Posted on 01/20/2017 4:18:15 AM PST by markomalley
Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States Friday at noon in much the same way he was elected.
Entertainers will largely boycott the inaugural festivities. So will dozens of Democratic members of Congress. Protesters will rage. The media coverage will be more critical than when his predecessor Barack Obama first took the oath of office, and will be more sympathetic to the demonstrators. Much of official Washington has yet to get over its shock.
All this was true during the campaign too, and none of it stopped Trump from reaching this point. "We are all ready to get to work," said Mike Pence, set to become the 48th vice president of the United States, at a press conference Thursday. "In fact, we can't wait to get to work for the American people to make it great again."
None of this was supposed to happen, according to political prognosticators from across the ideological spectrum. President Obama's approval ratings rebounded last year. Democrats were confident. Establishment-backed Republican Senate incumbents pitched a shutout against Tea Party primary challengers in 2017.
Yet Hillary Clinton will be attending Friday's inauguration not as president-elect but as a spectator. So will four of the five former presidents, none of whom supported Trump during the election.
Trump's election is the culmination in a number of stunning performances for right-wing nationalist parties in Europe's industrial democracies, culminating in the Brexit vote that will end up yanking the United Kingdom out of the European Union.
His win reflected the same rejection of global elites, powered by a coalition of traditional Republicans and disenchanted white working-class voters from Rust Belt states that had mostly remained safely in Democratic hands since the 1980s. And it came as the same surprise to pollsters and pundits alike.
"Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo," Trump declared at the Republican National Convention. Then on his post-election "thank you" tour, he had a four-word message for the business community that has long backed GOP candidates: "Buy American, hire American."
"The American worker built this country and now it's time for American workers to have a government for the first time in decades answers to them," Trump said at a rally in Iowa, a state that narrowly rejected him during the Republican caucuses but helped push him above 300 electoral votes in the general, making him president.
Republicans will now control all the elected branches of the federal government for the first time since the first years of George W. Bush's second term a decade ago. With a little luck in the Senate confirmation hearings, Trump can ensure that Republican appointees once again control the Supreme Court too.
Trump is no ordinary Republican president, however. He ran against the party's governing and donor classes. His only past political experience was as a donor, where he was bipartisan in his giving, and as an occasional speaker on the conservative circuit. His strongest credentials came from the New York real estate business and his powerful reality TV brand.
This unusual pedigree came as an unlikely recommendation to voters fed up with the direction of the country, including the 61 percent in the exit polls who thought America was on the wrong track. Trump represents the aspirations of millions who lost faith in their government, voted repeatedly for change (when they bothered to vote at all), and then ended up disappointed each time.
Trump promised to use the managerial prowess with which he had enriched himself on the behalf of the people. He vowed to banish the special interests from government and replace them with generals and fellow successful businessmen, all of whom would immediately start negotiating better deals for the public.
Whether Trump's early Cabinet picks represent a fulfillment of his campaign promise is a matter of perspective. Liberals complained about the number of generals. "We're not a military junta," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., complained on Obama strategist David Axelrod's podcast. But those are the very nominees Senate Democrats seem most inclined to confirm.
The billionaire businessmen in Trump's government have also raised eyebrows, given his promises to "drain the swamp" in Washington and huge margins among the white working class. "The entire premise of the criticism is that being successful automatically makes you part of the swamp," a prominent supporter protested, which if true would have disqualified in Trump himself.
After more than a year of skepticism about Trump in many cases, Republicans are excited to see what they can accomplish with Congress and the White House. Democrats are even more outraged than they were in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, since Trump lost the popular vote by a bigger margin than Bush 43.
There are also lingering questions about how he can avoid conflicts of interest with his vast business holdings, and wounds from the intelligence community's Russian hacking report remain raw.
Immigrant groups worry about the swift revocation of Obama's executive orders on immigration, potentially opening up thousands of beneficiaries for deportation.
The incoming president's job approval ratings are low by historical standards for the "honeymoon period," emboldening political opponents and those who wish to de-legitimize him early on.
"He seems to be escalating further and further his adversarial posture with the media and I don't know where this ends," said Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.
Trump has overcome many of these things before in his short political career. His presidency now may rise or fall on the alienated voters who elected him and his own ability to deliver on an ambitious — some say unrealistic — set of promises he made to workers who have been hurting for a long time.
He's not playing by your rules, and you have no idea how to stop him. Eat it with a spoon, leftie.
-—So will dozens of Democratic members of Congress.-—
There is serious irony in this action. The 69 or what ever have declared themselves irrelevant.
Not only is it totally unnecessary for them to show up for the inauguration, there is no reason for them to show up on the House floor. They are totally irrelevant and in the overall scheme of things just don’t matter.
they are tits on a boar hog
I shudder to think of how much alcohol went into her system last night, and how many pharmaceuticals will be keeping her alert today.
The chattering class and the Political Establishment (DC UniParty)are still trying to fight the last war, using the last tactics.
They are like the French, absolutely certain that the Ardens Forest is impenetrable to military formations, so they anchored their famed and expensive Maginot Line on it...and got bypassed, again.
The UniParty cannot accept the fact that the voting populace that has to work for a living, has rejected them and their Gimedat constituency.
It is going to be an interesting eight years!
The swamp is not comprised of entrepreneurs...it is comprised of lawyers. To imply otherwise is FakeNews promulgated by Dem representatives.
That is one disgusting swamp! Go Trump!
“He seems to be escalating further and further his adversarial posture with the media and I don’t know where this ends,” said Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.
Of what use to the world is an Associate professor of Political Science?
It ends when the press starts doing real reporting instead of opinion journalism.
What a accurate description the title gives.
LOL! Perfect for a T-shirt!
“He seems to be escalating further and further his adversarial posture with the media and I don’t know where this ends,” said Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.Of what use is the generalization “the media?” None.The problem “conservatives” face is that journalism - not “the media,” but journalism - is inherently cynical about society and naive about government.Journalism is negative because bad news sells. Journalism knows it is negative - and yet calls itself objective. Anyone who claims that negativity is objectivity is a cynic.Journalism considers itself - not the people, who are (in their minds) utterly in thrall to PR and will vote the way journalists insinuate that they must. Consequently it is inevitable that journalism must, at the same time that it is negative towards society, promote naïveté towards government.
The consequence is that journalism must be oppositional to conservatism. The naive, listening to journalists, will think that that puts conservatives in the wrong:
The natural disposition is always to believe.To the contrary, such people should consider thatIt is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.Any fool can be a “liberal.” It takes maturity to be conservative. To understand that it is only to be expected that journalists would be self promoters, and that their claims of superior objectivity would be baseless.The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certaindegree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Very nice. I keep a text file open next to my browser; in it I have things laid out that I might want to paste into FR replies. I just added that last paragraphThe phrase originated with Francois Guisot (1787-1874): "Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." It was revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929): "Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”to it.
I’ve an entire folder full of stuff that I post from time to time.
509 items so far...
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