The December 9, 2016 Thread
Trump named TIME's "Person of the Year," promptly criticizes them for not calling it "Man of the Year" pic.twitter.com/el1EkJ4byh
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) December 9, 2016
“Donald Trump will continue to hold the title of executive producer for the television show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ after taking office, foreshadowing an unorthodox presidency in which the commander in chief has a hand in the world of reality TV,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s name will be listed in the credits of the NBC show that he once hosted, according to details of the arrangement confirmed by a representative of the show. Such credits in Hollywood often come with a paycheck, though the representative did not disclose whether Trump will be compensated.”
So NBC will pay a salary to the President. Yeah. No conflict there at all.
WHOA: Andrew Puzder, Trump's pick for Labor Sec., was accused of beating his wife in multiple separate incidents. https://t.co/oI4ztWqo1z pic.twitter.com/IllcGPUvOw
— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) December 8, 2016
David Nir at Daily Kos points out that the Democrats won a victory this week by growing a spine and standing up to the GOP:
Earlier this week, Republicans threatened to throw one of their patented—and very dangerous—tantrums: Allow us to ram through a special amendment to allow retired General James Mattis to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of defense—or else we’ll shut down the government. But guess what happened? Democrats told Republicans to get bent, and the GOP meekly complied. […]
Led by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrats said they’d filibuster a special amendment that would let Mattis take the defense secretary job even though he only retired from active duty three years ago. For very good reason, federal law requires that members of the armed forces wait seven years before taking senior defense posts, to ensure firm civilian control over the military—a bedrock foundation of democracy.
Trump and the GOP don’t care about such principles, of course, so they’re raring to pass a special piece of legislation to lift this seven-year restriction for Mattis. But with Democrats set on filibustering the amendment, Republicans then suggested they’d attach it to a must-pass spending bill that would keep the government running past Friday. In other words, give us our way on Mattis, or we’ll shut the federal government down.
The threat proved to be hollow, though. Democrats all but invited Republicans to bring it on, remembering just how poorly things went for the GOP the last time they closed down the government. And guess what? When Republicans released the text of their spending bill, the special amendment for Mattis was nowhere to be found—a victory for the Democrats.
Trump will still push Mattis next year, and he may yet get confirmed. But in order to do so, he’ll need 60 votes, rather than the usual 50 for cabinet appointees.
Drunk men screaming 'Trump' attack Muslim straphanger https://t.co/uuUTQr3mft pic.twitter.com/iN7tQCGmDr
— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) December 9, 2016
Speaking on behalf of all white males, if you, as a white male, do not intervene when something like this happens in public, you are endorsing it. I don’t care if you might die in doing so. You intervene. If you die, you go to heaven.
So the TPP is still out there, and Nick Timiraos noticed about his cabinet:
President-elect Donald Trump railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his way to winning the White House and has vowed immediately to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation accord. Several of his cabinet picks and other early nominees to top posts, however, have endorsed or spoken favorably about the trade pact, including Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, announced Wednesday as Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to China, and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, Mr. Trump’s pick to head the Department of Defense…
Gen. Mattis joined 16 other retired military leaders and former defense secretaries in a May 2015 letter to congressional leaders that said TPP would help the U.S. maintain a geopolitical advantage in Asia… Another signatory to that letter: David Petraeus, the retired general who ran the Central Intelligence Agency and who has been considered by Mr. Trump for secretary of state. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., also considered candidates for the secretary of state post, have supported the TPP…
Wilbur Ross Jr., Mr. Trump’s nominee for Commerce secretary, has been extremely critical of the TPP in recent interviews, but he signed a letter in support of the agreement last year to the New York congressional delegation… Vice President-elect Mike Pence also supported the TPP as Indiana governor, but he said he changed his mind on the trade accord, and other multilateral deals, after he discussed the issue with Mr. Trump this past July.
The TPP will survive. Trump will make a change to it and then force a vote on it. And all the idiot Bernie Bros who favored Trump over Clinton will cry, and their tears will be delicious.
Chart: Wide age, education differences in post-election views of Trump https://t.co/kkdcf5k0DW pic.twitter.com/n1WzgpcdFW
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) December 8, 2016
Josh Marshall on the consequences of Obamacare repeal:
The total number set to lose their coverage is a bit over 23 million Americans (23,134,000). Of those, 12,311,000 lose their Medicaid expansion-based coverage; 8,963,000 are exchange purchasers who benefit from significant federal subsidies; 1,390,000 are young adults under the age of 26 who are allowed to remain on their parents plans; a final 470,000 are basic health care plan enrollees in Minnesota and New York. […]
And here’s something even more interesting, partial repeal turns out to be worse than full repeal. The Urban Institute has a new study showing something that seems paradoxical, but actually makes sense if you know the way the health insurance industry has integrated with and remade itself to operate with the ACA. Urban Institute’s numbers of people who lose insurance is slightly lower than Gaba’s numbers. They project 22.5 million as opposed to Gaba’s 23.124. But if repeal is partial, they project an additional 7.3 million would lose their coverage. That brings the total to 29.8 million, close to 10 percent of the people in the entire country.
Why would partial repeal hurt more people than full repeal? Well, in this case partial repeal means repealing the money (the incentives) without the regulatory structure. In the words of the Urban Institute study: “The additional 7.3 million people become uninsured because of the near collapse of the nongroup insurance market.” Basically you’re leaving the regulations intact but removing the money that makes them possible. So everything goes haywire and you get a lot of collateral damage. Why would you do that? Simple. The rules of the Senate allow you to do that with 50 votes. It’s politically easier to destroy care for an additional 7 million people.
ICYMI: Donald Trump is going to get somebody killed: https://t.co/WvprnGQVNw
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) December 8, 2016
More Josh Marshall:
As long as the President is making deals or allowing others to make them on his behalf, he has an open channel to accept payoffs from everyone. Domestic ones are just corrupt. Foreign ones may violate the constitution. They’re all the big money. Even for Trump.
The register is open for payoffs from everyone. Everyone. It seems like he wants to get the payoffs. If he doesn’t the only way he can prevent it is stopping the deal making, which obviously means divesting himself of the companies. I think that is the only way for him to stop the payoffs. The President shouldn’t be taking personal payoffs from people who want to buy a piece of the presidency. It’s bad enough we let something like that happen with campaign contributions. But we’ve never allowed Presidents to pocket the money.
How Trump's favorability compares to other past president-elects:
1993, Clinton: +40
2001, Bush: +27
2009, Obama: +64
2016, Trump: -21 pic.twitter.com/RFFhH2hviT— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) December 8, 2016
Jonathan Chait says Donald Trump has proven liberals and Democrats right about the Tea Party:
Time magazine’s profile of Donald Trump, its Man of the Year, notes, “he has little patience for the organizing principle of the Tea Party: the idea that the federal government must live within its means and lower its debts.” What’s astonishing about this sentence, which appears in a generally fascinating and well-done story, is its casual acceptance of the premise that fiscal discipline is, or was, the tea party’s organizing principle.
When the tea party appeared on the scene in 2009, an intense partisan dispute broke out as to just what this movement represented. Conservatives insisted that what spurred protesters into streets and town halls were the timeless principles of conservative movement thought: advocacy of balanced budgets, adherence to a strict constructionist version of the Constitution, opposition to “crony capitalism,” and skepticism of Keynesian economics. Liberals suggested a different explanation. The tea party was an expression of ethno-nationalist rage centered around a black president and the belief that his coalition stood for redistribution from older, white America to its younger, more diverse supporters. Reports by close students of the phenomenon, like Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, or Stanley Greenberg, revealed that deep-seated fear of demographic change rather than abstract constitutional or economic principles lay at the heart of the revolt against Obama.
Trump's pick for Labor Secretary is a complete betrayal of the working class: https://t.co/x9L26GRAjn
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) December 8, 2016
President-elect Donald Trump “in the final weeks of the election paid nearly $2.9 million to family-owned companies, according to his latest Federal Election Commission disclosure—a third of the total amount he had previously paid his businesses over the course of the campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The total Mr. Trump spent over the course of the campaign on family-owned companies and reimbursing his children for travel: $12 million.”
Per Pew, most Americans don't like what they are seeing in the Trump transition. That's unusual. pic.twitter.com/Z1gZyxJmrp
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) December 8, 2016
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) offers a warning to Republicans in the New York Times:
Despite the fact that your nominee lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, your leaders have announced their intention to repeal the Affordable Care Act early in the next Congress, with no replacement. This is a dramatic misreading of your mandate. It will lead you into a quagmire that will cause pain for millions of Americans and bedevil you for the next four years.
Repealing Obamacare will take health insurance away from millions of Americans — as many as 30 million, by one recent estimate. It will raise premiums and throw health insurance markets into disarray. Public support for repeal is low, and support for repeal without a replacement is in the basement.
If you continue down this path, you will be letting your reflexive opposition to President Obama’s legacy cloud your judgment. I was in the Senate when President George W. Bush misread his mandate and sought to privatize Social Security. His administration never recovered.
Rick Klein: “In his month as president-elect, Donald Trump has used Tweets to blast protesters upset with his election; threaten a government contract awarded to a company opposing his agenda; falsely claim that he won the popular vote if you only count the votes of legal citizens; and attack a local union head – a private citizen – who went on television to question the accuracy of his claims of saved jobs. This isn’t crossing lines – it’s scribbling over the old ones, and redrawing the boundaries of propriety even before Trump takes office.”
“One question for those who might seek to challenge the president is how they react to this new reality. Trump won’t change – but will efforts to draw him out adjust? When a president reacts to cable news, or online chatter, the spotlight will be on not just the president but on the person or entities under attack.”
A Daily Thread wouldn’t be complete w/o something like this:
“The TPP will survive. Trump will make a change to it and then force a vote on it. And all the idiot Bernie Bros who favored Trump over Clinton will cry, and their tears will be delicious. ”
Seriously, get over this shit.
RE: the Harry Reid piece, does anyone here believe Republicans care about governing mandates? That their presidential candidate lost the popular vote by millions of votes? I mean that would have to imply that GOP has a moral rudder. And everything since November 8 as shown a continuing lack of such a steering device. I just don’t see it.
Look at Trump’s cabinet picks. All people who essentially stand in complete opposite position of everything. Climate change, health insurance, labor unions, wages, *everything*.
I don’t think they give a damn about mandates.
El Som, I am still not over Nader from 2000. I won’t be over this until at least Empress Ivanka III’s Golden Jubilee.
I agree with El Som. Grown up.
Sorry, the petulant leftist (example Susan Sarandon) who wanted Trump to win over Hillary will forever be a target for scorn on my part.
Yep, Susan Sarandon cost Hillary the election.
Still love her scene with the lemons in ‘Atlantic City’ though…
If I were permitted to comment on this and disobey Cassandra executive fiat that I can only join the conversation when she allows it, I’d agreed with El Som (and Jason).
It’s bad enough that throughout the primary season we were called misogynist Bros who didn’t understand how politics worked. Then through the general election campaign we were browbeaten with how preposterous Trump was and that, even through HRC wasn’t a “perfect candidate” – hey – nobody’s perfect. So we did the moral and intelligent thing and voted for Clinton.
Then we get the result. Now again, I never asked for an apology. Don’t want one. What I would like is some fucking humility. Who backs the wrong horse then gets sanctimonious and shitty about it? You’re a very strange person.
Someone alert me the next time Susan Sarandon comes trolling around here so I can block her IP address.
On to things we agree on:
“Speaking on behalf of all white males, if you, as a white male, do not intervene when something like this happens in public, you are endorsing it. I don’t care if you might die in doing so. You intervene. If you die, you go to heaven.”
Agree 100%. We all have to be ready to jump in. If we fail to do so we are failing at being Americans, and worse… we are failing at living life as decent human beings.
What I would like is some fucking humility. Who backs the wrong horse then gets sanctimonious and shitty about it? You’re a very strange person.
What is strange is this presumption that a wrong horse was backed, when that horse beat her competition with or without the people on this blog. This is not FOX News where you get to create your own reality. What is strange is that there is supposed to be some humility when we have a President-Elect who is at the forefront of the Noose Brigade. I for one am not feeling at all humiliated and can’t afford to. So if you somehow need some humility, you’ll need to keep looking.
Oh boy. Here we go again. Thanks DD … Keep up the Clinton gloating, it is working out SUPER great!!
Except she didn’t beat her competition. Otherwise, she’d be President.
An inconvenient truth, but true.
She beat her primary competition — and any discussion of backing the wrong horse comes from that, right?
An inconvenient truth, but true.
And while we’re all here looking for humility, I’m looking for some humility from the folks who continued to spin out the lazy business about Democrats and Republicans being the same. Unless, of course, you can look at the Cabinet of Deplorables being assembled and can still make the same observation.
You’d think that BushCo would have been fresher in memory.
You’re missing the point, Cassandra. Humility about everyone’s assumptions and behavior. We’re going to see a huge dose of reality on the National Mall on 20 January and Fox News didn’t create it. It’s not a fiction. It’s happening. So this sanctimonious pretense that she “beat her competition” seems very strange indeed and mostly because she didn’t do what you’re claiming she did. That’s what I’m objecting to.
As far as being up for the fight, I’m doing everything to prepare myself and to rally others. On this we agree. I’m treating this as a grave threat to almost everything I stand for. So yes it’s not time to feel humiliation. Just stop saying we did everything correctly and “beat the competition.” It’s embarrassing.
Wow, the primary! Michael Dukakis beat his primary competition as well… this is the problem. You raise that issue like it means something. It doesn’t.
And you never heard me saying the candidates or the parties were the same. Never ever. I sucked it up and did the moral and proper and intelligent thing.
You have a huge chip on your shoulder and the fight ahead is going to be much tougher if you keep carrying that thing around. See what I’m saying?
No, it comes from being perhaps the only D in the country who could lose to Trump, right? We all got on board after she won the nomination, but she lost. Those of you who disagreed with our primary support for Bernie called us misogynists, sexists, Bernie Bros, and the like.
You essentially shouted down anyone who disagreed with you. After she ran a horrible campaign, you’re STILL shouting down those who stood with you even as you backed the wrong horse.
Which, by the way, is why we see fewer of our best commenters even commenting any more. Either move on and get to addressing the issues we now face, or put up that banner of Hillary and Kaine again, and change the name of the blog to ‘Delaware Ineffectuals’, or the like.
Then go looking for new contributors. I, for one, am not staying around if all you are gonna do is relitigate this disastrous candidacy for the foreseeable future.
Hear, hear, El Som.
Ok, everyone chill the fuck out. Look, we are not going to agree on this. I apologize for even mentioning TPP and Bernie Bros this morning. Jason was right, I picked a scab.
So my fault, everyone back to their corners.
You essentially shouted down anyone who disagreed with you. After she ran a horrible campaign, you’re STILL shouting down those who stood with you even as you backed the wrong horse.
And so right here is the problem. I shouted down no one. And I didn’t back the wrong horse. If you are looking for me to share your multiple excuses for Clinton Derangement Syndrome, then you get pushback. That’s gonna be the rule. If you don’t want to hear it, then stop doing it.
There are real reasons for criticism and I’m delighted to be a part of those discussions. But not Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Because that means (to me) that you haven’t a clue what the next battlefield looks like. If we’re just going to do the lazy stuff, then I’m not shutting up about that. And if you don’t like it, feel free to move on.
I’m in my corner, until the rules of engagement get crossed.
There’s definitely a derangement syndrome. That’s very clear.
You don’t run this fucking blog, Cassandra. You don’t unilaterally make the rules. Labeling something Clinton Derangement Syndrome is both lazy and intellectually dishonest. It’s a way to avoid discussing failings of the campaign. “Oh, you have CDR.” Calling others lazy is your lazy MO.
And if you don’t believe that you’re shouting anybody down, go back and read your recent exchanges with Anonymous. Keep chasing people away, it’s great for the blog.
so, cassandra, if you “didn’t back the wrong horse,” are you happy about trump? because, you know, the horse that was nominated lost.
You don’t run this fucking blog, Cassandra. You don’t unilaterally make the rules.
I run my own engagement on this blog and for *that* I do make the rules. Certainly you will not be making the rule for how I engage here.
It’s the Clinton Derangement Syndrome that is lazy. It was lazy when the GOP did it when Bill was President, it was lazy when she was running in 2008 and it is lazy when so-called progressives take up the same plumage. I’ve been consistent about that all season. Because this is supposed to be a stand-in for seriously engaging in the reality of either her policies or her campaign.
I didn’t shout down anybody. He has been working this line for awhile — start with some stupid Clinton comment and when challenged shift to an economic argument accompanied with a demand that we stop paying attention to identity politics when identity politics is what won this election for Trump. He left because I pointed out the habits. And it isn’t as though Anonymous wasn’t more than capable of shouting down and insulting everyone he felt needed it — he just couldn’t hang.
Yeah, that. Or maybe he realized it was a waste of time to discuss anything with someone who never admits she’s wrong. ‘Couldn’t hang’. Seriously.
BTW, still waiting for your stealth proof that Sean Barney is a progressive. You sure didn’t try to shout anyone down on that one, did you?
So how do you know El Som has lost the thread? He starts talking about Sean Barney.
There’s no stealth proof. You could certainly see it in his campaign for House Rep. (once you got past the war vet stuff). And you would have seen it yourself if you had ever taken Sean up on his many offers to meet with you to discuss your issues. But as usual, we can’t have your lazy narratives challenged, even by the one person who was entitled to that. Because who would be your go-to bad guy then?
Both sides of this dumb argument are so dumb. Clinton lost. I think we can all agree on that. Some of us liked her some didn’t but we all voted for her. Why keep pretending that she ran a great a campaign when the results prove, without question, that she didn’t?
Now it is all just arguing of the sake of arguing.
I agree. I made a dumb comment about Bernie Bros which in turn allowed dumb comments about Hillary, and then we were off to the races. Time to put it all behind us. My apologies for starting this.
I continually appreciate the way a litany of different contributors and commenters over the years have the same criticism of Cassandra. Which she then goes and reproduces over and over and over, while at same time claiming she isn’t doing it. It’s actually has a certain sick brilliance.
It takes two hands to count the people who’ve pointed this out. But there she is like a 3rd grader getting the final word… and doing the exact shit everyone has said she’s doing. It’s really an incredible feat.
I’m going to chalk this up to an internet thing. Oh and go ahead and get your last word in now. I know how much it means to you. I’m off.
I agree with jason that we need to be looking forward at the apocalypse rather than back at the catastrophe. But I’m also a historian …
So let’s point out something:
cassandra has a very specific sticking point. When people say Clinton was a shitty candidate and the Dems were wrong to nominate her, she reiterates what she has been saying all along …
–She personally supported Clinton and her policies …
–Clinton won the nomination by defeating a strong opponent, and did so by showing strength among the women and minorities, where she would have to be strong in order to win …
–There was no other stronger candidate either interested or available, especially once Biden bowed out. Martin O’Malley?
What cassandra is saying is that the position she held was consistent throughout the primaries and the general election, and that it was up to the people in the Democratic Party to either (a) come up with a better candidate (they didn’t); or (b) throw in everything to go all out to defeat Trump when it was clear that she was the nominee (many of them didn’t). She’s not going to apologize for that, and I can’t really say I blame her.
Cassandra is disagreeing with people on her in the same manner in which most contributors on here have. Why is it labeled “shouting down” for her?
DD, stirs the pot. So much infighting.