"That the US has elected a convicted felon, who is also indicted for attempting to overthrow the last election and is an overt admirer of autocrats, can be interpreted in one of two ways. Either voters do not take the risk that Trump poses seriously, or they know exactly what they are letting the country in for but still prefer it to business as usual...
The U.S. Supreme Court already wrote the equivalent of a judicial blank cheque when it ruled in July he had sweeping immunity for his actions as president. America has turned a decisive corner, It would be foolhardy to suppose Trump did not mean what he said when he vowed to come after his enemies, "- Edward Luce, The Financial Times, 'America Wants Trump, No Ifs or Buts'
What were you thinking?- Washington Post Comment
As the dust settles over election day, it’s worth reflecting that it’s not only the election results that have been at stake, but the future of the presidency and its powers. Over the course of the first quarter of this century, the American presidency has accumulated ever more power, rendering the office increasingly less constrained by either Congress or the courts. With Donald Trump’s reelection, the slide toward a dangerously empowered president has reached a moment of reckoning, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs and warfare.
Presidential Powers
Throughout American history, presidents have repeatedly sought to increase their powers, nowhere more so than in the context of war. As historian James Patterson has pointed out, “War and the threat of war were major sources of presidential power from the beginning.” Whether it was George Washington’s insistence that he was the one to formulate foreign policy when it came to diplomacy, treaties, and more; Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of complete control over whether or not to attack the Barbary Pirates; James Polk’s decision to take actions which risked war with Mexico; or Abraham Lincoln’s “sweeping assertions of authority” in the Civil War era, executive claims to authority when it comes to matters of foreign relations and warfare have been a persistent feature of American history.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
—Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)
We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have followed it.
It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them.
As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough advertising — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
I won’t try to hide it. I’m heartbroken. Heartbroken and scared, to tell you the truth. I’m sure many of you are, too.
Donald Trump has decisively won the presidency, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives and the popular vote, too.
I still have faith in America. But right now, that’s little comfort to the people who are most at risk.
Millions of people must now live in fear of being swept up by Trump’s cruel mass deportation plan – documented immigrants, as he has threatened before, as well as undocumented, and millions of American citizens with undocumented parents or spouses.
Women and girls must now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life-saving care during an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.
WASHINGTON D.C. — I woke up on Election Day wearing fuzzy feline headgear. My brown tabby, Joey, had wrapped his paws around my head and was purring in my ear as I remembered my plan to go to Washington D.C. to attend the watch party at Howard University for Vice President Kamala Harris. But with a cat draped across my skull, my mind drifted to a previous trip I'd made to D.C. in January 2017, when I covered the Women's March to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump. That day had been the one bright spot amid the years of MAGA hell, witnessing hundreds of thousands of people streaming in every direction, vowing to resist the fascist urges of a man who had bragged about sexually assaulting women. The symbol of the day: the ubiquitous p***y hats, cheerful pink knitted confections worn by women reclaiming control over a body part that Trump memorably boasted about grabbing against his victims' wills.
It looks now like my sweet cat was an ominous omen. With Trump's win, it's time for women to dig those hats out of storage, grab their "resistance" wine glasses, and get back to work. Trump's victory came at the hands of a majority of male voters, while most women once again turned out hoping to stop him. It will be up to women, again, to save America from this glowering fascist menace.
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
In Philadelphia this past weekend, I met a number of people who’d given up on democracy. They railed about politicians who make promises they don’t keep. They spun conspiracy theories about the government. A number of those who answered the door told me that they weren’t going to vote.
Then there were the grim young men who said, hell yeah, they were going to vote for Trump. They spoke of the Republican presidential candidate as if he were Tony Montana, the gangster played by Al Pacino in the film Scarface: violent, lawless, and powerful. Trump elicited respect laced with fear. According to his supporters, he’d stand up to America’s enemies abroad and be tough on crime domestically. Several said to me—with the usual preface of “don’t get me wrong but…”—that a woman president would be too weak or “mixed up by hormones” to do those necessary things.
If you cross celebrity culture with gun culture and add a few dollops of testosterone, you get Donald Trump.
The election of Trump is more than a political event; it is an attempt to legitimize a brutal evolution of fascism in America. His rise is not accidental but symptomatic, emerging from the depths of collective fear, dread, and anxiety stoked by a savage form of gangster capitalism—neoliberalism—that thrives on division and despair. This climate, steeped in a culture of hate, misogyny, and racism, has given life to Trump’s authoritarian appeal, drowning out the warning signs of past and present tyranny.
While it’s clear that American society changed dramatically with Reagan’s election and the corrupt rise of the billionaire elite, we must also recognize how liberals and the Democratic Party, instead of resisting, aligned with Wall Street power brokers like Goldman Sachs. In doing so, they adopted elements of neoliberalism that crushed the working class, intensified the class and racial divide, accelerated staggering levels of inequality, and intensified the long lacy of nativism, all of which fed into the conditions for Trump’s appeal. Clinton’s racially charged criminalizing policies, Obama’s centrist neoliberalism and unyielding support for the financial elite, and Biden’s death-driven support for genocide in Gaza have contributed to a culture ripe for authoritarianism. In short, this groundwork didn’t just make Trump possible; it made him inevitable.
If you’ve ever questioned whether our country has an inequality problem, this election should provide all the evidence you need. As billionaires used their financial firepower to throw support their preferred candidates’ way, Americans who’ve been left behind took out their frustrations at the ballot box.
How do we get started on this next chapter in the fight to reverse extreme inequality? With Senate Republicans still short of a filibuster-proof supermajority, next year’s debate over the expiration of the Trump tax cuts could still present one opportunity.
But it’s also likely that any near-term policy progress will have to start at the city and state levels and work its way up to the federal level. Three progressive tax victories from last night are an encouraging sign.
Washington state’s Initiative 2109 was the most important tax-related ballot measure of the year. Hedge fund executive Brian Heywood bankrolled this campaign, hoping to repeal the state’s innovative capital gains tax on high earners.
Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off.
And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires.
It all has to do with something called the administrative state.
While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy.
A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.
I feel like I’ve been in a brawl, a massive street fight where the punches are words and concepts instead of fists. I got clobbered while trying as hard a possible to warn the Democrats that they are losing the working class and that they absolutely must change course.
It should have been obvious that the Democrats could not cuddle up to Wall Street and then pretend that the “opportunity society” would help working people emerge from 40 years of mass layoffs and stagnant wages. It was so clear that the Democrats would be viewed as members and defenders of the elite establishment that rules over both the economy and government, and that Trump would be seen as the disrupter—the friend of the working class.
It really hurts to have called this one. I so wanted to be wrong.
It’s official. Neoliberal fascism has become mainstream in the United States. This is the only rational conclusion that one can draw from Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election. Indeed, Trump’s historic victory (which includes leading the GOP to a much larger-than-expected Senate majority and potentially in control of the House) has changed the nature of the Republican Party and shifted the center of gravity in U.S. politics in such earth-shattering fashion that it has led to the actual collapse of the Democratic Party.
Neoliberal fascism is now the dominant politico-ideological orientation in the United States and its dire consequences will undoubtedly be felt for years to come both inside the country and across the world. In this context, the formation of a united front against fascism is more important and urgent than ever before.
Under the leadership of Donald Trump, a political movement has been born that encompasses different major coalitions (working-class voters, women [whose share of support for Trump, ironically enough, went up by 2 percentage points from the last election], Christian fundamentalists, minorities [Black, Hispanic, Asian voters] and youth [though largely white and conservative], and the ultra-wealthy) all of whom have been drawn to the “America First” slogan.
Amid the postmortems and reckoning that will now follow the wreckage of Donald Trump’s return to “absolute” power, as authorized by the Supreme Court, there are a two notes in particular that deserve a deeper dive.
First. In Missouri, a state Trump won by 58 percent, voters also acted to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and to require employers to provide paid sick leave to workers. Proposition A was backed by unions and workers’ advocacy groups, social justice and civil rights organizations, and even over 500 state business owners despite the opposition of the Chamber of Commerce, the big corporate lobby wing.
“We’ve shown the rest of the world, the rest of the country, that regardless of what’s going on outside of our state, we’re able to come together and win,” said Terrence Wise of Stand Up KC, a coalition of low wage workers. “We felt that we have the power as everyday Missourians to come together and make our lives better.”
They will use this as an opportunity to balance their books on the backs of the working people and the poor. In fascist systems, all the money flows to the top" - Washington Post commenter
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