President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

These transcripts of Coates' interviews with Obama are so interesting. Especially when compared and contrasted to the mental lightweight preparing to take office.

'The Filter ... Is Powerful': Obama on Race, Media, and What It Took to Win

‘Better Is Good’: Obama on Reparations, Civil Rights, and the Art of the Possible

 

Krugman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html?ref=opinion

From the piece:

Why is this happening? I’m not asking why white working-class voters support politicians whose policies will hurt them — I’ll be coming back to that issue in future columns. My question, instead, is why one party’s politicians and officials no longer seem to care about what we used to think were essential American values. And let’s be clear: This is a Republican story, not a case of “both sides do it.”

So what’s driving this story? I don’t think it’s truly ideological. Supposedly free-market politicians are already discovering that crony capitalism is fine as long as it involves the right cronies. It does have to do with class warfare — redistribution from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy is a consistent theme of all modern Republican policies. But what directly drives the attack on democracy, I’d argue, is simple careerism on the part of people who are apparatchiks within a system insulated from outside pressures by gerrymandered districts, unshakable partisan loyalty, and lots and lots of plutocratic financial support.

For such people, toeing the party line and defending the party’s rule are all that matters. And if they sometimes seem consumed with rage at anyone who challenges their actions, well, that’s how hacks always respond when called on their hackery.

 

Are you saying they should Be Very Careful?

 

If anyone knows about being a hack, it would be Krugman.

 

Would it be alleged racist tape or racist alleged tape?

 

Charlotte got played by the NC GOP.

 

Why?

 

Would be a huge get if Trump can get him to take on this job.

 

Because he is a seriously heavyweight economist who in recent years has sold out every shred of his intellectual honesty just to get a chance to lick the asses of the Democratic Party power structure?

 

So he doesn't believe what he writes? He does for the sake of cachet and reflected glory of a party that almost zero power in America?

 

Exactly. He can be a broken record and a bit shrill, but the positions he takes seem to be his own. Does he ever even veer off basic Keynesian theory? Maybe you just don't agree with him?

 

Read up the pundit positions he's taken re: free trade, and compare those to the academic work that won him the Nobel.