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We've got a lot to cover today (including Obama's final press conference), so let's just dive right in and try to get through the rest of the week's news in lightning fashion.
I wrote a few weeks ago about the dilemma Mitt Romney would face if Donald Trump offered him the secretary of State position. That dilemma did not actually happen, and it now seems like Trump was just yanking Mitt's chain for the fun of it. How presidential! One of Trump's close advisors just admitted as much, saying Trump really just wanted Romney to publicly apologize for all the mean and nasty things he said about Trump during the election. Romney reportedly refused to do so, which was probably smart because it seems to have been the whole point of the exercise. Trump probably wasn't ever going to appoint Romney anyway, but wanted to see how low Mitt would grovel if he thought he could get the job.
Will Donald Trump be the second-best "bully" president we've had? I realize that that question can be read two ways, but I'm using "bully" in the older political sense of the word rather than in the "already ripped into 289 people on Twitter" sense. So while a strong case could be made for Trump-as-bully, what I'm referring to instead is the Teddy Roosevelt "Bully for you!" sense of the word. And, more importantly, the "bully pulpit." Because, much as Democrats might hate to admit it, Trump may be the most adroit user of the bully pulpit to change American politics in a very long time.
OK, that's a rather unusual title, but you'll have to wait until the talking points part of the program for us to address it. Call it "the lesson to be learned from the Carrier jobs and Donald Trump," or the silver lining that just might be an effective tool for Democrats in the near future. First, though, we've got to get through the news of the week and handing out our weekly awards.
Donald Trump's impending presidency is cause for a lot of concern among many, including both his political opponents and members of his own party. This can all be boiled down to the basic question of what, exactly, Trump is going to do as president. At this point, it's almost impossible to know whether he'll try to follow through on even the strongest of his campaign promises, or whether he'll decide to chart a completely different course once in office. That's what is worrying so many -- people both against Trump and for Trump alike.
This article was written in response to a Huffington Post article by Max Weiss, which was in turn written as a response to a Slate article. The original Slate article was titled: "So We're Still Blaming Jill Stein And James Comey, Huh?" and the Weiss response was titled: "Things I Blame For Hillary Clinton's Loss, Ranked." But the Weiss list was so far removed from my own feelings about the Clinton loss that I felt it was time to respond with my own blame list. It's been a month since the election, so hopefully enough time has passed that Democrats can discuss what went so wrong. So here is my own list of the things I blame for the 2016 election loss, ranked. And I have to quote Weiss in saying (while he was blaming Bernie Sanders): "I know this is going to piss a lot of people off, but so be it."
We're approaching the end of the year, so we can all expect to hear lots of "the year that was" items in the news. One of the earliest entries in this news genre came from across the pond:
Mitt Romney may soon be faced with a dilemma. If Donald Trump offers him the job of secretary of State, should Mitt take it? Normally this wouldn't even be an open question, much less a dilemma. The position is one of the most prestigious in the federal government, and any career politician would jump at the chance to fill it, in normal times. But this is Donald Trump's administration we're talking about, which will complicate Romney's choice (to put it mildly).
A key question now worth contemplating -- right before everyone goes home for Thanksgiving (and the inevitable family political squabbles) -- is how many of the promises Donald Trump made to his supporters can he break before they'll abandon him? Because so far, Trump has been doing some pretty serious backpedaling on some of [...]
For the past eight years, America has had an African-American president. Faced with the prospect of a white woman succeeding him, America instead just elected an angry white man as president. Call it the triumph of angry white men everywhere. Millions of Americans are about to find out what it's like to be led by the equivalent of the drunk uncle at the Thanksgiving table who refuses to follow the rules of politeness and political correctness. Was it a backlash against our first black president? Or rampant misogyny towards Hillary Clinton? Or just free-floating rage against a changing culture that is becoming more tolerant and multicultural by the year? It's impossible to accurately say, really. The only thing that can be said for certain is that angry white men are now dominant.