If you go to the New York Times today, you can learn that the President-Elect will make his son-in-law a chief adviser despite nepotism laws that should preclude him from doing so, but not to worry because “the Trump team will muscle through — as it usually does.” You can also learn that there will be many hearings for Trump’s un-vetted, unqualified cabinet nominations, but the Democrats’ “complaints about the process may not resonate with the broader public, though they will surely continue.”
Overall, they devote about a paragraph each to discussing these developments, but surely you’re more interested in this extensive treatment:
As the president-elect attacked Ms. Streep in a phone call with The New York Times, he took a moment to say his inaugural celebrations are such a hot ticket that “dress shops” in the area are selling out.
“We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars,” Mr. Trump said. “All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”
To which Washington-area stylists replied, “Huh.”
“All of the stores in the area are set up with huge inaugural shops,” Lauren A. Rothman, a Washington-based stylist and author who is focusing on dressing around 30 clients for two inaugural balls. “When you walk in, you don’t even have to work hard to find the dress section.”
Women who need dresses and accessories can find what they need at those oh-so-hard-to-find department stores Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom, she said. Two-strap styles and matte satin gowns in lengths that skim the floor are plentiful.
Linda Giordano, an assistant manager of sales for Nordstrom at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va., said that there were no inventory issues and that women could reliably find dresses between $200 and $10,000 in the “happy colors,” including jewel-toned blues and bright pinks, that have been popular with inaugural ball shoppers.
“If they’re looking for stylists we still have availability,” she said.
Jan Batch, a stylist for Neiman Marcus at the nearby Tysons Galleria, put in her plug: “If you get a ticket today, call me.”
Yes, they caught him. Trump lied again. He let his thin-skin get the better of him and made up a stupid untrue story about a dress shortage in the DC Metro area.
Bravo, Media! Don’t let him get away with it!
Meanwhile, we’re assured that Trump will get everything he actually wants because the laws don’t matter and the pro-law message “doesn’t resonate.”
I know der Trumper focuses on and draws attention to irrelevant minutia, but this — “All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.” — is totally bizarre. When have women invitees to inaugural balls ever complained about a shortage of gowns in Washington dress shops? And why would any man that’s not in the garment business even take note of it if it had occurred? There were ten official inaugural balls in 2008. Only two have been planned for 2017.
2017 inauguration plans so far
That compares to:
Someone needs to tweet that: Inauguration tickets printed by the Government Printing Office:
2009 – 1,000,000
2017 – 250,000
Not looking like a yuuge turnout for Mr. Trump who will issue a lying tweet about this. (ie the loser Park Service can’t count.)
How much of that was Obama being the first black President? When I lived there in the ’70s, DC was 80% black. I doubt if that has gone down significantly.
For the sake of correctness, I actually lived in Northern Virginia and Tyson’s Corner was the closest Mall.
Doubt that added more than a quarter million to the totals in ’08. The enthusiasm for Obama and what was expected to be a real change from Bush/Cheney was extraordinarily high and there’s no reason to deny or dismiss that.
Yes, much was expected from him.
and he delivered much
But to whom?
to all of us
The nepotism issue is thornier. While not a subject of the lawsuit over Hillary being appointed the chair of the healthcare committee, the judge in the case included a comment that her assignment was fine and didn’t fall under the category of nepotism. Unfortunately, that’s the only precedent since passage of the 1967 anti-nepotism law.
When will Democrats get it that when they crack open a door, the GOP will at some point throw it wide open and exploit it?
If/when Trump starts renting out nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, expect the MSM to ignore/normalize that, too.
Ditto when the Trump-branded mega-resorts start going up all over our national parks.
This is how it’s going to be. Laws don’t matter. Rules don’t matter. Convention and custom don’t matter.
The GOP and trump will do what they want and not give a darn what any of us say or think about it.
I sort of admire their chutzpah. It’s every man for himself now. Funny. I will enjoy the death of American exceptionalism and world leadership. Bring it on.
That’s not all that’s going to die … California will make sure of that. Stay tuned.
??????
The Doctor – Please clarify your critic statement about California. Are you suggesting that California will really secede? Maybe Trump won’t allow that to happen. In little more than an week he has control over an immense police and military apparatus—which he will not shy from using.
As you are probably aware, there IS a California secessionist … aka Calexit movement … please see
http://www.yescalifornia.org/
I was once a proponent of this crowd until I did some research and backed away. Marinelli, the guy leading the Calexit charge, is NOT the person to be leading it. He currently lives in Russia, has a Russian wife, voted for Trump. A PR nightmare. His approach sucks.
My thought: Given the direction the U.S. had been going (think Flint Michigan water situation, North Carolina in general, Kansas) California has been a haven of sanity. Add to that the destruction the Trump Emperorship will impose, … big effing trouble for the whole nation … if you choose to stick around.
My solution: Time to prepare to leave … as a state. Follow an Estonia-like model … the U.S. will financially crash, other states (think the northeast lead by NYS) will want to pull away from the disaster. And California will just back away in the turmoil.
Yes, the last time the U.S. did this we had a minor disagreement called the Civil War. But that was the deep south 150 or so years ago … not the sharpest knives in the drawer. California puts its brains and balls to it … better than the alternative.
And now you know why I came to Booman. I have my own agenda and it’s going to be fun.
your agenda is to start a 2nd civil war?
Start? No no no. Document! This is a wonderful time to be visiting planet earth. Destruction of your biosphere, the disintegration of the Empire which used nuclear reactions to char other civilian populations, the possibity of a new surviving culture … California.
What fun!! Popcorn anyone? Not a fan of alcohol. Too many people sedating themselves and thinking they’re cool because it says so on TV. And China is cracking down on cigarette smoking. How cool is that?
Just to let you know. My allegiance to the human species ends at the California border. People can’t breath in China due to smog … Syria … North Carolina. Go away! You have problems, most by your own hand. We have our own problems but you don’t see us trying to pray them away.
Ha! Laughing as the American media and politicians descend into chaos is about all I have left. I am powerless to do anything about it. Meanwhile my own life goes on as before. None of this has any effect. If I didn’t stop by here every once in a while I wouldn’t even know about it.
So yeah… I’m dumb for laughing at all the foolishness. Good luck.
I will assume that is somewhat snarky cause we need rules, laws, convention and custom. The question to me is how to make them pay for just walking past it all without even a tip of the hat.
Lots of people don’t care about rules. President Obama waged wars for 8 years on our behalf and accomplished… what? I’d argue nothing. People died at the hands of the US military and few noticed or registered even a protest. And nothing was gained in the process.
Meanwhile some sort of twitter war breaks out over a speech at a movie awards show. Good grief. And I’m dumb.
This is insane.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/left-wing-cultural-politics-who-whom/
NorthJersey dot com – Booker, Menendez endorse fellow Democrat Murphy for governor
Not self-funded on the order of a Corzine, Bloomberg, or Meg Whitman, but still $10 million isn’t chump change.
“ex-Goldman Sachs executive” Yes, that’s the Democratic Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman-Sachs.
Versus the Republicans who nominated GS guys for Treasury and director of the National Economic Council. Not to mention his guys for Commerce and Trade Rep, or Labor and Education. Get real.
Then you agree — no difference between the two parties — all GS all the time.
It would be extra nice if both parties could leave Wall Street behind.
Wall St. will never be left behind. It’s a traditional GOP base. Democrats had but two choices on this: tame the hell out of the reckless greed in the industry or co-opt the GOP by offering the industry as good as or better deals than the GOP did with the bonus of not bothering the wealthy men about personal, traditional religious morality.
Centrists are already reviving OFA to counter Brand New Congress and Our Revolution. How will they be repackaging neoliberalism?
Wish you could have read a piece up last night by Joel Berg on how to fix poors in the centrist manner. Eschaton has a screen capture, cause it got yanked.
Yes, this Trump administration will be exactly like a Clinton administration would have been. The last eight years would have been no different with John McCain and Sarah Palin in charge.
Not dumb enough to fail to recognize a tongue-in-cheek comment for what it was or that two sides of the same coin are never exactly the same. Or to predict that Hillary would win in a landslide.
More importantly, I’m not dumb enough not to have learned or forgotten the lesson from the Church Committee. Nor has Fritz Schwartz
An inability to see dark humor? I think perhaps so.
Your flippant response is misplaced, and seems to want to minimize a very real divide within the party, and touches on a core reason why we lost.
Let’s review.
From the 2010 Exit Poll:
I am not going to argue the perception that Obama let Wall Street off the hook was the entire reason for the Democrats collapse in 2010, but one would have to be willfully blind not to concede that the association was one of the reasons.
Now let’s look at what happened with downscale voters in 2016:
The collapse among downscale voters cost Democrats Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania at a minimum.
It is pretty easy to argue on reason for this collapse was the perception that Clinton was close to Wall Street.
In fact she WAS close to Wall Street.
So the defense to that is to say that these relationships would not effect how she would deal with Wall Street. It was probably true.
The core idea behind the Sanders campaign was these relationships are killing us with downscale voters.
So when you flippantly dismiss the fact that we are running yet another rich white GS guy I think you miss a very significant point.
The inside the beltway types like these guys because they have money.
The question on the table is whether these guys are the only ones who can win? And whether it is worth the cost.
Shortlists for her potential cabinet have been rolling out from Mike Allen, so take with grain of salt, but they all sound exactly like who Clinton would pick. Her pick for Labor? Howard Schultz, billionaire CEO of Starbucks. I think that is a perfect illustration of the Democratic Party’s problems. Andy Puzder is a monster, and his enforcement would be different than Schultz, but really…Howard Schultz? What a god damned joke.
The serious question is whether we are doomed to GS/Finance guys running because they are the only ones who can raise the money.
The NH Senate race cost over $100 million. IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Bernie was able to raise money small donations. The question is whether that can be replicated.
If it can’t, we are doomed to candidates like Patrick Murhpy in Florida, who have money but generally don’t win and who wind up blurring the difference between the parties.
Booman’s flippancy aside, it is really the key question for Democrats in 2018.
Can we finance campaigns without going hat in hand to the Hamptons?
I certainly don’t have enough money to subsidize multiple Dems as often and as regularly as it would be necessary
The thing is the money people are substantially more liberal than a lot of their elected office holders. The Podesta emails confirm this. I think where they are the problem (except for a select few) is when it comes to challenging the underlying assumptions of the economy. So they’re all for minimum wage increases (but not too much!), but any industrial policy short of the Pentagon is “rule by men” and to be opposed. Also unions disrupt efficiency.
The money people blind.
The don’t get it. It is why Brexit happened. They are insulated. What excites them is gay rights, gun control, immigration.
They missed the urgency in the economy. They reflexively believe the uneducated are racist.
I really need to not post on my phone….
The money people aren’t more liberal — they just have no use for retrograde christian morality on personal matters and racism as a guiding worldview. In the high finance and tech professions, the most prevalent remaining “ism” is sexism, a reflection of the continuing dominance of men in their ranks.
Great comment.
I’m frustrated by it.
But I’m from Jersey and it has probably the worst, most corrupt Dem Party in the country, and has for my entire lifetime.
We cherish the exceptions, Brendan Byrne, Bill Bradley, and (yes) Cory Booker.
But we’re New Jersey Dems, which means we’re going to be friendly to Wall Street, anti-Cuba, and pro-Israel.
It’s hard for outsiders to understand, but that’s what the NJ Dem Party is about. I don’t get mad at NJ Dems for taking those positions. I get mad when they steal, which they seem to do at an appalling rate.
There needs to be very serious thought about the point Marie raised and you dismissed. Two questions to think long and hard about:
Is progressive politics possible?
If progressive candidates cannot find alternative ways to find finance their campaigns, the answer is a resounding no.
Is there an alternative to Progressive politics that can win?
The answer from the exit poll data above may very well be no. There is simply no workable alternative to winning back downscale voters that does not include an aggressively populist view on economics.
That is a serious fucking dilemma, and I will be damned if I have answer.
well, the answer won’t be found in New Jersey where we have a different definition of progressive politics. Same is true of Connecticut, the Philly burbs, and plenty of other strong Dem areas like Raleigh, Boston, Silicon Valley.
People are not interested in Sanders or Occupy or an explicitly anti-finance message.
That may be the key to winning back Ohio or Iowa, but it’s also the best way to make sure Pat Toomey never loses and that you have a bunch of Republicans serving as senators and governors in the Mid-Atlantic states.
take some time to look where Sanders did well and poorly in Pennsylvania.
He won in Centre County where we have Penn State University and then a bunch of Appalachian folks.
He was slaughtered in Philly.
In the burbs, he did worse in the most liberal (most Democratic) counties (Montgomery and Delaware) and better in the more working class (Bucks) and affluent/Republican (Chester) ones.
In the Northeast, Sanders still lost but came close. These areas have some NYC commuters but are more working class Democratic.
Dems need to win in all these areas by large margins, and Clinton struggled with the working class Dems, costing her the state.
But Toomey did poorly with them, too, and won by doing much better in the burbs.
The Dems have a lot of House seats in the burbs in this region, although they’ve lost all but one in PA right now. But these seats in NJ, CT, even DE, are key to success.
These are liberal highly educated professionals who aren’t looking for a revolution or to be blamed for making a living based in large part on their investment income.
They’re with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They’re not with Sanders. And, yes, they make good donors.
Do you have any idea what you’re bragging about?
Urban and suburban professional white folks had no use for FDR either. They were socio-economic Rockefeller Republicans before that classification was named. WASPs — but restricted to Episcopalians, Presbyterians, NE style Congregationalists and Methodists, some Unitarians, and in the Philly area Quakers.
Thanks to all the low-cost higher education opportunities that FDR Democrats promulgated that class has grown. More sociologically than economically but low and middle level managers, educators and Pharma scientists, and public employees live as well as the professionals did seventy years ago. Albeit with less job security and a two income household.
They can afford their patronizing attitude towards minorities (“I’m not a racist like those hicks in coal country”) because until very recently they haven’t had to compete with them for jobs and only highly educated minorities move into their neighborhoods. Otherwise minorities in their area live in areas those white folks are afraid to drive through.
Five congressional districts have a portion in MontCo — and the Republican candidate won three of those five with MontCo voters.
I’m not bragging. I’m explaining,
weird characterization.
The polling suggested Sanders was a better candidate because he held the POC vote but would also hold the Obama margin among the young and the working class.
Clinton’s margin held against Trump in Philly by offsetting upper income whites against declines in both margin and turnout (turnout was the bigger issue) in the Philly African American wards. It is unclear to me if Sanders had been the nominee whether the erosion from the Obama turnout and margins in the African American community would have been incrementally larger.
The Sanders campaign is an odd one in its appeal in the primaries – something I don’t think has been fully processed. Sanders carried the young, college towns and downscale whites. It’s an unusual profile from previous insurgent Dem campaigns, which usually fair better with the better educated upscale voters. This latter profile was characteristic of McGovern, Hart, Dean and Obama.
The comparison of Sanders and Teachout in New York is instructive in this regard. Teachout won Manhattan in 2014, Sanders lost it. Sanders definitely ran into resistance with the over 100K professional crowd, something I wrote about here at some length when I was at the Convention.
The problem is the Clinton wing has in expanding beyond the Democratic core. Trump effectively polarized the white vote. Clinton was unable to make Trump pay in the EC battleground states because the Dems had already maxed out the African American vote and with the exception of Florida the Hispanic vote is not large enough to matter. Yet.
The people who are likely to control the party through donations are unlikely to be able to put together a winning campaign in the general.
This phrase is worth parsing some:
“These are liberal highly educated professionals”
What defines them as liberal precisely? Gay rights? Immigration? The definition of what you say makes them “very liberal” is dying among people under 30.
The reality is economic polarization is redefining politics and coalitions. Not just here – all over the world. Economic stagnation has pushed income inequality to the top of the agenda. But the very people you describe do not define liberalism in a way that puts economic equality at the top of the list.
The Democratic Party is in a very profound way split.
If the people you describe do not listen, they may be able to keep control over the Party.
But they may preside over a a decaying corpse.
I wonder, though, it your description is already outdated. Sanders favorables are the same as Bidens among Democrats.
I once wrote here that Clinton represented the last gasp of 80’s liberalism.
Economic populism may already be accepted party orthodoxy in way you do not appreciate.
And because of that blurrring, a lot of small donors WON’T donate to the DNC at all. They select the candidates to support directly.
Shocking how much was spent on that NH Senate race, but this was one of the few potential Democratic pickup seats —Open Secrets tally:
Outside spending – total $89 million. The breakdown on that is:
Ayotte: For: $5.8 million and Against: $47 million
Hassan: For: $4 million and Against: $32 million
Candidates’ campaign spending:
Ayotte: $19.5 million
Hassan: $18 million
The PA Senate race spending was also eye popping (but less so on a per capita basis)
Campaigns – Toomy $30.7 million and McGinty $16.1 million (but some of hers went towards her primary race).
Outside spending:
Toomey: For: $10.9 million and Against: $51.6 million
McGinty: For: $13.8 million and Against: $45.6 million (again a portion of that went into the primary race)
The last one, Illinois, was comparatively cheap. (A bluer state with a weaker incumbent and stronger challenger.)
Campaigns – Kirk $13.1 million and Duckworth $16.5 million.
Outside spending – Kirk For: $2.2 million and Against: <0.1 million. Duckworth For: $0.7 million and Against: $1.9 million.
The last one – FL
Rubio $21.9 million
Murphy $36.1 million
Outside: Rubio For $6.7 million and against $6.9 million; Murphy For: 5.3 million and against $30.7 million
Plus Grayson primary $7.2 million.
In October the DSCC pulled whatever it had left in its budget for the FL Senate race.
That 2010 exit poll is seriously telling if one bothers to tease the numbers apart.
But most people don’t want to look at data – it totally gets in the way.
Er, doesn’t 80% beat 20% most of the time? Once they kinda catch on to things…
Oh, yes! Both Parties! Except the (R)’s share ownership on the New York – Texas axis with the oil companies.
Working for G-S, marduk? Or just taking orders?
Murphy already sent out a mailer – no respite from the endless campaign I guess – anyway, his voter harrassment is another reason not to vote for him
the NJ Sanders guy, also running and declared previously in a voter friendly email
Will that matter in 2020 or will this . Note the jobs returning by 2020. Will Michigan voters care about scandal? Or will they care about auto jobs coming back? Their job coming back. But UAW workers are Democrats, right? Usually true but in 2020 will they be Democrats thinking “Obama and Clinton didn’t care about my having a job, but Trump brought it back from Mexico?
Yes, I know a lot of these announcements are illusion and would have happened anyway, but perception is king in politics.
And they’ll certainly promote the hell out of it, whether true or not.
Scary prospect
Jobs returning or the perception of fewer jobs leaving? The latter — manufactured reality — is, at least in the short run, is good enough. Only took a couple of decades for the a majority in this country to recognize that better paying and more secure jobs had been disappearing and that whatever new jobs were created were low pay and no security except for those in a few sectors and most of those required educational levels beyond the abilities and/or means of most people.
Wonder how many people have figured out that they tossed away a higher level of economic security for granite counter-tops and a whole hell of a lot more toys with short life spans because they aren’t made to last and will be rendered obsolete within eighteen months?
Perception is king. RR is revered by many of those blue collar workers in the mistaken belief that he brought prosperity. In reality, their downward economic slope accelerated. Employment and GDP growth did return, but mostly because of massive Keynesian stimulus.
Every time the (D) party leaves their FDR base, their fortunes fall. Expanding the base is good, but turning your back on the old base is not.
Fewer jobs leaving is all Trump needs. The appearance that he at least knows it is happening and is trying to stop it.
Democrats chose to turn out the lights on this, and then assumed that their only task was to smash any flashlight that appeared in another Democratic politician’s hand. The penlight that Obama turned on in ’08 may have been the difference that gave him the nomination but he mislaid it shortly thereafter.
Sanders turned on a spotlight and near, at, or more than a majority of Democratic voters welcomed the light in IA, WI, and MI. Then Trump only needed to mount a grandstand and turn a penlight off and on in those states. Any light is preferable to cursing the dark.
except it was Obama who saved the auto industry and it was Obama’s economy that lead to the sales records we’ve seen the last few years which added to the 1.5 million auto jobs he saved
And if our side is busy pointing out Trump’s PR moves rather than reminding folks that Obama created the environment for the auto giants to make these investments, we are screwed.
“our side” seems happier bashing Dems than promoting positive things that happened and placing the blame where it belongs for why we didn’t get more (GOP) unfortunately
Unfortunately, that “save” was done at the expense of younger workers. How did Clinton do with younger voters in MI?