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Sorry, no new column today. Holiday preparations took too much of my time, so I won't be able to complete November's Obama Poll Watch column -- which will have to run tomorrow. My apologies for the delay.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
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."
1-15. HILLARY CLINTON AND HER CAMPAIGN
Hillary Clinton was the wrong candidate for this election. She might have won in a different year, against a different opponent. Her strongest point, oddly enough, was the one thing the Democratic National Committee seemed scared to highlight -- she is a great debater, and whether facing Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump did an excellent job on the debate stage. But it just wasn't enough. So here it is, broken down.
So, has everyone had their fill of turkey leftovers? Well, taking a quick look at Donald Trump's cabinet choices should suffice anyone who still craves some leftover turkeys, if you know what we mean.
The most amusing headline we've seen so far came from Trump's consideration of David Petraeus for secretary of State: "Hillary Clinton wasn't charged with mishandling classified information. Trump might appoint someone convicted of it." Heh.
Trump's big photo op this week was at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where he announced he had only saved half the jobs which had been planned to move to Mexico. A thousand Carrier workers will still soon be out of a job, but Trump played it as a total victory. He only had to get Mike Pence to give up $7,000,000 in tax breaks from Indiana (Pence had refused the same deal earlier, a detail that also got lost in all the breathless reporting). Which, as Bernie Sanders quickly pointed out, is going to encourage all sorts of companies to threaten to move their workforce unless the government gives them some fat corporate welfare as well. Hey, Carrier got $7,000 per job, maybe we can hold out for $10,000 each!
It's December once again, which means it is time once again for our annual holiday pledge drive, complete with lots and lots of kitten photos, which are designed to fill you up with holiday cheer and inspire you to open up your wallet with joy. Hey, at least we're up front with our shameless advertising techniques, right?
Oh, the weather outside is frightful
Nancy Pelosi just got re-elected to lead the House Democrats, but almost a third of them voted for a much younger representative who urged the party to shift focus in a major way. Hillary Clinton underperformed among minorities and young people, which contributed in a big way towards her loss in the presidential election. And Barack Obama, in a Rolling Stone "exit interview" just revived one of the major Democratic problems he ran against, by saying: "The point is that politics in a big, diverse country like this requires us to move the ball forward not in one long Hail Mary to the end zone, but to, you know, systemically make progress." This, from a man who ran on: "Yes we can!' as a campaign slogan.
Democrats are, obviously, in a phase of attempting to rediscover what their party stands for -- and how strongly they will stand for anything, as well. So far, the results are mixed, at best. Which leads me to (once again) suggest a rather obvious issue that would help Democrats with all of these problems: start supporting marijuana legalization in a big way. The time has come. It's time to stop timidly "leading from behind."
Sorry, but there will be no new column today, as I am busy getting the annual pledge drive together. There will be kittens. Consider yourselves duly warned!
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
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:
Oxford Dictionaries has selected "post-truth" as 2016's international word of the year, after the contentious "Brexit" referendum and an equally divisive U.S. presidential election caused usage of the adjective to skyrocket, according to the Oxford University Press.
Now, "post-truth" is just a new spin on an old concept. Stephen Colbert was feeling a bit peeved last week, since "post-truth" is just another way to express Colbert's own famous neologism, "truthiness." But other than coining a new term for it, the idea behind Colbert's (or Oxford's) snappy word certainly isn't new. Back in World War II, it was known as "The Big Lie." The basic idea is an easy one to grasp: believe the hype, not the facts. Repeat a falsehood enough times, and a whole bunch of people start to believe it. Once they do, proving it wrong using facts just doesn't seem to work.
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).
Mitt Romney was one of the most vocal -- and most scathing -- critics of Donald Trump during the campaign. He wasn't afraid to say exactly what he thought of Trump, in no uncertain terms. Romney let it be known that he thought Trump was patently unqualified to lead the country, and he warned his fellow Republicans not to vote for such a charlatan. The voters didn't listen, of course, but it's pretty obvious what Romney thinks about Trump -- and his election to the presidency has likely not changed Mitt's opinion much at all. So to accept the job would mean working for the same man Romney was warning America about, not too long ago. Maybe Mitt could grow a beard and just give up shaving, so he wouldn't have to face himself in the mirror every morning.
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 his core applause lines, as he prepares to shift from campaigning to actually governing. Will his fans accept these broken promises, because they actually liked Trump's style more than they believed all his grand assertions, or did they take them all seriously and now are beginning to feel betrayed that they're not actually going to happen? This could be a crucial question, going forward, when assessing Trump's political capital and the effectiveness of his presidency.
Today's big news is that Trump apparently was just kidding about all that "Lock her up!" stuff out on the campaign trail. He's not going to sic his Justice Department on Clinton after all, it seems. Kellyanne Conway explained Trump's new position with a statement that might just send chills through Trump supporters everywhere:
Deficit hawk sightings used to be quite common in Washington, D.C., but early indications are that this bird's about to become a lot rarer. It may even wind up on the endangered species list, in fact. This sort of thing normally happens every time a Republican is in the White House (remember Dick Cheney's infamous "deficits don't matter" line?), but this time around it's already looking like the deficit hawks could disappear entirely from within the Beltway.
