Postmortem

1. Postmortem What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? What’s next?

2. Our President

3. “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016” Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House of Representatives. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. Economy: The economy is not in recession, and per capita growth equals or exceeds previous two terms. Policy change: The incumbent effects major policy changes in last term. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. Foreign/military failure and success: The administration suffers no major failure and achieves a major success. Charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic & the challenger is not.

4. Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to winMichael Moore in mid-July • Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.  • The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. • The Hillary Problem. • The Depressed Sanders Vote. • The Jesse Ventura Effect. Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth.

5. How Demographics Will Shape The 2016 Election (12/5/15) 1) A small shift in the national vote is all it would take for Republicans to break through Democrats’ supposed “Blue Wall.” If all five of our groups were to shift just 3 percentage points toward the GOP in 2016, Republicans would “flip” Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and win 315 electoral votes. 2) The power of the Latino vote is frequently overstated. 3) Sky-high African-American support and engagement is crucial for Democrats.

6. DEMOGRAPHY FAVORS DEMOCRATS Scenarios A, B, and C assume that voters of each age group, race, and state will show roughly the same turnout rates and partisan preferences as they did in 2012, 2008, and 2004, respectively. The next three are modifications of scenario A: Scenario D, or the “maximum minority turnout” scenario assumes that Hispanics and Asians will turn out to vote at the same rate as their white counterparts did in 2012. Scenario E assumes that a higher share of Hispanics, Asians, and other “new minorities” will support the GOP within all age groups and states than they did in 2012. Scenario F is what Brookings’ Frey, who co-authored the report, calls the “Donald Trump Dream” scenario. In this one, a higher share of white voters will support the Republican candidate than they did in 2012.

7. “The First Day Project” Trump plans to spend hours signing papers to erase the Obama Presidency. Campaign Commitments: • Repeal Affordable Care Act • Appoint conservative pro-life Supreme Court Justice • Build Mexican border wall • End Executive Orders and begin mass deportations • Torture terrorism suspects and “take out their families” • Pull out of Paris Accord on greenhouse gases • Ban visas from “troubled” Muslim nations • Step back from NATO unless other countries pay up • Drop opposition to nuclear proliferation • Establish partnerships with Putin’s Russia • End trade agreements • Impose tariffs on China and others

8. Gritting Our Teeth and Giving President Trump a ChanceNicholas Kristof NYT • Trump is inexperienced and makes extreme statements, but he’s not ideological. • Democrats are too quick to caricature Trump supporters as deplorables. Sure, some are racists or misogynists, but many are good people who had voted for Obama in the past. • Trump was absolutely right that the economic system is broken for ordinary Americans, especially working-class men. The time for ranting is over, and it’s time to accept the inevitable. Trump has surprised us in many ways this year, and let’s hope and pray that he will stun us once again by repairing the tears he made in our social fabric. Let’s give him a chance — for those are our democratic values. And if he falls short, let’s hold him accountable — for the sake of those same values.

13. The red ink has led to the collapse of two-thirds of 23 new nonprofit health plans that were established with federal loan dollars to increase competition in the state exchanges where customers shop for policies. And UnitedHealth Group is largely getting out of the Obamacare business because of anticipated losses of $650 million this year

14. Post-Election Grief Is Real Here’s What You Can Do About It 1. Allow yourself to feel everything you are feeling. 2. Do not let others tell you that your feelings are not valid. 3. Anger is normal, but use it constructively. 4. Do not be surprised if you find yourself replaying events obsessively. 5. Take time to rest. 6. Take note of your anxiety level. 7. Limit your media intake. 8. Seek support.

15. Donald Trump is going to be President. This is what we do next. John Schwartz

16. If you can, make politics one of the centers of your life. Twenty years ago U.S. elites had so successfully depoliticized America that simply caring about politics was like having a super-weird hobby. • White liberals must step up right now in the right way. The role for older, richer white liberals will be . . . to support other people’s priorities, put up money for things they don’t control and use all of their social power to protect Muslims, immigrants, and other minorities • We need a story. The core belief of the technocrats who run the Democratic Party is that people rationally evaluate facts and then make decisions. In reality, humans all have an emotional, internally consistent story running inside them all the time about the world and their place in it – and if they encounter any “facts” that contradict this story, the facts just bounce right off. • We don’t need a third party, we just need a party. When and where are the next Democratic and Republican Party meetings in your neighborhood?

17. We need non-corporate media. • Be not downhearted. Don’t give up. As bone-chilling as this moment is, it also proves that no one’s in charge and just about everything in America’s up for grabs. After all, Bernie Sanders looks like he’s appearing in a role where the casting notice read: “Male, 70s, white, must look exactly like the caricature of a socialist from 1980s right-wing agitprop.” Yet from a standing start he almost beat Hillary Clinton. • Barack Obama gets one day off. As Bernie Sanders put it this spring, Obama’s “biggest mistake” was organizing a huge grassroots army and then telling all those loyal followers, “Thank you very much for electing me, I’ll take it from here.” • Be good to yourself and everyone else. Since we’re stuck with each other, let’s be kind.

19. Women’s Income as Percentage of Men’s Number of female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies College Graduation