Post-election US, lay of the land

It is time to tabulate the results of the 2016 election. At the federal level, Republicans control the White House, Senate and the House of Representatives. They will also get a chance to reshape the Supreme Court. How did this happen? Well it has been happening for a while, with gradual erosion of Democrats at the State level, which has in turn led to Clinton and Sanders, neither one of them a spring chicken, being the the only primary candidates. Contrast that with the Republican primary which started off with 17 candidates. This affect of extirpation of the farm-team cannot be underestimated.

Surprisingly that erosion has continued at the state level in this election. Republicans control a record 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, and wound up with at least 33 governorships, the most since 1922. All that is the net result of Obama’s own preternatural self-assurance and inability to heed lessons. For them it might get worse because in 2018, the Democrats must defend an 25 seats in their Senate caucus, many of them in states that Trump carried.

This first shot across the bow was Obama’s inability to understand or to heed the lessons of the election of Scott Brown in the liberal state of Masschusetts. This was followed by the 2010 election in which the “Republican Party gained 63 seats in the US House of Representatives and making it the largest seat change since 1948 and the largest for any midterm election since the 1938 midterm elections. The Republicans also gained 680 seats in state legislative races, to break the previous majority record of 628 set by Democrats in the post-Watergate elections of 1974.” Instead of addressing the issues, Obama decided to unleash the IRS on the Tea Party, in the true Chicago-way, which inexorably brings us to where we are today.

demseat

Some have received the memo, and the ‘publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.’ Other leftist are holding back less.

Others like Juncker have not received the memo. He stated the following.

“We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works,” Juncker, arguably the EU’s most powerful politician, told students during a conference in Luxembourg, his home state. “I think we will waste two years before Mr. Trump tours the world he does not know.”

It is not a surprise that Juncker said that, but it is surprising that he was sober enough to be understood by the reporters.

All said “roughly 80 percent of the population living in a state either all or partially controlled by Republicans.”

No wonder there is talk of a Democrat civil war.

Progressives are itching to see the national apparatus reduced to rubble and rebuilt from scratch, with one of their own installed at the top.

And there is talk among some progressives, like Bill Clinton’s former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, about splitting from the Democratic Party entirely if they don’t get the changes they seek.

“The Democratic Party can no longer be the same, it has been repudiated,” Reich said on a conference call with members from the progressive grassroots group Democracy for America.

Heckuva job Obama!