Wounds are Licked: Initial Thoughts on a Tough Night
Phew. What a night. For a Democrat, this was the toughest election since 2004. After a night like this, it is important to take stock rather than feel hopeless. Here goes.
Undemocratic Outcome
At this late hour, it appears very likely that Hillary Clinton will attain more votes than Donald Trump, but lose the White House. Further, the Democratic House candidates will likely collect more votes than Republican candidates (again), but lose the House (again). The Electoral College and gerrymandering are terribly undemocratic practices and should be abolished. Don’t expect, however, any level or branch of this elected government to change the system that it so richly benefits from.
End the Filibuster
My hope is that the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, will have the guts to end the filibuster. While the filibuster is a nice idea in theory (i.e., one more check on government), its use has become so out-of-control and frequent that it has crippled government.
The voters have spoken. They want Republicans to control the Senate, and the voters ought to get that result. While eliminating the filibuster would be the height of Republican hypocrisy, it would be good for our government, and since when do congressional Republicans have a problem with breaking prior records of hypocrisy?
Pro-Business Democrats’ Chickens Have Come to Roost
In a turn of cruel irony, it is largely Bill Clinton’s trade policies that have cost his wife a shot at the White House. Well, that’s not entirely fair. It is not all Bill Clinton’s fault. It is the fault of “pro-business” Democrats who abandoned their working-class base and blue-collar unions in order to embrace terrible trade deals that sent American factories overseas, decimated the environment, and put foreign workers (many of them children) into terrible working conditions. Rather than admit just how terrible these deals have been, Democrats such as Hillary Clinton (as recently as a year ago) and Barack Obama (still!), are pushing for more of them such as TPP.
Both of the major parties abandoned the rust belt, and gave a collective “meh” about 50,000 U.S. factories just going away. Some people though are finally figuring out that these largely abandoned voters are ripe for the picking (see last night’s Ohio Senate race where the Republican candidate got the endorsement of the labor unions and trounced a popular former governor by 21 points!). Trump had the sense (or more likely the luck) to oppose these trade deals vociferously and the Midwest repaid him handsomely.
Dark Times for American Courts
Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have, for the past six years, embarked on a cynical ploy to block President Obama from performing his Constitutional duty of nominating very moderate judges to the federal bench. The result is what Chief Justice John Roberts calls an “emergency” with more than 100 judicial vacancies on our federal bench. Now, however, we will see Senate Republicans be rewarded for this reprehensible style of governing. There will be a rapid-fire filling of these 100 vacancies with judges that represent the furthest fringe of the far-right. This genuinely frightens me.
What Do You Have to Lose? Well, A Lot Actually
Trump often made the ridiculous argument that people should vote for him because, “What do you have to lose?” A lot of voters echoed this sentiment, apparently with the entitled and naïve belief that things in American cannot get any worse, only better. I have some news for these people. We have it very damn good here in the United States, and anyone who takes this privilege for granted does so at his or her own peril. Things can get a lot worse. Many who voted for Donald Trump in this election do not adequately appreciate this.
We Again See That When a Party Chooses Its Nominee by Turn, that Party Loses
The best way to select a nominee is to have a lot of people throw their hats in the ring, and for the voters to then select the candidate that gives them the greatest chance of winning. The worst way to select a candidate is to have few choices, and/or pick the nominee mostly by determining whose turn it is. Republicans did this in 1996 (Dole), 2008 (McCain), and 2012 (Romney). All three lost.
The Democratic Party failed our nation by failing to give us a true primary. Not a single Democrat emerged to challenge Clinton. The party had great, charismatic leaders waiting in the wings that could have emerged—people like Sherrod Brown (OH), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Brian Schweitzer (MT), Corey Booker (NJ), etc. No one did. Bernie Sanders—someone who is not even a Democrat—reluctantly offered to run because he realized the importance of a contested primary, and saw that no one else was going to run. Again, this is a failure of the Democratic Party and cowardice by its leaders.
Hillary Was, Quite Simply, a Lousy Candidate
While I have no question over Hillary’s character, intelligence, or ability to be a fine president, she is a terrible candidate (something I suspect should would admit behind close doors). We often hear that Hillary lacks authenticity and charisma, but what we don’t hear enough is that her overall strategy sucked because she did not learn from her mistakes. Hillary made all of the same mistakes she made in 2008 when she lost to an unknown freshman senator. Specifically, she gave us almost no reason to vote for her. I keep hearing that her website has specific policies about immigration, taxes, student loans and other things, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what any of them are. How is that possible? I follow this stuff much closer than most, and I can’t tell you anything. That is a failure of messaging and vision.
The Democratic Party Establishment’s Hubris Was Cruel and Unfounded
The Democratic Party castigated Bernie Sanders and his supporters (including me) for being a nuisance, and ridiculed us for not trusting in Hillary—who could not lose! Especially if Trump was the nominee! Hillary could lose, and she lost to the most unpopular person ever to run for president. The hubris of the Democratic establishment and its contempt for Bernie supporters was unfair and unfounded.
– Dylan
TheBlueBrothers 
February 11, 2018 at 3:12 am
Where were we?