Divided we stand

by | Nov 10, 2016 | Editor's Blog | 20 comments

The first indication I had that Tuesday might be bad for Democrats came at the end of early voting. By my count, 240,000 Republicans showed up to early vote who had not voted at all in 2012. In addition, almost 70,000 African-Americans who voted early in 2012 had not voted yet. The big unknown was the large number of unaffiliated voters who voted early, including more than 200,000 who hadn’t voted at all in 2012. I just hoped they were supporting Democrats.

In the 8th Congressional District where I was a candidate, Democrats held a 1% lead in ballots returned at the end of early voting. In 2012, it was 13%. I knew that didn’t bode well for me. I also knew, though, that the Democratic base in North Carolina was far more urban than the counties in my district.

To win, I needed a surge of Democratic voters and a depressed Republican turnout. The opposite happened. Democratic turnout was lackluster while fired up Trump supporters went to the polls and Republican moderates came home for Trump.

Only four Democrats won statewide (not counting the nonpartisan Supreme Court race. More on that in a minute). Roy Cooper and Josh Stein won against an incumbent and in an open seat respectively. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Auditor Beth Wood held onto their seats, though Wood will almost certainly face a recount since her margin is only 3,300 votes.

House Bill 2 probably did in McCrory and Newton. Both Cooper and Stein made the law central to their races. McCrory and Newton insisted the issue is about protecting women and children. Regardless of where people stand on transgender people and bathrooms, a majority of North Carolinians believed the bill hurt the state. They let McCrory and Newton know that.

In the Supreme Court race, Mike Morgan beat incumbent Bob Edmonds. While ostensibly nonpartisan, Edmonds was the Republican and Morgan was the Democrat. Morgan ran a strong campaign, worked hard, and had a presence on TV but his victory may have been influenced by ballot placement. In every partisan race, the GOP candidate came first. However, in the Supreme Court race, the order was reversed so Morgan’s name was at the top. He may have gotten the benefit of both educated voters who knew they wanted Morgan and GOP voters who just assumed he was the Republican. Also, ballot drop off in his race was almost 16%, greater than the partisan Court of Appeals races that all went Republican, meaning Edmonds likely didn’t get the advantage of the Trump surge voters.

North Carolina is still a swing state that is sharply divided. Parties win with candidate who can motivate their base. In 2008, Obama inspired minorities and young people to go the polls in droves. This year, Donald Trump gave rural white voters something to vote for.

20 Comments

  1. Jay Ligon

    I hope I am wrong. It’s like the Ghost of Christmas Future. We can see signs and indications, but the future is not written yet. The present, however, is quite clear.

    In a few months, a few people will have the world on their plate. They already had a lot of it. This massive accumulation of private ownership is unprecedented in human history and, until recently, thought to be outside the realm of possibility. These men will wipe their ass with our Constitution and begin to cherry-pick the rest of the nation’s assets.

    The foot soldiers, the red hat battalions have served their purpose. They will have a chance to celebrate at a NASCAR event or monster truck rally or a Klan rally, but when they go back to their homes, they will wait in vain for Trump’s checks to clear. They will wonder why they don’t have a job, why they lost their Medicare, why they lost their health insurance and why their Social Security was removed. Why? Because they are losers, and they were useful idiots. End of story in Trump world.

    There will be early reasons for parts of the right to celebrate: Roe v. Wade goes away, Christian prayers may permeate the schools and people who were never our enemies may be hauled away. There will be operatic moments of tears and cheers as these events play out: perhaps scenes of sobbing women and children torn from their homes while racist red hats laugh and cheer – their fondest dreams realized. But that will be the drunken brawl prior to the hangover and the reckoning.

    When the next deep recession hits during Trump’s administration, the joy of hating scapegoats will be cold comfort but it will be the only thing left. For people who only own hammers, everything is a nail. For people who put all their faith in guns, the world gets bloody. But not in the penthouse.

    There is a reason that the Walton family used a considerable portion of their fortune to build luxury underground bomb shelters. They expect this denouement as have other billionaires. Our government has vast underground accommodations which will protect a few, like Trump, from the coming reckoning. They have all their bases covered.

    Where will the corporate media be? They will do what they do. A few minutes of fires, footage of gun shots, followed by the weather, football scores, tips on how to find a good wine at a reasonable price, ending with an inspiring human interest story (A 93-year-old woman finished high school!)

  2. Adam

    I know it’s popular here to think that HB2 did in McCrory, but an analysis of the numbers doesn’t support that. McCrory stupidly did himself in by shoving the Cintra Toll deal down the throats of voters in northern Mecklenburg County.

    In 2012, McCrory won every precinct north of I-485. This year, he lost several, netting over 30,000 fewer votes from that area than he did 4 years ago. He’s losing to Cooper by around 5,000 votes. Hell, he got 6,000 fewer votes from Cornelius alone, and that’s Thom Tillis territory.

    In a big Republican year, Pat McCrory lost because his own voters turned on him after he refused to listen to their concerns about the NCGA selling their highway to a foreign-owned company and forcing them to pay twice to use it. But don’t take my word for it, check out the numbers for yourselves.
    https://ncridiculousness.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/i-77-toll-33000-votes/

    • TY Thompson

      Well if any good comes out of this year, the Establishment players in both Parties have been put on notice about the perils of defying the will of their rank-and-file voters.

  3. Donna

    North Carolina progressives still have a voice and we need to continue to use it. I’m sorry you lost Tom but don’t give up. No one knows how Trump will do as president (he is a black box…or maybe a black hole) though his campaign promises are pretty alarming. If he does well (primarily defined as more job and income growth for working-class voters…and I am totally on board with that) then the republican surge will continue. If he does poorly as a result of self-dealing, gutting of dodd-frank, 20 million people losing health insurance, scandals galore, perceived business-as-usual, or any other of a multitude of possibilities then I expect the backlash to be strong and swift. Democrats have to admit we let down working-class voters of all stripes before we can ever hope to bring them back to the party.

    • Jay Ligon

      No good comes of electing a racist, fascist sexual predator. The Progressive Movement is a candle in the wind now. America changed on Tuesday. This is a different country now with a different political system. It will become clearer as the oligarchs begin to assert the authority they now have.

      President Trump will have at his fingertips a vast nuclear arsenal, predator drones and hellfire missiles, the ability to conduct surveillance on every phone call, every tweet, every word in the public space

      Checks and balances do not exist when the oligarchs have control of every facet of American life. This was a slow-moving right wing coup that took its final step on Tuesday. It was invisible to most Americans. We still fail to comprehend its grasp and its comprehensiveness. It’s real.

      • Jay Ligon

        There are two aspects of what happened Tuesday that need to be considered.

        First, Trump must be viewed as a kind of cult leader, like Jim Jones, Kim Jong Un, Sun Myung Moon, David Karesh or L. Ron Hubbard. Prior to Tuesday, 44 Presidents had been elected to our nation’s highest office, and each observed rules of decorum. Most of them have been more or less knowledgeable about history, economics, law, and politics. As their names fade into the past, we forget focus less on their temporal discord and form a brief impression: Ike, the kindly grandfather; Kennedy, the young chief executive; Nixon, the Hamlet of the West Wing; Carter, the gentle soul in a cardigan; Reagan, the poised orator.

        In their contests to reach the highest office, these men walked a narrow path. They communicated sketches of the future they envisioned for us. They were all well-spoken, they understood a shared moral code even if they did not strictly observe it. Americans expected big ideas, scholarship, rectitude and thoughtfulness from them.

        The Americans who gave us Trump did not care that he lost all the debates, that he grabbed women by the pussy, defaulted on billions of dollars in loans, that he offered no real vision of the future only scapegoats to punish, that he used money raised for charity to please himself, that he desecrated the service of military men and women. The things he says and the things he does have never, ever been acceptable. How is it that he was popular? How did his inner circle of racists and fascists with their hatred of minorities, Jews, poor people, Mexicans and women pull it off?

        Trump, an actor, created himself as a man of the people, and he conned a lot people, but how? How was it possible? The relationship between the malignant narcissist and his codependent followers is powerful. It is not intellectual or rational. It is an emotional bond that allows the sycophant to ignore every fact, every rational thought, and every danger signal. The authoritarian follower needs the authoritarian leader to complete them. They need an attachment to their leader like a plant needs sunshine. It is a deeply emotional connection – for the follower. The leader doesn’t need to care. The authoritarian needs only to give lip service to the follower.

        As the rules of decorum were thrown away, and all expectations of intellectual fitness and morality and even national security were set aside, we witnessed their worship of the man. If they could have him, they would set their personal values set aside. It is Trump’s genius that he can manipulate the unwary. He has built his business on it. That is the Trump University business model.

        True followers will look away when Trump does something immoral. They will violate every personal principle they hold dear if it will please him. They will follow him. They will torture people. They will kill people, and they will die for him.

        But Trump does not hold control over every member of the Republican Party. The Cult of Trump (“I love the uneducated.”) numbers in the millions but there are rational wary, informed, pragmatic Republicans unmoved by Trump that intend to use whatever resources they can to dominate life in the United States for at least a generation at least.

        Those are the working parts of the new Republican world. They operate in tandem. Trump is the carnival barker, but rank and file oligarchs are collecting their winnings in the other tents where legislatures are taking away rights and liberties, changing tax codes, removing environmental protections, ordering surveillance, making women into baby-making machines and so on.

        It is important also to realize that while Trump will soon have his fingers near the nuclear buttons and his arsenal will now include drones equipped with hellfire missiles, that is not the whole story of weaponry now amassed against the civil society. For decades, the right has been buying guns and ammunition. There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States, as many guns as people, but the arsenal is mostly in the hands of the right wing. Guns don’t kill people; Republicans do. Make no mistake. Those guys and gals wearing red hats who came to the rallies to call people “Niggers” and “Wetbacks” and chanted “Build that Wall” and “Lock her up.” They will kill their fellow Americans as soon as they get the green light. They want to receive that order. They are locked, loaded and waiting on the command to fire.

        • Norma Munn

          Jay, I wish you were wrong, but what you write is the conversation that has been going on with some of my close friends since Tuesday. They are scared, but more shocked and unbelieving of what is coming. Most are younger than me, and do not really have a personal experience of their government and/or neighbors attacking them. They simply cannot quite grasp the real danger. And the number of guns and large quantity gun magazines has the potential for slaughter. It is not the terrorists we should fear, but those living down the street. I remember that experience from the 60’s and 70’s. And the man who started the call to “lock her up” is apparently under consideration for AG!

  4. Troy

    Leadership changed. Leadership needs to change again or at least direction needs to be re-focused. Can that be done from within without an outside change agent? I guess we’ll see.

    You have a point Hunter; people don’t want GOP-lite. They want GOP-hi octane. You assail the notion of moderation in the democrat party for something I would guess is more to the left. To that end, how well do you think that position would have fared Tuesday?

    Let’s face it, Pat McCrory was sacrificed. He was allowed to take all the heat in the media for HB2 and a few other snafus of his. Phil Berger and his minions sat safely behind the scenes and only came forward with a statement or two. Otherwise, Pat’s name has been pinned to the legislation and while he said he opposed HB2, he signed it and has been the face behind its defense. The GOP and the legislature all know this truth; regardless of who wins the governor’s seat, they are still in charge.

    McCrory took all the heat and was left twisting in the breeze. Had Matthew not come spinning up the coast in September, McCrory would have lost by a tremendous margin. I’m not sad about that at all. But it does give one an idea of the sort of mentality we’re dealing with. The pathetic thing is, McCrory is still defending their position.

    • HunterC

      Trump and Sanders were not a desire for GOP-hi octane. It was an anti-establishment desire.

      The failure of some to accept this distinction is ever more baffling after Nov 8.

      An assumption that I assail moderation is another failure to see what was so plain during the long primary season. Sanders and Clinton were both politicians with decades in the political arena, but Sanders was seen as the anti-establishment candidate. It is not necessary to endorse the totality of Sanders’ policies to recognize the existing political environment and play to it. Competent parties and campaigns should be able to handle such a basic task.

      While I doubt Clinton could have effectively sold herself as anti-establishment or outsider enough in this environment, her campaign never tried.

    • HunterC

      Trump and Sanders were not a desire for GOP-hi octane. It was an anti-establishment desire.

      The failure of some to accept this distinction is ever more baffling after Nov 8.

      An assumption that I assail moderation is another failure to see what was so plain during the long primary season. Sanders and Clinton were both politicians with decades in the political arena, but Sanders was seen as the anti-establishment candidate. It is not necessary to endorse the totality of Sanders’ policies to recognize the existing political environment and play to it. Competent parties and campaigns should be able to handle such a basic task.

      While I doubt Clinton could have effectively sold herself as anti-establishment or outsider enough in this environment, her campaign never tried.

      • Troy

        I thought we were talking about State politics here, not National?

  5. Smartysmom

    Hunter C. Last time I dared say that democratic party leadership had a problem, I was backhanded against the wall here. So nice to hear someone else say it. From our county to national, party leaders are failing dismally. But as long as denial and defensiveness prevail, nothing will change

  6. HunterC

    The first indication Nov 8 was going to be bad for Democrats should have been the day after the primary.

    It was as clear then as it is now that this was *another* outsider year. Trump and Sanders were months-long phenomena (though decades in the making) that were well-diagnosed on the pages of this blog by me and others. Please do go back and look and those posts.

    The Democratic party apparatus — such as it is — once again failed to realize the environment and react appropriately.

    It is past time to toss the “leadership” that has led again to no break into the all important GOP legislative supermajorities.

    While the Morgan race for the Supreme Court race was a great result, it most certainly was a ballot placement event. Just look at the counties Morgan won (Rutherford?!) and the counties the five GOPers won in the Court of Appeals races. The overlap is laughable. The Democratic retake of the Supreme Court had nothing to do with any competence by the party or the Morgan campaign.

    The fact that last-of-the-old-Blue-Dogs Cooper is barely holding on pending a recount to the absurdly vulnerable McCrory should put a nail in the coffin to the idea that folks want GOP-lite. But I’m sure the Main Street Democrat types won’t own up to the plain data.

    Disappointed, yes. Surprised, no.

    New party leadership is needed. And it matters to get it together now. There will be new legislative district lines. Competent candidate recruitment should begin ASAP. But recent history indicates Goodwin house and the legislative caucuses aren’t up to the job .

  7. Eric Smith

    Thanks Tom for all that you do. I realize that ballot placement no doubt propelled Mike Morgan into his victory and that many of the Trump folks who voted for him did not know that he was African American or a Democrat. I do think, however, that in years past, the fact that Mike Morgan was an African American running for the Supreme Court would have been such a controlling issue that conservative voters would have known that about him and might have voted accordingly. Some progress perhaps, in addition to the vote splitting between Trump and Roy Cooper, although that may have less about HB2 and more about people voting against incumbency and for the folksy Roy Cooper as opposed to the arrogant Pat McCrory with his phony Southern accent.

  8. Bert Bowe

    Many thanks for running Tom! I hope you’ll consider running in 2018, when there will be a very likely backlash to Trump’s actions for two years…

    • Jay Ligon

      To be clear about what happened on Tuesday, the effect of the Trump election will be catastrophic around the country and the world for about 99% of the people.

      Progressives and liberals have been fighting a losing battle since the election of Ronald Reagan to alter the trend toward fewer and fewer oligarchs controlling larger and larger amounts of wealth. That battle was a while ago. The trend line has accelerated in recent years – in fact increasing under the Obama years. For example, the Koch Brothers each added $1 billion apiece to their personal fortunes annually while Obama was in office. Other billionaires have benefited as well, like George Lucas, Stephen Speilberg, and T. Boone Pickens.

      The trend began accelerating under George W. Bush with the massive budget-busting tax cuts. After those cuts were put into effect, it became nearly impossible to increase taxes even by a few percentage points even when the national interest was at stake. The interests of the rich and corporate interests trumped the common good.

      Billionaires do not need medical insurance, public education, Social Security or Medicare. They need courts to enforce contracts and roads to get products and services to and from the market. They need airports for their planes and rights of way to lay pipe and cable. They need police to stop anyone who would rob them. They have no interest in feeding starving children or curing diseases in faraway lands. Some do, but they are considered traitors to the billionaire class.

      Beginning with Reagan, the government began to serve the needs of the rich and large corporations in preference to the needs of the poor and middle class. The war on unions began in earnest then. George W. Bush
      used public resources to benefit corporations like Halliburton, privatizing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Traditionally public functions like prisons, water and sewage treatment and the military became profit centers. Dick Cheney made at least $30 million on the wars he directed while in the White House.

      This anti-government philosophy set the stage for what will amount to the complete and final act of hegemony by the elites to be played out over the next few years. Social programs like Medicare, Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, subsidized housing, public education, national parks, and many many others will head for the chopping block.

      There are those who believe that the right-wing agenda is about opposing gay rights, putting prayer in public schools or eliminating abortion. It is not.

      Yes, it was a part of it, but that was the free candy you get for joining the coalition. The trailer park conservatives who don’t want money or tax breaks or social programs from the government were offered these trinkets for their cooperation. The right will deliver those soon and nothing more.

      The agenda of the right wing is to strip away taxation and to eliminate
      every program enacted by the New Deal, to eliminate all corporate liability and insulate wealth from encroachment by the lower classes.

      With the election of Trump, GOP majorities in the Senate and the House, and the soon-recaptured court majority by the far right, it is game over for most people, and the consequences could last at least a generation. Absent a revolution, there will be a return to the past.

      The top 1% control more than half of the wealth in the world. The top 10% control 85% of the worlds’ wealth. Billionaires have much more common with each other than they do with non-billionaires, which is why Trump admires Putin more than fellow Americans. Putin is a fellow billionaire.

      The government in the United States has been, since the New Deal, a means by which the powerless could find a champion. A way to equalize the inherent unfairness of life. People born into vast wealth do not worry about food, shelter, clothing, college tuition or jobs. People born without wealth struggle for those things most of their lives.

      Our government since the Reagan years has become a means by which the powerful protect themselves from encroachment by the have-nots.
      Now that total control has fallen to the radical right, and there is no moderating influence to control their excesses. We can expect a bitter harvest:

      The corporate media will be silenced in the coming years.
      The Supreme Court will outlaw abortion before next Christmas.
      The Affordable Care Act will be repealed before next Summer.
      The Estate Tax will be eliminated in the next budget.
      Corporate taxes will be greatly reduced in the next budget.
      The overseas funds held offshore because of tax manipulation will be repatriated in the next tax bill.
      Women who terminate pregnancies will be sent to prison.
      The homeless will grow in larger numbers than ever before.
      The charitable institutions will be starved for cash and will be unable to keep up with the needs.
      Opponents of the rich will be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
      The FBI will investigate dissenters.
      The wall between the CIA and the FBI will be eliminated.
      The totalitarian technology in Utah will be used to maintain constant surveillance of everyone.
      Torture will become an option for law enforcement and for our military.
      Our professional military will be allowed to suppress insurrection.

      After that, the social programs will be stripped away, one by one.

      That’s what happened on Tuesday. “It’s a Wonderful Life” was been
      replaced by “The Hunger Games.”

      • Someone from Main Street

        “There are those who believe that the right-wing agenda is about opposing gay rights, putting prayer in public schools or eliminating abortion. It is not.”

        Actually, the social policies motivate those who are clearly see no economic advantage from GOP policies to vote for the GOP. Franklin Graham would not state a preference for candidate, but exhorted his followers to pray and think about SCOTUS (i.e. abortion.) What is laughable is that GOP policies slashing funding to organizations like Planned Parenthood contribute to high infant mortality rates. So obviously the Republican concern for life essentially stops at the first breath.

        What concerns me – Trump’s obvious desire to squash anyone who disagrees with him. Shades of Soviet dictators.

        Sorry you lost Tom. What can Democrats do to woo rural voters? Or are they lost forever to the GOP?

      • Norma Munn

        Sadly, I fear you are right. I lived in NYC under Rudy’s mayoral days. Very tough for anyone not seeing the world his way. As for Trump, his lechery was well known, as for that matter, were the Rudy affairs while married. And with Pence added to the mix, it will indeed become “The Hunger Games.”

      • Eric Smith

        Jay– Thanks for all of the above. Lord knows what Trump will do, he is so squirrelly on his positions. One of his mouthpieces was on CNN on Wednesday night reminding the viewers that Trump was the only Republican candidate in the primary to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state house. I am a gay man. I was surprised when he referenced the Pulse nightclub tragedy in his convention speech and then thanked his Republican audience for their applause. (I acknowledge that the remark was mixed with Islamophobia so it was not unalloyed). Practically the first thing out of his mouth in his victory speech was a promise to spend $$$ on infrastructure. Perhaps you voted for Jill Stein, but I am willing for my own sanity to do what Hillary Clinton suggested in her concession speech, approach the Trump presidency with an open mind, at least for the moment. The concentration of wealth is a definite concern, but redistributionist rhetoric such as you deploy is not helpful, IMHO. I prefer the way that Elizabeth Warren makes the argument, which is a variation of: to whom much is given, much is expected. If you are a good businessman, God Bless, but you owe the country a proper return on the opportunities from which you have benefited through the payment of your progressive income tax.
        But thanks Jay for sounding the alarm, and as always thanks to Tom Mills for lifting our hopes and aspirations for a better state and country.

        • Jay Ligon

          Thank you, Eric, for your thoughtful words. I hear hopeful optimism in your message. You have found some reason to believe that life will improve under the Republicans and President Trump. My list of measures to expect is my guess, obviously, and my crystal ball and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. I am not optimistic as you can tell.

          Trump has not been vocal at all about gay rights. My wife and lived in the San Francisco Bay area for nearly 40 years, and we were present on Castro Street after Prop 8 was struck down by the Supreme Court. My wife’s family has many gay people in the family tree so the issue is important to her. Trump’s coalition prominently includes Evangelical Christians who are opposed to gay rights, and his VP Mike Pence signed into law in Indiana a measure which would allow discrimination against gay people. Similar to the controversy over HB2, when Indiana was threatened with the loss of conventions, sporting events and other business losses, Pence relented. His views on religious matters are at the extreme end of the spectrum. It is not a platform matter for the Trump Administration. You might keep an eye on who is appointed to important positions in his cabinet.

          We cannot know what is really in Trump’s mind about racism. His positions on Mexicans, Muslims, and black people are clearly racist. His booth at the North Carolina State Fair last month sold Confederate Flags. His rallies have been extremely racist and looked more like Klan rallies than Republican gatherings. His supporters felt comfortable using the vilest language describing women, gay people, Muslims, and Mexicans. Since his victory, there have been incidents all over the country where minority groups have been mistreated and abused.

          Trump’s campaign began with the racist and dishonest assertion that the black president was illegitimate, that he was from Kenya and lying about his American birth and that Obama should not be allowed under the Constitution to be President. It was a lie that he disavowed only years after he had gained much support from racists like the Klan and White Supremacists. A complaint about news coverage of his rallies is that the media under-reported the violence and vile language. It is one of the defining characteristics of fascism:

          “Identification of Enemies or Scapegoats as a unifying cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe whether racial, ethnic or other minorities.”

          Slogans and chants were used to lather up Trump crowds. “Lock her up.
          Lock her up” was one. A person with a legal mind might ask: “For what?” “Where is the evidence of a crime?” Trump crowds had jeers and cheers for Mexicans “Build that wall,: the media, Muslims, and blacks.

          Alone in his New York penthouse, sitting on his golden toilet seat, Trump may have different views, but his actions are fascistic. In a few weeks, there will be a Republican KKK rally here in Raleigh to celebrate the Trump victory. His campaign and his supporters are racists, and the Republicans are the new racist party. Is Trump in his heart of hearts a racist or an opportunist? I don’t think it matters. It doesn’t matter what Hitler really felt about Jews. What matter is what happened to Jews when he was in charge. Trump plans to round up millions of people and collect data on others and offer some sort of loyalty test. Would you pass?

          Finally, you mentioned the economy. The economy of the United States is vast and the most powerful on earth. After WWII, the marginal tax rate was 90 percent for incomes at the top end. This was when Republican Dwight Eisenhower, credited with the success of our country in the war, was president. When Ronald Reagan took office, the marginal rate for the top wage earners was 70%. The Reagan Administration used some untried and unproven economic theories to justify reducing the marginal rate to half that. The Laffer Curve and Trickle-down economics were offered to explain what was happening with tax policy.

          In 40 years, nothing has trickled down. The Laffer Curve is more of a cartoon of an economic theory than a real principal of economics. While these ideas were widely believed to mean something, tax policies were structured around them along with the ideas of Milton Friedman, a famous economist.

          Unfortunately, economists learn more from failure than success. The Great Depression was a treasure trove of information concerning failed ideas about capitalism. And the Great Recession was a teaching tool which exposed more failures. The protections we built around our economy to prevent the total collapse of Capitalism like in the late 1920s and early 1930s, we managed to unlearn in the 1990s and the early part of this century. Even discredited ideas prevail when people want to believe them.

          There is a more optimal structure to the economy than what we have. Almost all the new income in our economy since the Great Recession has flowed to the top 1%. It is not by accident. Almost all supports for the bottom end of the economy are being withdrawn.

          Remember, it was not the guy with a hammer and wrench who built the plants in China. That was done by Trump and his fellow billionaires. They are seeking the lowest possible labor costs.

          He will never, ever stop searching for lower labor costs. It will never, ever happen. He will never, ever get a Republican Congress to agree to import duties on goods made in low-cost labor markets. It will not happen. American workers will only get the work that manufacturers cannot get made anywhere else unless it must be made using our superior skill and expertise.

          They do not want to pay for the cost of American labor if our wages are higher than in China, Mexico, Bangladesh or other third world labor markets. American jobs have been exported by the largest corporations for a long time now.

          If the corporations (like GE, Exxon, and Microsoft) and billionaires like Trump pay no taxes, they are using our roads, schools, public services, airports, stadiums, telephone, courts, military, and rights of way without contributing to the cost of them. That is not wealth redistribution. In fact, companies like GE pay not taxes and take billions from government contracts.

          Trump will eliminate estate taxes so that his vast wealth will remain in perpetuity in the hands of his kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. He will lower corporate taxes and personal income taxes to pay little or no tax going forward.

          Our country has given reigns of power to one of the world’s greatest con men. He will repay us with disgrace, widespread poverty, and fascism.

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