However well-intentioned, this talk assumes that Trump is prepared to find common ground with his many opponents, respect the institutions of government, and repudiate almost everything he has stood for during the campaign. In short, it is treating him as a “normal” politician. There has until now been little evidence that he can be one.

More dangerously, Clinton’s and Obama’s very civil passages, which ended in applause lines, seemed to close off alternative responses to his minority victory. (It was hard not to be reminded of Neville Chamberlain’s statement, that “We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will.”) Both Clinton’s and Obama’s phrases about the peaceful transfer of power concealed the omission of a call to action. The protesters who took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities on Wednesday night did so not because of Clinton’s speech but in spite of it. One of the falsehoods in the Clinton speech was the implied equivalency between civil resistance and insurgency. This is an autocrat’s favorite con, the explanation for the violent suppression of peaceful protests the world over.

Source: Autocracy: Rules for Survival | by Masha Gessen | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

Five years ago, I warned about the risk of a Donald J. Trump presidency. Most people laughed. They thought it inconceivable.

I was not particularly prescient; I come from Italy, and I had already seen this movie, starring Silvio Berlusconi, who led the Italian government as prime minister for a total of nine years between 1994 and 2011. I knew how it could unfold.

Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president, the Berlusconi parallel could offer an important lesson in how to avoid transforming a razor-thin victory into a two-decade affair. If you think presidential term limits and Mr. Trump’s age could save the country from that fate, think again. His tenure could easily turn into a Trump dynasty.

Source: The Right Way to Resist Trump – NYTimes.com

President Barack Obama’s remarks about Donald Trump in his Monday press conference contained some of the most ominous words I’ve heard since news networks began calling the election for Trump early last Wednesday morning. But you may not have heard them.

It is an understatement to say that Obama’s departure from the White House is occurring under unusual circumstances. He is managing a transition to the presidency of someone he believes is unfit for that office, who has empowered racist hate groups, wants to undo the Obama presidency, and shouldn’t be entrusted with nuclear weapons.
[…]
In a tense environment where reporters, government workers, world leaders, and anxious citizens and immigrants understandably are scrutinizing every Donald Trump tweet and utterance and leak, Obama’s closing thoughts on the presidency and his successor will be given short shrift. But the things he says about the transition contain critical information about its progress and his confidence that, on the other side of it, things will run smoothly.

His Monday comments suggests he has very little confidence that they will.

Source: Obama Is Warning America About Trump’s Presidency. Are You Listening? | New Republic

Donald Trump’s victory in Wisconsin last week marked the first time a Republican presidential candidate has won there since 1984. The seemingly massive political shift that took place in this Midwestern U.S. state on Election Day, particularly in its rural counties, has since been thrust into the national spotlight.

In trying to better understand what happened in Wisconsin, and for that matter in the outcome of the election nationwide, one of the first people I wanted to speak with was Kathy Cramer. For almost a decade, the political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been inserting herself into the casual political conversations of smaller rural communities in her state—listening, asking questions, and ultimately identifying the common threads she’s been able to uncover.

Source: The Role of Rural Resentment in Trump’s Victory – CityLab

Bernie Sanders’ op-ed in the New York Times.

I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome. It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo.

Working families watch as politicians get campaign financial support from billionaires and corporate interests — and then ignore the needs of ordinary Americans. Over the last 30 years, too many Americans were sold out by their corporate bosses. They work longer hours for lower wages as they see decent paying jobs go to China, Mexico or some other low-wage country. They are tired of having chief executives make 300 times what they do, while 52 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Many of their once beautiful rural towns have depopulated, their downtown stores are shuttered, and their kids are leaving home because there are no jobs — all while corporations suck the wealth out of their communities and stuff them into offshore accounts.

Source: Bernie Sanders: Where the Democrats Go From Here – The New York Times

Supporters of Bernie Sanders’ failed presidential bid are seizing on Democratic disarray at the national level to launch a wave of challenges to Democratic Party leaders in the states.

The goal is to replace party officials in states where Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton during the acrimonious Democratic primary with more progressive leadership. But the challenges also represent a reckoning for state party leaders who, in many cases, tacitly supported Clinton’s bid.

Source: Bernie’s empire strikes back – POLITICO

Semi-retired Wisconsin pig farmer John Lader does not think much of Donald Trump as a messenger, but voted for what he described as the Republican president-elect’s message of change and economic hope for America.

“The last few years, there hasn’t been much optimism and hope among working people in rural areas in this country,” said Lader, 65, who lives in the farmland outside the southern Wisconsin city of Janesville.

Around 65 miles (105 km) to the northeast in the state’s biggest city of Milwaukee, Jose Boni, who cleans offices at a local university and rents out several homes, heard a different message: Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and vow to deport the estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, most of whom are Hispanic.

“He doesn’t care about our community or working people, he only cares about himself,” said Boni, 57, an Ecuador-born U.S. citizen.

The different worlds of Lader and Boni help illustrate the rural-urban divide that was critical to the outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election.

Source: In rural-urban divide, U.S. voters are worlds apart | Reuters

With Democrats reeling from the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of the leading Trump-blasters of her party, vowed on Thursday to continue battling the president-elect—while adding that she would be delighted to collaborate with him on some of the populist issues he raised during the campaign.

Speaking at the Washington, DC, offices of the AFL-CIO union federation on Thursday, in an event shown on Facebook Live, Warren declared, “If Trump is ready to go on rebuilding economic security for millions of Americans, so am I, and so are a lot of other people—Democrats and Republicans.” She noted that on the campaign trail, Trump had criticized Wall Street’s power in Washington and promised not to cut Social Security benefits—areas of common ground. But Warren, whom Trump derided as “Pocahontas” during the election, warned that if Trump tries to tear down the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law—which overhauled the financial industry after the 2008 meltdown—or to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she would fight him “every step of the way.”

Source: Elizabeth Warren Gears Up to Battle Donald Trump | Mother Jones