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IN WAKE OF TRUMP’S UNLIKELY VICTORY, AN “UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE”, LIBERALS RAGE & DEMOCRATS TURN FURTHER LEFT

Eleven Nine: James W. Ceaser, Weekly Standard, Nov. 21, 2016— Americans awoke on the morning of 11/9 to a different political world.

America Moves Right, Jewish Groups Move Left: Richard Baehr, Israel Hayom, Dec. 4, 2016— On January 20, the Republican Party will control the White House…

Dear Liberals: Start Practicing the Empathy You Preach: Michael Goodwin, New York Post, Nov. 20, 2016— Elections have consequences and an obvious one now is your distress.

Donald Trump’s Jacksonian Revolt: Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 11, 2016— The election of Donald Trump was a surprise and an upset, but the movement that he rode to the presidency has deep roots in American history.

 

On Topic Links

 

Donald Trump as Nixon’s Heir: Reihan Salam, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 2016

Can the Democrats Move Right?: Ross Douthat, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2016

Before Donald Trump, There Was Menachem Begin: Daniel Gordis, Bloomberg, Nov. 25, 2016

The Disintegrating Obama Coalition: Jay Cost, Weekly Standard, Nov. 21, 2016

 

 

ELEVEN NINE

James W. Ceaser                                                           

Weekly Standard, Nov. 21, 2016

 

Americans awoke on the morning of 11/9 to a different political world. There is only one word to explain what happened, and it is called democracy. The usual claims progressives invoke to deny that real democracy exists in America do not seem to apply in this case. A bought election? Hillary Clinton outspent her rival massively and enjoyed the support of many more of the big donors. There are no Koch brothers to kick around this time. Support from the big organized interests? Major unions, prestigious associations, and the denizens of the most powerful corporate board rooms were overwhelmingly in Clinton’s camp, just as Bernie Sanders had charged. Bias for one side by the major media? No contest here; Clinton enjoyed a huge advantage.

 

Fabulists are sure to discover a few things to confirm their thesis—instances of voter suppression, a right-wing conspiracy in the FBI and the bumblings of Director Clouseau, an electoral system that does not count the national popular vote. But even the most ardent will be hard pressed to deny that the people spoke.

 

Progressives face a difficult choice. Either they can blame democracy or they can fault Clinton. Much might be learned, of course, if they offered, like America's own founders, an honest assessment of democracy's limits. But it is encoded in their DNA to flatter it, at least in public. Only in the back rooms and among themselves do they define democracy as the rule of the deplorables. It is more likely, therefore, that they will turn their animus against the Clintons and blame them for pulling progressives into their culture of unseemly deals and continuing corruption. The civil war within the Republican party may ebb just as the civil war in the Democratic party begins to heat up. Democrats will need to look for new heroes, as Bill Clinton's luster was destroyed by this campaign and President Obama's vaunted legacy looks more and more tenuous.

 

The 2016 election reminds many of the election of 1980. Both featured a strong reaction on the part of the "little people" against an elite, especially against a progressive intellectual elite. Economic hardship was no doubt a factor in their arousal, but far more important was their anger—anger at being patronized by those professed, or who had once professed, to be their helpers. The uprising of the people was so overlooked that even the scientists of democratic behavior, the pollsters, missed it. Hence the surprise victories in both elections of a Republican president and the much-better-than-expected performance of the GOP in congressional races.

 

Yet there is this difference. The 1980 movement was made in the name of a guiding set of ideas, conservatism, to which its leader, Ronald Reagan, willingly and publicly tethered himself. This public philosophy both enabled and set limits to the movement. It naturally favored and honored thinkers and intellectuals, who in the aftermath of 1980 came to occupy an important place inside the Republican party. A vast conservative intellectual infrastructure was built, consisting of institutes, think tanks, publishing houses, and journals. (Progressives had so successfully done the same earlier in the century that their movement had become virtually one with the entire culture of intellectual thought.) The movement of 2016 has no such coherent philosophy. It is the product, for now, of raw and powerful sentiments and of a set of discrete and inchoate positions that can change by the day. It has been tied to one person, Donald Trump, who eschewed this entire intellectual infrastructure, less really from contempt than from indifference. Practicing politics (or anything else) by reference to a structure of ideas is to him simply another world, a different way of processing reality, of getting things done, and of managing affairs. His is not the art of theoretical thinking, but the art of the deal. Some in the conservative intellectual class have even taken to seeing this approach as a liberating step, freeing conservatism from what they charge has become a form of modern-day scholasticism.

 

Progressives and their followers in the media delighted in savaging both Reagan and Trump as incompetent, ignorant, well beyond the pale. The more these men were dismissed, the more many rallied to them in defiant solidarity. To this, Donald Trump added, often in plain sight, a shocking incivility and vulgarity. Undisciplined by any ideology, his different positions wandered into extremes and extravagances, which drifted in and out of a fluctuating agenda. In his flamboyance he more than reflected the collapsing standards of contemporary popular culture, where he has been an avatar of the changes. He clearly understood this realm better than any of his rivals.

 

Trump's unlikely emergence was akin to that of a party crasher. No one in the GOP initially took him seriously, as he defied one conservative piety after another. Some of his rivals chose to coddle rather than confront him, hoping to absorb his growing support once he was disposed of. If there is blame to be assessed for his rise, much of it goes to his major contenders who, each naturally ambitious for himself, refused to subordinate their personal careers to a larger set of conservative principles that they held, roughly, in common. Consciously or not, Trump followed the age-old strategy of divide and conquer, and his rivals played their part to perfection, offering themselves one by one to the slaughter…                                       

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents                                                                                                                                                       

AMERICA MOVES RIGHT, JEWISH GROUPS MOVE LEFT                                                                    

Richard Baehr                                                                                                        

Israel Hayom, Dec. 4, 2016

 

On January 20, the Republican Party will control the White House, both houses of Congress, at least 33 governors' offices, and over two-thirds of state legislative bodies, including 25 states where the governor is a Republican and the GOP is the majority party in both branches of the state legislature. The Democrats will have similar control in four states. The other states will have mixed party governance. One would need to go back to the 1920s to find a time of similar dominance by the Republican Party. In but eight years, the Democrats have lost a dozen Senate seats, 66 House seats, near 1,000 state legislative seats, 13 governors' offices, and the presidency.

 

The president-elect, Donald Trump, won 24-25% of the Jewish vote, according to the national exit polls and a J Street survey. Democrat Hillary Clinton won either 70-71% of the Jewish vote in these same surveys. The margin for the Democratic nominee was the second smallest for any Democratic nominee with Jewish voters since 1988. Only the 2012 Obama vs. Romney race among Jewish voters was closer (69% to 30%).

 

When the national popular vote total is finally complete (California, supposedly our most technologically advanced state, takes longer than any other state by a matter of weeks to complete its tally), Clinton will have won the popular vote by about 2%, while getting trounced in the Electoral College 306-232 (a 14% margin). Exit polls and final polls before Election Day showed Clinton winning by 4-5%. Given what some analysts are calling "shy Trump voters" who did not want to reveal their support for Trump to pollsters, it is certainly possible that Trump exceeded the percentage of support reflected in the exit poll or J Street survey among Jewish voters. In any case, it is safe to assume that Jewish voters were far more supportive of the Democratic nominee than almost any other group, which occurs in every presidential election.

 

What is clear since election day is that several major Jewish organizations have chosen to identify with those who seem panicked by the election results, particularly the election of Trump. Charitable organizations rely on contributions, and if two-thirds to three-quarters of Jewish voters went for the Democrat, it is not surprising that many Jewish organizations reflect this partisan split among their members and donors. Nonetheless, there is "a new sheriff coming to town," and typically, most major Jewish organizations look forward to working with the new president on their issues of concern, rather than going to war with him during his presidential transition.

 

In the past few weeks, the Anti-Defamation League, led by former Obama staffer Jonathan Greenblatt, was one of the first organizations of any kind to aim fire at Trump's naming of Breitbart executive chair Steve Bannon as an in-house adviser. The ADL leader was quick to label him an anti-Semite and a leader of the "alt-right." Most of those scurrilous charges have been walked back after the ADL was hit with pushback by those who have worked with Bannon or for him, and knew him far better than his critics, with several Jews among his leading defenders. But it was clear that the ADL wanted to be early out of the box to show it was not at all concerned with striking a partisan pose, and was part of the team on the left who were committed to making life miserable for Trump, even during the transition period before he took office. Today, the ADL is playing the role of victim, claiming it is under attack from the Right for doing its job.

 

Accusing Republicans of bigotry is nothing new at this point, and has become part of the standard campaign fare by Democratic candidates and those on the left. A major reason why Hillary Clinton was defeated was the near total emptiness of her campaign in making a case for why she should be president, as opposed to electing her so as not to have Trump in office, due to his temperament, and of course, alleged bigotry. In the weeks since Trump selected Bannon, mainstays of the major media, such as The New York Times and major networks, have given a lot of coverage to a collection of a few hundred white racists meeting at a convention in Atlanta. Clearly, guilt by association was the order of the day — white-power racists equals Bannon equals Trump.

 

The Bannon selection, which does not require Senate ratification, drew attacks from predictable Jewish groups on the left — J Street, the National Council of Jewish Women, T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and Uri L'Tzedek (the Orthodox Jewish social justice movement), among others. But a collection of groups associated with the Conservative movement was similarly harsh in attacking Bannon — the Rabbinical Assembly, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Cantors Assembly, the Women's League for Conservative Judaism and the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs issued a joint statement of condemnation.

 

Just days after the Trump victory and the Bannon pick seemed to create a certainty of a dystopian future for many American Jews and their organizations, a Minnesota congressman, Keith Ellison, had his name put forward as a candidate for the next leader of the Democratic National Committee. Remarkably, with the exception of the Zionist Organization of America and a few other politically conservative Jewish groups, most Jewish groups held their fire on Ellison, and seemed to think all was well regarding Ellison and Jews and Ellison and Israel. After all, New York Senator Chuck Schumer immediately endorsed him for the job. That Ellison once had ties to the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, and had called Israel an apartheid state, seemed to be of no great concern. Greenblatt's first comment was that he had contacted the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota on Ellison, and they gave him a clean bill of health. Greenblatt subsequently told The New York Times that he thought Ellison was "an important ally in the fight against anti-Semitism" but held a posture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "on which we strongly differ and that concern us."

 

Now, as other groups have continued digging into Ellison's' unsavory history with regard to Israel, the ADL has reversed course, and now argues that he is disqualified for the job. Greenblatt seemed disturbed that Ellison, in a 2010 speech to a Muslim group, had echoed the Stephen Walt-John Mearsheimer thesis that Israel controlled U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: "The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people," Ellison said in the recorded speech to his supporters. "A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes."…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents                                                                            

DEAR LIBERALS: START PRACTICING THE EMPATHY YOU PREACH                                                         

Michael Goodwin                                                                                                           

New York Post, Nov. 20, 2016

 

Elections have consequences and an obvious one now is your distress. Your grief over Hillary Clinton’s defeat is understandable, but your rage over Donald Trump’s victory is not. Yet instead of searching for the reasons, you embarrass the city by booing Mike Pence at “Hamilton.” You screech over Trump’s personnel picks and reflexively smear people you don’t know. Too often, your argument is “Shut up.” You are playing with fire by hardening the very polarization you decry. Please stop before you burn down the American house. By all means, mourn Clinton’s loss and the probability that you will never again see her name on a ballot. Her concession speech felt like “goodbye” and someone else will shatter the final glass ceiling.

 

While I am relieved Clinton will not be president, it is impossible not to feel for her on a personal level. Twice she was denied victory when it seemed inevitable, and there is no joy in imagining her pain. But neither is there any appetite for her politics. Back in February, I wrote that, win or lose the nomination, Bernie Sanders “has already won the future of the Democratic Party.” My only mistake was in underestimating the extent of his victory. With the Clintons out of the way, Dems are making a ferocious socialist turn, led by Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and presumed party boss Rep. Keith Ellison. Excepting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, Dem leadership is embracing radical policies that make President Obama look like a centrist. With unrestrained ideology, it’s leftward, march.

 

That way lies more madness and defeat, and Republicans already hold more federal and state power than they’ve held in nearly 100 years. I urge you to open your eyes and hearts to better understand the revolution taking place in the America outside your bubble. That’s not to deny that your rejection of Trump was reasonable. His thin skin is a concern and things he said and did were offensive. His lack of experience presents a steep learning curve at a very dangerous time. But the election is over, so let’s be fully honest: You don’t just reject Trump, you also hold contempt for his supporters. You belittle their concerns and demonize their resistance to your power. Among yourselves, you ask, how can they be so stupid to elect such a stupid man?

 

I hear such things, and it confuses me. I know you as warm and generous people, full of passion for your families and friends. You love America and share its bounty through charitable good works. And yet, that contempt for certain less fortunate Americans is real. Such hate is anathema to the classical meaning of liberalism, and is often directed at an unknown adversary. So it is here, because most of you don’t actually know Trump supporters. They are everywhere. They are checkout clerks in supermarkets, they fix your car, deliver your packages and maybe watch your kids. Some are doctors and many own small businesses. Too many are unemployed. They are the soldiers who defend you, the farmers who produce your food and the cops you trust. When you call 911, the first responders are probably Trump voters. They are essential to your lives, but you are ignorant about theirs. Except when you need them, you probably don’t notice them. Actually, you don’t really hate them, either. What you hate is the caricature of them the Democratic Party and the national liberal media created, and that you swallowed, hook, line and sinker.

 

You fell for the oldest trick in the propaganda playbook. Obama, Clinton, Hollywood and their media handmaidens “otherized” tens of millions of hardworking, God-fearing Americans, and you said amen. These hucksters turned anecdotes into universal truths. They found a racist or heard an anti-Muslim comment at a Trump rally and bingo, declared an entire movement bitter clingers, deplorables and irredeemables. You accepted the caricature because it fit the stereotypes reinforced in your closed circle. It has ever been thus for the smart set.

 

Here’s Time magazine describing the 1932 Democratic convention that nominated FDR: “Like Irish potatoes and more noxious growths were the city delegations — Tammany’s full-blown ward heelers, micks from Brooklyn and Boston, hybrids from Chicago. . . lusty bumpkins from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and drooping-gone-to-seed specimens from the country roadsides.” Minus the flair, that’s pretty much how the New York Times, MSNBC and this year’s version of Time described Trump supporters. They lied to you. If you must be angry, be angry at them. They are the great deceivers, and they haven’t stopped. You are better people than that. Declare your independence from partisan propaganda and go see for yourselves the truth about America. For its sake, and yours.                     

                                                           

Contents                                                                                                                                         

DONALD TRUMP’S JACKSONIAN REVOLT                                                                                               

Walter Russell Mead

Wall Street Journal, Nov. 11, 2016

 

The election of Donald Trump was a surprise and an upset, but the movement that he rode to the presidency has deep roots in American history. Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters are the 21st-century heirs of a political tendency that coalesced in the early 1820s around Andrew Jackson.

 

Old Hickory has been the despair of well-bred and well-educated Americans ever since he defeated the supremely gifted John Quincy Adams in the 1828 presidential election. Jackson’s brand of populism—nationalist, egalitarian, individualistic—remains one of the most powerful forces in American politics. The Republican Party’s extraordinary dominance in this election demonstrates just how costly the Democrats’ scornful rejection of “hillbilly populism” has been. Jacksonian culture can be traced to the 18th-century migration of Scots-Irish settlers to the colonial backwoods and hill country. Some Jacksonians have long been Democrats; some have long been Republicans. They are not a well-organized political force, and their influence on American politics, while profound, is often diffuse.

 

The folk ideology of Jacksonian America does not line up well with either liberal or conservative dogma. Jacksonians have never been deficit hawks when it comes to government spending on the middle class. In the 19th century, they enthusiastically supported populist land policies culminating in the Homestead Act, which gave out western farm land for free. Today, Jacksonians support middle-class entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, even as they remain suspicious of policies and benefits seen as supporting the poor. They do not, on the whole, approve of free trade. Jacksonians are often libertarian when it comes to everyday life. While many of them support tough drug laws, some are recreational drug users.

 

Jacksonian farmers participated in the Whiskey Rebellion against federal excise taxes on alcohol in the 18th century, and Jacksonians today still view tax collectors and federal agents with skepticism and hostility. One issue that largely unites Jacksonian opinion is gun control. Jacksonians often view the Second Amendment as the foundation of American liberty, ensuring the rights of a free people against overreaching government.

 

On race, Jacksonians have been slow to accept change. Their conception of America’s folk community has not historically included African-Americans. While a small fringe of violent racists and “white nationalists” seeks to revive old Jacksonian racist attitudes, Jacksonian America today is much more open to nonwhite and non-Anglo cultures. Now their bitterness is directed primarily against illegal immigration and Islam, which they see as culturally and politically incompatible with their conception of American values. Jacksonians have come a long way from Jim Crow, but they still resent their tax money being spent to help the urban poor, and they overwhelming support both the death penalty and tough police tactics against violent criminals.

 

As for foreign policy, Jacksonians are motivated by threats. When other countries are not threatening the U.S., Jacksonians prefer a course of “live and let live.” They believe in honoring alliance commitments but are not looking for opportunities for military interventions overseas and do not favor grandiose plans for nation-building and global transformation.  In war, the fiery patriotism of Jacksonians has been America’s secret weapon. After Pearl Harbor, Jacksonian America roused to fight the Nazis and Japan. After 9/11, Jacksonians were eager to do the same in the Middle East, particularly after they were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. When Iraq turned out not to be such a threat, Jacksonians felt betrayed.  

 

Many of them voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 out of disillusion with the neoconservative agenda of war and democracy activism. Mr. Trump’s criticisms of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush struck a chord in Jacksonian America. When war does come, Jacksonians believe in victory at any and all costs. Jacksonian opinion has never regretted the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a war of self-defense, Jacksonian opinion recognizes no limits on the proper use of force by the U.S.

 

Social scientists and urban intellectuals have been predicting the death of Jacksonian America since the turn of the 20th century. Urbanization and immigration were the forces that observers like Woodrow Wilson and Walter Lippmann hoped would transform American popular culture into something less antagonistic to the rule of technocratic intellectuals ensconced in a powerful federal bureaucracy. This did not work out as planned…                                                                                          

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents           

On Topic Links

 

Donald Trump as Nixon’s Heir: Reihan Salam, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 2016—If you ask Republicans what their party stands for, most will say conservatism. The trouble comes in trying to define what that means.

Can the Democrats Move Right?: Ross Douthat, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2016 —Since Election Day the great intra-Democratic debate over What Went Wrong has been dominated by two visions of how liberalism should be organized, identity politics versus economic solidarity, with writers variously critiquing or defending each tendency, or arguing that they are complements and that any tension can and ought to be resolved.

Before Donald Trump, There Was Menachem Begin: Daniel Gordis, Bloomberg, Nov. 25, 2016—So shocking was the electoral upset that Israeli television created a word for it: mahapakh. Derived from the root that means “revolution” or “turning upside down,” the word was fashioned because Menachem Begin’s 1977 election as prime minister was such a game-changer in Israeli politics that no existing word seemed to suffice.

The Disintegrating Obama Coalition: Jay Cost, Weekly Standard, Nov. 21, 2016—Political coalitions are tricky things to manage in the United States. Ours is a country of more than 320 million people but only two major political parties—so each side's voting bloc tends to be unstable at the margins, where national elections are actually won and lost.

 

 

 

 

 

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