Elex recounting
Donald Trump is going to be our next President. Is the sky falling yet? To find out, we decided we’d leave our Chicken Little costumes hanging in the closet, for a short while at least, and instead poke our heads into a few of the nation’s most sage political rags, both right and left. In the process, of course, we found ourselves dodging more than a few shards of the firmament. On the conservative side,
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol had been branded not only a “loser” but also a “dummy” by our president-elect, as the pair locked horns on everything from the Iraq War to immigration. So what does Kristol — who, in turn, had called Trump a “con man,” a “charlatan and a demagogue” and “dead to me” — have to say now? Well, very little, apart from advising readers to “Keep your panic dry” before excerpting a rather lengthy quote from George Washington which pleads to God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.” This, we would submit, reads like the journalistic equivalent of curling into the fetal position.
National Review, which also had turned up its nose at The Donald, offers a mostly sobered-up collection of essays on the election results. “Republican voters were not quite who the party thought they were,” writes Yuval Levin, as if the magazine itself had known all along. “Reduce deficits and don’t forget about the workers,” advises Edward Conrad, outlining what he calls “a new trade consensus” with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Elsewhere, columnist Reihan Salam predicts that Trump “might try to expand his support with a centrist healthinsurance proposal” — a “bipartisan ObamaCare deal” that he appears to be strikingly OK with.
Funny how the Nation seems far less optimistic about any such deal. Robert Borosage’s bald assertion that Trump will follow through on a pledge to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare is about as substantive a discussion as we got in the current issue. Indeed, the editors seem far more concerned about a Wall Street giveaway and an environmental apocalypse. That said, the quotes that rang most true were contained in John Nichols’ urge that “We must transform the Democratic Party,” which slaps the Clintons for “sleeping with Wall Street” while imagining that “wage-starved workers ... wouldn’t notice.”
The Atlantic, whose December issue appears to have been to bed before the early-morning election results of Nov. 9, nevertheless has a strong piece by James Fallows on the subject of China. Fallows observes, “It has become repressive in a way that it has not been since the Cultural Revolution.” This, we would suggest, is something that Hillary Clinton’s glad-handing husband helped lay the track for in the 1990s, as he freed up trade while asking for little in return. In this respect, among others, we can be glad he won’t be in the White House again.
New York political columnist Jonathan Chait tries to argue that Trump campaigned as a Marxist, but that what voters are likely to end up with is something closer to ... well, some kind of “authoritarian brand of populism.” Trump’s campaign “placed more emphasis on wages and work, and on cultural-populist themes, than Mitt Romney’s did,” Chait writes, eliding the rather glaring truth that Trump also outdid Hillary in this regard. “Equating Trump with the interests of the workers is a propaganda device meant to legitimize his power,” Chait continues, as if lecturing to a freshman seminar at Bard College. “Representing the ‘workers of the world’ solves the problem.” Why do we get the feeling that, if it were Vladimir Lenin he were quoting, Chait would be A-OK with the program?
In this week’s Talk of the Town, the New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot summons a dystopian vision of women’s health under the Trump administration, with Planned Parenthood defunded, Obamacare dismantled and abortion clinics nationwide getting bombed with impunity as Attorney General-nominee Jeff Sessions averts his gaze. “To be fair, Trump has suggested one decent policy for women and families: a six-week paid maternity leave, which would indeed end a national disgrace,” Talbot admits about halfway through the nightmare scenario. “But the plan pointedly omits paternity leave,” she quickly adds, complaining that this would enshrine “an oldfashioned view of families.” Margaret, we’ve got to hand it to you for explaining how maternity leave is a sinister plan that would oppress women.
Time grabbed headlines last week as it christened Trump its Person of the Year — and grabbed a second set of headlines when Trump chafed at its declaration he will be President of the Divided States of America. “It’s hard to measure the scale of the disruption,” writes Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs, still sounding shell-shocked by the election results after running a couple of covers beforehand that had heralded Trump’s “meltdown.” This week, the chastened editors run a lengthy feature on Trump supporters. “When Trump talked about getting rid of all the free-trade stuff, he brought to life the way this country should be going,” said Thomas McTague of Plymouth, Pa. Read it and weep, Hillary.