I agree the people of America want stuff done. They just don't want what the democrats pass. When the democrats start passing what Americans want, they will begin to win more elections.

Right now the status quo is that doing nothing is preferable to what the democrats pass.....which is why "obstructionism" doesn't hurt the republicans.

You are not acknowledging that Americans aren't all right wingers. It is obvious people in California and Oregon want different stuff than people in Ohio and Kentucky.

Don't fret so much. We put in a black president after Bush II's follies.

Winning elections is a complicated problem and I agree there is a lot I am not acknowledging. What I am doing is making an argument that "obstructionism" isn't necessarily a failing political strategy. If the other party's strategy is worse than do nothing, "obstructionism" makes a lot of sense because it is a political strategy that is so easy to implement.

Yes I ultimately blame them, but pretending the republicans are somehow better is ridiculous, when they are clearly worse. Lets just hope Trumps bark is worse than his bite, and going by videos of him from many years ago it could be possible.

Like I said I have zero sympathy for the idiotic democrats and folks like that pig face debbie schultz. Its just sad the republicans have been rewarded for their terrible behavior over the last 8 years, and prior.

Yes and it really seems to be a Clinton problem and not some huge right wing insurgency, because even in Ohio Trump "only" gained 100k votes compared to Romney, but Clinton dropped half a million!

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx

Obstructionism might not lead to ousting a political party per se. But faith in the congress is so low.

When you say, "pretending the republicans are somehow better...." Better at what? Winning elections? I'm not pretending they are better.....they are better. That is why they have the house, the senate, the presidency now, most of the governorships and the state houses.

I hope he delegates most of the governing. The GOP has a ton of power bit they should not view this as a big win for conservatism. It's not.

Run a likeable populist candidate and you'll have a good chance in 2020. I don't think Trump will deliver on most of the things he said in the campaign. Someone like Joe Biden doesn't lose so badly in the rustbelt.

I mean better at serving the country. I agree they are miles better at winning elections because they are strong, and while democrats are spineless pussies.

The truly grim fact for this morning is that, even if we survive four years of Trump's Visigothic occupation of Washington, there's nothing particularly to look forward to on the horizon. It's abundantly clear that the Dems will pivot further left to the Sanders/Warren wingnut types, and they have nothing really to offer.

In a perfect world, the message that should have sunk Trump is his record of spewing hate towards women and minorities. This is real life though, so the message that was practically going to sink Trump is that everything is going fine and it would be insane to turn the reins of power over to a petty neophyte who may or may not be a pawn of hostile foreign interests. But, crucially, the Dems have robbed themselves of the ability to make that case, largely because they are burrowing into the same rabbit hole that the Tea Party took the GOP down, that the system is hopelessly corrupt, that "neoliberalism" is a cancer, that we need a revolution, etc., etc.

Trump's victory really represents a total victory for the structural critique of capitalism that the left has been pushing for decades. Trade is so toxic that HRC had to walk away from a landmark FTA that she negotiated, even when unemployment is <5% on election day. Take that, global capital! The overlooked part is that the left doesn't really have any alternative to replace the neoliberal order, just a grab-bag of random terrible nonsense policies ($15 min wage, free college, etc.) and a vague hope that we can trim 15% off of our GDP/c and become Germany.

Ironically, the one area where the leftist critique is correct and the system is broken is structural inequality/social justice, and of course that cause has been comprehensively crushed.

I hope he doesn't delegate, because anyone he delegates to will be worse. While Trump is an idiot he'll be semiliberal about many things. Not so for congress, appointees, or pence.

Was only 4 years between goldwater and nixon. Only 8 between nixon and reagan.

It's an enormous win for the tax cuts you love so much. If he gets any sort of meaningful infrastructure bill the deficits will be so large that our balance of payments won't shift, so he probably won't "win" on trade. Hopefully everyone remembers this in four years.

This is insightful and largely agree with it. But can't a $15 minwage reduce a decent amount of income inequality. It's like everyone at least neing in a ****ty union.

One benefit of all this. Single payer will likely happen, or at least public option.

This post defeats itself, it does not matter how great capitalism is at making pie if it does an absolutely ****ty job of sharing out the pie, which is something you allude to.

From 1970 to 2014 wages for the median worker only grew by 8% when adjusted for inflation, productivity grew by way way way more than that. I think its safe to assume that the rate between 2008-2014 is a significant drag on the figure taken for the whole period.

Centrist business as usual politics is dead for the moment precisely becuase of a total failure to share pie properly, and the monetarist responses to the 2008 crises, mostly Quantitative money printing to inflate asset prices have been terrible in this regard.

The right have recognised the collapse of the centre and romped to soul shattering victories, first in Brexit now in Yanklandia.

If the left does not wake up and start working out how to appeal to this new reality and keeps on putting out centrist BAU candidates, its done for a decade at least.

I'm thinking more in terms of how long it takes to A) undo the damage Trump does and B) get back everything that was lost, such as universal access to health insurance and C) Make the progress on social issues and income inequality that we would have already made.

This is somewhat optimistic for the party. I've seen some of these numbers, too. A candidate who has a lot of enthusiasm behind them probably would have beaten him...

However, the Democrats may not have anyone with the combination of enthusiasm for their policy (like Bernie and Warren), with the speaking ability (both Obamas), who actually wants to run and isn't too old in four years. Bernie will be too old, Warren isn't a very good speaker, Michelle Obama doesn't want to run (although this may shake her up on that)...

Booker, maybe? One of the Castros?

The left did wake up to this - Bernie. The center-left running the Democratic party did not, and got everyone out of the way for Clinton.

I mean, damn, even Biden could have spoken to income inequality pretty well. He's an establishment guy, but he hasn't personally enriched himself through his political career and doesn't come from a lot of wealth or anything. He is a good speaker when he's got that self-righteous anger.

A ****TY JOB COMPARED TO WHAT? This is exactly the kind of argumentation I'm complaining about. There is no alternative economic system just gathering dust on the shelf that would produce lots of growth and share it evenly among everyone. The hard fact of life is that labor has been facing brutal competition for decades from liberalizing countries in East Asia who have no pie at all and would like to get a little slice. It's kind of a complicated problem, especially if you recognize the humanity of Chinese people!

What makes you think this? Genuinely curious.

Its called raising taxes not lowering them.

You are also ignoring that the average western worker is making more, producing more etc even with all this competition, they are making a bigger and bigger and bigger pie, yet the amount of pie they receive is relatively static.

I wonder why these people are pissed off?

If you made a smaller pie but shared it more equitably, actually more people could end up with more pie.

I think Trump will be useful in destroying various compromise solutions without realizing that a solution is necessary, so much of what he destroys will come back in a better form, provided the backlash is sufficiently large.

Hard to see Trump's rust belt coalition clamoring for government health care. I'm legit worried we need to sweat Social Security and Medicare as we know it.