That’s not to say there aren’t real issues with Trump. I find extremely worrisome that he hasn’t called out racist supporters as strongly as he should. (Contrary to some critics he has criticized them – just not as extensively as some of us would wish) I find some of his appointments worrisome. I’m also worried about how well he’ll separate his business interests from his role in government. While I think it’s a bit early for the criticisms there it is something we need to keep an eye on.

It seems mighty convenient to have a change of heart right after the unexpected victory. Me thinks we are swallowing a wagon load of wishful thinking. Picking a team on this playground is easy, especially if you have 300 million to choose from. Scoring points and winning the game is an entirely a separate matter. Time will tell. I hope I am wrong.

Such reforming compromise seems to fit with his larger-than-life ego. It seems as if he would be quite content to undo both political parties in order to be seem as a historic level unifier (or if not a true unifier, a historic level repositioner).

Of course this is utter dissonance to both his perceived election mantra and the image now ingrained for him by media and opponents. However, I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he takes on, yet again, the task of upsetting one more layer of his stereotyped persona.

What I find funny is how much wailing is likely to occur from those being assimilated. Will Trump be respected for switching to conventional Democratic positions? Extreme Republicans will be angry. But their organization is in shambles. Extreme Democrats will be angry too – not necessarily about the positions themselves, but from the source from which they come and the threat this poses to their order.

Thus, my hope at least is that compromise, fuelled by hubris, conquers the extremes on both sides of the divide.

The next thing I see on the horizon is destruction of the Democratic ruling elite, not via de-energization and loss of political seats, but by breaking rigid party ties. But, I guess we’ll see.

The biggest worry is that he’ll completely please his core constituency and then pick a fight with conservatives like Ryan who want a Tea Party revolution. He’ll say Ryan and company are trying to stop his policies and that he has no choice but join with Democrats like his good friend Schumer (who’s now Senate Minority Leader). He gets enough Ds and Rs to get his bills passed.

I laugh a bit at how everyone is acting like the sky is falling. The bigger worry is that he won’t be blatantly bad but will be just successful enough that people will turn a blind eye to the inevitable corruption, inefficiency and perhaps civil rights problems.

I think Trump is planning to be a President like Nixon 2.0. What people forget is that Nixon was very, very popular until the coverup of the Watergate breakin.

While it’s possible Trump will overreach and do something really stupid, I wouldn’t count on it. Brannon in particular is very forthright about starting a whole new political movement that’s part Jackson, part FDR, and part Reagan. It’ll be repellant to many of the intellectuals on the right and the left (including I’d assume people like myself). But I’m far from convinced it might not, for all its many dangers, be compelling to much of the country.

Policy changes really don’t operate at this level. Neither, unfortunately do the consequences of policy. Rather, intent and perceived costly commitments are operative.

In one light both leaders might be hated, but in another both stood with a very definite subset of the population.

As balkanization progresses one normally expects such adaptive commitments to increase in strength. Group oriented altruism is selectively disadvantageous when a threshold of people act only for their own self interest. Identity politics and things like uni-dimensional racism, sexism, etc (base on punch-up instersectional metrics) are hyper-corrosive to pluralism. The only question is whether we’ve passed this critical point or not?

I don’t think this can be answered just by looking at the population as a whole. When you have elite classes that virulently compete with each other, you have trouble. When you get sub-sets not subject to population flow (think SJW or Alt-rights who won’t let someone of the opposite morality be part of their group), you typically have trouble. This is what I would really look at: which groups most enable ideological & moral diversity? (Skin color or gender diversity is, in my opinion, a false flag here).

The great fear with too much out-group oriented cosmopolitanism was that you would, via good intentions, pass the point where these systems could be pulled back. Similarly, the worry with too much in-group nationalism is that it destroys the pluralism necessary for large heterogeneous nations. Once both groups stopped listening and respecting each other’s essential contributions, things were doomed. Large groups of people operating harmoniously is not a stable state of affairs. This lesson has to get re-learned in painful ways.

At least, over time, the dynamics seem to show selection for more cooperative individuals: ones that know how to work with those of opposite group orientations.

It was my personal wish and prayer that both Trump and Clinton would miraculous loose.(I think a majority of people might not be far from this idealistic hope.They were both so unacceptable). I knew that no matter what, the day after the election, it would be half true and cause for some celebration. But how to make the other half happen?

I think it would have been nearly impossible to impeach Clinton. We would be stuck with her for better or for worse in my opinion. But Trump? He has alienated most of the republican establishment. He isn’t even nominally conservative. Never have false expectations been higher for a new president. Oh yeh, every republican is participating in the unlikely victory celebrations, thoughtless to the months of mounting concern during the campaign. But soon the partying will be over. Trump is incapable of changing into another Bush, Romney, McCain, Kasich, Ryan, Reagan, Eisenhower, or anyone else look-alike. His know deficiencies (and frankly wickedness) will not lie dormant long and will start to bite us.

Remember 48 democrat senators would vote to impeach Trump tomorrow. We only need 19-20 republican senators to be given a couple of excuses to come to their senses and Trump will be out. Some of them ran against Trump and were treated badly by him and harbor quiet anger for it behind current insincere smiles.

Of greater concern is the fact that the system is broken. Neither party, after years of campaigning and billions of dollars, anointed an acceptable candidate. The lap dog media is morally bankrupt and partly but not entirely to blame. After perpetual bias and miscalling the election, who can trust them with anything? Why are we still listening?

The witless voting public in both parties during the primaries was most culpable for this fiasco. Too many of us lost our freedom to select a decent candidate this time around. How do we prevent another election worse than this one in the future? Trump ain’t the man to do it. Otherwise our republic is doomed.

A good common sense rule of thumb, in my mind, is that if you are scared about what Donald Trump might do with some regulatory power that then that should never have been a regulatory power with no checks, balances or due process.

Michael, you’re attacking a strawman still. I don’t favor uncritical deregulation. But I definitely think regulations are a huge issue even if not the only one.

John F, good point in terms of absolute vote primarily due to 3rd parties taking many more votes this year. I was more thinking that in terms of minorities, Trump got a larger share, and in terms of winning Trump obviously did while Romney got beat by 4 points by Obama.

Lois, there are two issues. One is why particular jobs within a particular business left. Outsourcing and automation are clearly part of that issue. However as industries change typically new jobs are created in new industries. That’s what’s not happening. It’s new businesses when they shift from moderate sized to being larger that’s typically the mover of job creation. Yet business creation has been low and hasn’t recovered the last decade. This isn’t just a Republican worry but has been focused on by liberals as well. So when we had at the beginning of the 20th century a massive shift from agriculture to assembly lines the new businesses were there to hire the people displaced by rising agriculture productivity. That’s just not happening today.

To the fillibuster, you realize Harry Reid already killed it for judicial appointments, right? And that liberals have wanted it removed for a long time.

Again, while it’s clear that deregulation is almost always a boon to GDP, anyone who suggests that it is our best strategy for combating inequality is on shaky ground. The somewhat cautious deregulation you seem to advocate for in 23 doesn’t sound inherently destructive, but I’m not seeing signs that Trump’s team, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are so mindful. Their almost religious faith in the benevolence and fairness of the market have them thinking that the more deregulation, the better.