Bernie Sanders’ op-ed in the New York Times.

I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome. It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo.

Working families watch as politicians get campaign financial support from billionaires and corporate interests — and then ignore the needs of ordinary Americans. Over the last 30 years, too many Americans were sold out by their corporate bosses. They work longer hours for lower wages as they see decent paying jobs go to China, Mexico or some other low-wage country. They are tired of having chief executives make 300 times what they do, while 52 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Many of their once beautiful rural towns have depopulated, their downtown stores are shuttered, and their kids are leaving home because there are no jobs — all while corporations suck the wealth out of their communities and stuff them into offshore accounts.

Source: Bernie Sanders: Where the Democrats Go From Here – The New York Times

Supporters of Bernie Sanders’ failed presidential bid are seizing on Democratic disarray at the national level to launch a wave of challenges to Democratic Party leaders in the states.

The goal is to replace party officials in states where Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton during the acrimonious Democratic primary with more progressive leadership. But the challenges also represent a reckoning for state party leaders who, in many cases, tacitly supported Clinton’s bid.

Source: Bernie’s empire strikes back – POLITICO

Semi-retired Wisconsin pig farmer John Lader does not think much of Donald Trump as a messenger, but voted for what he described as the Republican president-elect’s message of change and economic hope for America.

“The last few years, there hasn’t been much optimism and hope among working people in rural areas in this country,” said Lader, 65, who lives in the farmland outside the southern Wisconsin city of Janesville.

Around 65 miles (105 km) to the northeast in the state’s biggest city of Milwaukee, Jose Boni, who cleans offices at a local university and rents out several homes, heard a different message: Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and vow to deport the estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, most of whom are Hispanic.

“He doesn’t care about our community or working people, he only cares about himself,” said Boni, 57, an Ecuador-born U.S. citizen.

The different worlds of Lader and Boni help illustrate the rural-urban divide that was critical to the outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election.

Source: In rural-urban divide, U.S. voters are worlds apart | Reuters

With Democrats reeling from the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of the leading Trump-blasters of her party, vowed on Thursday to continue battling the president-elect—while adding that she would be delighted to collaborate with him on some of the populist issues he raised during the campaign.

Speaking at the Washington, DC, offices of the AFL-CIO union federation on Thursday, in an event shown on Facebook Live, Warren declared, “If Trump is ready to go on rebuilding economic security for millions of Americans, so am I, and so are a lot of other people—Democrats and Republicans.” She noted that on the campaign trail, Trump had criticized Wall Street’s power in Washington and promised not to cut Social Security benefits—areas of common ground. But Warren, whom Trump derided as “Pocahontas” during the election, warned that if Trump tries to tear down the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law—which overhauled the financial industry after the 2008 meltdown—or to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she would fight him “every step of the way.”

Source: Elizabeth Warren Gears Up to Battle Donald Trump | Mother Jones

In 2016, the polls got it wrong. They failed to predict that Donald Trump was winning key battleground states. But a startup in San Francisco says it spotted it well in advance, not because of the “enthusiasm gap” — Republicans turning out and Democrats staying at home. Instead, the startup Brigade’s data pointed to a big crossover effect: Democrats voting for Trump in droves.

The company built an app that asks a simple question: Which candidate are you going to vote for?

It’s like what boots-on-the-ground organizers do. Though there is one big difference. In the physical world, most people aren’t wearing their candidate button for the 18 months leading up to the election.

Source: An App Called Brigade Saw Trump Winning Swing States When Polls Didn’t : All Tech Considered : NPR

Satirst Tom Walker’s Jonathan Pie character rightfully rips the Democratic Party for losing to Trump.

A friend shared this blog post from a Republican college student, who wrote about what it is like to be a Republican college student.

I have reminded my liberal friends of the mistake of dismissing Trump supporters simply as racists (I will be writing more about this when I come up for air from all the stuff going on). The author here is right in reminding everyone of this.

I don’t think Ms. Hewlett is racist. This doesn’t mean she isn’t a little naive.

This paragraph stands out (emphases mine):

Well, I was not sad. While I understand that many people found the result disheartening, I am happy that the Republican party is in office for the next four years. I am happy that trade and markets will once again be free. I am happy that jobs will be brought back into the United States. I am happy that small business owners will finally be able to reap the benefits of hard work and dedication. I am happy that I voted in my first presidential election as a Republican.

Let’s take these one by one.
Continue reading →

I’ll have more election thoughts soon.

The Democratic Party has been the Establishment for eight years, and the Clintons have arguably been the Establishment for 24 years. Since the late 1990s, members of the white working class with high school or less have seen their life-chances radically decline, even to the point where they are dying at much higher rates than they have a right to expect.

A year ago Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Princeton University economists, published a study with the startling finding that since 1999 death rates have been going up for white Americans aged 45-54. It is even worse than it sounds, since death rates were declining for the general population.

One of the big reasons for this increased death rate has been increased use of opiods and other drugs, leading to overdoses, along with liver disease from drinking too much alcohol and increased suicide rates. The problems were especially acute among working class and rural whites with only high school or less, and later studies found that they extended to younger members of this social class in their 20s and 30s. Loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs was clearly a primary reason for this despair.

Source: Why the White Working Class Rebelled: Neoliberalism Is Killing Them (Literally) – Juan Cole – Truthdig