While
the internal debate about the campaign and Hilary as a flawed candidate
(which she was) and the DNC machinations is important, there are other factors to analyze and remember.
1: Ignoring the white working class. Thomas Frank, Christopher Hedges and Michael Moore have written extensively about this.
2: It should still be remembered that any attempt forward in the first two years of the Obama administration was met with absolute resistance. For example, the stimulus bill (ARRA) was limited purely by politics, and not by the claimed fiscal concerns of Republicans who spent freely beforehand. What would the recovery have looked like if the stimulus had been 500 billion more of infrastructure modernization and repair with a buy only American products policy? What if there had been a student loan forgiveness package as advocated by more than one economist? What would millions of people having hundreds of dollars more spendable cash per month done for the last five years? Obamacare itself was a war fought with every means necessary including a massive propaganda campaign by the right against it. There was a strategic reason for how the republicans were acting and we see it now. It was to raise anger.
This is a recent historical pattern. Both the Reagan-Bush and Bush II administrations were fiscally insane, ended in massive fraud, economic recession and limited the following Democratic administration's ability to move forward. At the same time, republican's refused to govern, instead acting as an insurgency funded by the crazed elite of the corporate right wing. Some have suggested this has been deliberate strategy. It likely is. It is easier to rob the place blind during a crisis and they have done that both times.
This is a lesson going all the way back to the first Clinton Administration, when Bill Clinton came in wanting to do a large social-economic package. When his advisors walked in, they told him (paraphrasing).." we can't...we have all the deficit obligations left over from Reagan and Bush." Obama was limited both by fiscal necessity from the insane Bush years and and an opponent not interested in governing, but in regaining power no matter the consequence. See Norm Ornstein.
We forget that since 2010, the House has been republican and essentially nothing has been done nor have the democrats had the power.
3: Voter Suppression: Since the Voting Rights act ruling by the Supreme Court, many republican controlled states have engaged in voter roll hi jinks to limit democratic voters. North Carolina is but one example. There are other well documented ways of limiting voting, from voter id laws, difficult methods of registration and simply limiting voting facilities in certain areas. Ohio is a perfect example of the latter.
4: This is not to excuse the Centrist democrats including Clinton who helped march through deregulation. The trade agreements are best described as investor rights agreements for multi-nationals. Many of the Mexican illegals are derived from the former corn farmers of Mexico who under Nafta were subject to the United States subsidized agribusiness and are now simply economic refugees.
5: Technology is reducing the needed workforce. The fact is we just need less people to operate larger plants or operations. So, places that once had sawmills employing hundreds or mines employing thousands just don't exist. That sort of manufacturing will not happen again. The problem is there has been no direct response to this that meets people's needs. There are now millions of people who are no longer in their former workforce simply because of technology, but our system does not provide them with an income regardless of their situation. There is no guaranteed minimum income. In rural areas, the smaller former regional agricultural centers are really hurt by the shrunken farm labor force and families, but there is no magic bullet to replace the former service industries in these towns. The Iron Range is a perfect example. In 1979 there were about 14,500 steelworkers there. Now there are less then 4000. All of this is from technology and forced market competition and not regulation. Any newer proposed operations use less manpower. I have two friends who drive production trucks and I repeatedly warn them they will likely be replaced by remote technology with one person watching several trucks guided by robot algorithms within ten years.What will they do?
6: There was still enormous money spent by the right on their favored candidates. The fact is someone like Russ Feingold had to compete against millions of Dark money dollars.
7: Gerrymandering, especially after the 2010 state elections.
8: Citizen's United
9: The economic and social conditions fueling this have been there for decades. Noam Chomsky warned a decade ago the only thing missing was what people perceived as an honest demagogue, and that is the role Trump played to perfection..the anti-hero demagogue. The propaganda system which kept the real concerns and experiences of ordinary people at bay added to this, as well as the deliberate actions by the republicans to not let anything be done for working people.
10: Liberal elites refusal to acknowledge or deal with the majority of people's life experiences. Rather than any sort of income and jobs program, we got income qualified school lunches, the Violence Against Women Act and affordable housing programs that did not take into account anything outside of income as a possible cause. We got Beyonce' dancing in support, but nothing that dealt with the rural drug problem. Thus working people watched as assistance based programs were fed into dysfunctional areas without dealing with addiction or behavior. When someone is working two jobs, cannot afford health care and then they watch as their dysfunctional neighbor receives all sorts of assistance, the resentment builds, real or not. There are entire regions that now look like industrial brownfields with closed buildings.
11: I am not as magnanimous to some of my fellow white working people as some commenters are. If I spent my time fact checking every coffee conversation for the utterly deluded, uninformed and racist beliefs espoused, I would end up working all day with a white board and power points. None of it would serve any purpose as most people's beliefs are fixed and they react only emotionally. The level of discerning literacy has dropped proportional to the amount of television watched. This is especially true with white's over 50 and ask any retail or public service person about dealing with an older baby boomer and their expectations. There are also still enough well off white people detached from any of these problems and simply support putting the boots to the lower classes necks to keep their economic status.
12: Nothing is still being done structurally. We still have a military and intelligence budget eating over half our resources, over 800 foreign military installations and troops in over 100 countries. We are still making enemies by our actions in other places and the blowback is the Muslim mass shootings and the crazed fear mongering of the right. That was Hilary's worst trait in my mind..the continued militarism. The empire is hollow and without pulling those resources back, this will all continue. You cannot be an empire and a democracy. See Chalmers Johnson.
1: Ignoring the white working class. Thomas Frank, Christopher Hedges and Michael Moore have written extensively about this.
2: It should still be remembered that any attempt forward in the first two years of the Obama administration was met with absolute resistance. For example, the stimulus bill (ARRA) was limited purely by politics, and not by the claimed fiscal concerns of Republicans who spent freely beforehand. What would the recovery have looked like if the stimulus had been 500 billion more of infrastructure modernization and repair with a buy only American products policy? What if there had been a student loan forgiveness package as advocated by more than one economist? What would millions of people having hundreds of dollars more spendable cash per month done for the last five years? Obamacare itself was a war fought with every means necessary including a massive propaganda campaign by the right against it. There was a strategic reason for how the republicans were acting and we see it now. It was to raise anger.
This is a recent historical pattern. Both the Reagan-Bush and Bush II administrations were fiscally insane, ended in massive fraud, economic recession and limited the following Democratic administration's ability to move forward. At the same time, republican's refused to govern, instead acting as an insurgency funded by the crazed elite of the corporate right wing. Some have suggested this has been deliberate strategy. It likely is. It is easier to rob the place blind during a crisis and they have done that both times.
This is a lesson going all the way back to the first Clinton Administration, when Bill Clinton came in wanting to do a large social-economic package. When his advisors walked in, they told him (paraphrasing).." we can't...we have all the deficit obligations left over from Reagan and Bush." Obama was limited both by fiscal necessity from the insane Bush years and and an opponent not interested in governing, but in regaining power no matter the consequence. See Norm Ornstein.
We forget that since 2010, the House has been republican and essentially nothing has been done nor have the democrats had the power.
3: Voter Suppression: Since the Voting Rights act ruling by the Supreme Court, many republican controlled states have engaged in voter roll hi jinks to limit democratic voters. North Carolina is but one example. There are other well documented ways of limiting voting, from voter id laws, difficult methods of registration and simply limiting voting facilities in certain areas. Ohio is a perfect example of the latter.
4: This is not to excuse the Centrist democrats including Clinton who helped march through deregulation. The trade agreements are best described as investor rights agreements for multi-nationals. Many of the Mexican illegals are derived from the former corn farmers of Mexico who under Nafta were subject to the United States subsidized agribusiness and are now simply economic refugees.
5: Technology is reducing the needed workforce. The fact is we just need less people to operate larger plants or operations. So, places that once had sawmills employing hundreds or mines employing thousands just don't exist. That sort of manufacturing will not happen again. The problem is there has been no direct response to this that meets people's needs. There are now millions of people who are no longer in their former workforce simply because of technology, but our system does not provide them with an income regardless of their situation. There is no guaranteed minimum income. In rural areas, the smaller former regional agricultural centers are really hurt by the shrunken farm labor force and families, but there is no magic bullet to replace the former service industries in these towns. The Iron Range is a perfect example. In 1979 there were about 14,500 steelworkers there. Now there are less then 4000. All of this is from technology and forced market competition and not regulation. Any newer proposed operations use less manpower. I have two friends who drive production trucks and I repeatedly warn them they will likely be replaced by remote technology with one person watching several trucks guided by robot algorithms within ten years.What will they do?
6: There was still enormous money spent by the right on their favored candidates. The fact is someone like Russ Feingold had to compete against millions of Dark money dollars.
7: Gerrymandering, especially after the 2010 state elections.
8: Citizen's United
9: The economic and social conditions fueling this have been there for decades. Noam Chomsky warned a decade ago the only thing missing was what people perceived as an honest demagogue, and that is the role Trump played to perfection..the anti-hero demagogue. The propaganda system which kept the real concerns and experiences of ordinary people at bay added to this, as well as the deliberate actions by the republicans to not let anything be done for working people.
10: Liberal elites refusal to acknowledge or deal with the majority of people's life experiences. Rather than any sort of income and jobs program, we got income qualified school lunches, the Violence Against Women Act and affordable housing programs that did not take into account anything outside of income as a possible cause. We got Beyonce' dancing in support, but nothing that dealt with the rural drug problem. Thus working people watched as assistance based programs were fed into dysfunctional areas without dealing with addiction or behavior. When someone is working two jobs, cannot afford health care and then they watch as their dysfunctional neighbor receives all sorts of assistance, the resentment builds, real or not. There are entire regions that now look like industrial brownfields with closed buildings.
11: I am not as magnanimous to some of my fellow white working people as some commenters are. If I spent my time fact checking every coffee conversation for the utterly deluded, uninformed and racist beliefs espoused, I would end up working all day with a white board and power points. None of it would serve any purpose as most people's beliefs are fixed and they react only emotionally. The level of discerning literacy has dropped proportional to the amount of television watched. This is especially true with white's over 50 and ask any retail or public service person about dealing with an older baby boomer and their expectations. There are also still enough well off white people detached from any of these problems and simply support putting the boots to the lower classes necks to keep their economic status.
12: Nothing is still being done structurally. We still have a military and intelligence budget eating over half our resources, over 800 foreign military installations and troops in over 100 countries. We are still making enemies by our actions in other places and the blowback is the Muslim mass shootings and the crazed fear mongering of the right. That was Hilary's worst trait in my mind..the continued militarism. The empire is hollow and without pulling those resources back, this will all continue. You cannot be an empire and a democracy. See Chalmers Johnson.
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