasser: “I have a different and more existential fear today about the future of independent journalism and its role in our democracy. And you should too. Because the media scandal of 2016 isn’t so much about what reporters failed to tell the American public; it’s about what they did report on, and the fact that it didn’t seem to matter.”

Josh Marshall says Trump is playing with matches and gas with Taiwan:

This Trump call to the President of Taiwan is as dangerous as it sounds. What makes it even crazier is that we don’t really know if this is a considered and deliberate provocation, an accident because Trump doesn’t even know the diplomatic protocol on this or just something some China hawk aide talked him into while he was eating a Taco salad. […]

But here’s the other thing in the mix. Before this happened there was already news in the Taiwanese press that Trump and his children are in talks to build a series of luxury resorts and hotels in Taiwan. (The link is to an English language discussion in Shanghaiist since the originals are in Chinese.) The One China Policy is a complex and not entirely logical way that all sides tacitly agree to keep kicking the status of Taiwan can down the road and into the future forever.

I use a safety pins. You see, when fat men wear suits, tying a tie regularly, with the smaller back portion of the tie being secured through the loop, the tie’s front side end point comes down to an end half down your shirt. It’s why Trump both wears extra long ties. But even then, it’s not enough. But scotch tape? On fabric? I imagine that doesn’t work too much. Safety pins, Donald. Safety pins.

Emma Green points to an interesting finding in the new study by the Public Religion Research Institute.

In general, they [white evangelicals] are worried about America becoming weak: 64 percent of white evangelicals “completely” or “mostly” agreed that “society as a whole has become too soft and feminine,” compared to 48 percent of white mainline Protestants, 40 percent of Catholics, and 35 percent of people who are religiously unaffiliated.

These evangelicals obviously don’t hang out with some of the women I know. The proper adjective to equate with feminine is tough and smart, not soft. But it does explain their inexplicable support for Trump.

Susan J. Douglas at In These Times writes about The Woman Who Might Have Been President:

It’s time to talk about sexism.

So now, here we are, at the end of a long campaign in which the Republican candidate has injected the body politic with massive new doses of racism, xenophobia, attacks on a free press, conspiracy theories, and a dark, soured vision about the state of the country—and, let’s not forget, misogyny. While the conventional wisdom held that authoritarianism, racial prejudice and ethnocentrism were the main drivers of Trump’s support, my colleague Nick Valentino at the University of Michigan and his collaborators found in forthcoming research that “hostile sexism” was “more powerful than authoritarianism” and “nearly as important as ethnocentrism” as a predictor of support for Trump. This was especially true for men, and “voter anger” multiplied the effects of sexism. The researchers concluded that “sexism is a powerful determinant of voter choice in 2016.”

Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. Her penchant for privacy—not surprising given what the Republicans and the national press have put her through since 1992—was her Achilles heel, leading to the use of a private email server that came to symbolize her alleged untrustworthiness. It also led her to be not adroit enough with the media. Hillary misread the country: the fury about the wages of neoliberalism—which, yes, she embodied—that was gripping people, young and old, on the Right and the Left. Thus, she didn’t have a galvanizing progressive message that, as the Sanders campaign demonstrated, millions were hungering for, even some white men feeling they’ve been left behind.

But can we please remember this: In 2015, Hillary Clinton was listed by Gallup, for a record 20th time, as the woman Americans admired most. So we must come to terms with this sad fact, as Penn State professor Terri Vescio put it, “The more female politicians are seen as striving for power, the less they’re trusted and the more moral outrage gets directed at them.” Not all Trump voters are misogynists, but sexism played a role in his victory, as evidenced, in part, by all the Trump regalia calling Hillary a “bitch.”

“U.S. employers hired at a steady clip in November while the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in nine years, signs of enduring labor-market growth that will likely leave Federal Reserve officials on track to raise interest rates later this month,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 178,000 in November from the prior month, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.6% from 4.9% in October as some people found jobs while others dropped out of the workforce. At 4.6%, the rate is the lowest since August 2007. Economists expected 180,000 new jobs and a jobless rate of 4.9% in November.”

Out next month: Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail by Jonathan Chait.

“An unassailable case that, in the eyes of history, Barack Obama will be viewed as one of America’s best and most accomplished presidents.”

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