Walk On By.

Whatever Democratic voters think — and most of them like Bernie Sanders and his platform — the dominant bulk of Democratic officials oppose them both with an organized vigor they seldom bring to combat with Republicans.

This strikes me as a detailed and balanced assessment. Long, but essential.

If you cared not for Bernie Sanders as a Democrat, you should read the essay anyway; there's plenty there for you. If you were a Sanders backer, as I was, it's very important to absorb this.

Bernie Sanders’s Five-Year War, by Matt Karp (Jacobin)

How he lost and where we go from here.

... First, (Bernie Sanders' campaigns) demonstrated that bold social-democratic ideas, well beyond the regulatory ambitions of Obama-era progressives, can win a mass base in today’s United States. An uncompromising demand for the federal government to provide essential social goods for all Americans — from health care and college tuition to childcare and family leave — stood at the heart of the Sanders project from beginning to end. Starting at 3 percent in the polls and conducting two presidential campaigns almost entirely on the strength of this platform, Sanders built the most influential left-wing challenge in modern history.

Yes, candidates from Jesse Jackson to Dennis Kucinich also supported single-payer health insurance, but their campaigns did not end with polls showing a newfound majority of Americans backing Medicare for All, let alone massive supermajorities among Democrats and voters under sixty-five. Yes, leftists from Michael Harrington to Ralph Nader had long declared that a bipartisan corporate class rules America, but they did not turn that insight into a political movement capable of winning primaries in New Hampshire, Michigan, or California.

Nor is the partial success of the Sanders campaigns merely a hollow “discourse victory.” It has presented concrete evidence for a proposition that mainstream political observers scoffed at five years ago, and that the American left itself had grandly announced rather than demonstrated: that “democratic socialism,” driven by opposition to billionaire-class rule and dedicated to universal public goods, can win the support of millions, not just thousands. Across the last half century, any activist with a bullhorn could proclaim this to be true, but Bernie Sanders actually fucking proved it.

Of course, as Bernie’s defeat makes clear, there is a vast gulf between winning exit polls and winning power. If the Sanders campaigns illuminated American social democracy’s unknown political resources, they also revealed, in a dramatic fashion, the determination of their opponents. This is the second practical lesson of Bernie’s five-year war: the unanimity and ferocity of elite Democratic resistance, not only to Sanders himself, but to the essence of his platform.

Proper reading for Independence Day: "How to Properly Criticize RussiaGate."

"RussiaGate has been a great diversion and 'the bear ate our homework' excuse for the awfulness of the dismal, dollar-drenched Dems, the Inauthentic Opposition party."

The author provides a clear summary of "Five Things That Really Happened and One That Might Have Happened," followed by the excerpt below.

How to Properly Criticize RussiaGate, by Paul Street (CounterPunch)

... Seven Ways RussiaGate Still Stinks

That said, the whole big RussiaGate drama and narrative – the dominant U.S. media obsession for two and a half years until its current displacement by the Democratic presidential electoral extravaganza (though Russia-Trump is scheduled for a new boost with Mueller’s forthcoming appearance before Congress) – still stinks for seven basic reasons:

First, there was no great US “democracy” for Russia to “undermine” in the first place. Domestic wealth and power structures, home-grown-oligarchy and plutocracy is what most significantly installed Trump in the White House (even if Hillary was most of the ruling-class’s preferred winner). The United States’ not-so democratic elections are “still unprotected” against the nation’s own capitalist ruling class – and against absurdly anti-democratic partisan gerrymandering (held up as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last week) and racist voter suppression).

Second, other nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia have far more say in US politics and policy than Russia, to say the least.

Third, Superpower Uncle Sam (with more than 800 military bases spread across more than 100 “sovereign” nations) continues to regularly intervene in and otherwise impact the internal affairs of other nations (Russian included) all over the world, with more and more terrible impact than any nation ever.

Fourth, RussiaGate has been a great diversion and “the bear ate our homework” excuse for the awfulness of the dismal, dollar-drenched Dems, the Inauthentic Opposition party. It has helped (as certainly intended) the corporate and imperial establishment atop that party continue to marginalize progressive forces both within and beyond the party – forces who properly note that the Democrats lost the election because of their corporate-neoliberal politics and policies. It has helped the Dem-neoliberal establishment avoid blame for demobilizing the nation’s progressive and social-democratic majority and putting a creeping fascist in the White House.

Fifth, RussiaGate has also helped (also as certainly intended) fuel the continuation of the dangerous New Cold War.

Sixth, RussiaGate has been used to confer fake-democratic and fake-progressive legitimacy on the repressive and imperial National Security State and its vast intelligence apparatus.

Seventh, RussiaGate has distracted and diverted the nation away not only from the dreadfulness of the neoliberal Democrats but also from Trump’s most horrific crimes. The orange-tinted beast has done far worse things than welcome help (of whatever significance) from Russia and obstruct the investigation of his creepy relationship with that nation: sadistic family separations at the border; concentration camps for migrant children and families; pushing to the brink of war on Iran; Eco-cidal energy deregulation to speed the planet’s transition into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber (the worst sin of all); burying federal scientific findings on the coming climate collapse; assaulting and degrading women; demonizing immigrants; shutting down the asylum process for Central Americans and Mexicans; declaring fake emergencies in order to do fiscal end-runs around Congress to fund a widely hated Nativist Wall and to sell arms to help Saudi Arabia murder more Yemeni civilians; trying to kick millions off of heath insurance; denying Congress’s power to investigate and oversee the executive branch; suggesting that he won’t accept the results of the 2020 election and that he should get more than two terms in the White House; whitewashing Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists; catering to the fascist National Rifle Association and its mass-shooting terror campaign; and…the list goes on and on.

Precinct by precinct: "An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election."

I'll just leave this here. In the context of our eternal city versus county division, we've compared the position of the Floyd County Democratic Party in forthcoming 2019 municipal elections to that of the last-ditch Alamo. The first map above illustrates this very clearly.

An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election

Do you live in a political bubble? Start exploring the map by searching for a place you know.

Right here in my own neighborhood ...

This is a Clinton precinct. The surrounding area is in the 72nd percentile for Clinton. The nearest Trump precinct is right next door.

How this precinct voted:

Candidate  Votes  Pct.
Clinton      206     52%
Trump       154     39%

Obama aide: "We’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used."

Sadly accurate.

Dowd refers to a new book by former Obama aide Ben Rhodes, “The World as It Is.”

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton -- on second thought, no. It's just too depressing to contemplate.

Obama – Just Too Good for Us, by Maureen Dowd (NYT)

 ... It is stunning to me, having been on the road with Barack Obama in the giddy, evanescent days of 2008, that he does not understand his own historic rise to power, how he defied impossible odds and gracefully leapt over obstacles.

He did it by sparking hope in many Americans — after all the deceptions and squandered blood and money of the Bush-Cheney era — that he was going to give people a better future, something honest and cool and modern.

But by the end of his second term, he had lost the narrative about lifting up people, about buoying them on economic issues and soothing their jitters about globalization. They needed to know, what’s in it for them?

He pushed aside his loyal vice president, who was considered an unguided missile, and backed a woman who had no economic message and who almost used the slogan, “Because It’s Her Turn.” Then he put his own reputation for rectitude at risk by pre-emptively exonerating Hillary Clinton on the email issue, infuriating federal agents who were still investigating the case.

The hunger for revolutionary change, the fear that some people were being left behind in America and that no one in Washington cared, was an animating force at the boisterous rallies for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Yet Obama, who had surfed a boisterous wave into the Oval, ignored the restiveness — here and around the world. He threw his weight behind the most status quo, elitist candidate.

“I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,” Rhodes writes about the “darkness” that enveloped him when he saw the electoral map turn red. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to change.”

Bad time to figure that out.

"Don’t blame it all on racism. During the financial crash Obama sided with the bankers, not people losing their homes – making Trump’s victory possible."

On this most auspicious of days, it bears repeating that I admire Barack Obama immensely as a human being performing a thankless job. We may not see the likes of him again, and that's to be regretted.

However, it's simply inescapable that one must separate the man from the performance, and the legacy of Obama's record is mixed. Posterity will probably enhance this legacy owing to the shambles of what came before it, and what's about to happen next -- that is, if we have anything approximating real news in the future.

The overarching point remains: Without properly understanding what has happened these past eight years, we cannot understand neither why Donald Trump is taking office as president, nor what a proper opposition political organization looks like.

Buckle up. America's about to indulge its inner white trash, and the results are not likely to be therapeutic.

How Barack Obama paved the way for Donald Trump, by Gary Younge (The Guardian)

Don’t blame it all on racism. During the financial crash Obama sided with the bankers, not people losing their homes – making Trump’s victory possible

 ... One cannot blame Obama for Trump. It was the Republicans – craven to the mob within their base, which they have always courted but ultimately could not control – that nominated and, for now, indulges him. And yet it would be disingenuous to claim Trump rose from a vacuum that bore no relationship to the previous eight years ...

 ... There is a deeper connection, however, between Trump’s rise and what Obama did – or rather didn’t do – economically. He entered the White House at a moment of economic crisis, with Democratic majorities in both Houses and bankers on the back foot. Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, he chose the former.

ON THE AVENUES: Once more with feeling, because as the notable American philosopher Moe Bandy once sang, “Here I am, drunk again.”

ON THE AVENUES: Once more with feeling, because as the notable American philosopher Moe Bandy once sang, “Here I am, drunk again.”

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

October 27 was only five weeks ago, though it seems like a lifetime or two, maybe three. It was just before the invasion of the orange electoral body-snatching tsunami from the black lagoon, on a Thursday, when I dipped into the lengthening NA Confidential archive for a sparsely updated look at my first 12 years of blogging.

In other words, a “best of” rehash, blatant stalling to mark a week’s time, this being what happens when inspiration refuses to strike and perspiration fails to incite.

A regular reader subsequently offered this comment:

I would prefer to see a new, original reflection on the 12 years. It's 12 years for us, too.

Fair enough, I thought, and so amid the dying embers of a New Democratic Order poised to perform a graceless non-Hubert Humphrey Humpty Dumpty maneuver, I began writing just such an essay.

Then came the election, and BOOM – immediate column obsolescence. I trashed it, because if all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten, then the children have seized the asylum and re-education camps can’t be very far behind.

Fortunately, our recent trip to Sicily proved somewhat restorative. My mood has improved. It’s time again to mutter epithets, emit sighs, shrug shoulders, pull myself up from the barroom floor, shake off the sawdust and spittle, and resume throwing punches.

Although, in the main, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

---

I’ve always insisted that the impetus for NA Confidential’s birth in 2004 was my benumbed stupefaction at the reality of a second term for George W. Bush, gradually alchemizing into a fresh resolve to make meaningful shift happen by narrowing my gaze to the interstate-grade streets outside our front steps.

How very quaint this seems today.

Still, the Rise of Mighty Trumpolini and the Fall of the House of Clinton bring the blog full circle. The way forward is all the way back to the past, where I started. Doubling down on localism, grassroots and community is the most rational course available to me, in spite of the eternal complication of my personal identity crisis.

That's because I’ve rediscovered my inner European, and it’s less of joking matter than ever before. I’ve never felt entirely comfortable in my “own” country. A majority of my countrymen (and women) have never made much sense to me, whether they’re residing in Palm Springs, Key West, Juneau or directly across Spring Street.

Now, whether self-identifying as red, blue or purple, they’ve all become batshit crazy, every last one of them -- and no, I'm not exaggerating. Roughly 120 million of them voted for one or the other of the two most disliked political personages in American history. Does this strike you as healthy in any way?

Can’t I escape, and become an expatriate, cozily burrowed inside Sicily’s 33%-of-GDP black economy, living a life of espresso, cannoli and Catanese horse steaks, existing entirely apart from politics, governments and patriotism … reading, studying, learning and enjoying beauty?

Yes, I know. It isn’t possible, and Italy has big problems of its own. Instead, I’m destined to remain a stranger in this increasingly strange land. Accordingly, as my pal Putin's V.I. Lenin famously asked, “What is to be done?”

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know – at least yet.

My thoughts at the moment are provisional and subject to change, and whether you realize it or not, so are yours. Previous rules will mutate, and we’ll adapt to them. I’m down with the challenges and eager to join the resistance if necessary, but I’m also realistic. The fog of battle is gooey and thick. It’s the hardest thing in the world to wait and see, and yet wisest in the short term, and so I fully intend to sandbag the bigger picture until the battle lines can be discerned.

To reiterate, I propose to stay the course and honor the founding epiphany of this blog.

Local engagement remains a more fruitful use of my available time than being emotionally distracted by matters so far beyond my atrophied reach that self-induced alcoholic paralysis is the only likely result of trying to corral them – and when you’re already drinking copiously to only barely cope with the illustrious likes of our Genius of the Flood Plain, Shyster Shane and Pinocchio Rosenbarger, self-care is absolutely imperative.

Localism does not imply restricting or insulating ourselves from a wider world. It never has. The mantra of “Think Globally, Act Locally” provides a solid foundation for confronting the vicissitudes of the planet by seeking functionality right here at home, as elusive as it continues to be.

Yes, of course: The issues and outcomes of a national election campaign matter, but macro begins with micro, and always has. We must start somewhere, and it might as well be here.

---

So, how is NA Confidential looking, 12 years later?

I’m avoiding an answer because frankly, I’ve no idea. I don’t know where to begin searching, and moreover, it isn’t clear to me if I’m even in a position to offer an opinion, or to judge any of it.

It is my belief that the weight of future others – call them posterity – ultimately measures the output of the planet’s pamphleteers, agitators, polemicists, rabble-rousers, provocateurs and maybe bloggers, too, and yet depressingly, posterity itself has become conceptually undependable.

As an aside, speaking from a heart three sizes too small, I’ve spent the past 12 years writing the contemporary history of my town, and to be truthful, it has been a chronically undervalued labor of love, not to mention underpaid, although I never expected to profit from it and never will, because artists are supposed to be impoverished and unappreciated in their own lifetimes, but c’mon!

Is it too much to ask for a nice civic plaque? Just bolt it to an immovable object like Warren Nash?

The biggest problem with “In Posterity We Trust” is that from the vantage point of December, 2016, at a time when we’ve all gone pirouetting through the looking glass, it’s no longer certain there’ll be sufficient agreement about the very nature of factual, objective reality, such that my work – my bile, this artistic expression, these labored stanzas – can be properly assessed.

Furthermore, considering the perennially vacant unresponsiveness of our local leadership-pretend caste, which functions primarily as a chronological extension of the NAHS student council without the teens' vigor and wit, why remain engaged at all?

Over a period of twelve years, we’ve seen the petty, loutish, self-greasing wheels continue to turn. The artist’s mounting despair, frustration and self-doubt can be palpable. Is anyone out there reading? Does anyone even care? Has thinking in Nawbany been outlawed?

I keep writing because of a massive, innate stubbornness. It is a reaction I can control, one remaining within my power assuage, to awaken in the morning and survey the thoughts knocking around in my brain like bouncing baby bingo balls, hammer them into some measure of coherence, and move them down the chute as quickly as possible so other ideas can gestate.

I want my writing to be read, and for the words to matter – to inform, explain, entertain and motivate. However, first and foremost, it’s an itch that must be scratched, and so it goes … and there it is.

This “blogging” must be something worth doing, or I’d choose another pursuit, but the truth is that while I can’t imagine not writing, my sabbatical’s coming to an end.

The time is fast approaching for one of two options: Either get a job, or create one. My preference is for the latter, and after all, whether it’s Pence in ascent or Gahan in decline, we’re going to need a place to congregate, commiserate, drink, eat, conspire and chat our way through it.

I’m working on a few ideas. You’ll be kept posted. Ciao, arrivederci, and damn, that tripe stew at La Terrazza del Patrone was tasty.

---

November 17 and 24: (BYE WEEKS, literally and figuratively)

November 11: ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat.

November 10: ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

November 3: ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

October 27: ON THE AVENUES: It's NAC's 12th birthday, and the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Thomas Frank and Bernie Sanders talk about things Adam Dickey doesn't want to hear.

Since I'm in such a good mood this morning, we'll be taking a glance as Thomas Frank and Bernie Sanders talk about an array of compelling ideas that local party bigwig Adam Dickey doesn't want to hear.

However, first let's take a brief diversion into post-electoral Democratic self-delusion, one of Mr. Disney's perennial specialties.

Can They Count?, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Blaming third-party voters for Trump’s win isn’t just bad politics. It’s bad math.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election day victory, political wonks find themselves in an urgent predicament — apparently, not a single one of them owns a calculator. This crisis is ill-timed indeed. Performing simple feats of addition and subtraction is a vital part of the wonks’ post-election number-crunching ritual. But without calculators, wonks make mistakes.

The calculator crisis has already had an impact on public opinion. Justifiably unnerved by the shortage, data-slingers have flailed in the days and weeks following the election. As a result, they’ve churned out misleading analyses full of bad math.

The worst instances of bad math have to do with the so-called “protest vote,” cast by those voters who, disgusted by the major candidates on offer, pulled the lever for marginal third-party challengers like the Green Party’s Jill Stein. To hear the wonks tell it, these voters were dupes — frauds even — and they cost Clinton the election.

Because what really happened was this.

The Democrats lost because their Republican challenger was able to galvanize voters far more successfully than Hillary Clinton, whose technocratic blend of esoteric policy-talk and milquetoast liberalism did next to nothing to motivate turnout, even with the specter of a Trump presidency looming large.

So, the Democrats drew the short straw, and the reform process begins. Or does it?

How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted, by Thomas Frank (The Guardian)

Labor and economic equality used to be at the heart of liberal politics. Rich professionals expunged these concerns – and have reaped the consequences

What makes 2016 a disaster for Democrats is not merely the party’s epic wipeout in Washington and the state capitals, but that the contest was fought out on a terrain that should have been favorable to them. This was an election about social class –about class-based grievances – and yet the Party of the People blew it. How that happened is the question of the year, just as it has been the question of other disastrous election years before. And just like before, I suspect the Democrats will find all manner of convenient reasons to take no corrective action.

But first let us focus on the good news. Donald Trump has smashed the consensus factions of both parties. Along the way, he has destroyed the core doctrine of Clintonism: that all elections are decided by money and that therefore Democrats must match Republican fundraising dollar for dollar. This is the doctrine on which progressive hopes have been sacrificed for decades, and now it is dead. Clinton outspent Trump two-to-one and it still wasn’t enough.

Leaving aside the question of how this conclusion pertains to Jeff Gahan's fattened war chest, it isn't pretty.

This year the Republicans chose an honest-to-god scary candidate, a man who really ought to have been kept out of the White House, and the party’s centrists choked. Instead of winning, the pragmatists delivered Democrats to the worst situation they’ve been in for many decades, with control of no branch of the federal government and only a handful of state legislatures. Over the years, and at the behest of this faction, Democrats gave up what they stood for piece by piece and what they have to show for it now is nothing.

At least we now understand what it really means to swing.

... the real swing voters are the working people who over the years have switched their loyalty from the Democrats to Trump’s Republicans. Their views are pretty much the reverse of the standard model. On certain matters they are open to conservative blandishments; on economic issues, however, they are pretty far to the left. They don’t admire free trade or balanced budgets or entitlement reform – the signature issues of centrism – they hate those things. And if Democrats want to reach them, they will have to turn away from the so-called center and back to the economic left.

Frank doesn't believe the Democratic Party will be up to the task of introspection and rehabilitation. The party won't make the necessary changes, and ...

This will happen because what leading liberals cannot understand – what they are psychologically blocked from understanding – is that the problem isn’t really the white working class. The problem is them.

For those of an optimistic nature, there's a potential silver lining.

If the unreconstructed Democratic party is to be saved, I suspect, what will save it is what always saves it: the colossal incompetence of the Republicans. This, too, we can already see coming down the rails. Donald Trump is getting the wrecking crew back together, and before too long, I suspect, he will have the country pining for Hillary Clinton.

Ah, what might have been, but Bernie Sanders is not looking back in anger.

Bernie Sanders: Where We Go From Here, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

It feels like a bomb went off in Washington. In less than a year, the leaders of both major parties have been crushed, fundamentally reshaping a political culture that for generations had seemed unalterable. The new order has belligerent outsider Donald Trump heading to the White House, ostensibly backed in Congress by a tamed and repentant majority of establishment Republicans. Hillary Clinton's devastating loss, meanwhile, has left the minority Democrats in disarray. A pitched battle for the soul of the opposition party has already been enjoined behind the scenes.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won overwhelming youth support and 13 million votes during primary season, now sits on one side of that battle, in a position of enormous influence. The party has named him "outreach chair," and Minnesota congressman and Sanders political ally Keith Ellison is the favorite to be named head of the Democratic National Committee. This is a huge change from earlier this year, when the Sanders campaign was completely on the outs with the DNC, but many see Sanders' brand of politics as the Democrats' best shot at returning to prominence.

Since November 9, the Floyd County Democratic party has continued doing what it's done best during Chairman Dickey's tenure: Avoid any trace of content while erecting sanitized facades to hide behind.

Of course, there are times when Occam's razor rules, and the simplest explanation is the best; as such, local Democrats have absolutely nothing in the tank, and so nothingness is the only path the party can take.

We already know how it's going to play out hereabouts:

New Albany Heating and Air presents ...

COOL PAPA GAHAN AND THE COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED FLOYD COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY

"Meet the new loss ... same as the old loss ... "

Democrats seeking an alternative to Trump: "You won’t have a choice but to try something new."

Trump-ready balconies?

"Whatever the cause, something is different here. One age is dying, and another is rearing its head."

Dan O'Sullivan writes like the love child of Alexander Cockburn and Hunter S. Thompson, and the result may be the single best summary I've yet seen of the recently concluded presidential election, as well as a thoughtful (and delightfully florid) assessment of where we are are, as a nation, right now.

Vengeance Is Mine, at Jacobin

Chaos reigns … fascist stooge finds his balcony … the resistible rise of Donald Trump … bomb crater America finds its Dauphin … Hillary Clinton: 10.0 Richter scale failure … the pinko revolt begins … digging ourselves out of the collapsed gold mine

(SNIP) The results will be radioactive. There is a perverse and hideous gift here. While the madness of a Clinton interregnum would’ve proceeded according to standard operating procedure, a banal yet sickening continuity with that of Obama and Bush, the colossal weirdness of Trump’s movement does represent something of an innovation. Frankly, Trump is too fucked up to ignore, and his core gang of freaks will make this country an extravagantly worse place.

You won’t have a choice but to try something new.

So, what is to be done?

For one thing, face the "alt-right" for what it really is, take a lesson from Bernie Sanders, and promote a genuinely alternative vision.

They may be loud and sinister; they may harass and impugn and assault those weaker than them. They are also cowards, emboldened by their tangerine stalking horse. I know them; they are young losers who crave the attention otherwise denied in life. Their will is as weak as their leader. Stop giving them for free what they dream of all day long.

No more of this narrow view of either wooing or abandoning “the white working class,” either. The zero-sum, emotionally bankrupt thinking on race that has dominated this country — one in which African-Americans see their voting rights stolen, while white Americans are incited against “welfare cheats” and other euphemistic scapegoats while further immiserated themselves — must be smashed. It is time to defend and support the entire working class — the black working class, the Latino working class, indigenous Americans, and the white working class.

There is no need to pick and choose between helping one group to the detriment of another; an alternative vision will answer Trump’s bigotry with an abiding antiracism, a radical compassion capable of freeing all Americans from the indignities of life today in this country.

There can be no dealing with this man. Bernie has lain down a gauntlet Trump cannot meet. Now, every day, and in every way, it is time to say “go fuck yourself” to Trump and his ilk, until the weapons capable of destroying him can be perfected.

Trump is, for all his monstrosity, just a symptom; as daunting as the challenge of frustrating Trump and the GOP’s agenda at every turn will be, of even graver importance will be constructing an alternative vision capable of contending with the crisis of American life.

It is impossible to select meaningful excerpts from an essay of this length, so please click through and read it all. You too, Adam.

Yo, Chairman Dickey: "It is crucial that our cultural elite, most of it aligned with the New Democrats, not be allowed to shirk their responsibility for Trump’s success."

But Uncle Walt typically had better years.

It starts right here, at the grassroots, and the Floyd County Democratic Party, the only entity hereabouts with an existing structure capable of being retrofitted for some semblance of a purpose, might actively seize this revolutionary moment by initiating dialogue aimed at the future.

So here is our silver lining. This is a revolutionary moment. We must not allow them to shift the blame on to voters. This is their failure, decades in the making. And their failure is our chance to regroup. To clean house in the Democratic party, to retire the old elite and to empower a new generation of FDR Democrats, who look out for the working class – the whole working class.

To be blunt, in the three weeks since the New Democratic Order had its clocked clean locally, regionally and nationally, our Floyd County Democratic leadership cadre (with apologies to leaders who actually heed the literal definition stipulating "one who leads") has emitted little more than the whimpering of lashed curs, a few stray platitudes, and the stench of utter bullshit.

Whether one is inside the local party or outside it, and assuming that the party itself lacks the chutzpah to gift party chairman Adam Dickey with a pink slip, it's obvious that Dickey must resign. Mayor Jeff Gahan is the highest ranking Democrat left woozily wobbling. He actually has a record of winning elections, and so it's his party now -- not that he has any idea what to do with it, just that this is the way politics works following a debacle like 2016.

It is doubtful that more than a handful of local DemoDisneyDixiecrats grasp the immensity of the task ahead.

(Bill Clinton's triangulation) heralded the Obama years, as the New Democrats continued to justify their existence through a focus on social causes that do not threaten corporate power. Or as Krystal Ball put it so powerfully: “We lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege.” Add to this that we did it while their life expectancy dropped through self-destructive behaviors brought on by economic distress.

Nevertheless, the window is cracked open. Can a local political party that finds competitive discourse so highly distasteful that it rigidly censors its own social media platform, thus all but ensuring a culture of losing, look deeply into the mirror and commence the 12-step program for reversing rot and recapturing roots?

It's doubtful. Is there a doctor in the house to check the corpse for a pulse?

Clinton & co are finally gone. That is the silver lining in this disaster, by Hazem Salem (The Guardian)

... Hillary Clinton has given us back our freedom. Only such a crushing defeat could break the chains that bound us to the New Democrat elites. The defeat was the result of decades of moving the Democratic party – the party of FDR – away from what it once was and should have remained: a party that represents workers. All workers ...

Lest we forget:

In a capitalist democracy, the party of the left has one essential reason for existing: to speak for the working class. Capitalist democracies have tended towards two major parties. One, which acts in the interest of the capitalist class – the business owners, the entrepreneurs, the professionals – ensuring their efforts and the risks they took were fairly rewarded. The other party represented workers, unions and later on other groups that made up the working class, including women and oppressed minorities.

This delicate balance ended in the 1990s. Many blame Reagan and Thatcher for destroying unions and unfettering corporations. I don’t. In the 1990s, a New Left arose in the English-speaking world: Bill Clinton’s New Democrats and Tony Blair’s New Labour. Instead of a balancing act, Clinton and Blair presided over an equally aggressive “new centrist” dismantling of the laws that protected workers and the poor.

Responsibility? What a seldom-seen concept locally:

This is not to deny the reality of structural racism or xenophobia or the intolerance shown to Muslims or the antisemitic undertones of Trump’s campaign. I am myself a person of color with a Muslim-sounding name, I know the reality and I am as frightened as everyone else. But it is crucial that our cultural elite, most of it aligned with the New Democrats, not be allowed to shirk their responsibility for Trump’s success.

So let us be as clear about this electoral defeat as possible, because the New Democratic elite will try to pin their failure, and keep their jobs, by blaming this largely on racism, sexism – and FBI director Comey. This is an extremely dangerous conclusion to draw from this election.

I love the smell of purge in the morning. Now, please.

"Rural identity has come to be largely defined as an us vs. them mentality, with the them being people who live in cities."

As a side note, this is the 1,250th post of the year at NAC. This is a new world record, at least for this blog. Can someone out there suggest how I might earn a few farthings for all this pro bono work? Now to the point ...

So it goes: Fire and brimstone evangelicals vote for a crass libertine, the poor for a paragon of wealth, and resentful anti-urban rural cadres for the ultimate city dweller.

Is there racism, xenophobia and homophobia in these expressions? Of course, but to focus on these to the exclusion of other economic and class factors steadily building up steam since America first met Archie Bunker in 1971 is to avert one's eye from the ball that matters, if not one more so than the other, then equally.

Call me a Marxist if you wish. I remain convinced that economic considerations play a huge part in these instances, and understanding what just happens is crucial. I'm not there yet. It has taken us time to arrive at this juncture.

Listen up, folks: As for this rural resentment described below, whence I came. I may not have physically moved very far away from my roots, but psychologically, I've spent the past 35 years stuffing these developmental markers into a trunk and throwing it into a mine shaft, from where it has now emerged, gloriously intact, ascendant.

We may be past the point where thinking and facts even matter, and probably my insistence that we all go find a mirror for necessary introspection is the stuff of childlike escapist fantasy – and lest we forget, to echo my pal Ignatius, veneration of Walt Disney is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

It's simple. Leaving aside the inadequacies of the Democratic "opposition," it should be obvious that I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump in a million years, and probably a clear majority of my high school classmates just did. Understanding why they did might help me understand why I didn't. It won't change the world to learn the answer, though it might change me.

The Reality of Rural Resentment, by Sommer Mathis (City Lab)

One of the biggest themes to emerge so far from the 2016 U.S. presidential election is a widening rural vs. urban divide.

... (Professor Kathy) Cramer's new book, The Politics of Resentment, traces the rise of conservative Governor Scott Walker and the political evolution of Wisconsin. What Cramer says she found is that a strong sense of rural identity in the communities she visited has become a key driver of political motivation in Wisconsin. And over time, that sense of rural identity has come to be largely defined as an us vs. them mentality, with the them being people who live in cities ...

Five key points: "Class trumps gender, and it’s driving American politics."

Polish Duck Blood Soup.

This is one of the finest pieces I've read on the topic, although it omits mention of the role of religion, especially evangelical voters who voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump is spite of his ... well ... you know.

Then again, we already knew evangelicals were rationality-challenged. I can't do justice to this article with an excerpt alone, so please click through and read the entirety.

What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class, by Joan C. Williams (Harvard Business Review)

For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap.

One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich ...

... Class trumps gender, and it’s driving American politics. Policy makers of both parties — but particularly Democrats if they are to regain their majorities — need to remember five major points ...

"The real triumph of (neoliberalism) was not its capture of the right, but its colonization of parties that once stood for everything Hayek detested."

Photo credit.

The end is the beginning: "Hayek told us who we are, and he was wrong."

Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

 ... It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy. Hayek’s triumph could be witnessed everywhere from Blair’s expansion of the private finance initiative to Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act, which had regulated the financial sector. For all his grace and touch, Barack Obama, who didn’t possess a narrative either (except “hope”), was slowly reeled in by those who owned the means of persuasion.

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XIII, This Isn’t the Article I Expected to Write.

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XIII, This Isn’t the Article I Expected to Write

By Nick Vaughn, Guest Columnist

I stood in the ballroom of the JW Marriott in Indianapolis on November 8th. It was a long and winding road from campus that luckily provided service so I could stay updated on the US Senate and House races. That was where the real battle would be fought, I had thought. I put in a ton of hours over the summer as well as over the course of my first semester of college to make sure that Congressman Todd Young would beat Evan Bayh. I was tracking the early results as they came in and I was a tad perplexed. To be running against someone like Bayh, I thought the early results were odd. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Young jumped out to a 10% lead and never looked back. Then Eric Holcomb won and then Jennifer McCormick won and before I knew it Donald Trump was the projected winner of Florida. What was going on?

I am still processing what occurred on Election Day as well as the events that have followed. I never thought in a million years I would see Donald Trump as President-Elect. I knew Hillary Clinton was unpopular but I never knew that it was to this magnitude. Clinton must feel lower than Walter Mondale. Of course, a blowout probably hurts much less than a close defeat (I can attest). Clinton simply dropped the ball. Sure, she can blame this on FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress that they were alerted to new emails and they needed to check them out, but he did send another letter that said they were all hunky dory. This race was Hillary’s to lose and she lost it. She simply underperformed. She was 100,000 votes behind President Obama’s 2012 total in Wisconsin and the voter demographics were certainly not in her favor. Further still, Trump somehow garnered 30% of total minority votes which was enough to
put him over the edge while performing 1 point less than Romney did among white voters in 2012.

Now we see protests of the election (we would have either way). The peaceful protests we see today as a result of Trump’s victory could have very well been supplemented with violent protests, killings, possibly even lynchings if he had lost. In fact, the Trump advocates’ response to these protests are for the protesters to get over it. Some have even called them cry babies and they just need to get a job. This total hypocrisy is absolutely astonishing (though not unexpected) and shows the blinding effects Trump’s divisive rhetoric have had on people throughout this election cycle. Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani even got in on the absurd bashing of protests claiming that these protesters are “professional protestors” that were hired by the DNC to cause riots after the election results.

While Trump has toned down his rhetoric since winning, his advocates and supporters are still in campaign mode. This type of rhetoric Trump used to glide into victory has caused more destruction than even his lack of discipline and discernment could as Commander-in-Chief. Sure, a President Trump could be a hot head and lack the proper judgement that would cause us to fall head first into war, however, I would argue he has done something far worse. Donald Trump has caused people to hate each other. People who are separated only by meaningless things like party identification or race or ethnicity. We have made a complete about face from Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise words of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

So, I would ask you to take action over the next four years. Not obstructionist action but instead a objective support/check and balance combo as Trump ascends to the Oval Office. What’s done is done and there isn’t any going back. While I wholeheartedly understand the “He is not my president" sentiments, however, he has to be your president. For the sake of stability he must be our president. Donald Trump has already begun to tone down his rhetoric and his outlandish policies are no longer on the forefront of his agenda. Let’s be hopeful. By the way, next week I plan to dive into our local results. Until then, here is the quote of the day: “If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” - John F. Kennedy

Mike Rowe's election analysis: We're trying to lick a cat without actually putting our tongues on it.

These past few days, I've been browsing for election perspectives from across the spectrum, and not the places I usually alight.

This one comes from Mike Rowe, the actor and television personality to whom I'd otherwise be completely indifferent (I watch almost no TV), except for his emphasis on boosting vocational education as a means of addressing America's skilled trade gap.

Rowe's thoughts strike me as sensible. You?

Mike Rowe

Last Friday, my dog posted a video that featured a man licking a cat with the aid of a device that’s designed for the specific purpose of making it easier for people to lick their cats. I’ve been silent ever since, because frankly, I couldn’t think of a better way – metaphorical or otherwise – to express my feelings about this election cycle. The entire country it seems, has been preoccupied with finding a way to lick a cat without actually putting their tongue on it.

Too oblique? Too weird? Ok, how about this analysis ...

If you cannot access it via Fb, try here: Mike Rowe weighs in (Tribunist).

"Political cartoonists around the world are sharpening their pencils to illustrate something that can’t be explained in words: President-elect Donald Trump."

A picture's worth ... yeah, you know.

FUNNY, NOT FUNNY: This is how the world’s best cartoonists are reacting to Trump’s victory, by Manuel Rueda (Fusion)

With a mix of angry humor, barbed irony, and total disbelief, political cartoonists around the world are sharpening their pencils to illustrate something that can’t be explained in words: President-elect Donald Trump.

While some cartoonists are focusing on Trump’s misogyny, others are using their skills to highlight the racism and nativism that ran through his campaign. In most cases, the cartoonists are challenged to make the U.S. look more cartoonish than it’s become.

Many of today’s cartoons reflect a deep concern about the immediate future of a country that for centuries has been a beacon of democracy and freedom for those fleeing authoritarian regimes and economic chaos.

Bernie Sanders: It looks as if an Independent is the current leader of a rudderless Democratic Party.

In the sense of an adaptive reuse borne of expedience, the Democratic Party's nuts and bolts might be useful in the short term. However, they'll need to be configured in a vastly different way pending an upgrade, and the leadership purge must be vast.

ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

Thanks, Adam. There’ll be a little something extra in your pay packet. By the way, it’s a pink slip, and so very sorry about that exit door’s nasty overbite; the building commissioner should have made your landlord Warren Nash fix it, but well, you know how things like that work around here.

It's revealing that Bernie Sanders, an Independent, steps forward with a road map for the Democratic Party. Let the falling on swords begin.

Bernie Sanders: Where the Democrats Go From Here, by Bernie Sanders (New York Times)

Millions of Americans registered a protest vote on Tuesday, expressing their fierce opposition to an economic and political system that puts wealthy and corporate interests over their own. I strongly supported Hillary Clinton, campaigned hard on her behalf, and believed she was the right choice on Election Day. But Donald J. Trump won the White House because his campaign rhetoric successfully tapped into a very real and justified anger, an anger that many traditional Democrats feel.

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 ...

There is wisdom in NYC restaurateur Danny Meyer’s post-election letter to his employees.

Time to get off my ass.

Democracy, listening, love, acceptance, routine and resiliency are among the bullet points as a prominent restaurateur addresses his legions.

I'm reminded that during those crazy days following the 9-11 attacks, the Public House fulfilled its founding promise as a place designed to encourage thinking and togetherness. By contrast, on Wednesday this week it felt as though I had no place to go to begin plotting a future course.

By the end of the day, it was becoming very clear to me that I need another space -- another soap box, another "poor man's university" -- with good beer, of course. It's time to get going on that. If there is to be a principled opposition, it needs to have a place to relax.

Danny Meyer has good things to say in his letter, and it's worth reading in its entirety. He closes with a brief outline of "enlightened hospitality," which once might have struck me as corporate gobbledygook, but now bears an element of pro-activity. You don't wait until hard times to practice it. Rather, you do it all the time, every day.

Read Restaurateur Danny Meyer’s Post-Election Letter to Employees, by Whitney Filloon (Eater)

As America simultaneously celebrates and mourns Donald Trump’s presidential victory, chefs and restaurant owners are also split on how to feel ... following Tuesday’s surprise election results, restaurateur extraordinaire Meyer penned a lengthy letter to employees of Union Square Hospitality Group — which is made up of more than a dozen restaurants including Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern — attempting to make sense of things, and to figure out where to go from here.

In The Nation: "Working-class women who voted for Trump tell us a lot about feminism’s relationship to class politics."

Know The Nation:

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, and the most widely read weekly journal of progressive political and cultural news, opinion and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, with the stated mission to "make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."

A message earlier this week from Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher of The Nation.

Today, we rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists of principle and conscience. Today, we recommit to mobilizing against hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and economic pain. And as we have at other times of crisis in our nation, we will move forward in solidarity and in the belief that stronger communities arise in times of crisis. We rededicate ourselves to thinking anew, to putting forth a compelling vision of fundamental change.

We stand for an inclusive and progressive populism—one that addresses inequality and economic insecurity. We stand with women and with Muslim, African-American, and immigrant communities who have been threatened by the blatantly racist, sexist, and bigoted campaign Trump ran.

As Nation writer Ian Haney-López reminded us just a few weeks ago, “Remaking our politics and economy will depend on a broad coalition that must include substantial numbers of racially anxious whites. Ignoring their fears, or worse, pandering to them, further impoverishes all of us. Instead, we must have a unified message for whites as well as people of color. Fearful of one another, we too easily hand over power to moneyed interests, but working together, we can rebuild the American dream.”

The answer to what some have called Trump’s “whitelash” is not to retreat on social liberalism, ever; it is to double down on an economics that speaks to working and poor people.

The immediate response to Trump’s election is one of opposition—we commit to obstructing, delaying, and halting any attacks on people of color, women, or working people that may come from a Trump administration. But we must also understand why millions are angry and anxious, and why they voted for the cruel hoax that is Trumpism.

We knew this was an election about change and a revolt against political elites. Yet it is also a revolt against what elites in both parties have done or accepted—global trade and tax deals of, by, and for the corporations; Wall Street bailouts; big-money politics and crony capitalism; decades of promises not kept. It is a time for great reflection and an even greater reformation—of the Democratic Party, of our politics, of our society. The Nation's work will continue—as it has in good, not-so-good, and bad times—to offer alternative visions and ideas, to deepen our journalistic mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further the work of the political revolution in a nation divided.

A current excerpt of relevance:

Inequality Between Women Is Crucial to Understanding Hillary’s Loss, by By Kathleen Geier (The Nation)

Working-class women who voted for Trump tell us a lot about feminism’s relationship to class politics.

... Class differences among women are an all but taboo subject. But scholars such as Leslie McCall have found that economic inequality among women is just as large, and has been growing just as fast, as economic inequality among men. This economic divide among women has created one of the most significant fault lines in contemporary feminism. That’s because professional-class women, who have reaped a disproportionate share of feminism’s gains, have dominated the feminist movement, and the social distance between them and their less privileged sisters is wide and growing wider. In the decades since the dawn of the second wave, educated women gained access to status jobs, but working-class women experienced declining wages and (because of the rise of divorce and single parenthood among the working class) shouldered an increasingly heavy burden of care. Yet mainstream feminist groups and pundits have consistently stressed the social and cultural issues that are most important to affluent women, while marginalizing the economic concerns of the female masses.

ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat.

ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

---

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
- Lady Macbeth

A little more than a year ago, Leadership Southern Indiana held a New Albany mayoral debate, and one candidate conspicuously declined to attend.

More than a year later, on the day after the 2016 election, Mayor Jeff Gahan finally climbed aboard the Leadership Southern Indiana bus.

Literally.

The bus stopped in front of The Grand, and prior to my Discovery 2017 class disembarking, Gahan got on. Blocking the only potential escape route except his own, he stood at the front of the bus and offered a few words about New Gahania in an emerging Time of Trump.

As Gahan’s many handlers long have noted, and tended to plan the mayor's schedule accordingly, his agoraphobia manifests itself in the usual way.

Agoraphobia (ag-uh-ruh-FOE-be-uh) is a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and often avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and make you feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed.

It isn’t that Gahan fears human contact. He fears unscripted situations in public settings, and when compelled to interact with people in such places, he generally over-compensates, displaying a forced, cheerleader-level of excitement, which at best is chatty, though usually comes off as just plain strange.

However, give this man a proper script, show him the markings, block it out, and he invariably succeeds in appearing “mayoral,” whatever that really means. Team Gahan knows this, and extemporaneous environments are studiously avoided, because it’s anyone's guess what might come out of the mayor’s mouth amid the escalating inner panic.

On Wednesday, standing there on a bus chartered by an organization he shunned, nothing was written on paper, and the results were predictably weird.

However – amazingly – Gahan got something right when he conceded that downtown New Albany’s revitalization owes primarily to risks taken and investments made by independent business persons and entrepreneurs, not City Hall.

This was a startling admission, given that Gahan’s re-election campaign was predicated on taking personal credit for the city’s improved prospects. In addition, it doesn’t jibe with Team Gahan’s day-to-day municipal governance, which relies on Goebbelsian marketing and rule-of-plaques, both real and metaphorical, as erected by Gahan’s various funding mechanisms and the toadies manning them.

Still, it was a factual utterance, and worthy of note.

---

Then, in closing, Gahan actually said something interesting, though not before somehow confusing a busload of local residents for visitors from Omaha, by expressing the misplaced hope that they would enjoy their “stay” here.

I’ll paraphrase:

The most important thing for you to remember about New Albany, and what we always remind everyone, is that we’re a kind city.

That’s kind, as in affectionate, loving, helpful, benevolent, and displaying the qualities of kindness.

Whether this assertion is true isn’t the point.

Rather, in spite of Gahan’s odd suggestion that his statement functions as some sort of widely embraced local mantra, it’s the very first time I’ve heard him express this sentiment by using the precise word “kind.”

And, since it isn’t in the mayor’s nature to be improvisational, the word – the concept, this mantra – must have been planted by someone, at some point in advance. He’s simply not good enough with words to pull “kind” from the ether.

It’s just my opinion, but I think it’s no coincidence that Gahan introduced this fresh new concept of a “kind” city on the afternoon following a smoldering train wreck of an election on the part of his Floyd County Democratic Party, a topic covered elsewhere: ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

The last county election cycle was in 2014, and it was just as catastrophic for the Democrats as Tuesday. In 2015, the New Albany city council lost its Democratic majority, and 12 percentage points came off Mayor Jeff Gahan’s big 2011 total, bringing him within easy reach of the GOP in 2019, assuming the latter can locate a man or woman with the minimum requirement of a pulse.

My guess: In Gahan’s mind, he’s the last courageous bastion of blue “values” in a sea of red, hence his trial balloon of a “kind" city, this vision temporarily supplanting the woeful anchor-in-river-mud chosen by Sheriff Duggins as a “branding” mechanism for our burg.

The truth is more complex. As laudable as Come to Our Kind City might be, it will take more than just words to meet the challenges ahead of us. In Floyd County as a whole, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by a whisker shy of twenty percentage points, recording almost 60% of the total votes cast for president.

Meanwhile, and although I don’t have time to run all the precinct numbers, Councilman Greg Phipps’ 3rd council district (precincts 3, 5, 7 and 10) in the center of the city went solidly for Clinton 1,020 to 791.

Unfortunately, when it comes to a platform of positions aimed at meeting the urban realities of the local Trump landslide, Gahan’s got next to nothing.

True, the mayor has made vague gestures of symbolic support for the city’s vulnerable communities, but talk is cheap, and not once in almost five years has he risked political capital to step beyond this into concrete proposals.

Now likely is the time, seeing as “quality of life” just took on a whole new connotation. For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be grappling with an Orwellian social phase, as summarized by the novelist’s phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Thus far, regrettably, Jeff Gahan’s mayoral legacy has been one of detached passivity in every area save for the utilization of funding schemes sufficient to erect bright, shiny objects of the sort appreciated primarily by a sizable number of voters who just opted for Trump.

Just as tragically, far too many of the city's progressives have consciously accepted Gahan's purely Faustian bargain: In return for City Hall's lip service on social agendas, the mayor's financially ruinous program of heroic monument construction is overlooked.

As the young folks like to say, on Tuesday shit got real.

---

Beyond a hope for simple human kindness shared by many of us, and as ironically expressed to a group currently engaged in a leadership exercise, itself sponsored by an organization Gahan previously sidestepped with vapid nonchalance, does the mayor actually have what it takes to lead when the going starts getting tough?

I don’t think Gahan knows the answer himself, but history's tides move to their own rhythm, and he’s going to find out, sooner rather than later.

So are the rest of us. It's been that kind of week, after all.

---

November 10: ON THE AVENUES: Don't be a Dickey, local Democrats. The verdict is in, and it's time for a change.

November 3: ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

October 27: ON THE AVENUES: It's NAC's 12th birthday, and the beatings will continue until morale improves.

October 20: ON THE AVENUES: Key events in the New Albanian rebirth, but first, a piccolo of grappa, per favore.

Come out from your silos, because it's time to learn from our mistakes.

Photo credit.

"Trump’s message was: 'All is hell.' Clinton answered: 'All is well.' But it’s not well – far from it."

It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump, by Naomi Klein (The Guardian)

People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?