November 11, 2016

The Trump Era Begins

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Today brings three miscellaneous harbingers of life in Trump’s America. First, here is Harry Reid on Trump:

I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.

Trump could say something about this if he wanted to. The election is over, after all. Hell, it would make him look statesmanlike. But apparently he doesn’t want to.

Second, here is James Fallows on foreign trade:

I suppose plenty of liberals are happy with this state of affairs, but Fallows is right. If your beef with TPP revolves around intellectual property issues, then fine. But if you’re pretending it’s bad because it would hurt American workers, you’re engaging in the same cheap populism as Trump. Ceding trade leadership to China will do no one in the United States any good.

Finally, here is Caitlin Owens on Obamacare:

The pre-existing conditions ban will stay? Huh? How do you do that without also keeping the subsidies and the individual mandate? It would bankrupt every insurance company in America. Most likely, I suppose, this is just standard Trumpian deception. He’ll keep the pre-existing conditions ban, but surround it with so many qualifiers that it’s meaningless.

The Medicaid thing, however, is actually interesting. There’s no reason that Trump couldn’t keep the Medicaid expansion in place, arguing that it’s not “really” Obamacare. What’s more, I wonder how many red states would adopt it? If Trump endorses it, and holding out is no longer a big middle finger to Obama, a whole lot of red-state governors might suddenly discover that it’s a pretty good deal for their residents after all. This will come right after they decide that a big slug of deficit spending to stimulate the economy is also a great idea.

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