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You Want It Darker: Why Trump and What Next?

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I spent the days after the election, one that I too had hoped and predicted that Clinton would win, mourning and comforting despairing friends, colleagues, and students afraid of what the future will bring. Where I teach at San Diego City College, the majority of the students are part of the America that Trump hates. There is terror at the thought of family members being deported, unease at the prospect of discriminatory policies based on religion, race, gender, and sexuality, and fear of a cynical climate-denying opportunist bent on sealing the fate of the endangered natural world.

Most of all, there is grief and rage over the murder of hope.

Somehow it was fitting that Leonard Cohen died this week after penning one last shout: “You Want It Darker”   [Read more…]

An Open and Sincere Letter to All Trump Supporters

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The following is a post pulled from Facebook:

I understand why someone would vote for Trump. I don’t mean that I can see his appeal, because I can’t. But I do understand why someone who normally votes Republican would cast a vote in his favor. However, I’m not sure this understanding goes both ways. I’m not sure that you, Trump voter, really understand why we non-Trump voters are so distraught.

A lot of you think you do — understand, that is. You think it’s politics. No one likes to be on the losing side of an election. And that’s why so many of you — and to be fair, I’ve seen Clinton voters share this same sentiment, in an attempt to restore rationality — have scolded people on my side for the unpatriotic heresy of disconnecting from Trump voters on social media. You see it as childish, sore loser stuff. You say, “Can you really not have someone who disagrees with you as a friend?”

You’re missing something vital though. You’re just happy the election is over, and that now you’ll have a government that pursues the conservative policies you prefer. All of which is fair. That’s a normal consequence of an election, and while the rest of us are understandably upset about that part, it’s part of the program. You win some, you lose some. We’ve been there before.

But this election includes extracurricular material. And that’s why, Trump voter, your more progressive friends are questioning whether or not they can keep you in their lives.   [Read more…]

If You Voted for Trump Because He’s ‘Anti-Establishment,’ Guess What: You Got Conned

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By Paul Waldman / Excerpt from the The Washington Post

The greatest trick Donald Trump pulled was convincing voters he’d be “anti-establishment.”

Well, maybe not the greatest trick. But in a campaign full of cons, it has to rank close to the top. This was near the heart of Trump’s appeal to the disaffected and disempowered: Send me to Washington, and that “establishment” you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ll blow it up, send it packing, punch it right in the face, and when it’s over the government will finally be working for you again. And the people who voted for Trump bought it. After all, he’s no politician, right? He’s an outsider, a glass-breaker, a guy who can cut out the bull and get things done. Right?

But the idea that he would do this was based on a profound misunderstanding of what the establishment actually is, and who Donald Trump is.   [Read more…]

San Diego Democrats Dominate in Local Contests

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San Diego Democrats came away with an impressive set of victories in the 2016 general elections, though you wouldn’t have known it from all the glum faces at election central on Tuesday night.

The implications of their party’s loss at the top of the ticket ruined the night for most folks. The question remaining now is how effective Democrats in San Diego and California will be in the face of a tidal wave of reaction coming out of Washington DC.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that Congressman Duncan Hunter, Jr has emerged as one of those being vetted for a position in Trump administration’s Department of Defense.   [Read more…]

San Diego Representatives Wonder: Where Do We Go from Here?

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Laura Fink remarked, “There were twelve women in the history of the world that have been on a ballot and won a democratically elected head of state or head of government position. That’s twelve. Seventy total if you count the Prime Ministers, but twelve that have had their name on a ballot and won.

“I don’t think we know the implications of gender in this race or their degree. I think that they’re massive. The consistency among those twelve women: almost all of them were called iron ladies. They all had powerful husbands. They were all fairly disliked and they were all political insiders.

“I’ll just leave you with this. You guys do the math and see if we require something of Hillary Clinton that we now dislike about her.”   [Read more…]

Here’s the Hate From Donald Trump’s Followers

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We’re sharing a compendium of tweets seen by SDFP editors on social media since election night.

Anybody who has any doubt about what’s coming and the need to organize, mobilize, and fight back should read these all the way through.

Does anybody have a plan yet? Not that we know of. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t working on it.

Stay angry, my friends; build a network; give hugs where needed.   [Read more…]

South Bay Election Results: Highlights, Insider Information and Facts

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This year, I tried to cover elections for a region that often feels ignored: the South Bay — defined as everything south of the I-54 (including National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and South San Diego). For Democrats and pro-labor, the overall results were quite positive in this region.

Here, I want to introduce you to the candidates based on my own coverage. During this election cycle, I have gotten to know many of the candidates and wish them all best of luck serving our communities.
  [Read more…]

Nobody Saw a Trump Victory Coming! Here’s What’s Next for America

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Trump Astounded and Shocked Democrats — and Even His Own Pollsters

Hillary was a shoo-in.. or at least that’s what everyone thought. Hillary had a blue firewall and many paths to 270 electoral votes. Donald had a bunch of heavy lifting including an almost impossible flipping of one or two blue states.

Whaaa hoppened?! What happened was that angry, white rural voters went for the guy that was against free trade (much as Bernie Sanders was) and promised to bring their rust belt jobs back from China and other Asiatic places. You had only to look at the state by state maps to see solid red in rural areas even in blue states with the only blue being in the big cities.

It wasn’t enough for Hillary to win even though she came close, and unmistakably the popular vote by more than two million. According to an article by the New York Times, this 1.5 percentage point surpasses margins by Al Gore, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy .   [Read more…]

Let’s Do This, People. Calls to Action & Nationwide Anti-Trump Protests

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Emerging from shock and denial over the results of the 2016 Presidential election, protesters took to the streets in more than two dozen cities nationwide, including San Diego.

Carrying signs including slogans like #NotMyPresident, “Misogyny Has to Go”, “Black Lives Matter” and “Trump Makes America Hate,” demonstrators carried flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupted traffic, and declared a refusal to accept Trump’s victory.   [Read more…]

California Goes a Different Way in 2016: Election Reactions & Results

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San Diego, Statewide Results on Propositions, Legislative & Federal Offices

Voters in the State of California opted for more progressive choices when it came to elected officials than most of the rest of the country.

Nationally, it should be noted marijuana measures did well (except Arizona), as did minimum wage increases, and paid sick leave, along with reform-oriented local prosecutors.

(It’s a two-column day, folks. Look for coverage of protests & calls for action in a subsequent piece, posted as fast as I can type.)   [Read more…]

The Night that Democracy Died in America

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Sometime after 2 a.m. eastern standard time – in the middle of the late night, Hillary Clinton – who won the popular vote for President – phoned Donald Trump and made her concession. He had won the electoral vote.

In an historic rebellion of the white, working-class, half of American voters used democratic means to elect a man who does not understand the Constitution, who does not respect the Bill of Rights, and who does not believe in democracy.

It is an irony, then, that a radical regime was voted into power that represents the greatest threat in 40 years to what is left of American democracy. Words do matter. With the threats and promises made by our new President-elect over the course of the last year and a half, it’s clear that not since the time of Richard Nixon have the civil rights of Americans been so openly splayed out on the chopping block as they are now – or will be in a few months.   [Read more…]

I’ll Have the Apocalypse Burger, with a Bullet on the Side

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The Democratic Party, not the Republicans, died Tuesday night. It took with it to the grave a functional middle class.

From now on smart people will have to find some new ways to avoid the hoi polloi, the downward bound still clinging to their weekend Harleys and storing their AK 47’s in whatever closet they can afford to rent. We’ve watched our tepid and bland Democrats — the Susan Davis’s and Scott Peters — clapping and wiggling their asses to the tunes of corporate advisers for so long that we’ve failed to notice they look and sound just like Republicans.

They just wouldn’t go away, would they? They kept cloning themselves, and droning the same songs of the party of Jefferson. They were forced by political law to live in their districts but we didn’t know where they were, and we knew it wouldn’t be in their local offices. How many pieces of our minds were we unable to give them?

Who’d a thunk the Dems would die first?   [Read more…]

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