Trumptastic Voyage The SimpsonsIs it really possible that today is the 18th of Brumaire in the French Republican calendar? (Apparently yes!) That’s a little on the nose. The date gives its name to Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire, in which he seized power and ended the French Revolution. It also gives its name to Marx’s essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” which famously opens: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Hegel of courseusually worked in threes, and if tragedy is the thesis and farce the antithesis, then surely the synthesis is Trump, who is at every point a perfect superposition of tragedy and farce. Anyway! It will all be over soon, maybe.
Republican Donald Trump has stunned the world by defeating Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, ending eight years of Democratic rule and sending the United States on a new, uncertain path.
US election results: Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton to win presidential race
Poynter Election Front Pages ...
"Ads don’t work, polls don’t work, celebrities don’t work, media endorsements don’t work and ground games don’t work."
John King, covering his eighth presidential race, is a big winner amid
what Bruce
Springsteen might call a pants-dropping, house-rocking,
earth-quaking, booty-shaking political stunner.
A great journalist chum
calls it a "dystopian nightmare." At minimum, it was precisely that
for the Polling-Survey Industrial Complex whose errant ways were laid bare
during King's night-long tour de force. It was a "big middle finger"
to the political and media establishment, said "Morning Joe's" Willie Geist this
morning. The media was in full meltdown. (Vanity Fair)
Nobody foresaw what both
The Washington Post and The New York Times this morning headlined, "TRUMP
TRIUMPHS," with the New York Daily News going with a landscape shot of the
White House
and "HOUSE OF HORRORS." The Wall Street Journal's
Gerald Seib's analysis: "‘Deplorables’ Rise Up to Reshape America." The media melted down in real time last night
Those are my main earlier posts on the Trump phenomenon and related matters of relevance. By the way, I say Trump and the stock marketstill is not a clear story. See this too, barely down at the open compared to the close.
Donald Trump skipped the traditional photo with the press
Ikonoclast : More broadly, this Trumpalist development of a new US Trumpire is all of a piece with the USA’s trajectory since Reagan. A “B” movie actor became President then and now a B “Reality” TV presenter becomes President. This trajectory has about reached its nadir. History repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce,” as Karl Marx wrote.
The Republicans now control just about everything in US politics. Republicans now control the House and the Senate and will have the Presidency in the new year. They control most state governorships too with 31 Republican controlled legislatures, 11 Democrat-controlled legislatures
and 11 split legislatures.
and 11 split legislatures.
I’ve been warning that neoliberalism and capitalism are not done with us yet. The worst is still to come. Maybe a few people will start to see this “Cold Fact” (as Sixto Rodriguez would call it) John Quiggin Trump voters are Romney-voters
"Along with not releasing his tax returns and refusing to have a protective press pool, Trump has broken another election tradition: Posing for a photo with the traveling press corps."
Clinton Clinton party 'like covering a wake'
* "I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us - it's about us - on our victory and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign" - Donald Trump at the start of his victory speech.
* "The American people have elected their new champion" - Donald Trump's running mate Mike Pence, introducing the president-elect to the Republican's celebration party.
* "It's been a long night, and it's been a long campaign, but we can wait a little longer, can't we? We'll have more to say tomorrow." - Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta tells supporters at an election party to go home.
* "We've just done what y'all have done, sweeping our own porches before we sweep other people's" - Sarah Palin compares the Trump vote to the Brexit vote.
* "Is he (Trump) going to offer me a job? I'm hoping he might do. He will be in need of a proper Eurosceptic ambassador in Brussels for the European Union" - Interim Ukip leader Nigel Farage jokes about a possible career opportunity.
*"I don't really know how everything is going to go from tomorrow. I don't really want to think about it" - Hillary Clinton supporter Thalia Cedeno, watching the US election results in New York.