The January 2, 2017 Thread

The New Yorker asks What is Trumpism?: “Now that Trump is the President-elect, plenty of prominent conservatives are hoping that he will govern as a reliably conservative Republican. Decius, the faceless blogger, is hoping instead that Trump’s Presidency will mark the dawn of a new kind of conservative movement. He is one of a handful of pro-Trump intellectuals who have been laboring to establish an ideological foundation for the political tendency sometimes known as Trumpism.”

“Politicians, as a rule, do not trouble themselves overmuch with the opinions of intellectuals, and Trump is unusually untroubled by debates about political philosophy. But these intellectuals—a group that includes anonymous bloggers and prominent academics—maintain that he does have a distinctive world view. In their argument, his unpredictable remarks and seemingly disparate proposals conceal a relatively coherent theory of governance, rooted in conservative political thought, which could provide an antidote to a Republican Party grown rigid and ineffective.”

President Obama “will give a farewell address next week from Chicago, his hometown, most likely his last chance to defend his legacy directly to the country before Donald J. Trump is sworn in,” the New York Times reports.

Look at these strong, smiling, popular men! How the media covered the rise of Hitler & Mussolini https://t.co/4VDHXkVvYd via @SmithsonianMag

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 2, 2017

Gallup: “As Donald Trump prepares to take the presidential oath on Jan. 20, less than half of Americans are confident in his ability to handle an international crisis (46%), to use military force wisely (47%) or to prevent major scandals in his administration (44%). At least seven in 10 Americans were confident in Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in these areas before they took office.”

“Americans express somewhat more confidence in Trump to work effectively with Congress (60%), to handle the economy effectively (59%), to defend U.S. interests abroad as president (55%), and to manage the executive branch effectively (53%). But even in these areas, Americans are far less confident in Trump than they were in his predecessors, when comparisons are available.”

All of Donald Trump’s known conflicts of interest in one place https://t.co/u7Mexfzoja via @voxdotcom

— Howard Dean (@GovHowardDean) January 2, 2017

Politico: “Since Republicans will control all the levers of power in Washington for the first time in almost a decade, they’ll hit the ground running on some issues: Both chambers, for example, hope to pass a budget blueprint that makes a critical down payment on repealing Obamacare even before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.”

“But it won’t take long for the inherent divide between Senate and House Republicans to rear its head. The House wants to pass a number of bills to scrap Obama-era rules and curb executive branch regulatory powers. But those will be a much heavier lift in the upper chamber.”

America Becomes a Stan https://t.co/1AHaSJNILO

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 2, 2017

Politico: “From Moscow, Vladimir Putin has seized the momentum of this unraveling, exacting critical damage to the underpinnings of the liberal world order in a shockingly short time. As he builds a new system to replace the one we know, attempts by America and its allies to repair the damage have been limited and slow. Even this week, as Barack Obama tries to confront Russia’s open and unprecedented interference in our political process, the outgoing White House is so far responding to 21st century hybrid information warfare with last century’s diplomatic toolkit: the expulsion of spies, targeted sanctions, potential asset seizure. The incoming administration, while promising a new approach, has betrayed a similar lack of vision. Their promised attempt at another ‘reset’ with Russia is a rehash of a policy that has utterly failed the past two American administrations.”

“What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.”

Jeff Stein on the Age Gap, which explains my hatred of old people:

If you’re under 35, odds are you were upset by the results of the 2016 presidential election. That’s not because young voters had any particular love for Hillary Clinton — she did slightly worse with them than Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012 — but because millennials’ dislike of Donald Trump has been off the charts.

The situation is reversed when it comes to older voters. Voters over age 45 broke for Trump over Clinton by about 9 percentage points. And that outcome fits a broader trend in American politics: Younger voters strongly favor Democrats, while older voters strongly favor Republicans.

Those political sentiments seem to be driving attitudes about the economy. We’re still weeks away from Donald Trump’s inauguration, but Trump’s win has already made older Americans more bullish on the country.

Washington Post: “Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that Democrats will home in especially on Rex Tillerson, Trump’s choice for secretary of state; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), his pick for attorney general; Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget; and Betsy DeVos, selected to serve as education secretary.”

“There’s also Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and oversee changes to Obamacare, who is expected to be attacked by Democrats for his support for privatizing Medicare. Andrew Puzder, a restaurant executive set to serve as labor secretary, will face scrutiny for past comments on the minimum wage, among other policies. Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner set to serve as treasury secretary, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, will also be the focus of Democratic attacks, aides said.”

David Weigel: “In 2004, the last time that Democrats comprehensively lost a national election, an argument broke out about how the party should reform. John F. Kerry had been just one state — Ohio — away from victory. Democrats had lost Senate seats in red states, but held their own in the House and in state legislatures. (Republicans netted three seats, but would have lost a net of two seats but for mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas.) Hillary Clinton loomed as the favorite for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, but it was clear to many pundits that the party needed someone else. No, not Barack Obama. Clearly, the party needed a moderate nominee from red America.”

“Clinton, indeed, did not win the 2008 nomination. Sixteen years of speculation about her inevitable presidency ended on Nov. 8. But the hand-wringing of 2005 is just as instructive as the Republicans’ hand-wringing of 2013. In recent history, the most confident analysts of our political parties have argued that victory will come through moderation. They have been completely wrong.”

Obama was the left progressive option in 2008, which was one of the reasons he beat Clinton, the perceived moderate choice that year. Our 2020 nominee is going to be unknown to us for some time. Hell, he or she may have just been elected (cough Kamala Harris cough).

“You have to understand, I think that the Clinton days are over. This idea that we’re going to be this moderate party that’s going to move in this direction, that’s going to throw blacks under the bus for criminal justice reform, and for prison expansion, that’s going to throw workers under the bus for NAFTA, those days are over.” — Political commentator Van Jones, on CNN.

Very good read. How @Fahrenthold did what he did covering @realDonaldTrump the candidate – and how he'll keep going: https://t.co/tGtE9xt13W

— On the Media (@onthemedia) December 29, 2016

John Avlon: “Given everything we know about Donald Trump from his divisive, demagogic presidential campaign, the next four years will be a stress test for the American system.”

“The Trump Years promise to be full of Oval Office insults, Twitter attacks and disregard for facts. But rather than viewing the prospect of covering a Trump administration with exhaustion, we should feel invigorated. Because when this time is done, we will look back on it as the best and most important time to be a journalist – not because it was easy, but because it was hard and our sense of mission was clear: to respect the office of the President while holding the person in power accountable against a standard of enduring American values.”