November 9, 2016

Coup d’etat by election November 2016


THESE STORIES ARE THE BEST THAT I FOUND TODAY, AND THERE ARE SO MANY THAT I DECIDED NOT TO MAKE ANY COMMENTARY. BETWEEN THEM ALL, THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF INFORMATION TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT, IN MY VIEW.

I HOPE THE INCLUSION OF THE RAPE ACCUSATION DOESN’T ARROUSE PATRIOTIC IRE AGAINST ME. I THINK IT’S AS IMPORTANT AS THOSE STORIES ABOUT BEHIND THE SCENES MANEUVERING. PARDON ME FOR SAYING THAT I THINK THIS ELECTION SHOULD BE GIVEN SCRUTINY AS A POTENTIAL SOFT COUP.

FINALLY, WE DESPERATELY NEED TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION CONCERNING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, WHICH GAVE TRUMP THIS VICTORY OVER CLINTON, WHO HAD A HIGHER POPULAR VOTE JUST AS WITH THE CASE OF BUSH AND GORE.


CLINTON PLAYS NICE


https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-calls-trump-congratulate-him-victory-092551550--election.html

Clinton calls Trump to congratulate him on victory
LISA LERER and KEN THOMAS, Associated Press 1 hour 41 minutes ago
November 9, 2016


NEW YORK (AP) — On the eve of the election, Hillary Clinton was standing behind a podium bearing the presidential seal. By the time the votes were counted, Donald Trump had captured the White House in a political earthquake.

Clinton conceded the presidency to Trump in a phone call early Wednesday morning, a stunning end to a campaign that appeared poised right up until Election Day to make her the first woman elected U.S. president.

Clinton, who watched the returns hunkered down with family and close aides at a Manhattan hotel suite, made no public appearance before supporters who had gathered under the glass ceiling of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center planning to celebrate what was expected to be her historic victory. Clinton planned to make a statement later Wednesday morning.

The mood inside the convention center grew increasingly grim as Trump captured battleground states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio and shattered a longstanding "blue wall" of states in the Upper Midwest that had backed every Democratic presidential candidate since her husband, Bill Clinton, won the presidency in 1992.

Democrats — starting with Clinton's campaign and the White House — were left wondering how they misread their country so completely. Aides stopped returning calls and text messages. Supporters left election night parties in tears.

"My disappointment makes me not trust the rest of the world," said Katie Fahey, who had flown to New York from Grand Rapids, Michigan, wearing a red pantsuit, expecting a victory party. "I don't even want to go out. I want to wear sweatpants and curl myself up in a corner."

The results were startling to Clinton and her aides, who had ended their campaign with a whirlwind tour of battleground states and had projected optimism that she would maintain the diverse coalition assembled by President Barack Obama in the past two elections.

On the final day of the campaign, Clinton literally followed Obama to stand behind a podium with a presidential seal at a massive rally outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

As she walked up to the lectern, the president bent down to pull out a small stool so the shorter Clinton could address the tens of thousands gathered on the mall. Before leaving the stage, Obama leaned over to whisper a message in Clinton's ear: "We'll have to make this permanent."

Clinton's stunning loss was certain to open painful soul-searching within the party, which had endured a lengthy primary between Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who drew strong support among liberals amid an electorate calling for change.

"The mistake that we made is that we ignored the powerful part of Trump's message because we hated so much of the rest of his message. The mistake we made is that people would ignore that part and just focus on the negative," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, who was not affiliated with the campaign.

The tumultuous presidential cycle bequeathed a series of political gifts for Clinton's GOP rival: An FBI investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server, questions of pay-for-play involving her family's charitable foundation, Sanders' primary challenge, Clinton's health scare at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony and FBI Director James Comey's late October announcement that investigators had uncovered emails potentially relevant to her email case.

Yet her team spent the bulk of their time focused on attacking Trump, while failing to adequately address Clinton's deep liabilities — or the wave of frustration roiling the nation.

Every time the race focused on Clinton, her numbers dropped, eventually making her one of the least liked presidential nominees in history. And she offered an anxious electorate a message of breaking barriers and the strength of diversity — hardly a rallying cry — leaving her advisers debating the central point of her candidacy late into the primary race.

Clinton's campaign was infuriated by a late October announcement by Comey that investigators had uncovered emails that may have been pertinent to the dormant investigation into Clinton's use of private emails while secretary of state. On the Sunday before the election, Comey told lawmakers that the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against Clinton.

But the announcement may have damaged Clinton while her campaign tried to generate support in early voting in battleground states like Florida and North Carolina. In the nine days between Comey's initial statement and his "all clear" announcement, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That was about 18 percent of the expected total votes for president.

___

Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Catherine Lucey, Rachelle Blidner, Michael Balsamo and Deepti Hajela contributed to this report.

___

Follow Lisa Lerer and Ken Thomas on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/llerer and http://twitter.com/KThomasDC



SHOES DROPPING ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/11/09/501398066/trumps-election-gives-hope-to-europes-far-right

Trump's Election Gives Hope to Europe's Far Right
November 9, 20162:13 PM ET
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY

Photograph -- French far-right leader Marine Le Pen arrives to make a statement on Donald Trump's election as president in Nanterre, outside Paris, on Wednesday. She is considered one of the leading candidates in France's 2017 presidential elections.
Christophe Ena/AP


There's an expression in French, "Jamais deux sans trois," or "Never two without three." After Brexit and Trump, will Marine Le Pen be next?

France holds its presidential election next spring, and Le Pen, the leader of the country's far-right National Front party, could well be one of the top two candidates in the first round of voting, which would propel her to the second-round runoff in May 2017. But she hasn't been seriously considered as a candidate who could actually become president.

Until now.

"I think we can have the same surprise in France," said National Front Secretary General Nicolas Bay, speaking Wednesday on French radio.

Bay called Trump's victory a victory of the people who were "betrayed by the elites." He said both Trump and the National Front have the same platform: rejection of multiculturalism, rejection of globalization and free trade, and strengthening national borders.

There are other important similarities: Both Trump and the National Front want to limit or even halt immigration. Both are wary of Muslims. Trump has toyed with the idea of the U.S. weakening its bonds with NATO, or perhaps even leaving. The National Front wants France to leave, too. It would also remove France from the European Union.

"Congratulations to the new president of the United States Donald Trump and to the free American people," Le Pen tweeted, even before Trump had accrued the necessary number of electoral votes.

Her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, who founded their party 44 years ago, also chimed in on Twitter: "Today the United States, tomorrow France."

"The election of Trump is a turning point," says Philippe Moreau Defarges, a political analyst with the French Institute of International Relations. "A taboo has been broken. It's a watershed moment because we have seen that a populist can be elected to high office."

Defarges says Trump's victory gives fresh hope to a swath of populist parties across Europe that have been able to boost membership by exploiting issues including the refugee crisis, immigration and lagging economies.

These parties are surging in a way that hasn't been seen since before the Second World War. Defarges says it could alter the entire political and economic landscape of Europe.

Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist at the University of Georgia, says "Trump's win gives a narrative of success, of possibility, to far-right parties in Europe, because Trump won despite all the predictions. So they can say to people, 'You're not wasting your vote if you come out and vote for us. We will actually do much better than what everyone says.' "

In the Netherlands, Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders called Trump's victory a sign that the West was living through a "patriotic spring" and that it proved that people are fed up with politically correct politicians. His party tops polls and is poised to be the deal-maker in a new Dutch government to be voted next spring.

In Germany, Frauke Petry, the head of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, was quick to send her congratulations to President-elect Trump. In an early-morning tweet, a German news outlet reported that Petry said, "This night changes the USA, Europe and the world!"

"Americans have chosen a new beginning free of corruption and sleaze," she also tweeted. "This is a historic chance."

The AfD wants a ban on minarets and Muslim face veils. Though many believe it has no chance of emulating Trump's success, German analysts say the party will use Trump's victory to mobilize people who normally would not have voted but see that things can change now.

In Greece, which is struggling to deal with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, the far-right Golden Dawn party hailed Trump's election as a victory against "illegal immigration" and in favor of ethnically "clean" nations.

In Austria, a candidate of the populist Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, is poised to become the EU's first far-right head of state in a Dec. 4 runoff with the Green Party. Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache said Trump's win shows "the political left and the aloof and sleazy establishment are being punished by voters and voted out of various decision-making positions."

Across Europe, mainstream conservative parties are getting a wake-up call. If a host of anti-establishment, anti-free trade, xenophobic parties gain more power, analysts say it could reshape the EU. Defarges, the French political analyst, warns that major international agreements such as the global climate treaty and the Iran nuclear deal may also be in danger.

Mudde, the Dutch political scientist, says Trump will normalize the radical right in Europe, "because every politician will have to deal with Trump as if he's a normal U.S. president. And if national politicians are going to deal with Trump in a normal way, it will be harder to exclude radical-right politicians nationally. The parties will say, 'Oh, you're OK working with Trump, but you're not OK working with us.' Clearly this is not about ideology, its about keeping your power."



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-uncertain-new-relationship-us-trump-win/

Stunned Mexico ponders "uncertain" new relationship with U.S. after Trump's win
AP November 9, 2016, 1:33 PM

Photograph -- Workers check freshly printed newspapers with the headline reading “We will tremble” under a picture of President-elect Donald Trump, at a printer of the local daily Norte in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ


MEXICO CITY - Hours after the United States elected Donald Trump to be its next president, Mexico began carefully laying the groundwork for a relationship with a new leader who campaigned against its citizens and threatened to wreak havoc with its economy.

President Enrique Pena Nieto sent a series of messages from his official Twitter account Wednesday morning, congratulating not Trump himself but the American electorate, and said he was ready to work with Trump to advance the countries’ relationship.

“Mexico and the United States are friends, partners and allies that must continue collaborating for the competitiveness and development of North America,” Pena Nieto wrote.

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Enrique Peña Nieto ✔ @EPN
México y EUA son amigos, socios y aliados que deben seguir colaborando por la competitividad y el desarrollo de América del Norte.
8:30 AM - 9 Nov 2016
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The messages came shortly after Mexico’s Treasury Secretary Jose Antonio Meade tried to strike a reassuring tone in a news conference by saying that Mexico’s financial position is strong in the face of a falling peso. He says no immediate actions are planned.

Donald Trump blasts Clinton's support of NAFTA calling it "worst thing to happen to the manufacturing industry"
Play VIDEO
Donald Trump blasts Clinton's support of NAFTA calling it "worst thing to happen to the manufacturing industry"

But the threat is real. The United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has said he wants to re-negotiate, is the backbone of that commerce.

“The relationship of Mexico and the U.S. is uncertain,” said Isidro Morales, of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. “Donald Trump is not a person of institutions. Surely it will be a unilateral policy worse than (George W.) Bush and we don’t know what to expect.”

Mexico’s currency appeared to track Trump’s rising and falling fortunes throughout the campaign and it fell sharply Tuesday night. According to Banco Base, the peso dropped 9.56 percent, its biggest daily loss since 1995.

In the streets, Mexicans fretted about just how many of Trump’s promises to deport millions of immigrants, revamp trade relations and make Mexico pay for a border wall would come to fruition.

Reyes Isidro, a barista in a small neighborhood coffee shop, said that one way or another he was sure the poor would bear the brunt of Trump’s policies, even in Mexico.

“In the end, the most affected are always those of us who have the least,” Isidro said. “We’re the ones that have to take the hits.” He said the weaker peso would make it more difficult to buy things.

And if Trump follows through on his promise of increased deportations, “what are those people going to do? They will have to find a way to survive on this side. The possibilities begin to narrow for you,” he said.

Jose Maria Ramos, a professor at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, said Mexicans will have to wait and see what Trump really does.

“A lot of proposals had a marketing effect,” he said. “It’s one thing to be a politician and make statements; he managed the media very effectively.” But things like building a wall and making Mexico pay for it could turn out to be too complicated to carry out. “Being a candidate is not the same as being president.”



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cuba-announces-military-drills-heels-donald-trump-surprise-win/

Cuba announces military drills on heels of Donald Trump's surprise win
AP November 9, 2016, 12:48 PM


HAVANA -- Cubans worried on Wednesday that President Trump would throw the United States’ 2-year-old detente with Cuba into reverse, erasing their hopes for a more prosperous future of normal ties with Washington.

President-elect Donald Trump calls for unity in victory speech
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President-elect Donald Trump calls for unity in victory speech

The Cuban government, meanwhile, announced the launch of five days of nationwide military exercises to prepare troops to confront what it called “a range of actions by the enemy,” using terminology that almost always refers to the United States.

The government did not link the exercises to Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential victory, but the announcement of maneuvers and tactical exercises across the country came nearly simultaneously with Trump’s surprise win. It was the seventh time Cuba has held what it calls the Bastion Strategic Exercise, often in response to points of high tension with the United States.


Photograph -- Cuban ceremonial troops stand at attention after being reviewed by President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution March 21, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Trump has promised to reverse President Obama’s opening unless President Raul Castro agrees to more political freedom on the island, a concession considered a virtual impossibility. Many Cubans said they feared they were on the verge of losing the few improvements they had seen in their lives thanks to a post-detente boom in tourism. Along with a surge in visitors, normalization has set off visits by hundreds of executives from the U.S. and dozens of other nations newly interested in doing business on the island.

Trump victory protests
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Trump victory protests

“The little we’ve advanced, if he reverses it, it hurts us,” taxi driver Oriel Iglesias Garcia said. “You know tourism will go down. If Donald Trump wins and turns everything back it’s really bad for us.”

The first Bastion Strategic Exercise was launched in 1980 after the election of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president, according to an official history. The announcement by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces in red ink across the top of the front page of the country’s main newspaper Wednesday said the army, Interior Ministry and other forces would be conducting maneuvers and different types of tactical exercises from the 16th to the 20th of November.

What could a Trump administration bring to office?
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What could a Trump administration bring to office?

It warned citizens that the exercises would include “movements of troops and war materiel, overflights and explosions in the cases where they’re required.”

Speaking of Cuba’s leaders, Communist Party member and noted economist and political scientist Esteban Morales told the Telesur network: “They must be worried because I think this represents a new chapter.”

Carlos Alzugaray, a political scientist and retired Cuban diplomat, said the Trump victory could please some hard-liners in the Cuban leadership who worried that Cuba was moving too close to the United States too quickly.

“There’s been a lot of rejection of what’s been done with Obama,” Alzugaray said. “Many Cubans think that a situation of confrontation is better for the revolution.”

© 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-elected-us-president-wins-election-response-germany-france-merkel-hollande-putin-a7407426.html

Donald Trump's election as US President opens 'period of uncertainty' in Europe, leaders warn
Angela Merkel says she will work with President-elect if he offers 'respect for human beings, independently of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views'
Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden 4 hours ago3 comments


Video -- Mr Trump's success has raised hackles in Europe although far right groups have hailed it as a triumph

Europe is facing a “period of uncertainty” following the election of Donald Trump as US President, leaders have warned as France and Germany gave the President-elect a frosty welcome.

François Hollande, who once said the Republican candidate made him “want to retch”, called for European nations to unite to defend their interests.

The French President said Wednesday’s shock result “opens a period of uncertainty” that must be met with lucidity and clarity.

Liberation-Trump-Front-Page
Liberation November 9 frontpage
“I offer my congratulations, as it is natural to do between two heads of democratic states,” Mr Hollande said in an unsmiling televised address. “The United States is a partner of the first order for France.

Follow the latest live updates here

“What is at stake is peace, the fight against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East, economic relations and the preservation of the planet.”

Hinting at climate change, previously denied by Mr Trump, Mr Hollande said he would open discussions with the new administration without delay but confront disagreements with “vigilance and frankness”.

“Some positions taken by Donald Trump during the US campaign contradict values and interests we share with the United States,” he added.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes
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“This context calls for a united Europe, capable of making itself heard and of promoting policies wherever its interests or its values are challenged.”

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Barack Obama calls Donald Trump to offer congratulations
Mr Trump has raised hackles in France by claiming Isis’ Paris attacks last November might have been avoided if the country relaxed its gun laws, as well as claiming “vicious” no-go zones existed in the capital.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated the President-elect and offered “close cooperation”, but tacitly criticised Mr Trump in her speech. She told reporters in Berlin his election campaign featured “confrontations that were difficult to bear”.

Ms Merkel stressed Germany's close historical connection with the US but added: “Germany and America are connected by values: democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for the dignity of human beings, independently of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views.

“On the basis of these values, I am offering the future President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, close cooperation.”

Her remarks came after Mr Trump took aim at the German government’s policy of opening its borders to refugees, calling the move a “disaster in August”.

hollande-merkel-putin.jpg
Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel made strong statements on the election of Donald Trump (Reuters)
“Hillary Clinton wants to be America's Angela Merkel and you know what a disaster this massive immigration has been to Germany and the people of Germany,” he told a rally, in comments since shown to be factually unfounded. “Crime has risen to levels that no one thought they would ever, ever see. It is a catastrophe.”

The response from Germany and France was far more outspoken than the cordial welcome offered by British leaders. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, congratulated Mr Trump and said she would maintain the “special relationship” between Britain and America, while Boris Johnson said he was “looking forward” to working with the new administration as Foreign Secretary.


READ MORE
Donald Trump's election is a 'very difficult moment' for EU
Hungary’s Prime Minister was also positive, calling the shock result “great news” that shows “democracy is still alive”. Viktor Orban has previously been criticised by the US, including by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary State, for weakening democracy and is known for his anti-refugee policies

Far-right and anti-immigration groups were also celebrating. Among them were France’s Front National, who hailed the “collapse” of political order and Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders.

Vladimir Putin said Moscow is ready to try to restore good relations with the US in the wake of the election but would face a "difficult path".

EU Parliament president Martin Schulz said the result “must be respected” as he said that Mr Trump “managed to become the standard-bearer of the angst and fears of millions of Americans”.

Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said: "We'll continue to work together, rediscovering the strength of Europe.”



http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/trump-victory-movement-161109111846362.html

US ELECTIONS 20161 HOUR AGO
Trump Victory: What now for the far-right movement?
US system of checks and balances has a moderating effect. "Trump will have to work with Congress and the Supreme Court."
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Ku Klux Klan leaders at a 'white pride' rally in Georgia last April say they feel that US politics are going their way, as a nationalist divide deepens across the nation [John Bazemore/AP]
byCreede Newton

Amarillo, Texas - In the rural Texas Panhandle, the night of the United States presidential elections was joyous. This is Trump country and one of the most conservative regions in the US. All the polls were wrong, and unlike the images of those at Clinton headquarters on Tuesday night, faces here were bright and cheerful.

Behind the happiness, there is, however, a question on many minds: what will happen with the re-energised far-right movements?

Cody Nevels, a self-asserted "white nationalist" with nearly 20 years of far-right activism under his belt, told Al Jazeera that he supported Trump "heavily", and was elated to see him win the election. Trump's win is "a validation for us".

"It's almost a weight off our shoulders because we fight so hard just to be heard."

Nevels recently became involved with White Lives Matter (WLM), a reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests. The group's popularity has increased over the past few months as they have adopted an internet-friendly approach to organising. "We recently kicked off WLM in the UK," he says.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated WLM a racist hate group. Nevels disagrees, saying the far-right movement is against "taking away" white history. "For us, that's not OK," he said, going on to stress that their protests have been entirely legal.

His brand of white nationalism isn't necessarily racist, he claimed. Nevels wants to preserve endangered "cultures" and "different historical events" for whites. He said he wants equal rights for all, but feels that whites are frequently losing these rights.


Watch: Donald Trump's Ku Klux Klan controversy
Trump-driven momentum

The WLM activist explained that putting forth their views will become more difficult with Trump's victory because the US political left will put up even more resistance.

Nevertheless, "we're going to keep pushing our White Lives Matter," he said. "We're going to keep pushing our nationalist views … Is it racist in a sense? Somewhat. But it's not a racist view."

George Michael, associate professor at Westfield State University who has studied right-wing extremism in the US for decades and written several books on the subject, says that the general concessus in the US disagrees with Nevels and "white nationalists".

Michael told Al Jazeera that WLM has many neo-Nazi members, and while they have yet to break any laws, he is reluctant to say they are a "softer version of white nationalism".

Michael says their momentum owes much to Trump: "I think his election gave the far-right a lot of confidence. They were very energised by the Trump candidacy. This signals to them that they're able to have an impact on American politics."

Part of the energy comes from the fact that pro-Trump events gave those on the extreme and far-right the chance to meet each other face-to-face for the first time in years.

"Over the last decades, they could get involved in chatrooms and writing in blogs - rarely in person. That changed, and I think it will embolden them in the future," says the professor.

READ MORE: White Lives Matter- A new US hate group shows its face

Marginal voices

Michael has also studied the convergence of the far-right and populist figures. His 2008 book entitled Willis Carto and the American Far Right detailed the raise of Carto, an important figure in the US populist movement.

Carto was known for espousing anti-Semitic and racist views through the now-defunct Liberty Lobby , a far-right lobbying organisation he founded.

"Trump is certainly in that long tradition of populist figures. His rhetoric on controlling immigration animated that nativist, isolationist current in the US," Peter Montgomery, a researcher for the left-leaning pressure group People for the American Way, explained.

"Not only that, but he's attacked this notion of political correctness and survived," he said. "That's something we really haven't seen for many years."

Montgomery told Al Jazeera that Trump has primed supporters for alt-right media, a new branch of the far-right movement that has strongly supported Trump.

Alex Jones, the host of far-right radio programme Infowars that deals in conspiracy theories has gained legitimacy due to Trump, Montgomery noted.

"He [Jones] has been a marginal voice. But Trump, by going on his show, gives him a huge boost in credibility."

The Infowars host has depicted terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings as "false flag" operations carried out by the US government to distract from their nefarious doings, according to the SPLC.

Along with Jones, Montgomery pointed to Milo Yiannopoulos, a figure who has gained notoriety for his ban from Twitter due to online bullying, and Stephen Bannon, both Trump supporters of the alt-right outlet Breitbart, as examples. Bannon oversaw Breitbart's content for years before being named the executive officer of Trump's campaign in August 2016.

With the election of Trump, Montgomery says, "these people aren't going away, they've been elevated".

READ MORE: Donald Trump - The Rise of right-wing politics in America

Alt-right media, along with far-right groups such as WLM, will continue finding ways to "propagandise," Montgomery concluded.


White Lives Matter movement at a protest in Houston [Patrick Strickland/Al Jazeera]
Trump's supporters both in the mainstream Republican party and far-right movements, his detractors, and academics all seem to agree on one thing: the Republican candidate will have a lasting effect on the US political landscape for years to come.

The Trump camp

The far-right's re-energisation in political organising and media signals a reckoning for the future of the Republican Party according to Brennan Leggett, a Republican with years of involvement in local politics who assisted the Trump campaign in northern Texas.

"It literally could be a civil war like no other within this party. There won't be two sides, but three," Leggett told Al Jazeera.

These three sides would include: "establishment Republicans, like the Bush family; the Tea Party, which has more of a Libertarian leaning; and the Trump people," he explained.

With his victory, Trump's camp - white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and mainstream Republicans like Leggett who are disenchanted with the establishment - seem to be on top.

Expert professor Michael said that "a movement has been created. Issues like immigration and trade policy - serious issues that really revived the far-right - are not going away."

Yet, Michael was quick to say that people must keep in mind the history and nature of the US government.

"The American political system has a moderating effect," he says, thanks to a system of checks and balances of the three separate branches, the professor said.

"Trump will have to work with Congress and the Supreme Court. They won't always agree, as we've seen during this election season," Michael said.

"Not unlike some elements of the far-left were a disappointment with Obama after his 2008 election, the same could happen with Trump and the far-right," he concluded.

Follow Creede on Twitter: @CreedeNewton

Source: Al Jazeera



http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2016/07/clone.of.donald-trump-rise-wing-politics-america-1.html
Donald Trump: The Rise of Right-wing Politics in America

Most political elite and pundits in the United States have been bewildered by the growing popularity of Republican candidate Donald Trump despite his controversial statements about Mexican immigrants, Muslims, refugees, women, and other minorities.

Dr. Mohammed Cherkaoui
Thursday, 21 July 2016 12:43 Mecca

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Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, speaking in January 2016 [GETTY IMAGES]

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<b>Abstract

Most political elite and pundits in the United States have been bewildered by the growing popularity of Republican candidate Donald Trump despite his controversial statements about Mexican immigrants, Muslims, refugees, women, and other minorities. He remains a polarizing figure within the uncharted territory of Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny. This report showcases the socio-economic and cultural dynamics which have paved the way for the rise of Trump as he has outperformed 16 other Republican opponents. It makes six propositions about the driving force behind what can be coined as a new doctrine of Trumpism.

Introduction

The 2016 presidential race has been exceptionally interesting with the deepening ideological gaps between the top three Republican and Democratic contenders: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders amidst unprecedented divergence of their political philosophies. Trump’s call for the restoration of white America’s ‘greatness’ and Sanders’s ‘political revolution’ have pulled the political discourse in opposite directions to extreme right and extreme left.

Subsequently, Clinton’s centrist positions - as known during her previous campaign against Senator Barak Obama in 2008 - have shifted toward progressive liberalism under the impact of Sanders’s popularity among the youth and his natural appeal in the television debates and campaign rallies. As a result, Trump and Sanders can be seen as “twin harbingers of a possible American apocalypse—signs of the beginning of the end for the American political tradition and way of life.”(1)

Table 1: Shifts of the presidential candidates’ political positions in 2016 [conceptualized by the author]

Extreme Left Moderate Left Centre Right Extreme Right
Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton ------------ Ted Cruz Donald Trump
The underlying hypothesis in the report is that there is a strong correlation between Trump, as a newcomer to presidential politics, and his right-wing followers protesting their socio-economic decline vis-à-vis the self-empowerment of some minorities and the electoral victory of the first black president in 2008. Trump and his followers, who make 40 percent of conservative voters, can be conceived as two sides to the same political coin. He has vowed “America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration. But to chart our path forward, we must first briefly take a look back. We have a lot to be proud of.”(2)

By using the tools of critical discourse analysis, one can identify the ideological connection and claims of power between Trump and his followers. Critical Discourse Analysis can be defined as the uncovering of implicit ideologies in the texts as it unveils the underlying ideological prejudices and therefore the exercise of power in texts.”(3) From this perspective, one can deconstruct the appeal of Trumpism as a defense of the whiteness of America.


Statesman or Showman?

The rise of Trump represents two interrelated phenomena: one political with an ideological trajectory of protecting America and re-empowering the white majority; and the other is mediatized as he has capitalized on his TV fame and manipulated most broadcast and print media outlets.

His Democratic rival Bernie Sanders captured the irony of this media-driven Trumpism when he said "any stupid, absurd remark made by Donald Trump becomes the story of the week. Maybe, just maybe, we might want to have a serious discussion about the serious issues facing America."(4)

According to a SMG Delta study, Trump benefited from nearly two-billion dollars of free advertisement. By mid-March 2016, his campaign kept the expenditure under $10 million; whereas his rival Jeb Bush spent $86 million and Marco Rubio allocated $55 million. However, Bush and Rubio failed in their pursuit of destabilizing voters’ trust of Trump’s platform.

Media critics point to the construction of Candidate Trump in the public eye with no serious hard-ball follow-up questions. As the New York Times columnist Franc Bruni notices, “There are legitimate questions of proportion in regard to Trump coverage, and perhaps he has been accorded additional acres of news media real estate because he’s so easy to talk and write about, a policy-free zone of quickly digested, succinctly rendered struts and slurs.”(5)


The New ‘Hero’ of WASP

The businessman-turned-politician Trump has positioned himself with the extreme right, evangelical, and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) groups with the hope of “making America great again.” He has vowed to restore the socio economic power of the white majority in the backdrop of American exceptionalism.

Trump characterizes his candidacy as a “working-class” rebellion movement against the Republican elite and the “failing” policies of the Obama administration. He argues that "the middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing and it's ridiculous, OK?"(6)

His criticism of the Obama doctrine has been a cornerstone in his campaign. He accuses President Obama of “weakening our military by weakening our economy. He’s crippled us with wasteful spending, massive debt, low growth, a huge trade deficit and open borders. Our manufacturing trade deficit with the world is now approaching $1 trillion a year.”(7)

According to recent YouGov polls, 20 percent of his supporters describe themselves as “liberal” or “moderate,” with 65 percent saying they are “conservative” and only 13 percent labeling themselves as “very conservative.” Less than a third of his followers say they are involved with the Tea Party movement. Their views put them on the right side of the American electorate, but they cover the Republican mainstream.(8)

Trump's support skewed male, white, and poor. The male-female gap was 19 percentage points (47 percent support among men versus 28 percent among women). He won a whopping 50 percent of voters making less than $50,000, 18 percentage points ahead of his support with those who earned more than that amount.(9)

His attacks against certain minorities like Muslim Americans and Mexican immigrants have been fueled by his pursuit of defying political correctness and the traditional presidential appearance. Many Americans experience the reign of political correctness as a “form of dishonor or humiliation”.(10)

Ironically, Clinton and Sanders became de facto defenders of the American values and the Constitution and the safeguards of the Melting Pot philosophy which has shaped America’s history in the last three centuries. Clinton said Trump has made a name for himself in this election by “trafficking in prejudice and paranoia. At a time when America should be doing everything we can to fight radical jihadists, Mr. Trump is supplying them with new propaganda. He’s playing right into their hands.”(11)

Accordingly, Trumpism can be analyzed as a dialectical relationship between group identity formation and populist and protectionist leadership. According to the New York Times, the number of Americans who still believe in the American Dream has fallen to the lowest level in 20 years. More than half of all Americans under the age of 25 no longer believe that capitalism is the best of all economic systems.

A recent study conducted by RAND Corporation found that “this feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.”(12)

Trump considers himself as a pragmatist power-driven leader and a hero of white America politics. He believes he can be an effective CEO at the White House after the November 8th election striking political deals in the same way he has built his real estate empire. Under a Trump administration, as he vowed, “No American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of a foreign country.”(13)

Within this nativist and nationalist mindset, there has been strong allegiance in both directions between Trump and his followers. Some analysts assert that “one common explanation of Trump’s success is that his supporters are irrational. Many conservative commentators have observed that Trump’s legions stick with him, even in the face of repeated explanations of his many deficiencies… There is, however, no reason for his supporters to be driven away from him even by his real imperfections if they find no other candidate addressing their concerns.(14)


Eight Pillars of Trumpism

Trump has contested the status-quo politics of the Republican Party, and accused its leaders of betraying the middle class (a politically-correct reference to the “working class”). In less than ten months (September 2015-July 2016), Trump ignored the Republican Party’s conventional legacy, and subsequently emerged as the de-facto Leader.

Still, the Republican leadership, either at the Congress or at the helm of state governorship, struggles with the unstoppable tide of Trumpism, which deviates from the legacy of great Republicans like Abraham Lincoln (1861-1985), Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), and Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). As Carson Holloway explains, “many conservative intellectuals seem to have worked themselves into a state of indignation that makes it difficult to understand the Trump phenomenon. They have convinced themselves that a vote for Trump is necessarily and obviously an act of grave political irresponsibility. Yet Trump has won the votes of millions of ordinary, decent Americans.”(15)

Trump’s political discourse has been shaped by eight main points:

1) The need for building a firewall between the United States and Mexico as a preventive measure against illegal immigration and drug trafficking;

2) Protection of the U.S. national security from terrorism and banning the entry of Muslims to the United States to the extent that Trump has become the new advocate of Islamophobia;

3) Opposition of all humanitarian calls to welcome some of the Syrian refugees with the pretext that some of them could be ‘members’ of the Islamic State in Syria and Levant (ISIL), and the need for containing what he terms as ‘radical Islam’;

4) The advocacy of various controversial methods of torture and interrogation, including waterboarding, vis-à-vis suspected members of terrorist groups, farther than what was approved by the George Bush administration (2001 2009);

5) Aggressive development of the U.S. military capabilities and America’s hard power beyond the reach of other nations as a strategy of deterrence;

6) Penalization of U.S. companies for outsourcing their manufacturing operations overseas and imposing heavy fines and tariffs on Chinese and Japanese exports;

7) The characterization of the new nuclear accord with Iran as “weakness” in the Obama administration’s approach to negotiations; and

8) Revisiting the U.S. coverage of the national security costs for certain allies like Japan, South Korea, and the Arab Gulf states.


Flirting with Neo-Fascism

Trump’s public discourse has been synonyms to several controversies. He has developed the notoriety of being a “loose cannon” firing frequent attacks against Mexican immigrants, Muslims, refugees, women, and other minorities. Hillary Clinton argues that “Trump’s ideas aren’t just different – they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.”(16)

As a new complex political doctrine; Trumpism can be considered the product of the frustration, fear, and intolerance of most conservatives: It is also the nexus of white, extreme right wing, nativist, and isolationist politics. One of the most controversial statements was his call for a ban on the entry of Muslims to the United States in December 2015.This narrative implies a clash-of-civilizations interpretation of the terrorism dilemma. He reinforced his position three months later with another rejectionist narrative “Islam hates us”. His fellow candidates; both Democrats and Republican as shown in Table 2, criticized him for drifting towards demagogy and authoritarianism.

Table 2: Reactions of presidential candidates to Donald Trump’s call for banning the entry of Muslims into the United States [compiled by the author]

Democratic candidates

Hillary Clinton “I think it’s prejudiced, I think it’s discriminatory. That has no place in our politics.”

Bernie Sanders
“A demagogue’ “We are a weak nation when we allow racism and xenophobia to divide us”.

Martin O’Malley “He is running for President as a fascist demagogue”.
Republican candidates
(left the presidential race)


Ted Cruz “This is not my policy”
Lindsey Graham “Frankly dangerous”

John Kasich
“This is just more of the outrageous divisiveness that characterizes his every breath and another reason why he is entirely unsuited to lead the United States.”

Jeb Bush “Trump is unhinged. His "policy" proposals are not serious.”
Marco Rubio “His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.”

Carli Fiorina “An over exaggerated and dangerous statement.”

Trump’s Islamophobia, anti-immigration, and anti-refugees positions have revealed some fatigue of American democracy. Fascism scholar Robert Paxton notices that "the use of ethnic stereotypes and exploitation of fear of foreigners is directly out of the fascist's recipe book. A sense of victimhood is absolutely essential to the rise of fascism and that is very strong in America today, particularly among the white middle class.”(17)

Carl Bernstein veteran editor of the Washington Post argues that Trump is “a neo-fascist in the sense of his appeal and methodology that has to do with authoritarianism, nativism, and incitement, which we're seeing now.”(18) However, I argue that this coziness with neo-fascism and tyranny implies the existence of some societal shifts which have served as a launching platform of Trumpism.


Properties of Trumpism

The presidential campaigns of 2016 have shown an increasing shift toward extreme right-wing politics. Trump seems to claim some exaggerated credit for mobilizing the white middle class if we take into consideration his limited knowledge and experience in politics. Subsequently, the precursors of Trumpism can be summarized in six main points:

1. Nihilism: Trump has often referred to a general economic, political, strategic, and military ‘decline’ of the United States despite President Obama’s success in cutting the unemployment rate by half (nearly 10 percent in 2009 to 5 percent in early 2016) and initiating a new era in the U.S. international relations. Trump’s isolationist stance translates into contesting the new nuclear accord with Iran, the new policy toward Cuba, and even Obamacare as one of Obama’s signature reforms of domestic policies. Trump said his supporters want a leader who can “blow the existing system into hell.”

2. Protectionism: Trump’s dark view of America and fear of the other has led to growing attachment to political and economic protectionism. Many American workers remain skeptical of several free trade agreements, including NAFTA with Mexico and Canada, and the trade imbalance with China, Japan, and Mexico. Trump has vowed to impose up to 45 percent tariffs on the U.S. outsourced products. His supporters applaud this policy despite its potential negative on the U.S. economy and their personal income.

3. Nativism: The presidential rallies have shown clear differences of the ethic traits among the candidates’ supporters. Trump’s followers in particular seem to be the whitest, with a dominant European ancestry, and the least representative of the multi-racial and colored America. They have been uncomfortable with the current demographic shift with one million new immigrants settling in America every year. They also remain concerned with the growth of the Latino communities as the new majority by 2025. This nativism was one of the precursors of the Tea Party which presented itself as a renewal movement of the Republican Party in 2009.

4. Populism or Defending the People? Trump tends to use a simplified and fiery language beyond political correctness and the nuances of the public discourse. His communication strategy reveals two main tendencies: a) his limited political knowledge which he derives from watching news programs on television, and b) the no-university educational background of most of his supporters. However, Trump’s apparent populism is not innocent; it hides a deliberate ideological exploitation of the gap between the political elite in Washington and ordinary Americans. It is also an extension to his demagogy in playing the card of identity politics.

5. Nationalism, not Patriotism: Trump stands out as a ‘national hero’ in the eyes of his supporters seeking the protection of the national security and restoring the pride and standing of America in the world. However, this apparent patriotism hides a sinister framework of white American nationalism and supremacy politics. Accordingly, Trump’s discourse seems to tab into the narcissism of his WASP base among the so-called “Me Generation”. They are the young Americans of the seventies, who considered themselves to be the ‘center’ of the universe, revolting against tolerance, social integration, and political correctness.

6. Trial of the Republican Party: Trump’s electoral popularity has not existed in a vacuum; but is energized by a negative sentiment vis-à-vis the Republican Party establishment. For the last twenty years, Republican leaders have sided with wealthy conservatives and Wall Street elite instead of formulating a pro-active strategy to help avoid the current rupture between the Party and the working class. Trump’s popularity implies the failure of the Republican Party in containing the Tea Party as a rebellious movement against the elitist Republican policies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Dr. Mohammed Cherkaoui
Dr. Mohammed Cherkaoui is professor of Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Washington D.C. and former member of the United Nations Panel of Experts.

REFERENCES

(1) Seagrave (2016) “What Trump and Sanders Teach Us about America”, The Public Discourse (Visited on July 5) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/03/16629/

(2) D. Trump (2016) “Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech”, The New York Times, April 27 (Visited on July 5) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html

(3) H. Widdowson (2000) “On the limitations of linguistics applied”, Applied Linguistics, 21 (1), p. 3-5

(4) CBS News (2016) “Sanders: Can’t Respond to Every “Moronic Statement Made by Donald Trump, April 1 (Visited on July 7) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanders-explains-his-response-to-trump-remarks-on-abortion/

(5) F. Bruni, (2016) “Donald Trump Won’t Leave Us Alone”, The New York Times, April 5(Visited on July 7) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trump-wont-leave-us-alone.html?_r=0

(6) M. Clyne, (2016) “Trump: ‘Middle Class Is Getting Clobbered in This Country’, August 27 (Visited on July 6) http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/donald-trump-middle-class-tax-code/2015/08/27/id/672177/

(7) D. Trump (2016) “Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech”, The New York Times, April 27 (Visited on July 7) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/

us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html

(8) D. W. Brady and D. Rivers (2015) “Who Are Trump's Supporters?” Real Clear Politics, September 9, (Visited on July 8) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/09/who_are_trumps_supporters.html


(9) D. Thompson (2016) “Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters, Really?” The Atlantic, March 1 (Visited on July 6) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/

(10) C. Holloway (2001) “Aristotle Explains the Trump Phenomenon”, The Public Discourse (Visited on July 5) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/04/16733/

(11) S. Frizell (2015) “Hillary Clinton Blasts Donald Trump’s Comments on Muslims:, CNN, December 5 (Visited on July 6) http://time.com/4141599/hillary-clinton-trump-muslims

(12) D. Thompson “Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters, Really?”, The Atlantic, March 1 (Visited on July 7) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/

(13) D. Trump (2016) “Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech”, The New York Times, April 27 (Visited on July 7) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html

(14) C. Holloway (2016) “Why Trump Persists”, The Public Discourse, (Visited on July 7) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16536/

(15) C. Holloway (2016) “Why Trump Persists”, The Public Discourse, (Visited on July 6) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16536/

(16) H. Clinton’s Speech, San Diego, California, Time, June 2, 2016 (Visited on July 5) http://time.com/4355797/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-foreign-policy-speech-transcript/

(17) H. Stark (2016) “An Exhausted Democracy: Donald Trump and the New American Nationalism”, Spiegel Online International (Visited on July 6) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/essay-donald-trump-and-the-new-american-nationalism-a-1092548.html

(18) J. Amato (2016) “Carl Bernstein: Donald Trump Is An American 'Neo-Fascist'”. CNN. 13 March (Visited on July 7) http://crooksandliars.com/2016/03/carl-bernstein-donald-trump-american-neo

us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html

(8) D. W. Brady and D. Rivers (2015) “Who Are Trump's Supporters?” Real Clear Politics, September 9, (Visited on July 8) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/09/who_are_trumps_supporters.html


(9) D. Thompson (2016) “Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters, Really?” The Atlantic, March 1 (Visited on July 6) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/

(10) C. Holloway (2001) “Aristotle Explains the Trump Phenomenon”, The Public Discourse (Visited on July 5) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/04/16733/

(11) S. Frizell (2015) “Hillary Clinton Blasts Donald Trump’s Comments on Muslims:, CNN, December 5 (Visited on July 6) http://time.com/4141599/hillary-clinton-trump-muslims

(12) D. Thompson “Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters, Really?”, The Atlantic, March 1 (Visited on July 7) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-really/471714/

(13) D. Trump (2016) “Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech”, The New York Times, April 27 (Visited on July 7) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html

(14) C. Holloway (2016) “Why Trump Persists”, The Public Discourse, (Visited on July 7) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16536/

(15) C. Holloway (2016) “Why Trump Persists”, The Public Discourse, (Visited on July 6) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/02/16536/

(16) H. Clinton’s Speech, San Diego, California, Time, June 2, 2016 (Visited on July 5) http://time.com/4355797/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-foreign-policy-speech-transcript/

(17) H. Stark (2016) “An Exhausted Democracy: Donald Trump and the New American Nationalism”, Spiegel Online International (Visited on July 6) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/essay-donald-trump-and-the-new-american-nationalism-a-1092548.html

(18) J. Amato (2016) “Carl Bernstein: Donald Trump Is An American 'Neo-Fascist'”. CNN. 13 March (Visited on July 7) http://crooksandliars.com/2016/03/carl-bernstein-donald-trump-american-neo



http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/09/bernie-sanders-donald-trump/93530352/

Would Bernie Sanders have defeated Donald Trump?
Jesse Yomtov , USA TODAY 7:29 a.m. EST November 9, 2016


During the primaries, one of the most common attacks on Bernie Sanders was that he wasn't anywhere near as "electable" in the general election as Hillary Clinton.

As Donald Trump is poised to assume the presidency, let's take a look back at how Sanders was polling against Trump in a head-to-head general election matchup.

The RealClearPolitics average from May 6-June 5 had Sanders at 49.7% to Trump's 39.3%, a 10.4-point cushion.

In that same time frame, Trump was polling close to Clinton and was even ahead in multiple polls.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. (Photo: USA TODAY)

During an appearance on Meet The Press at the end of May, Sanders acknowledged that disparity: "Right now, in every major poll, national poll and statewide poll done in the last month, six weeks, we are defeating Trump often by big numbers, and always at a larger margin than secretary Clinton is."

That polling was of course based on a hypothetical scenario, five months from Election Day. However, Sanders' popularity among white working-class voters might have been the difference in this election; voters that Trump ultimately won.

Sanders defeated Clinton in both the Wisconsin and Michigan primaries, two of the states that Trump surprised in on Tuesday.

This wasn't lost on those who had followed the polls:

Follow
Joshua Ovenshire ✔ @TheJovenshire
I 100% believe Bernie Sanders could have beaten Trump. I think A LOT of people jumped camps when Clinton beat out Sanders.
1:56 AM - 9 Nov 2016
389 389 Retweets 1,383 1,383 likes
Follow
The Catch Fence ™ @TheCatchFence
If democrats hadn't screwed over Bernie Sanders we'd probably be talking about President-elect Sanders right now. #ElectionNight
2:14 AM - 9 Nov 2016
223 223 Retweets 421 421 likes
Follow
Chris McCoy ✔ @chrisamccoy
I'll finally say it: Bernie Sanders would be our President in 2016 if the DNC didn't collude.
1:52 AM - 9 Nov 2016
197 197 Retweets 410 410 likes
Follow
Joe Penna ✔ @MysteryGuitarM
...and Bernie was called "unelectable".
1:17 AM - 9 Nov 2016
139 139 Retweets 370 370 likes
PRESIDENT
View Full Results
Updated Nov. 9, at 10:42 a.m.
218
Clinton
59,344,398
270 TO WIN
276
Trump
59,179,214




http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/word-bernie-voters-dontblamemeivotedforbernie-161109100731420.html

US ELECTIONS 20163 HOURS AGO
A word from Bernie voters: #DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie
Backers of left-wing Democratic candidate take to social media blaming Clinton's flaws for Trump's election victory.

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Bernie Sanders argued during his campaign that Hillary Clinton was not fit to be a presidential candidate [Al Jazeera]

Right after the US election results were clear on Wednesday, Bernie Sanders supporters rushed to social media to say: "We told you so!", using various hashtags such as #DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie,
#StillSanders and #BringBernieBack.

Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election came as a shock to many Democrats, some Republicans and generally a whole lot of people around the world, but not to the supporters of the Vermont senator who lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton in June.

The campaign of Sanders repeatedly argued that Clinton was not fit to be a presidential candidate due to her track record of political scandals, as well as her Wall Street and corporate ties.

YouTube ‎@YouTube
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Don Allen @dxguy7
Bernie Sanders Says Hillary Clinton Is Not Qualified to Be President http://ln.is/www.youtube.com/83nPe … via @YouTube
9:02 PM - 3 Nov 2016
3 3 Retweets 1 1 like
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
Tod Moore @TodMoore3
the #BernieSanders fans told U #ImWithHer idiots a year ago & y'all refused 2 listen 2 us THIS IS ON YOU
10:38 PM - 8 Nov 2016
129 129 Retweets 215 215 likes
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
RecoveringDem @Bernie4Indiana
#Dems could've had a victory party tonight, instead they destroyed #BernieSanders for their #coronation #DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie
12:54 AM - 9 Nov 2016
103 103 Retweets 168 168 likes


Clinton was forced to respond to many issues that she had been associated with during her campaign; from the millions of dollars she earned from speeches, accusations regarding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, more recently controversies with her aides, and most seriously, using a private email server for official communications when she was the secretary of state.

In addition, Bill Clinton, former president and husband of Hillary, has a collection of his own.

The supporters of Sanders were already frustrated even before the election as throughout the Republican campaign the same argument Sanders used against Clinton was echoed loudly by Trump.

Trump depicted the former secretary of state as a "corrupt politician" of what he called "the Washington establishment", also saying that Clinton was not fit to be a president, as Sanders did.


Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
#CrookedHillary is unfit to serve.
4:55 PM - 3 Nov 2016 · Concord, NC, United States
20,347 20,347 Retweets 36,741 36,741 likes
"Hilary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system," he said, in one of his final rallies in Florida, criticising the FBI's rapid review of a Clinton aide's emails over her and her team's handling of classified information.

The FBI said the discovery of new emails on the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner's computer warranted no new criminal action against Clinton.

View image on Twitter
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Follow
Zach Haller @zachhaller
omfg is #DontBlameMeIVotedForBernie legit trending?? My #dbmivfb??#ElectionNight #MAGA
12:55 AM - 9 Nov 2016
77 77 Retweets 138 138 likes
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
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Daniel Schneider @BiologistDan
#Democrats you have no one to blame but yourselves. You screwed #BernieSanders. You cheated. We all lose #ElectionNight #ElectionDay
12:07 AM - 9 Nov 2016
644 644 Retweets 944 944 likes

"My contract with the American voter begins with a plan to end government corruption, and take back our country ... from the special interests, who I know so well. When we win tomorrow, we are going to drain the swamp," Trump said, revisiting Sanders' rhetoric.


Many on social media also argued that votes that the Republican candidate secured were not pro-Trump votes, but were anti-Hillary votes.

Follow
Thomas C. @Thomas_Conerty
Hillary isn't losing because she's a woman. She's losing because she's corrupt, untrustworthy, and unpopular. #ElectionNight
12:13 AM - 9 Nov 2016
2,106 2,106 Retweets 4,219 4,219 likes
Follow
Gabrielle Seunagal ♛ @ClassySnobbb
Hillary is losing because America is tired of the scandals and corruption that come along with the Clintons. We've had it with big gov't.
12:16 AM - 9 Nov 2016 · Alpharetta, GA, United States
55 55 Retweets 106 106 likes



http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/bernie-sanders-brother-bid-cameron-uk-mp-seat-160923144641950.html

UNITED KINGDOM23 SEPTEMBER 2016
Bernie Sanders' brother in bid for Cameron's UK MP seat
UK-based Larry Sanders, 82, will represent the Green Party in the race for former British PM David Cameron's seat.
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Larry Sanders, 82, will be representing the Green Party in the upcoming by-election [Zak Bond/Green Party]Larry Sanders, 82, will be representing the Green Party in the upcoming by-election [Zak Bond/Green Party]
The brother of Bernie Sanders, the former US presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, has announced that he will be running for a seat in the British parliament, vacated last week by former Prime Minister David Cameron.

Larry Sanders, 82, who moved to the UK in 1969, was selected to represent the Green Party in the October 20 by-election to replace Cameron as the MP for the Witney constituency in Oxfordshire.

Cameron, who stepped down as prime minister in late June following his failed referendum campaign to convince UK voters to remain the European Union, announced his resignation from parliament earlier in September.

Follow
Keith Taylor MEP ✔ @GreenKeithMEP
Congrats to @LarrySandersPPC, selected as @TheGreenParty candidate for #Witney. A fantastic local activist & advocate for truly public #NHS.
6:38 PM - 22 Sep 2016 · Hackney, London, United Kingdom
54 54 Retweets 51 51 likes
"The major political parties are in disarray," Sanders said in a statement on Friday.

"The policies of the last 30 years, shifting resources and power from the majority to the richest, culminated in the illegality and greed which crashed the economy in 2008," he said, channelling a rhetoric his 75-year-old brother and senator of Vermont used throughout his presidential nomination bid.

"This is a rich, capable and decent country," he said. "We can do better."

'More funding for social care'

Sanders will be fighting the by-election "on the promise to fight NHS [National Health Service] privatisation", the Green Party said in a statement on Friday.

"He will also campaign for a fair proportional representation system so every vote counts, more funding for social care and to reverse housing policy so everyone can afford a decent home."

READ MORE: Bernie Sanders calls out capitalism at the Vatican


Larry Sanders, right, is the older brother of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders [Justin Lane/ Green Party]
Larry Sanders, who previously served as a local councillor, is currently the Green Party's health spokesman.

He been active in local politics in Britain for more than 15 years, also ran for a parliamentary seat in the 2015 general election for Oxford West and Abingdon, when he secured 4.4 percent of the vote, losing to his Conservative rival who got more than 45 percent.

The Witney constituency is also a stronghold for the ruling Conservative Party.

READ MORE: Britain's Green Party surge

At the 2015 election, Cameron secured the Witney parliamentary seat by winning more than 60 percent of the vote, while the Green Party candidate only got 5 percent.

The Conservatives announced on Thursday that 37-year-old Robert Courts will be their candidate in the coming by-election for the Witney seat.

Courts, a barrister and local councillor on West Oxfordshire District Council, said he was "honoured" by his party's decision.


UK: Leftist politics challenging the media - Listening Post
Source: Al Jazeera News

United Kingdom Bernie Sanders Elections Politics
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NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2016-race-general-michael-hayden-donald-trump-presidency-national-security-concerns/

Gen. Michael Hayden: Donald Trump doesn't fit "into the intelligence picture"
By REBECCA LEE CBS NEWS
November 9, 2016, 1:36 PM

PLAY – CBS News Video


Retired four-star General Michael Hayden was arguably one of the most prominent critics of Donald Trump’s run for president. The former NSA and CIA director was among 50 national security officials who signed a letter in September warning that Donald Trump was a “risk” to the country’s national security.

Now that the once-unlikely billionaire is our newest president-elect, the risk has become even realer to Hayden.

“Look, I think it’s fair to say that he’s become the president-elect by showing anger, by being accusatory, frankly, not being all that fact-based and scapegoating real and imagined enemies,” Hayden said. “None of that fits into the intelligence picture – that’s very alien to the way intelligence comes at an issue. And unless he has a conversation with what I call the fact-based, inductive, world-as-it-is people and they have a meaningful dialogue, I fear he’s going to continue to act on this other set of beliefs and that’s going to be very bad for America and for the world.”

Gen. Michael Hayden: This could be an ugly four years
Play VIDEO
Gen. Michael Hayden: This could be an ugly four years
In a past appearance on “CBS This Morning,” Hayden highlighted some of the biggest national security threats expected to confront the next president, including what he called “ambitious, fragile and nuclear” states like Iran.

The Iran deal signed by the Obama administration may be in jeopardy under a Trump presidency, as the president-elect has run expressed opposition to the pact throughout his campaign (along with some misstatements about it).

But Hayden said he didn’t think it was possible for the deal to be dismantled because it is “relatively locked in.”

“The immediate impact of the deal with regard to the nuclear deal program is OK,” Hayden said. “It’s all the other things that the Iranians are doing and frankly, Mr. Trump had good criticisms of the administration. Don’t let them get away with what they’re doing in Syria, in Yemen and elsewhere.”

Hayden said those issues were a greater priority, and that the new administration could worry about Iran’s nuclear program years later when the current provisions of the deal “begin to age off.”

Another top concern for Hayden in the next presidency is threats from Russia, especially because of Trump’s past comments expressing admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Congratulating Trump on his stunning upset Wednesday, Putin expressed hope in working with the president-elect.

World reacts to Donald Trump's election win
Alluding to Trump’s past comment about wanting a good relationship with Russia, Hayden said he, too, would like that, but it “can’t be cost-free for the Kremlin.”

“I would also like him to make some conditions on the Russian, that the Russians have to do certain things and stop doing other things for us to begin to have a more mutually beneficial relationship,” Hayden said. “I have yet to see word one in terms of what Russian behavior has to look like before we enter into this more meaningful dialogue.”

As for the fight against ISIS, Hayden said the United States is in a “pretty good spot,” though he has expressed some concerns.

“We’ve been way too light, overregulated and underresourced but right now we are on the cusp of a significant victory in Mosul. It’s going to take time and frankly, we’re beginning to tighten the vise around Raqqa as well,” Hayden said.

Despite the progress, Hayden still has a fear about Trump’s approach to ISIS.

“Mr. Trump thinks we are where we are now because we’ve been weak and stupid. I think we’ve been slow, but not weak and stupid,” Hayden said. And he seems to have the belief that we can kill our way out of this quickly and then go home. My sense is with that formula, we get to kill our way out of this again and again.”

When asked how Trump’s idea of a ban on Muslims entering the United States – one of Trump’s signature issues on the campaign trail – could impact national security, Hayden said it only makes things “more and more difficult.”

“What’s going on is a great civil warring inside a great monotheism. We can’t decide the outcome of that war but we have to give the monotheism some respect because we have deep, good friends inside that belief system and to take this blanket accusation – ‘they all hate us’ – and now impose this restriction on all believers of that great faith, that sets us back,” Hayden said.



REACTION AT HOME


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/high-school-students-protest-trump-win/

California high school students stage walkout over Trump win
CBS NEWS
November 9, 2016, 2:37 PM

15 Photographs -- High school students in the East Bay outside San Francisco stage a walk-out in protest of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election on Nov. 9, 2016. CBS SAN FRANCISCO


BERKELEY — Hundreds of students walked out of three East Bay high school Wednesday, protesting Republican Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.

Students at Berkeley High, Bishop O’Dowd and Oakland Tech all staged morning walkouts, reports CBS San Francisco.

The high school students joined protesters elsewhere in California and other parts of the nation who took to the streets to demonstrate against Trump’s win.

Trump victory protests
Trump victory protests
Berkeley Unified School District spokesman Charles Burress said about 1,500 Berkeley High School students participated in their protest that began around 8:20 a.m., just as classes were getting underway at the school at 1980 Allston Way.

Students then gathered outside the school, taking turns to speak on microphone.

Burress estimated about half the school’s students were participating. Classes, however, were still being held for students wishing to attend.

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“Donald Trump may be president, but we are going to make sure that this man, that he is going to prioritize the well being of the people, so please join us in this fight,” an unidentified student said during the protest, addressing the large crowd.

“He wants us to turn against each other,” another female student said to the crowd as she held back tears. “I just want to emphasize that as young people it’s our job to continue to fight like our parents fought for us.”

Burress said the students have been very focused and respectful of each other and the situation.

“The district prefers that its students are in class and participating,” Burress said. “However, we do understand their concern and we take it very seriously when they feel passionate about political issues. We’re doing everything we can to support them.”




http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/09/501421924/how-president-trump-could-derail-obamacare-by-dropping-legal-appeal

How A President Trump Could Derail Obamacare By Dropping Legal
November 9, 201611:08 AM ET
JULIE ROVNER

Photograph -- If the Trump administration decides to drop an appeal of a legal setback involving Obamacare subsidies, the insurance exchanges could be hobbled.
Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images


Republicans have been vowing for six years now to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They have voted to do so dozens of times, despite knowing any measures would be vetoed by President Obama.

But the election of Donald Trump as president means Republican lawmakers wouldn't even have to pass repeal legislation to stop the health law from functioning. Instead, President Trump could do much of it with a stroke of a pen.

Trump "absolutely, through executive action, could have tremendous interference to the point of literally stopping a train on its tracks," said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of law and health policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Trump Can Kill Obamacare With Or Without Help From Congress
SHOTS - HEALTH NEWS
Trump Can Kill Obamacare With Or Without Help From Congress

Trump is set to take office at a tricky time for the health law, with many Americans in both parties complaining about rising premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. The Republican-led Congress has refused to make changes to the law that would help it work better — such as offering a fix when insurers cancelled policies that individuals thought they would be able to keep. As staunch opponents of the law, they, of course, have little incentive to improve it.

When problems have arisen, Obama has often used his executive authority to try to solve them. And it's this very mechanism Trump could use to undermine the law. As president, the Republican "can just reverse" Obama's actions in many cases, said Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan who writes about health policy. A president "can't undo the basic architecture of the law, but you can throw sand into the gears," he said.

Formal regulations would take time to undo, because they must follow a lengthy process allowing for public comment. But there are several measures Trump could take on Day One of his presidency to cripple the law's effectiveness.

Perhaps Trump's easiest action — and the one that would produce the largest impact — would be to drop the administration's appeal of a lawsuit filed by Republican House members in 2014. That suit, House v. Burwell, charged that the Obama administration was unconstitutionally spending money that Congress hadn't formally appropriated, to reimburse health insurers who were providing coverage to working-poor policyholders — those earning between 100 and 250 percent of the federal poverty line.

More than half of people who purchase insurance in the health exchanges get the additional help, which reduces out-of-pocket health spending on deductibles and coinsurance. While that help for consumers is required under the law, the funding was not specifically included. (Tax credits for people with incomes up to four times the poverty level to help defray the cost of premiums are a separate program and were permanently funded in the ACA.)

In April, Federal District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled in favor of the House Republicans. "Such an appropriation cannot be inferred," she wrote of the payments, and insurer "reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution." However, Collyer declined to enforce her decision, pending an appeal to a higher court. That appeal was filed in July and is still months away from resolution.

If Trump wanted to seriously damage the ACA, he could simply order the appeal dropped, letting the lower court ruling stand, and stop reimbursing insurers who are giving deep discounts to half their customers. That move would wreak havoc, said Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute, a longtime opponent of the health law. The insurers would still have to provide the discounts, as required by law, he said, "but they're no longer getting subsidies from the federal government to cover the cost. So they are going to be selling insurance to these people way below the cost of that coverage."

Even those who support the law say that mismatch would effectively shut down the health exchanges, because insurers would simply drop out. A Trump administration "really could collapse the federal exchange marketplace and the state exchanges if they end cost-sharing" payments to insurers," said Rosenbaum, who has been a strong backer of the health law. There is already some concern about the continuing viability of the exchanges after several large insurers, including Aetna and United HealthCare, announced they would be dropping out for 2017.

Trump Wins. Now What?

ELECTIONS
Trump Wins. Here Are His Priorities

Another way Trump could undermine the health law would be by simply not enforcing its provisions, particularly the individual mandate that requires most people to have insurance. That requirement is supposed to ensure that healthy as well as sick people sign up, thus spreading the costs of people with high bills across a larger population. But "executive branch non-enforcement could make a real difference to the vitality of the exchanges going forward," Bagley said. If healthy people don't sign up, sick people would need to pay more money for their insurance.

Aside from inflicting damage to the exchanges, the administration could also affect the law's operations by refusing to approve states' changes to their Medicaid programs. States rely on federal regulators to sign off on changes large and small, including which citizens are eligible, to keep their Medicaid programs operating. "There are so many things that an administration that doesn't want a program to work can do," Rosenbaum said.

The bigger question, though, is not what Trump could do to cripple the health law — it's what he would do. He has addressed the issue only rarely — characterizing the health law as, simply, "a disaster" — and his plans for it aren't clear. "It's one thing to talk about ripping insurance from 20 million people" who are newly covered, Bagley said. "It's another to actually do it."

Health policy analysts on both sides of the aisle also still question where health care fits on Trump's priority list.

"A big unknown is how aggressive Trump would remain in going beyond rhetorically opposing Obamacare," said Thomas Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "His report card as a presidential candidate reads, 'Donald needs to improve his attention, effort, and study habits. He is easily distracted and seems to prefer just picking fights with others.' "

Perhaps most important, Cato's Cannon says, is not whether Trump could single-handedly undo the health law, but whether he could undermine it enough to force Congress to take action. If Trump were to do just enough to cause the insurance exchanges to fail, he said, "that would put pressure on Congress ... to reopen the law."

Editor's note: A version of this story was first published by Kaiser Health News on Oct. 7.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can follow Julie Rovner on Twitter:@jrovner.


http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501451368/here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to-do-in-his-first-100-days

Here Is What Donald Trump Wants To Do In His First 100 Days
November 9, 20163:45 PM ET
BARBARA SPRUNT

Photograph -- President-elect Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech during his election night rally.
John Locher/AP


At the end of October, Donald Trump spoke in Gettysburg, Pa., and released a plan for his first 100 days in office.

The plan (below) outlines three main areas of focus: cleaning up Washington, including by imposing term limits on Congress; protecting American workers; and restoring rule of law. He also laid out his plan for working with Congress to introduce 10 pieces of legislation that would repeal Obamacare, fund the construction of a wall at the Southern border (with a provision that Mexico would reimburse the U.S.), encourage infrastructure investment, rebuild military bases, promote school choice and more.

GOP Leaders Make Peace With Trump In Favor Of 'Unified Republican Government'
POLITICS
GOP Leaders Make Peace With Trump In Favor Of 'Unified Republican Government'
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mostly made nice with Trump but also shot down or expressed little enthusiasm in some of his plans. On Trump's proposal to impose term limits on Congress, McConnell said, "It will not be on the agenda in the Senate." McConnell has been a long-standing opponent of term limits, as NPR's Susan Davis reports. "I would say we have term limits now — they're called elections."

McConnell also threw some cold water on Trump's infrastructure plans, calling it not a top priority.

McConnell did say repealing Obamacare is a "pretty high item on our agenda" along with comprehensive tax reform and achieving border security "in whatever way is the most effective." But he also declined to discuss the Senate's immigration agenda further.

"We look forward to working with him," McConnell said. "I think most of the things that he's likely to advocate we're going to be enthusiastically for."

Below is the 100-day plan Trump's campaign released in October, called "Donald Trump's Contract With The American Voter."

What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter — and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington

Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

* FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;

* SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);

* THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;

* FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

* FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

* SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:

* FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205

* SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

* THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator

* FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately

* FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

* SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward

* SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

* FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama

* SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States

* THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities

* FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back

* FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side [sic] childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values

Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.

And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.


THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY


***ELECTORAL COLLEGE DOES IT AGAIN

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/09/501393501/shades-of-2000-clinton-surpasses-trump-in-popular-vote-tally

Shades Of 2000? Clinton Surpasses Trump In Popular Vote Tally
November 9, 20167:22 AM ET
BILL CHAPPELL

Photograph -- Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks to Florida voters Oct. 30 at a Baptist Church in Miami, Fla.
Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton finds herself on the wrong end of an electoral split, moving ahead in the popular vote but losing to President-elect Donald Trump in the Electoral College, according to the latest numbers emerging Wednesday.

As of 12:33 p.m. ET, Clinton had amassed 59,583,144 votes nationally, to Trump's 59,344,988 — a margin of 238,156 that puts Clinton on track to become the fifth U.S. presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election.

Neither candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote: As of noon Wednesday, Clinton stood at 47.7 percent and Trump at 47.5 percent.

"Trump crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold at 2:31 a.m. ET with a victory in Wisconsin," as NPR's Carrie Johnson reported last night.

Addressing the results publicly for the first time Wednesday morning, Clinton said that she had offered to work with Trump as he assumes the presidency, saying, "I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans."

Clinton also acknowledged, "This is painful — and it will be for a long time."


Of the election's results, Clinton added that the country's electorate had proved to be "more deeply divided than we thought."

If the final tally follows the current trend, the result would mark the second time in the past 16 years that a Democrat has lost a national election while winning the popular vote. In 2000, Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote against George Bush, but he lost the presidency by five electoral votes in a hotly contested result.

Because of how the Electoral College works, it's theoretically possible for a candidate to win the White House with less than 30 percent of the popular vote, as NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben recently reported.

Discussing the 2000 election, Danielle noted that despite the split outcome, that race "also has the electoral-vote margin that most closely reflects the popular-vote margin."

Danielle added, "In that sense, one could call it one of the 'fairest' elections in modern politics."

Before the 2000 presidential race, the popular and electoral vote had been split three times — all in the 1800s. Here's the full list that Hillary Clinton is now poised to join:

Andrew Jackson in 1824 (lost to John Quincy Adams)
Samuel Tilden in 1876 (lost to Rutherford B. Hayes)
Grover Cleveland in 1888 (lost to Benjamin Harrison)
Al Gore in 2000 (lost to George W. Bush)
The last time the electoral college system came up for serious debate was in the late 1960s. From the House of Representatives archives:

"The closest Congress has come to amending the Electoral College since 1804 was during the 91st Congress (1969–1971). H.J. Res. 681 proposed the direct election of a President and Vice President, requiring a run off when no candidate received more than 40 percent of the vote. The resolution passed the House in 1969, but failed to pass the Senate."



http://www.npr.org/2016/11/02/500112248/how-to-win-the-presidency-with-27-percent-of-the-popular-vote

How To Win The Presidency With 23 Percent Of The Popular Vote
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN
November 2, 20166:00 AM ET

Photograph -- Rakeda Leaks (right) and Candice Williams fill out Electoral College maps on election night 2008.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
POLITICS -- Why Do We Vote On Tuesdays?


It's that time again: time for Americans to figure out how, exactly, their presidential election works. "Electoral College" searches spike every four years, just before Election Day, according to Google ... and the search volume is picking up right now.

Long story short: To win the presidency, you don't have to win the majority of the popular vote. You have to win the majority of electoral votes — that is, 270 of them.* In most states, a candidate wins electoral votes by winning the most voters.

So. Win a state by just one vote, and you win all of its electoral votes (unless you live in Nebraska or Maine, which divvy up their votes a little differently).

This can lead to off-kilter election results — in 2000, for example, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote by a few hundred thousand votes, but lost the presidency by five electoral votes. So we wondered: Just how few votes would a candidate need to win 270 electoral votes?

We decided to find out. A candidate only needs to win the 11 states with the most electoral votes to hit 270. Assuming only two candidates (a big assumption; see below) and that one candidate won all of those states by just one vote, and then didn't win a single vote in any of the other states (or D.C.), how many votes would that candidate have to win? It depends on how you do the math. Either way, it's far less than half.

Initially when we did this story, we found that if you start with the biggest-electoral-vote states, the answer is 27 percent. However, we have an update: as Andrej Schoeke very nicely pointed out to us on Twitter, there's another way to do it (via CGP Grey) that requires even less of the popular vote: start with the smallest-electoral-vote states. Our math went through a few iterations on this but by our final math, in 2012 that could have meant winning the presidency with only around 23 percent of the popular vote.

We're making a lot of assumptions here — we're using vote totals from 2012, for one thing. Moreover, we're assuming there are only two candidates in the race.

And let's be clear about the obvious here: This kind of an extreme election isn't going to happen. And if it did — if there were somehow a bunch of 1- or 2-vote wins, you can bet the recounts would stretch into 2017.

A Week From Election Day, Democrats Have Many Paths To A Senate Majority
POLITICS
A Week From Election Day, Democrats Have Many Paths To A Majority
And we're also sure that with any number of tweaks to the math (like plugging in a third or fourth candidate), you could come up with results that are slightly-to-moderately different. But that's not really the point here. The point is that the Electoral College can skew election results to a fantastic degree.

How a 7-point win becomes a "landslide"

This kind of popular-electoral vote discrepancy is why some articles about the 2008 election had to be careful to call Obama's win an electoral landslide — he won 68 percent of the electoral vote but only about 53 percent of the popular vote.

Skewed wins like this happen regularly in U.S. elections — a modest popular vote margin can yield a ridiculously large Electoral College margin. For example, in 1984, Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale in the popular vote by 18 points — a sizable gap, but nothing like the Electoral College walloping: Reagan won 525 electoral votes, beating Mondale by 95 percentage points.

Here's what those gaps look like in every election going back to 1960's race, in which John F. Kennedy only squeaked past Richard Nixon in the popular vote by around 100,000 votes:

The Electoral College Turns Modest Wins Into Landslides

Presidential election victors often win by a larger margin in the Electoral College than in the popular vote. Notably, in 1984, Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale by about 18 percentage points in the popular vote (winning 59 percent of the vote to Mondale’s 41), but by 95.2 percentage points in the Electoral College (with 97.6 percent of the electoral vote (525) to Mondale’s 2.4 percent (13)). Below, the winning candidate’s margin of victory in the popular vote and Electoral College for each election year since 1960:

Ironically, the 2000 election — whose outcome struck many people as unfair because Gore won the popular vote but not the electoral vote — also has the electoral-vote margin that most closely reflects the popular-vote margin. In that sense, one could call it one of the "fairest" elections in modern politics.

Well, maybe. But then, come Nov. 9, there will be no difference for the losing candidate between getting 250 electoral votes or 150 — a loss is a loss.

Obamas Welcome Trick-Or-Treaters, Dance To 'Thriller'
POLITICS
Obamas Welcome Trick-Or-Treaters, Dance To 'Thriller'

The difference an Electoral College makes

The Electoral College and current demographics mean that both parties often take particular electoral votes for granted: Democrats regularly win California and New York, while Republicans win Texas and Georgia (however, things have been closer than usual in those states this year).

(Likewise, there are plenty of easy wins for each party at the low end of the spectrum. Wyoming is regularly Republican. Hawaii regularly votes Democratic.)

And that means that candidates regularly spend a disproportionate amount of time in high-electoral-vote battleground states like Florida and Ohio as they plot their "paths to 270." This means voters in Los Angeles or San Antonio (or Cheyenne or Honolulu) don't get that much attention.

If the Electoral College disappeared tomorrow, campaign strategy would probably shift dramatically; Democrats might campaign more in Austin, Texas. Republicans might do more outreach in conservative parts of California. Either way, the people of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania might get some respite from the onslaught of rallies and ads every four years, as candidates try harder to win bigger parts of the country.

*Before you fire off an email, yes, we know: You can still win the presidency without winning 270 electoral votes. If no candidate hits 270, then the House votes. But we're talking outright on election night.

Correction
Nov. 2, 2016

This story initially reported 24 and 21 percent for the newer method of computing the popular vote that Andrej Schoeke sent us. The number we eventually landed on is 23.



***FAULTY POLLING RESULTS AND COMPUTER ANALYSIS

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/six-assumptions-about-politics-that-are-no-longer-true-after-trumps-victory/

Six assumptions about politics that are no longer true after Trump's victory
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS
November 9, 2016, 4:09 AM

Play VIDEO -- Donald Trump addresses supporters after being elected president


Donald Trump did what almost no one expected he could do Tuesday night: he overcame a daunting electoral map, virtually all national polling and the expectations of the entire political class to win the presidency.

There will be plenty of time for recriminations in the days to come -- and oh, will there be recriminations -- but in the meantime, everyone is asking one big question: how could so many people have been so wrong?

What it comes down to is that Trump’s victory has demolished so many baseline assumptions and truisms of American politics on which politicians and journalists alike have based their thoughts and predictions -- a fact that will perhaps forever change the way we think about and report on politics.

Here are the top assumptions that, after Tuesday, have been upended:

1. That the candidate who is leading in virtually all national polling is the candidate who will win the election.
It is quite an understatement to say that polling had a bad year. Trump himself has long been fond of telling his supporters at rallies that the U.S. presidential election would be another Brexit -- by which he meant that pollsters didn’t expect the United Kingdom to actually vote to leave the European Union, but they did it anyway.

A quick glance at the wealth of reputable national polling over the course of the general election finds that the only poll -- the only one -- to correctly and consistently put Trump in the lead was the Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll. All the major networks -- CBS News included -- had Clinton with a solid advantage heading into Election Day.

Included in the future discussion about polling is exit polling the day of Election Day -- which suggested Clinton would eke out a victory, even in some states where Trump was ultimately victorious. Exit polling data has long been taken as objective truth, but after Tuesday night it’s hard to imagine that happening again.

2. That increasingly data-driven campaigns with significant investments in analytics are the best way to win.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama’s much-vaunted 2008 campaign and its revolutionary use of data and analytics ushered in a new era of politics in which candidates and campaign operatives believed good data would lead to victory. It was a bipartisan conclusion: candidates and officials in both parties began building up high-dollar analytics firms and touting their digital and data efforts. The same goes for a sophisticated ground operation, which goes hand-in-hand with the data and analytics developments of the last eight years.

But twice this year, the candidates with the better analytics operations lost: during the primary, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz spent millions of dollars accurately mapping out the GOP electorate and modeling support and scenarios. He fell to Trump. Clinton effectively inherited the data pros of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaign, and she lost as well.

People in the political consultant class who’ve built their careers and their fortunes on telling candidates they should pay big bucks for a data operation have got to be terrified that their livelihoods are about to disappear.

3. That massive party divisions -- and the lack of support of the party establishment -- can keep a candidate from winning.

Let this sink in for a minute: With the news Tuesday that former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura literally left the presidential slots on their ballot blank, it’s official that no living former presidents supported Trump in his campaign. John McCain and Mitt Romney, the respective 2008 and 2012 GOP nominees, did not support Trump. A slew of other major party leaders did not support Trump. Many party leaders pulled their endorsements after the now-infamous Trump Access Hollywood tape emerged in October.

Donald Trump's historic win
Play VIDEO
Donald Trump's historic win
He won anyway.

Gone is the assumption that a candidate without the full support of his or her party can’t win the presidency. Despite Mike Pence imploring Republicans to “come home,” Trump effectively told the Republican establishment that he didn’t need or want their support. It turns out he was right: he won the presidency without it.

4. That the candidate with more money and more TV ads on air is going to win.

It seems almost farcical that the person to do the most to reverse the effects of Citizens United, the landmark Supreme Court case that effectively created super PACs, would be a rich New York business mogul.

In recent elections, the adage has been that more is better: more super PAC cash, more ads on TV, more money overall. Even Democrats, initially reluctant to embrace super PACs, raised some major cash for the pro-Obama, then pro-Clinton Priorities USA and plastered the airwaves with ads.

But Trump won this campaign while being massively outspent on the airwaves and with less super PAC money on his side. Clearly, money is no longer the best determinant of who’s going to win.

5. That the Democrats’ Electoral College firewall was going to hold for cycles, even decades, to come.

Another post-2008 assumption was that the geographical realignment President Obama brought about -- victories in Mountain West states like Colorado and Nevada, and in East Coast states like North Carolina and Virginia -- were here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

Obama won because he earned strong support from the demographic groups among the country that are growing -- chief among them African-Americans and Latinos -- so Democrats’ declining share of the white vote was offset. Trump doubled down on working-class white voters -- so even though Clinton too won among African Americans and Latinos, she ultimately lost the election.

The fact that Trump’s victory was officially projected after picking up Pennsylvania (which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988) and Wisconsin (which hasn’t gone to a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1984) is proof that he has reshaped the map yet again. Democrats counted on Midwestern Rust Belt states to go Democratic again this November; future Democratic national candidates won’t make that mistake again.

6. That the party with the biggest post-Election Day internal reckoning on the horizon was the GOP, not the Democrats.
Every four years, the party that loses the White House goes through a public and private identity crisis, going over what went wrong and how they need to improve four years down the line.

For months now, everyone has assumed the party going through that identity crisis would be the Republicans: after a messy and divisive primary with 17 candidates that resulted in Donald Trump as the party’s standard-bearer, the conventional wisdom was that he would lose and Republicans would have to internally beat each other up over whose fault it was.

Instead, Democrats have quite the reckoning coming. Clinton had the better campaign operation, ran more TV ads and had the various wings of the party behind her (albeit reluctantly, on the part of some Sanders-wing progressives). But she still lost -- and what that says about the party’s path and message going forward remains to be seen.

© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-did-many-polls-seem-to-miss-a-trump-victory/

Why did many polls seem to miss a Trump victory?
By JOSHUA NORMAN CBS NEWS
November 9, 2016, 12:24 PM

Most polls heading into the Nov. 8 presidential election predicted Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. Two weeks before people lined up to vote, famed poll aggregator Nate Silver at the FiveThirtyEight website put her odds of winning at up to 85 percent. When he later gave Trump a 35 percent chance of winning a few days before the election, the adjustment was criticized by liberal pundits.

Yet most polls clearly got it wrong, leaving a triumphant Donald Trump seemingly clairvoyant in his repeated pre-election, mid-scandal claims the odds were actually in his favor.

Even with a steady downward trend from a mid-October double-digit national lead caused in part by the email scandal, Clinton still appeared to have an edge in the race at the end. The day before the election, a CBS News poll suggested Clinton had a four-point lead nationally, 45 percent to Trump’s 41 percent.

But polling is still more art than science, relying on educated guesses about demographic groups, voter turnout, and positions on issues, and margins of error are overlooked by just reading the headlines of polls.

Another problem is that national polls don’t reflect the Electoral College.

Ask Al Gore about this: he earned about 500,000 more votes nationally than George W. Bush in 2000 but lost anyway because he didn’t win in the right states.

When all the votes are counted, Clinton may end up suffering Gore’s fate -- she currently has a slim popular vote lead of a couple hundred thousand electoral votes. Clinton could walk away from this election with the support of a plurality of voting Americans, but a resounding electoral college defeat.

In one of CBS News’ final polls before this election, this result appeared possible. Projections showed Ohio and Florida as tied after Clinton had enjoyed leads in those states, which have long had tremendous sway over the outcomes of presidential elections with their large number of electors.

Other polls focusing on individual states just before the election showed Trump making huge headway in states Obama won in 2012 -- such as North Carolina -- as well as deep inroads in Democratic strongholds like Michigan and Wisconsin, which haven’t been won by a Republican in decades.

So if people had looked at individual battleground states and their polls rather than the national polls, the picture for Clinton would have appeared far from rosy just before Nov. 8.

And none of that takes into account the educated guessing that goes into election polling.

As the Economist points out: “Every survey result is made up of a combination of two variables: the demographic composition of the electorate, and how each group is expected to vote. Because some groups—say, young Hispanic men—are far less likely to respond than others (old white women, for example), pollsters typically weight the answers they receive to match their projections of what the electorate will look like.

“Polling errors can stem either from getting an unrepresentative sample of respondents within each group, or from incorrectly predicting how many of each type of voter will show up.”

This problem leads to uneven election forecasting and the possibility that poll headline writers in tight races can easily get it wrong. John Heilemann, Bloomberg Politics editor, told CBSN that means that “polling is broken, in a profound, deep way.”

In the case of Trump, we now know one of the key reasons why he won: non-college educated white voters, which represents a massive demographic in most of America, and especially in most key battleground states.

Their enthusiasm for the Republican candidate appears to have driven them to the voting booth in a way most pollsters simply failed to predict -- the unprecedented crowds at rallies, the people who drove long distances and waited for hours and hours to see him speak, the theory went, would not necessarily translate into votes at the ballot box. In hindsight, it seems obvious that this was flawed reasoning. Those Americans came out in record numbers to vote for Trump.

In addition to non-college educated white voters, white voters with a college degree also went for the Republican candidate in greater numbers than polls predicted. Heilemann said this is probably due to many of them being “embarrassed” to admit publicly they supported Trump.

So while it appeared that Trump’s divisive rhetoric during the campaign was turning away large segments of Americans in droves, it was at the same time firing up the passions of a sizable demographic in the right states to produce one of the most stunning political upsets in history.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/this-election-is-being-rigged-but-not-by-hillary-clinton-w448638

This Election Is Being Rigged – But Not by Hillary Clinton
Those actually trying to manipulate the election outcome support the guy who keeps whining about election-rigging
By Joshua Holland, 5 days ago
11/9/16


Photograph -- Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that this election is being "rigged" for Hillary Clinton. Spencer Platt/Getty

Donald Trump established what's alleged to have been an entirely fraudulent "university." He has a hard-earned reputation for screwing over contractors and investors, a long history of hanging out with mobsters and has been named a defendant in 1,450 lawsuits. And yet he's dubbed his opponent, who's been subjected to dozens of investigations that all came up with bupkis, "Crooked Hillary." No candidate in history has taken projection to such remarkable lengths.
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But an even more impressive example of projection can be found in Trump's constant claims that this election is being "rigged" for Hillary Clinton. There do seem to be a lot of actors trying to manipulate the outcome – or at least having that effect – but they're all lined up behind the guy who won't stop whining about election-rigging.

It's unclear whether WikiLeaks is actually in cahoots with the Russian government. But Reuters reported this week that U.S. intelligence officials are investigating "a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election."

Meanwhile, a small town in Macedonia called Veles has become a "global hub for pro-Trump misinformation," according to BuzzFeed. The village of 45,000 people hosts 100 websites that spew Facebook-shareable nonsense about the election – and Hillary Clinton's many "crimes."

Julian Assange says his motives are anything but partisan, but the timing, selection and presentation of the emails hacked from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's account leave little doubt that their intent is to sway the outcome. (If there were any lingering doubts, WikiLeaks' habit of tweeting out fake stories about Clinton plucked from the wingnuttosphere should dispel them.)

The emails have revealed only that politics is a rough-and-tumble business, and people working campaigns talk a lot of shit in private. But they appear damning to anyone who has never worked on a campaign, especially when the emails are stripped of context and spun to seem dark and sinister. Regardless, they clearly divide the Democratic coalition, and dribbling them out on a daily basis for the final weeks of the campaign is as clear an example of trying to rig an election as you'll find.

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman reports for The Guardian that "deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI ... spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election."

Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton's email controversy has dominated airwaves. Brendan Smialowski/Getty

Regardless of FBI Director James Comey's intent, it's clear that his oddly vague letter to Congress about some emails found on a computer shared by disgraced perv Anthony Weiner and Clinton aide Huma Abedin – emails that nobody had even looked at – violated established protocols and threw a monkey-wrench into the election in the final days before the vote.

That was followed by various leaks about a long-stalled investigation into the Clinton Foundation that was reportedly fueled at least in part by the book Clinton Cash, which may be popular with the credulous seniors who watch Fox News but should nonetheless be relegated to the fiction aisle. "The FBI is Trumpland," one current agent told Ackerman.

And it’s important to remember that the entire nontroversy over Clinton's emails began when Congressional Republicans' failed to come up with any evidence that the Benghazi attacks were the result of wrongdoing by the administration, despite spending millions of tax dollars on a dozen investigations.

Matt Yglesias defined the "Prime Directive" of Clinton scandals like this: "We know the Clintons are guilty; the only question is what are they guilty of and when will we find the evidence?" None of Clinton's emails was marked classified at the time. More to the point, classified info is only supposed to be sent over special secure channels; there's no difference between sending it through a private email account or a state.gov email address. And if using a private server was a way to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, it was a poor strategy. We know this because her mails were successfully FOIA'd and are available online.

Trump constantly whines about the media being biased against him. But he's not talking about bias, which is an entirely subconscious process. He's offering a goofy conspiracy theory that mainstream media outlets purposefully manipulate their coverage to give the election to Clinton.

Most reporters and editors would personally prefer Clinton over Trump. They're mostly college-educated people who live in big coastal cities, and he's spent months bullying and threatening them. But their subconscious biases clearly favor Trump.

Bias is elevating a process story about emails to the same level as a candidate bragging about sexual assault, and a dozen women coming forward to say it wasn't just idle "locker-room talk." It's the networks devoting three times as much airtime to Clinton's emails than all of the issues at stake in this election combined. It's the fact that the media have spent the final week of an incredibly important election talking about some emails that we know nothing about, other than Hillary Clinton didn't send or receive them. Why is that even news?

The proof is in the pudding: PolitiFact looked at 500 claims made by Clinton and Trump, and rated 51 percent of Trump's claims either "false" or "pants on fire," whereas only 13 percent of Clinton's statements earned those ratings. And yet, a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found Trump leading Clinton on who is "honest and trustworthy" by eight percentage points.

Meanwhile, red-state legislators are working hard to suppress the Democratic vote. You want an under-reported email scandal? According to a Reuters report, private emails show Republican officials in North Carolina "lobbied members of at least 17 county election boards to keep early-voting sites open for shorter hours on weekends and in evenings – times that usually see disproportionately high turnout by Democratic voters. ... The officials also urged county election boards to open fewer sites for residents to cast ballots during early." One Republican official recalled what happened when he balked at the plan: "I became a villain ... I got accused of being a traitor and everything else by the Republican Party."

The same thing's been happening in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere. Hell, election officials in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia, tried to move a polling place in a black community to a sheriff's office. Real subtle, guys. And if we really want to talk about rigged elections, all of this was made possible, or at least much easier, by the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, a long-standing goal of a chief justice appointed by a president who won a half-million fewer votes than his opponent in 2000. Unsurprisingly, early voting in black communities has been sluggish this year, compared with earlier cycles.

In the pursuit of a highly dubious "voter fraud" case in Indiana, a state headed by Trump running mate Mike Pence, state police seized 40,000 mostly African-American registrations from a grassroots group working to get out the vote. Nobody can say for sure how this unorthodox bit of policing will affect those voters' ability to cast their ballots.

Meanwhile, restrictive voter-ID have been popping up around the country, despite the fact that in-person voter fraud isn't really a thing. In the most comprehensive study of the impact of these laws to date, researchers at UC San Diego found that they depress Democratic turnout by 8.8 percent, while Republican turnout only drops by 3.6 percent.

And if that weren't enough, notorious ratfucker and "informal Trump adviser" Roger Stone and pro-Trump groups say they're going to send a bunch of white goons out to "monitor the polls" in primarily minority districts. (Best of luck to any Alt-Right goober who actually goes to the "ghettos" of Philadelphia to hand out "40s and weed" to local residents.)

The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate who'd really struggle against a conventional Republican opponent. There's some truth in this, and the Clintons were no doubt wise to sacrifice some cows on Eid al-Adha to get Trump nominated.

But if Clinton wins on Tuesday, she will have overcome not only a quarter-century of scandal-mongering and thousands of years of deeply embedded sexism, but also a shit-ton of efforts to tilt the playing field toward her toxic opponent.

Watch the racism behind Trump's "rigged election" talk.


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I COULDN’T POSSIBLY AGREE MORE THAN WITH I DO WITH THIS OBSERVER ARTICLE. IT WOULD PROBABLY HAVE WORKED FOR CLINTON TO NAME SANDERS AS VICE PRESIDENT, IF HE WOULD HAVE TAKEN IT. NOW IT’S WAY, WAY TOO LATE. WHAT BOTH PARTIES FAILED TO NOTICE WAS THAT PO FOLKS OF BOTH PARTIES WERE DESPERATE, AND THEY REBELLED.


http://observer.com/2016/11/hillary-clinton-and-the-dnc-have-only-themselves-to-blame/

OPINION
Hillary Clinton and the DNC Have Only Themselves to Blame
This is what happens when a major political party rigs the primaries to nominate their preferred candidate
By Michael Sainato • 11/09/16 6:03am

PHILADELPHIA, PA - NOVEMBER 8: People react to returns for the presidential race between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump at the election night party for Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty at the Sheraton Hotel on November 8, 2016 in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McGinty lost to Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.

People react to returns for the presidential race between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump at the election night party for Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty at the Sheraton Hotel on November 8, 2016 in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for Donald Trump winning. The mainstream media couldn’t have helped Clinton anymore than they did, and Trump couldn’t have tried any harder to lose.

Because Clinton would have easily lost to a moderate Republican, her campaign coordinated with the DNC to elevate Trump as a legitimate candidate, and declared war on anyone who opposed Clinton’s coronation.

Bernie Sanders, the most popular politician in the United States, would have easily defeated Trump. But the Democratic Party, with super delegates rallying behind Clinton and corrupt DNC staff working for Clinton behind the scenes, ensured Sanders came up short in the Democratic primaries.

Hillary Clinton’s performance-enhancing steroids were Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, and an army of Clinton partisans more than willing to forgo their autonomy as journalists to propel Clinton’s candidacy. The only problem with this strategy was it could only work in the Democratic primaries—not the general election.

In a period of growing resentment toward gridlock in government, increasing corporate and wealthy influence coupled with corruption, the Democratic Party‘s endorsement the embodiment of the status quo was a sure fire way to lose a general election—even against an inept demagogue like Trump.

But the Democratic Party won’t learn from these mistakes. Rather, they will blame everyone but themselves. Green Party candidate Jill Stein will be a likely scapegoat, despite the fact that if all of the votes for Stein went to Hillary Clinton, Clinton still would have lost the election just as badly.

The most loyal Clinton supporters will predictably attack Sanders and his supporters for Clinton’s loss. They will do so without acknowledging that Clinton did nothing to extend an olive branch to Sanders supporters. Tim Kaine was the exact opposite of a progressive, and Clinton immediately hired Debbie Wasserman Schultz after she resigned in disgrace from her position as DNC chair after WikiLeaks revealed she helped Clinton cheat in the Democratic primaries. Wasserman Schultz’s replacement, Donna Brazile, was just as much a corrupt Clinton loyalist. As for policies, the only one Clinton even somewhat adopted from Sanders was the half-hearted promise to make public colleges tuition free.

Both Russia and WikiLeaks will be blamed for Clinton’s defeat—but they didn’t write the emails from the DNC and Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, which served to confirm and vindicate criticisms of Clinton, rather than develop new narratives.

The DNC knew Clinton was a weak candidate and relied on Machiavellian tactics and an elitist circle of mainstream media insiders to manufacture consent for her candidacy. Their strategy backfired, and there is no one else to blame for Clinton’s loss and Donald Trump’s win.

Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.



SANDERS’ WEBSITE –

https://ourrevolution.com/press/our-revolution-statement-election-results/

PRESS RELEASE
Our Revolution Statement on Election Results
November 9, 2016


"Tonight's election demonstrates what most Americans knew since the beginning of the primaries: the political elite of both parties, the economists, and the media are completely out of touch with the American electorate.

"Too many communities have been left behind in the global economy. Too many young people cannot afford the cost of the college education. Too many cannot afford basic necessities like health care, housing, or retirement.

"Those of us who want a more equitable and inclusive America need to chart a new course that represents the needs of middle income and working families. The most important thing we can do is come together in unity and fight to protect the most vulnerable people of this country. Just like we did yesterday, Our Revolution will be on the front lines of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal tomorrow morning. We will do everything in our power to ensure that the president-elect cannot ignore the battles Americans are facing every single day.

"Tonight Donald Trump was elected president. Our job is to offer a real alternative vision and engage on the local and national level to continue the work of the political revolution in the face of a divided nation."



IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT!

“Maybe if liberal and conservative elites alike don’t have answers, it’s time to build a fighting left that can offer real solutions.”


http://usuncut.com/politics/dear-neoliberal-democrats/

Dear Neoliberal Democrats: This is Your Mess, Own It George Ciccariello-Maher | November 9, 2016

The final election results are not in, but one thing is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is a failure. And so is the neoliberal establishment.

Even if she narrowly manages to defeat Donald Trump, she has still lost. Her failure is not individual, however, but a failure of Clintonism, the Democratic Party, and decades of failed economic policies. According to some exit polls, Clinton is losing half of union households and getting routed in a rust belt abandoned by Clintonism: in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a state that she took so much for granted that she didn’t make a single campaign stop there.

All this against a racist misogynist with no ground game, hemorrhaging the support of his own party leadership, with far fewer resources and a thousand character flaws and weaknesses to be exploited. All polls show that even many Trump voters doubted his qualifications and character, but they voted for him anyway.

Confronted with this reality, Clintonite liberals have been willfully ignorant, managing to both write poor whites off as racist deplorables while simultaneously underestimating their potential to swing to the Right. Neglecting poor whites, Clintonism holds Black and Latino Americans hostage, offering no solution to police murder and promising more deportations to boot.

The blame game is already in full swing: Democratic apparatchiks are already preparing to blame FBI director James Comey, third party candidates, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Vladimir Putin’s name come up—the Red Scare never gets old. But the ire of a wounded Clintonism will no doubt be directed above all at the Left.

But the liberal establishment and its neoliberal economic policies have failed, and it’s time for liberals to own that. The pundits, the talking heads, the press, and the pollsters are admitting that they had no idea what they were talking about and flailing for explanations. Maybe if liberal and conservative elites alike don’t have answers, it’s time to build a fighting left that can offer real solutions.

The left needs to directly confront the racism that Trump harnessed, but it also needs to better understand what caused the Trump phenomenon to begin with. For all of his flaws, Bernie Sanders did the second, and you don’t have to like Sanders to admit that there’s no way he would have fucked this up so bad.

But Sanders’ failure to capture the Democratic Party was no accident. If Trump wins, the same Democratic Party has been calling him a fascist and would-be dictator will demand that we recognize his legitimacy. They will suddenly discover that, instead of fighting back, they can reach across the aisle and work with this eccentric leader.

But the reality is this: if you really believe that Trump is a fascist, you’d better be prepared to do more than just vote.


George Ciccariello-Maher is an organizer, radical political theorist, and professor at Drexel University. Follow him on Twitter @ciccmaher.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/presidential-election-donald-trump-would-have-lost-if-bernie-sanders-had-been-the-candidate-a7406346.html

VIDEO -- Donald Trump would have lost US election if Bernie Sanders had been the candidate
The Vermont senator always said he was a better challenger to Mr Trump
Andrew Buncombe New York @AndrewBuncombe 14 minutes ago69 comments



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/us-election-donald-trump-wins-protests-los-angeles-california-oregon-a7407521.html

Donald Trump wins: Thousands of Americans take to streets to protest against new President-elect
Anger erupts across a number of American cities after Mr Trump is elected president
Ben Kentish @BenKentish 2 hours ago187 comments

Video -- Demonstrators in several US states chanted anti-Trump slogans and burned effigies of the new president

Thousands of people have taken to the streets across western America to protest against Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election

Cities in California, Oregon and Washington all witnessed angry demonstrations, with objects being set alight and effigies burned.

Up to 1,500 people gathered at the University of California in Los Angeles in the early hours to express their anger and sadness at the shock result.

READ MORE
Donald Trump wins: The countries celebrating US election result
This line from Arab Spring to Brexit to Trump could endanger the world
Trump's views on climate change mean he's a danger to us all
Elsewhere in the state, tyres and rubbish trucks were reportedly set alight and windows smashed as Californians, who overwhelmingly backed Mrs Clinton, reacted to the news that Mr Trump looked set to become their next president.

Some marched through the city chanting anti-Trump slogans. A crown at the University of California Santa Barbara shouted: “Not my president. Not my president.”, according to the LA Times.

Protester N.J. Omorogieva told the newspaper she was “heartbroken” by the result, saying she joined the demonstration “to give hugs to people who were overcome by devastation.”



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/us-election-donald-trump-wins-protests-los-angeles-california-oregon-a7407521.html

Donald Trump wins: Thousands of Americans take to streets to protest against new President-elect
Anger erupts across a number of American cities after Mr Trump is elected president
Ben Kentish @BenKentish 2 hours ag

Video -- Demonstrators in several US states chanted anti-Trump slogans and burned effigies of the new president

Thousands of people have taken to the streets across western America to protest against Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election

Cities in California, Oregon and Washington all witnessed angry demonstrations, with objects being set alight and effigies burned.

Up to 1,500 people gathered at the University of California in Los Angeles in the early hours to express their anger and sadness at the shock result.

READ MORE
Donald Trump wins: The countries celebrating US election result
This line from Arab Spring to Brexit to Trump could endanger the world
Trump's views on climate change mean he's a danger to us all
Elsewhere in the state, tyres and rubbish trucks were reportedly set alight and windows smashed as Californians, who overwhelmingly backed Mrs Clinton, reacted to the news that Mr Trump looked set to become their next president.

Some marched through the city chanting anti-Trump slogans. A crown at the University of California Santa Barbara shouted: “Not my president. Not my president.”, according to the LA Times.

Protester N.J. Omorogieva told the newspaper she was “heartbroken” by the result, saying she joined the demonstration “to give hugs to people who were overcome by devastation.”

President Trump protests

show all
Videos uploaded to social media showed hundreds of people in Los Angeles chanting “We will be all right”.

One person can be seen carrying a Mexico flag, an apparent protest against Mr Trump’s pledge to clamp down on Mexican immigration to the US by building a wall along the border. The new president has previously said Mexican immigrants are “rapists” who are bringing “drugs and crime” into the USA.

In Oakland, just outside San Francisco, protesters reportedly smashed a window at offices of the Oakland Tribune newspaper and set fire to vehicles and tyres. Effigies of the new president elect were also burned.

trump-protests-1.jpg
A fire burns during protests in Oakland, Calif (AP)
One demonstrator was taken to hospital with “major injuries” after reportedly being hit by a car.

In nearby San Diego, 500 students marches across their campus, shouting: “F*** Donald Trump”.

And in New York, singer Lady Gaga staged a protest outside Trump Towers by standing on top of a sewage truck and holding a sign reading ‘Love trumps hate’.

Fireworks were set off by protesters in Seattle, Washington while demonstrations also took place in the cities of Portland and Eugene in Oregon.

In other areas, however, Trump supporters gathered to celebrate their victory. Around 30 people headed to Mr Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, where they chanted “This is our president” as counter-protestors looked on.

trump-protests-6.jpg
A protester sets off fireworks during a protest against President-elect Donald Trumpin Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood (AP)
Outside the White House, too, Republican supporters gathered to rejoice at Mr Trump's election victory.

The protests are a sign of the deep divisions that were exposed during a long and bitter election campaign that saw the electorate deeply polarised along social, ethnic and geographical lines.

Donald Trump was eventually elected as the 45th President of the United States after winning all the key battleground states, despite Hillary Clinton receiving more votes across the country.



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sanders-campaign-donald-trump-victory

Sanders Campaign Has 'Nothing Polite' To Say About Election Results
ByESME CRIBBPublished NOVEMBER 9, 2016, 10:43 AM EDT

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) campaign said Wednesday morning that it had "nothing polite to say" about Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election.

A top advisor to Sanders told CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny: "We have nothing polite to say right now."


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Esme Cribb


http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-supporters-to-dnc-we-tried-to-warn-you/

Bernie supporters on Twitter erupt in anger against the DNC: ‘We tried to warn you!’Zach Cartwright | November 9, 2016

As Donald Trump continues to win battleground states, Bernie Sanders supporters are shaming the DNC for nominating Hillary Clinton.

The dominant mood on social media is that Clinton’s floundering election hopes are the fault of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for rigging the Democratic primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Popular pro-Sanders Twitter accounts are going viral over the news of Donald Trump carrying North Carolina and Ohio, and leading in other must-win swing states like Florida and New Hampshire.

Others lamented on significant losses for Democratic U.S. Senate and Congressional candidates who fell short of the votes needed to re-assert Democratic control of those respective legislative bodies.

Follow
Ana Kasparian ✔ @AnaKasparian
Dems had a candidate that could've destroyed Trump, but the DNC just had to fuck things up. Congrats establishment. Enjoy the destruction.
9:56 PM - 8 Nov 2016
5,546 5,546 Retweets 8,226 8,226 likes

Follow
Anonymous @YourAnonNews
The Democratic Party did this to themselves when they shanked Bernie.

The Republican Party did this to themselves by having no spine.
9:38 PM - 8 Nov 2016
3,918 3,918 Retweets 5,319 5,319 likes

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Kaydee King @KaydeeKing
Many Dems losing the House & Senate this election & all I can think is if Bernie was on the top of the ticket that wouldn't be happening..
8:47 PM - 8 Nov 2016
401 401 Retweets 646 646 likes
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People For Bernie @People4Bernie
The lesson from tonight's Dem losses: Time for Democrats to start listening to the voters. Stop running the same establishment candidates.
10:16 PM - 8 Nov 2016
894 894 Retweets 1,361 1,361 likes
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Walker Bragman @WalkerBragman
If Dems didn't want a tight race they shouldn't have worked against Bernie.
9:49 PM - 8 Nov 2016
190 190 Retweets 309 309 likes
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who was one of Hillary Clinton’s most outspoken surrogates during the contentious Democratic primary, blamed Clinton’s poor performance on Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who has so far received a negligible number of votes nationally, saying Stein was the Ralph Nader of 2016 in preventing a Clinton victory. The account @BerniesTeachers threw Krugman’s analysis back in his face.


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Teachers for Bernie @BerniesTeachers
Your candidate was the issue. Take responsibility. https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/796175841256415232 …
10:11 PM - 8 Nov 2016
229 229 Retweets 364 364 likes
Ana Navarro, a Republican who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, summed up the preposterous nature of the 2016 presidential election in this tweet:

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Ana Navarro ✔ @ananavarro
GOP nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Hillary Clinton. Democrats nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Trump
10:07 PM - 8 Nov 2016
4,406 4,406 Retweets 7,897 7,897 likes

Popular left-wing Facebook page The Other 98%, which was pro-Sanders during the primary, responded to Trump’s surge by simply posting a meme of Sanders’ face with the text “All this could’ve been avoided. Thanks for nothing, DNC!” The meme has been shared almost 15,000 times in less than an hour:

While Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton just before the Democratic National Convention in July, many of his supporters remained adamant in their refusal to support the DNC-anointed candidate, pointing to WikiLeaks’ revelations that top officials at the DNC had been working behind the scenes to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor by coordinating with media figures to circulate anti-Sanders narratives.

Rather than attribute a potential Trump presidency to the GOP nominee’s perceived popularity among voters, the closeness of this election could be credited to Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings. According to RealClearPolitics, anywhere between 51 and 57 percent of voters had a negative opinion of the Democratic nominee.

As of 11 PM Eastern, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remain too close to call. Clinton has 197 electoral votes to Trump’s 187.


Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at zachcartwright88@gmail.com, and follow his work on the Public Banking Institute blog.



https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/?fref=nf

Dan Rather
November 9, 2016
8 hrs ·

As Donald Trump took the podium for his first speech, not as a party candidate but as the president-elect of the entire United States, his tone was of the utmost importance. He seemed to be reading off a prompter carefully prepared words. But he started with a statement of magnanimity for HIllary Clinton. He spoke of binding the wounds of division. He promised to be president of all Americans. He spoke of a great public works project and protecting veterans.

He was optimistic in speaking of the future. Notably missing was any talk of some of the drastically contentious hallmarks of his campaign - building a wall, a Muslim ban, the NATO allies - just to name a few.

You can be deeply skeptical of his motives and refuse to forget all that he has said and that has transpired. There is a looming verdict for history to level and it is a story still to be written. There is also a real question with Trump’s ascension whether the ends justify the means - whether the truth matters. Be all that as it may, we need to have a peaceful transition of power. That is an unmoveable hallmark of the stability of our democracy.

Trump said that campaigning was difficult. Well, governing is much more so and that is now in his hands. He has made a lot of promises. We will see what he keeps. He said their work is just beginning. That is an understatement.

The world is on edge. The country is deeply divided. The markets have gone off a cliff. World capitals are erupting in anxiety. Huge segments of the American public are in panic - going through the shock of grief. This is the world that is now Trump’s to contend with. Do we really know what we have wrought?

This is a conversation that I need you to be a part of. Do not opt out. Your voice matters now more than ever. I will continue to be here in the days and weeks ahead. And we shall endeavor, together, to find a path forward in the best of America’s ideals.
Courage.


Dan Rather
9 hrs ·
Secretary Clinton has conceded. It is now official.

Well the polls were wrong - very wrong, most journalists were wrong - and the earth has been shaken with an earthquake of a magnitude many didn't see coming. This is Brexit on steroids. We are entering into uncharted territory as a nation with a now president-elect who has run roughshod over the norms of American presidential campaigns. Clearly a silent but vocal majority has poured forth and pulled down the status quo in Washington with an energy that is echoing not just across the United States but around the world.

America is divided, not along geography as it used to be, but within states between races, educational levels, and urban vs. rural. This is a county by county map and clearly there were many voters who felt overlooked by a new world order who have roared with vengeance. They will not be by forgotten any longer.

No doubt many will disagree but I do not believe Hillary Clinton lost because she is a woman. My analysis is that a majority of voting Americans ached for change, especially structural changes in the economic system. They believe the American middle economic class has been mostly lost and they want it back.

There is sure to be deep despair amongst Clinton supporters who seemed to be tasting the sweetness of victory for most of the campaign. I have heard from many who feel like they are staring into an abyss. Many of you have posted on this page, there is palpable fear about the future of the nation, of the world. But this is the verdict of the American people and we must accept it. We also must work on the process of hope, healing and a re-dedication to unity.

It may be unbelievable to think now, but we cannot fogo our values. Flush with victory, will Trump change his tune at all? He has always been a mercurial man who has shown very little of a policy compass. His supporters will allow him to do anything. And perhaps he can build a bridge we never saw coming. Hope is father to the thought, I grant you. But it is a hope.

I have seen dark days - after Pearl Harbor, during Vietnam, in the depths of the Civil Rights Movement. I still believe that most Americans are kind and decent people, including--overwhelmingly--those who voted for Trump.

I still believe we can work together. If Donald Trump does indeed win, I pray for him tonight to be a wise and magnanimous leader. I pray that he is not bound by the limits of party. I pray that he can prove his critics wrong. I pray for my country. I pray for its leaders of all political parties. I pray for my country and my countrymen. I pray for the future.


Gene Terry
My son is mentally disabled. He will never be my son's president. He will never be my family's president. His name will not be spoken in this house in front of my children. My son, and my daughters, will never see his face in this house...especially th...See More
Like · Reply · 9,766 · 8 hrs · Edited
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Julie Foley
Julie Foley Such a sad sad day for our country! And for the families that live with special needs children, I salute you for doing everything you do. Keep his name out of your house as I will. He doesn't deserve decency from those he mocks.
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Amy Russ
Amy Russ I have not been this terrified since 9/11. This man with a hair-trigger temper will now have access to the nuclear codes. Not to mention the hatred he has stoked for the past year and a half. I am so confused this reality tv personality won over the most qualified person ever to run. I am dumbfounded.
Like · Reply · 5,452 · 8 hrs

Christopher Ryan Amy you can stop being terrified
I am a veteran who served in USAF
MINOT Air Force Base
Strategic Air Command
5 th AMS
B52 Bomber Alert Pad
In 1980 during Cold War
That being said
NO President can or has that decision only to himself
There is a procedure and protocol to follow and multiple keys held by other people
This has always been a scare tactic used by politicians running for president just to scare you for a vote
Trust me what you've been told is BS
There are safety protocols for good reason
So sleep tight girl
Everything be OK
Like · Reply · 2,647 · 7 hrs



NOT THE NEWEST DIRT ON TRUMP, BUT AMONG THE WORST


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/why-the-new-child-rape-ca_b_10619944.html

THE BLOG
Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored
06/29/2016 01:17 pm ET | Updated 6 days ago


An anonymous “Jane Doe” filed a federal lawsuit against GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump last week, accusing him of raping her in 1994 when she was thirteen years old. The mainstream media ignored the filing.

If the Bill Cosby case has taught us anything, it is to not disregard rape cases against famous men. Serious journalists have publicly apologized for turning a blind eye to the Cosby accusers for over a decade, notwithstanding the large number of women who had come forward with credible claims. And now history is repeating itself.

In covering a story, a media outlet is not finding guilt. It is simply reporting the news that a lawsuit has been filed against Mr. Trump, and ideally putting the complaint in context. Unproven allegations are just that - unproven, and should be identified that way. (Mr. Trump’s lawyer says the charges are “categorically untrue, completely fabricated and politically motivated.”) Proof comes later, at trial. But the November election will come well before any trial. And while Mr. Trump is presumed innocent, we are permitted — no, we are obligated — to analyze the case’s viability now.

No outsider can say whether Mr. Trump is innocent or guilty of these new rape charges. But we can look at his record, analyze the court filings here, and make a determination as to credibility — whether the allegations are believable enough for us to take them seriously and investigate them, keeping in mind his denial and reporting new facts as they develop.

I have done that. And the answer is a clear “yes.” These allegations are credible. They ought not be ignored. Mainstream media, I’m looking at you.

1. Consider the context: Mr. Trump’s overt, even proud misogyny.

The rape case must be viewed through the lens of Mr. Trump’s current, longstanding and well documented contempt for women. Men who objectify women are more likely to become perpetrators of sexual violence, just as one with a long history of overtly racist comments is more likely to commit a hate crime.

Mr. Trump has relished calling women “dogs,” “slobs” and “pigs,” and cyberstalked and derided journalist Megyn Kelly for having the temerity to ask him to defend his own words. He threw out the most misogynist of attacks, attempting to undermine her professionalism by accusing her of menstruating. He’s cruelly ridiculed the appearance of a female opponent (Carly Fiorina) and an opponent’s wife (Heidi Cruz). His campaign even openly acknowledged that it disqualified all women for consideration as his vice-president.

Mr. Trump has a long history of debasing women he’s worked with, crossing the line on a regular basis. He’s taken lifelong joy in objectifying women, including his proclamation: “Women, you have to treat ‘em like shit.”

This cannot be ignored. Decades of abusive language does not make him a rapist. But it does show us who the man is: a callous, meanspirited misogynist who no sane person would leave alone with her daughter. As Dr. Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”

2. More context: two prior sexual assault court claims have been made against Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Trump has been accused of worse than just misogynist language. Two prior women have accused Mr. Trump, in court documents, of actual or attempted sexual assault. (Mr. Trump denies all the allegations.)

Under oath, Ivana Trump accused Mr. Trump of a violent rape.

First was Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s first wife, who said under oath in a 1989 deposition that he had violently attacked her, ripped out her hair and forcibly penetrated her without her consent. According to the Daily Beast, she claims he was wildly angry that she’d referred him to a cosmetic surgeon who had botched a “scalp reduction” job (to cover a bald spot) and caused pain in his scalp - hence the vindictive yanking on her hair. At the time Ms. Trump said she felt “violated” by the alleged “rape.”

A few years later, after their divorce was settled, Ms. Trump claimed that she did not mean the word “rape” in a “literal or criminal” sense.

Note: virtually every settlement of a case involving a high profile person paying money to a former spouse - or anyone - requires the person receiving the money to agree in writing to ironclad nondisparagement and confidentiality. In plain English: you promise to be quiet and not say anything bad about the party paying you money. This has been the case in hundreds of settlement agreements I have worked on over the years. Ms. Trump was almost certainly contractually prohibited after she signed from saying anything negative about Mr. Trump. And it is also common to attempt to “cure” prior negative statements with new agreed-to language - like, I didn’t mean it literally. (You didn’t mean forcible penetration literally?)

A business acquaintance accused Mr. Trump of sexual harassment and “attempted rape.”

A second woman accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, in 1997. According to The Guardian, then 34-year-old Jill Harth alleged in a federal lawsuit that Trump violated her “physical and mental integrity” when he touched her intimately without consent after her husband went into business with him, leaving her “emotionally devastated [and] distraught.” The lawsuit called the multiple acts “attempted rape.” Shortly thereafter she voluntarily withdrew the case when a parallel suit against Mr. Trump brought by her husband was settled. When The Guardian reached the woman in 2016 to ask whether she stood by her sexual assault allegations, she responded, “yes.”

In a court filing, according to a report, Ms. Harth alleged that while she and her husband were trying to do a business deal with Mr. Trump regarding a beauty pageant, he repeatedly propositioned her for sex and groped her, culminating in this frightening alleged incident:

Trump forcefully removed (Harth) from public areas of Mar-A-Lago in Florida and forced (her) into a bedroom belonging to defendant’s daughter Ivanka, wherein (Trump) forcibly kissed, fondled, and restrained (her) from leaving, against (her) will and despite her protests.” In the court document, she said that Trump bragged that he ”would be the best lover you ever have.”

Recently Donald Trump issued a statement that women’s claims of sexual harassment, documented in a lengthy New York Times investigation which included Ms. Harth’s lawsuit, were “made up.”

Jill Harth responded angrily on Twitter last week: “My part was true. I didn’t talk. As usual you opened your big mouth.”

In other words, she is standing by her story.

3. The new Jane Doe child rape claim against Mr. Trump is consistent with verifiable facts about Mr. Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein, and has a powerful witness statement attached to it.

A third woman accused Mr. Trump of rape very recently. According to the Daily Mail, a woman filed an April 2016 lawsuit claiming that when she was thirteen years old she was held as a sex slave to Mr. Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein. The woman claimed to have a witness, “Tiffany Doe,” to the incidents. She filed the case in pro per, that is, without the assistance of a lawyer.

The case was dismissed by the court for technical filing errors. She then obtained a lawyer and the case was modified and refiled in New York federal court, against Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein.

I’ve carefully reviewed this federal complaint. It is now much stronger than the one she filed on her own, which makes sense because she now has an experienced litigator representing her. Jane Doe says that as a 13-year-old, she was enticed to attend parties at the home of Jeffrey Epstein with the promise of money modeling jobs. Mr. Epstein is a notorious “billionaire pedophile” who is now a Level 3 registered sex offender — the most dangerous kind, “a threat to public safety” — after being convicted of misconduct with another underage girl.

Jane Doe says that Mr. Trump “initiated sexual contact” with her on four occasions in 1994. Since she was thirteen at the time, consent is not an issue. If Mr. Trump had any type of sexual contact with her in 1994, it was a crime.

On the fourth incident, she says Mr. Trump tied her to a bed and forcibly raped her, in a “savage sexual attack,” while she pleaded with him to stop. She says Mr. Trump violently struck her in the face. She says that afterward, if she ever revealed what he had done, Mr. Trump threatened that she and her family would be “physically harmed if not killed.” She says she has been in fear of him ever since.

New York’s five year statute of limitations on this claim — the legal deadline for filing — has long since run. However, Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Meagher, argues in his court filing that because she was threatened by Mr. Trump, she has been under duress all this time, and therefore she should be permitted additional time to come forward. Legally, this is calling “tolling” — stopping the clock, allowing more time to file the case. As a result, the complaint alleges, Jane Doe did not have “freedom of will to institute suit earlier in time.” He cites two New York cases which I have read and which do support tolling

Two unusual documents are attached to Jane Doe’s complaints — sworn declarations attesting to the facts. The first is from Jane Doe herself, telling her horrific story, including the allegation that Jeffrey Epstein also raped her and threatened her into silence, and this stunner:

Defendant Epstein then attempted to strike me about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed at me that he, Defendant Epstein, should have been the one who took my virginity, not Defendant Trump . . .

And this one:

Defendant Trump stated that I shouldn’t ever say anything if I didn’t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that I had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having my whole family killed.

The second declaration is even more astonishing, because it is signed by “Tiffany Doe,” Mr. Epstein’s “party planner” from 1991-2000. Tiffany Doe says that her duties were “to get attractive adolescent women to attend these parties.” (Adolescents are, legally, children.

Tiffany Doe says that she recruited Jane Doe at the Port Authority in New York, persuaded her to attend Mr. Epstein’s parties, and actually witnessed the sexual assaults on Jane Doe:

I personally witnessed the Plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she was 13 years old.

It is exceedingly rare for a sexual assault victim to have a witness. But Tiffany Doe says:

I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop.

Tiffany Doe corroborates, based on her own personal observations, just about everything in Jane Doe’s complaint: that 12-year-old Maria was involved in a sex act with Mr. Trump, that Mr. Trump threatened the life of Jane Doe if she ever revealed what happened, and that she would “disappear” like Maria if she did.

Tiffany Doe herself says that she is in mortal fear of Mr. Trump to this day:
I am coming forward to swear to the truthfulness of the physical and sexual abuse that I personally witnessed of minor females at the hands of Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein . . . I swear to these facts under the penalty for perjury even though I fully understand that the life of myself and my family is now in grave danger.

Given all this, and based on the record thus far, Jane Doe’s claims appear credible. Mr. Epstein’s own sexual crimes and parties with underage girls are well documented, as is Mr. Trump’s relationship with him two decades ago in New York City. Mr. Trump told a reporter a few years ago: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Powerfully, Jane Doe appears to have an eyewitness to all aspects of her claim, a witness who appears to have put herself in substantial danger by coming forward, because at a minimum Mr. Epstein knows her true identity.

Jane Doe has not granted any interviews, and we don’t know anything about her background, or Tiffany Doe’s, or the details of their stories. Much information needs to be revealed to fully assess this case. Perhaps they will be discredited on cross-examination. Perhaps they will recant. But if we’re going to speculate in that direction, we should speculate in the other direction as well. Perhaps Jane Doe and her lawyer will have more evidence and witnesses to corroborate her claim. Perhaps witnesses from Mr. Epstein’s notorious parties will come forward. We just can’t know any of that at this point.

But based on what we do know now, Jane Doe’s claims fall squarely into the long, ugly context of Mr. Trump’s life of misogyny, are consistent with prior sexual misconduct claims, are backed up by an eyewitness, and thus should be taken seriously. Her claims merit sober consideration and investigation.

We live in a world where wealthy, powerful men often use and abuse women and girls. While these allegations may shock some, as a lawyer who represents women in sexual abuse cases every day, I can tell you that sadly, they are common, as is an accuser’s desire to remain anonymous, and her terror in coming forward.

What do you call a nation that refuses to even look at sexual assault claims against a man seeking to lead the free world?

Rape culture.

We ignore the voices of women at our peril.

Stay informed with the latest news and video. Download HuffPost’s news app here.

Follow Lisa Bloom on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LisaBloom



I HOPE SOMETHING MORE HOPEFUL THAN THIS LAST ARTICLE WILL APPEAR TOMORROW.