Post-mortems

I've got a number of worthy ones bookmarked. I think I'll post them one at a time.  The one I found myself nodding yep at the most at was Atrios and his familiar refrain, "Shit is fucked up and bullshit." Which is a problem when nobody in charge of the the shit seems to care.... except, of course the con-man who pretends he does.

As for Clinton, I know what her policy proposals were. I'm not sure anybody else did. The media is horrible and don't talk about policy, but we knew that. I also know that improving the EITC in a complicated fashion and promising free college, but not for all people because that's crazy Bernie talk, but for some people and "debt free" college for all and can you fill out this form please to determine your eligibility* and oh by the way none of this shit will get through Congress anyway so why aren't we promising the moon if we can't deliver the half a moon we are promising. All the Dems are now on board with "expanding" Social Security. This is great! What does it mean? Probably giving more to the blahs and the immigrants and the gays.

Sure all of this is "pundit's fallacy" stuff. But I'm not gazillionaire Tom Friedman telling you that what the people really want is to invade more countries and have better cell service in the subway. I don't actually think all the country wants from our politicians the same things I want. I do know that things are fucked up and bullshit for much of the country. President Trump is going to make everything a whole lot worse, of course, but candidate Trump said he'd fix things. We'll keep the immigrants out. We'll bring back coal jobs. Show me a problem, and I'll fix it. Not set up a plan to adjust the framework to tweak the incentives to modestly change the market outcomes. Just fix it.

The way to win is tell them why they should vote for you. Tell them about the wonderful things you will do for them. And, then, ideally, do those things.  Hillary told people "America is already great" and that national health care would "never ever happen."