“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Charles M. Blow: America Elects a Bigot
Donald J. Trump is president-elect of the United States. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.
Against all odds and against all forms of the establishment, he prevailed. He won, legitimately, including in many states that were thought to be safely blue. The pundits and the polls were wrong. There was more pent-up hunger for change — and also racial, ethnic and economic angst — than many models considered.
Mr. Trump will become this country’s 45th president. For me, it is a truly shocking fact, a bitter pill to swallow. I remain convinced that this is one of the worst possible people who could be elected president. I remain convinced that Trump has a fundamentally flawed character and is literally dangerous for world stability and injurious to America’s standing in that world.
There is so much that I can’t fully comprehend.
Robert Reich: Democrats once represented the working class. Not any more
What has happened in America should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.
At the core of that structure are the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives, and fundraisers; the major media, centered in New York and Washington DC; the country’s biggest corporations, their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks, their top officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington; and the wealthy individuals who invest directly in politics. [..]
The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump.
Kate Aronoff: Trump won. Now we organize to block him, every step of the way
It happened. Less than a month ago, the odds of a scandal-racked Donald Trump winning the election were just north of 8%. The man whose candidacy began as a joke in the summer of 2014 has become the leader of the free world. Faced with a Trump presidency, the urgent task now isn’t to dissect and explain how we lost. It’s to plan how to block his regime every step of the way forward. [..]
In January, we’ll see which of Trump’s plans – to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, tear up the Paris Agreement, throw Clinton in jail – he’ll follow through on. The upshot is already clear: in short order, the United States could slide from hawkish neoliberalism into authoritarianism. Preventing this will mean mustering more unity and vision than progressives in the United States ever have.
Gloria Steinem: After the election of Donald Trump, we will not mourn. We will organize
In my country, the white-lash and the man-lash have just created President Donald Trump, an unqualified candidate who came up not through politics, but through inheriting money, a gift for bullying, and being on television.
Though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Trump won enough to get a majority of electoral votes. That was a move to the right not unlike Brexit and the rule of Prime Minister Modi in India. Yet I also have to admit that, in answer to the question I’m most often asked, I hoped but never quite believed I would see a female president in my lifetime. At least, not a woman like Hillary Clinton. [..]
I think this country is in a time of danger because most of us are escaping control by some of us. Just as we would never tell a woman, man or child to stay in a violent household, we will never go back to the old hierarchy. Despite ongoing threats, at home and in other countries, including a very racialized and gendered terrorism, we have many leaders who inspire democracy, who model it, and who know we are linked, not ranked.
Luckily, real change, like a tree, grows from the bottom up, not the top down. We have Hillary, Barack and Michelle to guide us. We will not mourn, we will organize. Maybe we are about to be free.
Scott Lemieux: A rightwing supreme court could be Donald Trump’s most insidious legacy
Senate Republicans staged an unprecedented blockade of Barack Obama’s nomination to fill the US supreme court seat left vacant by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia. This gamble could have failed, allowing Hillary Clinton to nominate a younger and more liberal justice than Merrick Garland.
Instead, from their perspective, it was a huge success. Republicans will now maintain control of the court. And depending on how many nominations Donald Trump gets, very rightwing Republican justices could be in control of the supreme court for more than a generation. [..]
The next Democratic government would face a supreme court that takes a narrow view of federal powers. And by allowing money to swamp elections and vote suppression by state legislatures, a Republican supreme court would continue to tilt the political playing field in favor of the Republican Party.
Donald Trump might be president for only four years. But even that is probably enough time to produce a supreme court that would have a huge policy impact on American politics long after he has left office.
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