Month: November 2016

President JFK was assassinated 53 years ago today. This morning I heard someone on the radio speculate that maybe Trump might be like him, once he becomes president.

I couldn’t help but find the comment amusing because Trump’s transition team is well under way, floating the usual suspects from the guilty wing of the republican party for cabinet positions.

It’s such a who’s-who list of characters from previous administrations that it’s clear, Trump was a mask for the GOP all along – pretending to be an outsider, a populist for the forgotten man.

The republican brand was so tainted in failure, they had no other choice but to run an outsider to beat Hillary, champion of the status quo, and it worked.

Even though Trump just spent a year criticizing republicans, and being criticized by them, he’s now hiring them.

It’s the fastest flip-flop of revolving-door collusion in white house history.

President elect Trump is not an “outsider” and he never was. He’s an unmasked strategy to regain the white house, by the same old institutional relationships that had it before.

Already it’s easy to see this will be a reorganization of the same cast of characters, with the same motivations.

Trump is just the continuation of previous republican agendas.

Trump won, in large part, because the democrats deprived the ticket of the credible populist alternative, Bernie Sanders.

Bernie had the big crowds ready for “political revolution”. But despite being cheated and defeated by the democratic national committee, and Hillary, he now graciously supports them as the lesser of two evils.

The failure of the democrats to win this election is so much more than their own failure. Those who need the assistance that good representation provides, will be the ones who will feel the failure of the democrats. The democrats will be sad, but the suffering will be done by others.

The millions of people who donated to Bernie in small but heartfelt amounts, and millions of others who couldn’t afford to give, will physically feel the failure of the democrats to maintain a majority in government.

So in reality, while this last election, which was promoted as the year of the outsiders, with Trump and Sanders drawing record crowds hungry for change, it was not that at all.

It was a trick. It was a contest of deceptions for the vote of the common man, and the republicans did it better. That’s how the current electoral system works.

Politicians pander to their voters and then legislate for their donors.

If you believe Trump and Sanders were outsiders, then you will need to consider the system has changed them. They did not change the system. Even if they were outsiders, they are now insiders.

Either way, The election is over and the public loses, because the duopoly rule will continue to strengthen at the expense of our democratic processes.

You might think, wait a minute, Trump hasn’t even gotten started. Well, yes he has. His cabinet nominee choices make that clear.

It’s an old agenda by the hacks he criticized for over a year during his campaign. Now the band is getting back together, in the white house.

The contradictions between Trump’s campaign promises and the policies he advocates as president on behalf of “the forgotten man”, will be plentiful. I look forward to parsing the rhetoric.

Now that the 2016 election is over I’d like to congratulate the elected officials for their victories and all of the candidates for their participation. It was a very emotional process for many people. I am thankful for being able to participate in my limited way. I didn’t campaign much but still got a lot of votes. Which tells me people read my statement for candidacy in the voters guide and agreed with it, then voted for me. I would like to extend a special thanks to all of them.

I would especially like to congratulate Pramila Jayapal. She will be my next congressional representative. She will represent hundreds of thousands of people in the 7th district. She is very intelligent and articulate and I expect she will vote the same as I would have on virtually every issue that comes before congress. I wish her well.

There are a lot of measures on the local ballot here that I would like to comment on, time allowing. But, next up in the Log, a few words about the presidential election.

The unexpected victory of Trump is historically without precedent, as far as I know. Five days later the protests in the streets against him continue to build. The heartbreak of defeat felt by Hillary and the democrats, will hurt for sometime to come.

All of that turmoil from this election was due to the antiquated political system that we use. Both candidates had higher negative approval ratings than positive, meaning that more people disliked the presidential candidates than liked them. The non-voters were in the majority again, as usual, outnumbering all of the voters combined.

The lesson of this election is how inadequate our democracy is. Our antiquated democracy was outlined before the advent of electricity. Yet, it is still praised as the greatest political system ever, by the private parties that control it, and benefit from it, despite its blatant failure. Failures Trump articulated over and over during his campaign.

The election of Trump is a repudiation of both parties and their policies. The establishment will see Trump’s victory as successful consensus of the people, rather than a rejection of themselves and their institutions that have failed the public.

The winning campaign mantra was we have been cheated by a rigged system run by political hacks. The irony is that Trump will almost certainly proceed with the same failed policies that is cheating the public, and rig the system further. The republicans were looking for an excuse to be less compassionate and now they have one. Trump will fill his government with lobbyists and political hacks, like republicans always do.

The democrats will continue with their futile resistance and the country will sink further into what ails it. I will share what I view as the obvious solutions as I get time. The most obvious remedy now is to create a democratic party that represents the public, or abandon it for a new political coalition that can challenge the failed policy makers from both sides of the aisle.