David Remnick: Trump's Rages and the Case for Optimism

[babylonsister]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-rages-and-the-case-for-optimism?utm_brand=tny&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_facebook&fbclid=IwAR0wvPr4Tc_0MIRRJ6JDQV5V6d0HtRpsFxDg40pX7spQ9Wj_mc2Bop_i63A

Trump’s Rages and the Case for Optimism
By David Remnick
November 15, 2018

snip//

The midterm elections did not suggest at all that Trump is finished, that he has no chance to be reëlected and prolong this degrading chapter. He still has the capacity to energize a significant and powerful base of voters. He still holds the Senate; his capacity to deepen his mark on the Supreme Court and on lower courts remains. Trump will surely start devising ways to slime the committee chairpeople in the House, particularly those who are likely to lead investigations into his activities—Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Elijah Cummings—and those who will, after New Year’s Day, start announcing their candidacies for the Presidency. Trump’s ferocity as a campaigner is not to be underestimated, and, sensing his own imperilment, he is bound to campaign with even less consideration for the bounds of decency than he did in 2016 and 2018.

And yet the election results, which continue to accumulate, are not on Trump’s side; his furies make plain that—his declarations of glorious victory to the contrary—he understands this. The Democrats won back at least seven governorships and made serious inroads in state legislatures.They performed well not merely on the coasts but in crucial parts of the Midwest, the Southwest, and even the South. The cities and the suburbs are not with him. The Democrats took at least thirty-four seats back in the House and, of course, flipped the chamber, so that committees will now all be chaired by Democrats. The House Freedom Caucus, which has been so influential, has lost its footing. The voices of women, particularly Democratic women, have been amplified in Congress like never before.

Finally, the elections, over all, made it even more evident than before that the Republican Party has made its pact with a President who is losing support and, in demographic terms, losing the Party’s traditional advantages. The advantages that it continues to hold have less to do with popular support than with the inequities of gerrymandering and the structure of the Senate and Electoral College.

For two years, certain institutions and forces of American life have, imperfectly, fitfully, resisted the autocratic and anti-constitutional instincts of the Trump Administration. Judges, investigators, civil-society organizations, protesters, government officials and ex-government officials in possession of a conscience, and the press have done important work. The election, which nearly everyone understood as a referendum on Donald Trump, has had the most powerful effect of all, and it has led to his current unwinding.

There is no overestimating the damage that Trump has done and will continue to do. He will go on, at best, ignoring the perils of climate change, the evidence of a future that is our present, from the wildfires of California to the swamping of New Orleans, Houston, Puerto Rico, and the state of Florida. He will go on, at best, ignoring the mortal peril of gun violence and the fiscal peril of heedless financial policy. He will go on trying to frighten Americans about “caravans” and “terrorists” infiltrating the country. And he will go on undermining invaluable international institutions and alliances.

But there has always been a case to be made for hope. And the case was made, most powerfully, at the ballot box. When the President fantasizes that the vote was a fraud, the result of criminals dressed in one hat, then another, one shirt, then another—well, that rhetoric of desperation is a signal that maybe, just maybe, a change is on the way.

[Achilleaze]

1. k and r

[Farmer-Rick]

2. He got the double voting idea from his BFF little tiny man Putin

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/they-could-be-twins-photos-appear-to-show-russians-voting-twice-in-putin-election

They could be twins': photos appear to show Russians voting twice in election
People appeared to cast two ballots in southern town of Ust-Dzheguta in presidential election

Putin hires goons to go around Russia voting for him over and over again, in different precincts. He told Trump about this and now Trump uses it as an excuse to trash voters.

[calimary]

3. Not surprising, unfortunately.

[Nitram]

4. Truth