The December 15, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 15, 2016

A new CBS News poll finds just 34% of Americans think President-elect Trump will be a good or very good president, and another 23% think he will be average. Thirty-six percent think he will be a poor president.

Trump ends the election year with far lower expectations than his two most recent predecessors did. In December 2008, 63% of Americans thought Barack Obama would make a good for very good president, while just 7% expected a poor performance. Less than half thought George W. Bush would make a good president in December 2000, but just 14% expected him to be a poor president.

New York Times: “As Democrats steel themselves for the day next month when the White House door will slam on their backs, some of the country’s more liberal state attorneys general have vowed to use their power to check and balance Mr. Trump’s Washington.”

“The strategy could be as simple as mirroring the blueprint laid out by their Republican colleagues, who made something of a legal specialty of tormenting President Obama. Conservative attorneys general in states including Texas, Virginia and Florida have sued the Obama administration dozens of times, systematically battering Mr. Obama’s signature health care, environmental and immigration policies in the courts.”

Thank God. They are finally learning a little bit.

“Republicans in the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday took the highly unusual step of moving to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor after a bitter election that extended years of fierce ideological battles in the state,” the New York Times reports.

“After calling a surprise special session, Republican lawmakers who control the General Assembly introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election boards, to require State Senate approval of the new governor’s cabinet members and to strip his power to appoint University of North Carolina trustees.”

Rick Hasen: “And here’s the kicker: any lawsuit over these alleged rules will end up before the state Supreme Court with its new Democratic majority, unless the special session itself produces a court-packing plan, and if that happens the Court itself would have to resolve a key question about its own membership.”

Jonathan Chait: “Donald Trump’s surprising (though not unforeseeable) election has provoked a wave of fear and anger among his opponents. But much of it has been misdirected into denial or despair rather than effective channels of political mobilization. The clearest symbol of this misplaced energy is the campaign to persuade members of the Electoral College to deny Donald Trump the presidency.”

“The first thing to note about this effort is that it is utterly hopeless… Second, and more important, denying Trump the presidency through an Electoral College coup is not a procedurally legitimate response… The final problem is that the campaign to prevent Trump’s election has turned the hopeless Electoral College gambit into a substitute for political organizing.”

“But there are better measures of horror at Trump and Trumpism than support for a hopeless and questionable tactic. The correct response should involve the protection and engagement of normal politics.”

So this happens, denying Donald a majority in the EC, and the election gets thrown to the House and Senate. The House votes for President and the Senate votes for Vice President. My understanding is that the only candidates that can be considered are the ones who received electoral votes. So Trump and Clinton. So in the end, we will wind up in the same place: President Trump. I applaud the effort, but I understand the need to do it to deny legitimacy to Trump, but in the end, Trump will be President no matter what occurs.

“Outgoing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has announced that he will hold a news conference on Thursday to present the newest revelations in his years-long investigation of President Obama’s birth certificate,” KPHO reports.

LOL. Why won’t the bad man go away?

Jacob Levy: “An 80,000 vote margin in a 137 million vote election, about .05%, is susceptible of almost endless plausible explanations. The number of different factors that might well have moved that many votes is very large. So there are a lot of different true but-for explanations: but for Clinton’s failure to campaign in Wisconsin, but for the Comey letter, but for stricter voter ID laws and reductions in the numbers of polling places, but for Jill Stein, and so on, ad infinitum. A Democratic party strategist has good reason to take lots of them very seriously.”

“But anyone trying to generalize about popular beliefs or the electorate’s mood should be very wary of any of them. Grabbing a plausibly-true but-for explanation of 80,000 votes, as if it says something big and true about the whole electorate, will over-explain the outcome. An explanation that is one of the many valid ones for those 80,000 votes, and thus for the Electoral College outcome, but that implies some large shift in opinion or mood toward Trump, is a bad explanation overall.”

Incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told Hugh Hewitt that major changes could be in store for White House press briefings under the Trump administration.

Said Priebus: “Look, I think that many things have to change, and I think that it’s important that we look at all of those traditions that are great, but quite frankly, as you know, don’t really make news. And you know, even looking at things like the daily White House briefing from the press secretary, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways that things can be done, and I can assure you we’re looking at that.”

He added: “The point of all of this conversation is that the traditions, while some of them are great, I think it’s time to revisit a lot of these things that have been done in the White House and I can assure you that change is going to happen, even on things that might seem boring like this topic, but also change as far as how we’re going to approach tax reform, the American worker, how we protect them and business all at the same time why skyrocketing our economy.”

“As President-elect Donald Trump considered Mitt Romney for secretary of state, Trump wanted one thing Romney wouldn’t give him: an apology,” CNN reports.

“Trump personally saw it in business deal terms: He would get the mea culpa he sought from Romney; Romney would get the job he covets. But Romney — who titled his own book No Apology — declined.”

“He offered forward-looking praise for Trump — starting with the President-elect’s election-night speech. But he wouldn’t go backward and retract his words from the campaign.”

New York Times: “The conflict has come to a head over choosing a deputy to serve under Rex W. Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil chief executive whom Mr. Trump selected this week to be secretary of state. Mr. Trump is weighing whether to choose John Bolton, a combative and strident advocate for an expansive American foreign policy who was closely aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney in the Bush administration.”

“Mr. Bolton’s nomination as deputy secretary of state would be subject to a vote in the Senate, and it is not clear whether he would survive his confirmation hearing. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has said privately that he has misgivings, according to a person who has spoken with him. And Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, another Republican on the committee, has promised to block the nomination.”

Said Paul: “There is something to be said for one of the top diplomats in the country being diplomatic.”

“The Federal Reserve said it would raise its benchmark short-term interest rate for the first time in a year and expects to lift it faster than previously projected in the coming year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“They also indicated they see a brightening economic outlook and expect to raise short-term rates next year by another 0.75 percentage point–likely in three quarter-point moves.”

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  1. puck says:
    December 15, 2016 at 8:05 am

    “some of the country’s more liberal state attorneys general have vowed to use their power to check and balance Mr. Trump’s Washington.”

    Delaware, home of 378 Trump corporations and a Democratic AG, was conspicuously absent from this list.

  2. anonymous says:
    December 15, 2016 at 1:27 pm

    Stuff like this makes me despair of the Democratic Party:

    http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/40844-democrats-screwed-the-pooch-again

    “This wasn’t necessarily about a fight you can win. This was about a fight you can have.”

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