Bravo, Farhad, for saying what needed desperately to be said. And kudos to your editors at the Times, too. It must be a hard pill to swallow over there on Eighth Avenue, to have one of your more lucid columnists pointing the finger where it should have been pointed all along: at the internal rot that's ruining this country. It's America that's screwed up. The question is, how do we fix it? A more serious question might be, can it even be fixed?
101
Very interesting and realistic take.
For all intents and purposes, the author of this column got it right.
***** Trump is celebrating and will try and sell this report as a campaign aide.
Funny, as I was reading this, it bought to mind the mindset of Trump and
singer R Kelly.
I won my case, 'I beat the rap' said Kelly.
Said Trump 'There was no collusion'.
With both men, it matters not that they possibly did these things they were accused of, the 'law' said I didn't (or more to the point, couldn't prove it.)
5
Claire Macskill lost because of Rachel Maddow but the 40 house seats that flipped were in spite of MSNBC? The collective complicity that the very very bad media poisoned so many with must not have worked on the house races. Maybe Claire lost because she called Bernie and Warren crazy?
I mean is your idea that the Mueller investigation sucked
sucked sucked
up all the political energy and thus cost the dems a what 75 seat flip in the house? What's the unemployment rate again? By the time the final votes of '18 were counted all dems thought they did better than most anyone imagined they would on election night '16. Rachel Maddow has too many viewers right? Our elections were attacked by Russia and our media covered the story, sorry if that bugs you or something.
4
From Manjoo's description, you would think Americans would be fleeing our nation the way Venezuelans are fleeing theirs.
Instead, we still have thousands of people a day desperate to get into our country.
Do we get things wrong? Yes. Democracy is messy and capitalism is far from perfect. But if Manjoo and other Democrats keep pitching the image of our nation as such a mismanaged hellhole, they should count on losing the election in 2020. And then start looking for a better country to live in. Good luck.
7
... and... once again--a pundit jumps to conclusions. I guess the NYT's requires him to comment. But, hell, when a man goes to court because of evidence of wrong-doing and the jury lets him off--think O J--does that mean that he didn't do it? Or, does that mean, according to so many "neutral" sounding pundits, that we should not have taken the information to court--i.e., investigate it-- in the first place?! But remember, the Republicans did this! Republican House and Senate set up this investigation and a Republican adjudicator--Mueller--investigated it. And the "victim"--Phrump, I guess--kept lying--blatantly so. Why would anyone have given him the benefit of the doubt? So now, those of us who saw a great deal of smoke--Manafort, etc.--are supposed to stay in our homes and not investigate if a fire existed next door? And that we should apologize for questioning the neighbor where the smoke was coming from because there wasn't a fire? What is up with that? Really?
10
How can the Times run this drivel? To offhandedly refer to the president as a “racist demagogue”and later impugn the millions of Americans who voted him into office, how can you tolerate this kind of yellow journalism? Believe me, ever so slowly you are destroying the reputation of The NY Times for objectivity and fairness.
8
Is the author of this piece serious? Let me spell this out for everybody in the starkest terms possible:
1) Russia bought some Facebook ads.
2) The Democrats had incriminating things in the E-mails that the Russians hacked and released.
3) The Democrats chose to run Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate.
Regarding each of the above:
1) Yawn.
2) If there had been nothing incriminating in the Democrat's E-mails, there would have been nothing to release. For this reason, the E-mail thing is the Democrats' own fault.
3) Hillary Clinton is anathema to many, many people in this country. How bad? Bad enough that the American chose to elect Donald Trump instead.
The bottom line:
The Democrats lost because they screwed up. They misread everything about the moment and the American people. They lost because they deserved to lose.
And, many, many people in this country were so tired of politicians that they decided to give a celebrity businessman a try. That's not a comment on the failure of democracy, it's a comment on the failure of the people, the government, and our broken system as a whole.
(And, based on the Democrat's response to the Mueller report, they have learned nothing.)
Maybe our politicians need to reflect on that for a while?
16
The liberals were licking their chops over this for 2 years .. Talk about "counting the chickens" .. heck they didn't even have any eggs !!! Yet they were so confident "something" was going to implicate the President. Well they were wrong and Trump will most likely be re-elected in 2020. He delivered for the GOP and the economy is humming along .. With all that in Trump's favor - tell me if the liberal agenda will defeat Trump:
Here's what they want .. and Good Luck!
1. Medicare for all
2. The Green New Deal
3. Amnesty for 12 million "undocumented immigrant workers"
4. Gun control
5. Universal income
6. Slavery reparations
7. Free homes and college education for "asylum seekers"
8. Higher taxes on the middle class [Warren wants families who earn over $150K to pay more]
9. Return California to Mexico
10. Better movie roles for transgender actors
7
Vengeful and nasty a president who would trash an American war hero while praising a brutal dictator is just beginning to destroy our democracy in another term folks will not recognize the fascist country we will become.
4
Seriously? Have Democrats been so stuck in their bubble that they haven't realized there were so many reasons besides all this "collusion" that brought Trump to power? Was this the Democratic fantasy? That big bad Trump is all just a bad dream, and if they tried hard enough, they'll impeach him on grounds of collusion?
Trump actually spoke to the disaffected working class of the Midwest. He lied on all of it, but it's the fact that he at least showed sympathy towards their plight that he won. Hillary Clinton turned on her own base: the union workers and the working class. Social justice warfare and "I'm with her" was never going to be enough to convince people who lost their jobs at the steel mill or on the factory floor that Hillary was best for them. And before I'm labeled a bigot and a racist; think about this. What change did Clinton promise? What policies would she have implemented that would have garnered her more support among the white working class, of which much has been said these past few years? Trump promised to bring their jobs back and end the trade deals that screwed these workers over. He lied on nearly all of these points, but it seemed better to these people than Hillary.
Democrats need to take a long, hard look in the mirror if they really believe the only reason Trump won was because he was a Manchurian candidate. And we better do it quick too because 2020 is next year...
13
This is the first, and only, commentary I have read that satisfies the first rule of affecting change, the acceptance of reality. Accept that the narcissist in chief will be around and then work around that fact. Congress, forget everything except legislation that will save us, our world, and our childrens' world. As for the rest of us, turn off the entertainment called cable news. Let's all DO something other than performing or watching public self-stimulation!
430
@ThirdWay
Agreed! We all have better things to do than to be enthralled by endless pundits trying to figure out Mueller's next move. They were all wrong! Why did I watch?
21
@ThirdWay
The reality is that among the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump was 58% of the white voting majority including 62% of white men and 54% of white women who knew who Donald Trump was and was not and voted accordingly.
While among the 66 million Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton were 92% of the black voting minority including 88% of black men and 95% of black women.
Moreover smiling and smirking Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are quite happy with their efforts to get Trump in the White House.
As long as Trump has a majority in the Senate and the Supreme Court of the United States cable news is the least of America's problems.
28
@ThirdWay
I don't get the difference between cable news pundits & NYT columnists & commenters. It's all just vaporware anyway.
10
Mr. Manjoo got it wrong, and he is not very honest reporting the sudden awakening to the reality of journalistic manipulation. No, it wasn't the delusional belief that "The ease with which a racist, misogynist, serial con man had slipped past every gatekeeper in American life suggested something deeply sick at the core of our society" that gave the fuel to the mass psychosis of desperation and denial. It was the Democratic Party's dismal misunderstanding of the American feelings of anger and frustration brought about by eight years of the Obama presidency. And equally guilty was the press (NYTimes included) that jumped with enthusiastic abandon to "give track" to a fabricated story of a Russia-Trump collusion. It was surely more entertaining than trying to understand and explain how a personality like Trump can resonate with the legions of "deplorables" wearing MAGA hats. In this self serving charade the real loser is the press. Average Americans who felt the lesser of two evils was Trump, and saw the Mueller investigation as a form of political vindictiveness and punishment, will now be more inclined to give him another four years, in spite of what the media writes about him. The media has been exposed as just another American institution, imperfect and subject to abuse.
7
Let’s see.
• So the dozen Russian intelligence agents who went to the Trump Tower that everyone lied about despite email threads and photographic evidence and finally, admissions under the threat of perjury, just really talked about adopting little Ivans and Sachas?
• So the Russian sparrow who slept and bribed her way into the upper management of the NRA just really love handing out huge amounts of money and sleeping with dirty old men?
• So the two active FSB agents who went to the Oval Office with neither oversight from the CIA nor coverage from the American press the day after Comey was fired were just there to admire the decor and sample the free apples by the coffee table?
• So the closed door meetings in Helsinki and Buenos Aires that Putin secured by a mere come hither glance at Trump’s direction with again, no respect to protocol, no respect to written records, not even translator’s transcripts, were actually just two world leaders doing small talk?
Well, you might be interested in buying this bridge and rescuing this princess. And don’t forget, you can cure cancer by doing this one trick.
Treason committed in plain sight is still treason.
“Putin said he didn’t do it and I believe him.” — Donald J. Trump, siding with Russia over 17 American security, military, and intelligence agencies.
It would not be a surprise if he seeks Russian help in investigating those that investigated him. And Republicans will be OK with it.
13
Trump didn’t need to collide actively with Russia- it is clear they had a favored candidate and were very efficient in using social media as a megaphone to sow discord and influence the votes if undecided voters, particularly in swing states. We shouldn’t downplay the affect of the disinformation machine known as the Internet Research Agency: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump/amp
5
An honest summary of two wasted journalistic years - the US and UK "liberal" media has made itself a laughing stock. As for "Russian agents sowing discord" in the US and UK - what dowe think our agents are doing in Russia, in Venezuela and in any country that refuses to obey US/UK orders.
Now let`s analyse the Trump/Netanyahu/AIPAC approach to peace in the Middle East.
5
"It's our own fault we elected Trump."?
And THAT is your apology to Trump.
You are like a woman saying, "contrary to my accusations, my husband never cheated on me. It is MY fault that I married him."
If that is an apology, what is an insult?
You really are an embarrassment to your profession.
2
It is time for this demagoguery to end and Mr. Manjoo to pack his bias bags and disrespect for the office of the President and end this shrill diatribe of moral depravity. His rhetoric is nothing but divisive which is endemic to his leftism. When his verbal treachery is exposed, he just tacks a new course and continues to gibe with no apology or disguising a contempt for truth. Mr. Manjoo has charted a path of pure destruction born in the cauldron of ideological intolerance.
4
The "shambolic democracy" with "unfit" candidates results from some of the following
1. Clinton ethical and moral lapses
2. slogan of too many Democrats " No white man for President"
3. criticism of Kamala Harris "Is she Black enough"?
4. Elizabeth Warren's falsely claiming to be Native American
5. Cory Booker spectacle as Spartacus
6. Trump
3
The only COLLUSION was between Hillary Clinton and the DNC! There is no such thing as American shortcomings--there ARE shortcomings of our sham representation! The Democratic Party is a party of failure, greed and hypocrisy. They will say "no mommy, I did not eat the cake!" with cake all over their silly faces. Democrats have been in sheer *denial* that Donald Trump beat them SO BADLY. Hillary won the popular vote, you say? Guess what! That doesn't count! The author of this article insists on "the horror...the horror...the horror...!" The only TRUE horror is the absolute pettiness and sore loser-ishness of Democrats practically nationwide! It's an embarrassment. No more straws to grasp at. No more Russian shadow monsters. The truth is ugly when you believe what ONLY YOU WANT TO BELIEVE without looking at the facts!
Jobs not mobs in 2020
5
Time will tell if Trump is worse than Nixon, who conspired with the South Vietnamese government to kill peace talks in 1968, all to help him and Henry gain power. The led to the deaths of thousands of American troops.
It will also tell if he is worse than George W. Bush, who lied us into an insane war in Iraq, a war where many thousands of Americans died or were terribly injured, and trillions of dollars, eventually were squandered.
But honestly, I am pretty sure we don't need any more time to come to the conclusion that Trump is the worse human being ever to sit in the White House.
And he isn't done, for it is still possible he will let North Korea skate until it has built a much more powerful nuclear armament, and it is likely he will allow Netanyahu to encase into law the apartheid imprisonment of the Palestinian State.
And yes, like Nixon and like Bush, he just may get re-elected, which says the American people are partially, well, nuts. That would be the part that is low income and votes for someone who, in his budget, is doing what he can to murder Medicare and Medicaid, and Obamacare.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
7
You've identified part of the delusion. But the endless cries of "Racist," and "Misogynist" are as delusional, and as utterly at odds with reality, almost as preposterous as claims he is a Nazi. Discounting Omarosa, no one who knows Donald Trump personally, including any number of blacks and women who have known and worked for him for decades, validates those slurs. True, he rejects political correctness in all its forms, and that is one of the things that attracted so many normal Americans to him.
Coastal intellectuals cannot fathom how deeply those of us in flyover country detest the endless assault on our values and our patriotism by self-absorbed denizens of the liberal echo chamber; how offended we are by self-righteous demands that we allow adult men who "identify as female" into our daughters' bathrooms and locker rooms, that we refrain from calling fundamentalist Islamist terror by its true name, that we may not expose our school children to their Judeo-Christian heritage in schools that require them to study the Quran, that we are not smart enough to decide what and how much health insurance we want and can afford. Nor how deeply revolted we were by the nomination of Hillary Clinton and the insistence that the presidency was hers, as if by some divine right.
You will never understand why we elected Donald Trump, and will do so again in 2020.
6
I am a little curious. When the author concludes,"Collusion was a seductive and convenient delusion. " was he actually seduced and deluded? He never told us. The racist allegation he actually does make falls flat in the face of President Trump's enormous love for his Jewish daughter and grandchildren. After all the Jews have been the most hated group in world history even while cloistered in ghettos. Six million of them were actually murdered, two million of whom were children. Staggering...
4
The faster the Democrats can let go of the Mueller findings, the better. The record of this administration is no less scandalous and tawdry than anything Mueller's team investigated.
The Democrats would be better off focusing on on the record of this administration, and ignore the village idiot in the White House.
The environmental roll backs, regulatory roll backs, North Korea and the other laughable foreign policy debacles, the effort to take away people's health care . . and on and on.
Any one of those issues, in the right hands will insure that 2 years from now, this will all seem like just a bad dream.
We just need the right pair of hands.
4
you say " it`s Our own fault..we elected Trump"
but ..I didn`t..
for very obvious reasons
the guy`s ..a caricature of a very bad..
....used car salesman...
We`ve known the guy was a weasel,,
since we saw him ..on guest appearances ..on Letterman
in the 1980`s
I`m sorry if it sound s too partisan
but just who.. the heck voted for him..and how many?
is the worst indictment we could face
is the worst testament..
4
I wholeheartedly agree with Manjoo here. And I’d say that us lefties and liberals better pay some attention and get over ourselves (not to mention stop looking for alibis and scapegoats) before we punt another one.
Fact is, WE did about as much to elect Trump as Putin did, and he did a lot.
33
Obviously, Putin and Trump never colluded. Not because Trump wouldn’t, but because Putin is former KGB and he knows Trump is too stupid to be a dependable co-conspirator. Schmoozing was/is the weapon of choice.
3
You make a lot of bold conclusions here. Duly elected - not so sure. We know that Russia interfered significantly with a big assist going to Facebook and bots to spread the fake and incendiary news like wildfire.
And as far as I know, you nor anyone else has actually read this report. 4 pages from a hand-picked AG who himself said that Trump wasn't exonerated tells me very little but just enough to know that he isn't above board. If this were a democrat trying to get away with all that he has, the republicans would be going to the ends of the earth to bury them.
2
Thank you, Mr Manjoo for this clear-sighted column.
Investigations to determine criminality matter, but the real scandal has always been in plain sight - that a significant number of American electorate voted for this man with their eyes wide open. Trump's bigotry, misogyny, and utter lack of integrity had been on public display for 30 years prior to the election, and nearly half of voters chose him as their representative.
And please do not "but Hillary." But nothing. My cat would make a better president than this composite of humanity's worst instincts.
4
OMG, the Mueller report was never about collusion because that's not a legal thing. Everyone has let Trump control the perception.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/collusion-meaning-trump-.html
3
This is a very good essay that gets at the fundamental problem: America is broken and Trump is merely a symptom of the general degeneracy of the American system.
The question though is what possible solution could there be? The investigation gave us a false hope that there'd be a way to check Trump, when it's abundantly clear that our other branches of government and our electoral system are not capable of reliably checking him.
Many of us are waking up to the possibility that there is no solution. The very fact that our political system is so broken means that we cannot fix our system through the system. I fear we need to go outside the system—general strikes, secession, rebellion—who knows what the answer is. But as long as we wait hoping either for Congress or the Courts to save us, for elections to save us, or for some deus ex machina like Robert Mueller to save us, we are sure to continue on our path of precipitous decline.
48
@617to416
It's interesting reading the tactics of the Yellow Vests in France ("Among the Gilets Jaunes", by Jeremy Harding, London Review of Books, 3/21/19). The group has refused to align with any political party, and are now in actual dialogue with the Macron administration. They are tackling the big questions - income inequality and climate change. Perhaps they are a road map for us.
7
It's time for the Democratic Party to let go and move on.
Trump is a bad president. He's an awful president. I did not vote for him. I would like him gone. But, absent extraordinary circumstances, in a functioning democracy we get rid of bad presidents through elections, not investigations and impeachment.
Ever since Clinton both parties have tossed aside substantial policy disagreement and political norms in favor of trying to "delegitimize" the other party's legally and fairly elected leader through conspiracy theories, investigations, protests, and hyperbole. First it was Clinton at the hands of the GOP. Then the left was up in arms about Bush as illegitimate. Then the birthers and Tea Party came out for Obama. Now we have Democrats refusing to accept the conclusions of the Mueller Report.
This needs to end. Just because you don't like a president's policies or politics, it doesn't make them an illegitimate pretender or an emerging dictator. Trump is not going to turn us into Nazi Germany any more than the next Democratic president is going to turn us into Venezuela.
Politics should be about moving the policy needle a little this way, and then a little that way, with a lot of compromise and negotiation in between. It should not be an existential battle for tribal survival.
Yet that is what it has become, and BOTH parties and their rabid "bases," constantly baying for handcuffs and spouting hyperbole, are at fault.
We need to get back to the middle.
28
Democrats "nominated a deeply unpopular candidate?" Deeply unpopular to whom? Primaries are nothing if not popularity contests. The candidate with the most delegates gets the party nomination. Clinton also got the most votes of both candidates in the Presidential election. She's also been won the Gallup poll dozens of times over decades for the most popular woman in America.
170
Just to add, this ‘deeply unpopular candidate who lacked any novel vision’ got more votes than any white man has ever received in any American election.
If anyone thinks HRC ‘forgot’ to campaign anywhere, perhaps worth reconsidering whether she might have been directing her efforts exactly where polling directed for the most impact. Does anyone really think she’s the kind of person who knowingly leaves things to chance?? Maybe the polls were wrong but HRC never ‘mails it in’.
She lost the election, and we’re all paying the price. I’m more inclined to blame a credulous midwestern electorate than I am to blame HRC. Given the clear and present danger posed by Trump, anybody who did not vote for HRC for whatever reason bears some responsibility for the disaster we’re living through.
If we’re going to blame her we might conclude that all we need is a different messenger, and if we make that mistake we increase the chances that Trump’s Tribe can use the strange leverage of the electoral college to ’own the libs’ again. They seem only too happy to vote against their own interests to do so.
Sad days.
65
@Mark
The GOP worked against her
The Alt-Right worked against her
Two powerful men credibly accused of sexual assault worked against her (Trump and Assange)
Her Democratic primary challenger worked against her
The "Progressive" Left worked against her
"Progressive" delegates at the Democratic National Convention chanted against her
Russia worked against her
The FBI worked against her
Wikileaks worked against her
Mainstream media worked against her
Fake news worked against her
Hostile sexism worked against her
Benevolent sexism worked against her
Unconscious misogynist implicit bias worked against her
Stockholm Syndrome worked against her
This highly qualified, intelligent woman, never charged with any crime, who devoted her entire adult life to public service was attacked from all sides without and also from the misogyny within so many of us.
And Hillary STILL won more votes than her opponent and won more votes for President than any white man in history.
32
A "racist, misogynist, serial con man." I agree that compared to The Donald, Hillary comes across as the more qualified candidate, one with well-thought-out positions on the issues and a WOMAN who was thoroughly trained and deserving of the Presidency.
A "deeply unpopular candidate." Sure, only if you discount her three million vote margin of support. It would take a person over two months to count to three billion. Who could dismiss the judgment of that many independent voters as quickly?
14
Dammit, yes.
3
I read this twice to be sure I didn’t overlook something. . .
As a (former?) technology reporter I am surprised that you and your editors forgot / missed / ignored / overlooked Facebook's (versus "tech giants") in this analysis.
As The Times reported. . . https://nyti.ms/2UV27qf
86 million accounts were “played” by Prof. Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and the IRA.
Hopefully our government won’t “forget” to fine them for their egregious violation of campaign law by taking rubles for political ads.
2
and it was you, the writers of columns and op ed pieces that were in the forefront of the delusion...which is why myself, (who for many years was a journalist based in the middle east) will only give a peremptory glance at most writing in the ny times these days...shallow and pack driven pc drivel...
3
All true but anyone can be a visionary post ex-facto. Why did Mr. Manjoo not have it in him to write this column a couple of weeks ago?
4
And, having read this piece, you are still delusional. The country has never been better, stronger, and more on the right track.
1
Until I see the full Mueller report, there is no proof there was no collusion.
Best piece about this issue i've seen in this paper so far, sir. How can anyone could have taken that piece of toilet paper that was the Steele dossier seriously.
"...what we all might have done with our time instead."
Speak for yourselves. I spent virtually no time reading about the Mueller inquiry. I actually spend very little time on Trump either. What i'm interested in is what he's going to be replaced with. It actually matters - going back to the Repubs and Third Way Dems who got us here in the first place will most likely bring the same sort of result on down the line.
1
I am speechless at the NYT’s editorial staff for allowing such inaccurate drivel. Barr’s summary states that there wasn’t evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that members of the Trump campaign tacitly or expressly conspired with the Russian government. It did not say that members of the Trump campaign did not collude or attempt to collude with Russians to influence the election (of which there is ample publicly known evidence). Come on people. There’s a BIG distinction.
1
Re: "t's our own fault we elected Trump".
Not entirely. His economic policies were endorsed by Paul Krugman - the NY Times hard hitting opinion writer, and a former economist
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html
and in politics, as the Clinton campaign realised is the economy stupid, that counts
As to Collusion was seductive
It was much more than that. Important opinion makers were sure collusion took place - before the report was issued.
"There’s really no question about Trump/Putin collusion, and Trump in fact continues to act like Putin’s puppet. The only question is how high the indictments will reach,"
Paul Krugman , NY Times, 11/17/2017
--
2
The big picture here about Trump is not all that complicated, folks.
America is an entertainment culture. The news business is now an entertainment medium (the lead news story this hour is Jussie Smollett, not Robert Mueller), owned by the giant movie entertainment companies.
And of course Trump is an entertainer par excellence, by way of The Apprentice and Mark Burnett Productions. Trump was deliberately brought into politics by the cable networks in 2016 and subsidized with free air time in order to spice up ratings in the dull Hillary vs. Jeb race. Since the 1970s the news media have endlessly publicized and promoted Trump for his audience drawing power.
With Trump's election, the takeover of the political system by the entertainment industry is now complete. Conventional politics is dead, as is conventional political journalism.
The "tectonic shift in the news media" is simply the transformation of news from print based objectivity to electronic entertainment, as prophesied decades ago by Marshall Mcluhan and Neil Postman.
Welcome to Huxley's Brave New World. Some Facebook "soma" anyone?
2
I agree that we need to be honest with ourselves that, whatever else may have contributed to Trump's win, we as a country largely did this to ourselves. Where I disagree is that this hasn't been said to death; that this isn't what is driving the wave of new political activism; that this isn't the main reason why the news is continuing to cover Trump's every concerning tweet even though we know it also amplifies his message, because we know that the alternative is that people get distracted by the rest of their lives, are able to forget about the horrifying reality of this mistake we've made, and then return to the polls in 2020 ready to make the same mistake again.
I also disagree that we really had any choice but to shine a bright light on the possibility that the head of our government was beholden to a hostile foreign power. Seriously, in what world should that not get top billing, even if the investigation finds no collusion in the end?
The Latin words on American currency translate into "Out of many, one."
My opinion is that's no longer true.
Where's the purity in Democracy these days? So many in Congress are working so hard to erase it. Examples? Here's a few. The Republican efforts to make it more difficult to vote. Money is free speech. Corporations are people. Gerrymandering. The groundless attacks on immigration. Etc., etc.
Out of many...many, would be more appropriate.
Also keep in mind.. The average American voter isn't that smart .. 95% emotion and 5% brain .. Trump barnstormed the country in his jet .. campaigned in the airport hanger then off to another venue.. from a cost savings standpoint it was genius. The man knew how to market and American's fell for it hook line and sinker .. Most white American's are racist [+75% have racial bias] so he threw in some anti-immigrant fervor and presto the next POTUS.
If the Democrats run on Unity... then get ready for Trump 2020.
I don't like it anymore than you.. but that's who we are and will will take more than a liberal platform or personality to sway the status quo.
Since Russian collusion is becoming a dead-end fantasy, the Democrats will now proceed to harp on the electoral college, or reparations, or AIPAC, or getting rid of ICE, or blackface, just about anything to avoid speaking of the real issues that voters care about.
It is quite possible that the people of flyover country don't care who is in the Oval Office as long as they feel he is listening to them.
The hubris, pedantry and arrogance of this opinion piece gives me nauseas...but keep it up; this is why Trump won.
Publish the ENTIRE Muller report if there is nothing to hide. We DO NOT want to see a half-baked SUMMARY written by a Trump appointee, put in place by the Liar-in-Chief for the whole purpose of squashing the truth!
1
Wow! Amazing insight!
Thank you, Farhad Manjoo. My thoughts exactly.
We we we. Speak for yourself, please. Same goes for David Brooks.
Still a whole lot of finger pointing. You need to look more deeply at the faux liberty peddled by the the Left in America.
If in 2020 the Democrats keep harping on race, gender, and other ways to divide the electorate, they'll lose again. Best approach is to ignore Manjoo and other pundits like him.
1
Mr. Manjoo, your column is so right on. The disaster thrust upon us by Trump's rise to power is soley the fault of the America people. It isn't even all Trump's fault; he just happened to be at the right place at the right time.
We can hardly blame the Russians for taking advantage of our stupidity, can we? That's what competition is about and that's what the U.S. and the Russians have been doing since 1945, much to the world's disadvantage
1
The big target is big businesses after big profits! Let’s break up these parasitic corporations that lobby our government and corrupt our republic!
1
Keep on holding the unwashed masses of fly-over country in contempt. After all, it has been working so well for you.
You nailed it, man.
"But don’t overlook the headline finding."
It's a headline and a finding written by a Trump toad and projected through his prism of bias. It's shocking to see journalists falling over themselves to legitimize Barr's abrupt spin as though it is an accurate portrayal of what is surely an exhaustively detailed and highly nuanced legal presentation by Mr. Mueller.
2
If you want to know why people voted for Trump - then ASK them!! Stop talking only among fellow leftist liberal social justice warriors. Trump voters are more than happy enough to tell you exactly what it was that made them choose Trump or reject the Democrats. Those can and do include many rational, well-thought positions.
Just because you don’t like the choice doesn’t mean that it wasn’t rational for the person who made it.
There is also the emotional factor. In the last three years of Obama we had riots, assassinations of police, rampant leftist sharing of easily debunked nonsense on social media, the whole college campus forbidden-speakers thing.
Face it. You did it to yourselves. Freedom loving patriots rejected the Democrats and continue to reject them. If you want those votes back then change your SJW, Jacobin, Red Brigade ways.
2
The writer is ignorant of too much. The electoral college among other things was to prevent large sections of the country being ignored by coastal populations. And exploited by big capitalists and bankers and strategic materials miners, drillers, and then stuck with the coal sludges and almost eternal subterranean fires surfacing here and there, cyanide leakages, fracking solvents and aircraft manufacturing fluids polluting the aquifers, . . . In other words, the rape of the lands of the hinterlands
by the coastal barons.
And the corporate ‘farmers’ for quick profits and shareholder happiness rape the soil that often takes 100-1000 years per inch to accumulate and let it run off rather than spend a bit more in contour farming and other soil maintenance.
Now if the Canary Islands’ volcano soil slippage happens quickly and that 600’ wave at 600 mph heads for the East Coast, there will be no survivors east of the Appalachians. And if The New Yorker’s 1917 article on, in an ~.1 sec all land west of the Cascades moves 30’ west, we will lose the coastal population of the N W and especially liberal Seattle.
California? You know it’s catastrophes.
So Clinton in her wifely arrogance wrote off the Midwest and the lower incomes rather than listen to her husband who was fairly good about national politics. (Personally, I think she was a fine legislator and senator who understood compromise. But never elect a legislator or small state governor to be chief executive of a huge nation.)
1
Collision was going to be extremely hard to prove but let’s not minimize Russia’s role in the election. The flood of fake news on Facebook in particular surely had a huge influence on the election. We focus on voter suppression but what about low turn-out and in particular people who couldn’t vote for Hillary because of the constant stream of fake news about her, having it come down to a false choice of two terrible candidates.
In the end it was a pile of straws that broke the camels back and got us this mess. Hillary was a terrible campaigner. Wiener somehow gave the email server story more life, Fox suppressed real news about illegal payoffs to porn stars. Trump appealed to nativist populism, and engaged a huge swath of the electorate that had been ignored by both parties. But in the end the key was the barrage of fake news that kept countless people home because they just couldn’t vote for either candidate.
It was probably an attempt to bring down the US Presidency by the Russians, Chinese, CIA, or telecommunication companies by introducing the same seductive delusions that schizophrenics encounter as hallucinations by invisible imaginary voice broadcasts into the heads of the authorities that cannot distinguish between delusional thoughts and reality. Or maybe, the authorities smoked pot in college and affected their brains somehow.
Brillliant
You can’t write a piece about the Special Counsel’s report after only reading the AG’s PR press release.
1
Yet another op-ed by The New York Times that puts the blame for high expectations regarding the Mueller Report on average Americans rather than blaming the real culprit: The media.
Cheer up fellow Democrats! Just because Trump may not have colluded with Russia doesn't mean we don't have plenty of other things about him to be unthankful for. He still is the same narcissistic, ignorant, untruthful, petty, impulsive, arrogant, racist and mean-spirited sorry excuse for a human being, let alone a President, that he was last week. So look at the dark side and realize that there still is no reason why any half-sane person would vote for him in 2020.
1
Mr. Manjoo is right to say that Democrats blame anyone but themselves for their election loss. However, he himself does the same thing, blaming the mainstream news media, Republican tolerance of Nazis, Comey, "tech giants", and Clinton's failure to campaign in Michigan.
Liberals pour such bitter vitriole on Trump because they consider him - and, by extension, his voters - their moral inferior. The tens of millions of voters who voted for Trump (and many of those voters in the rust belt had voted for Obama in 2012) are for Democrats, "deplorables", to use Clinton's word.
The people at the top in the US are highly intolerant and contemptuous of anyone who does not share their values and policy objectives. Yet, their defensiveness before Trump and attempt to delegitimize his victory by criminalizing it shows that they actually do not feel very confident about their values, and are afraid to engage their political opponents in dialgoue. They don't feel that they can win a political argument, and instead call their opponents names, and see an election outcome as a "tragedy", rather than asking how they win voters over to their side.
1
Spot on. This is the most honest and accurate analysis of the big picture: Why/how Trump won, how the liberal media and DNC establishment helped him win, and the delusion of liberals seeking nonsense conspiracy theories of Russian "meddling" instead of facing up to the hard facts and working to change things. I can't believe the NYT published this column since they are guilty of all the same promotion of Trump Mr. Manjoo accused the liberal media as a whole of engaging in. And they are still doing it. The entire main page every freaking day is filled with stories about Trump, his latest tweet or stupid inanity uttered at a press conference. This is all at the expense of other news. Stop doing this. Give a sober daily run-down of Trump related news and fill your page with other news stories, national, international. Without somehow relating it to Trump in a gotcha! fashion. Don't help him win a second term. And keep publishing a "diversity of opinion" in the op-ed section. More from Mr. Manjoo, please.
1
Collusion is collaboration with the intention to commit a crime. Trumps chumminess and private chats with Putin and his defense of Putin's evilness may have looked like collusion, but it was all really just Trump being Trump.
Stupidity is not a crime, nor is ignorance.
I agree with Mr Manjoo that Trump was not elected because of Russian influence. But he is now clearly working (either willfully or as a useful idiot) as an agent of Russia and against the interests of the US and our allies. I thought Mueller had been given latitude to investigate these concerns, which have always been of much more concern to me than the Russian meddling. Did Mueller not investigate these ongoing activities? If not, will any part of our government do so?
Your sub heading to your piece reveals the truer delusion
in stating "we" you commence to argue that some kind of
American unity exists..... it does not.. We did not elect the President; a select productive discerning element of the populace brought fresh power to the swamp... Those over buttering their bread for decades feel a mite threatened
fearful that the gravy train is about to dry up.... Democrat
Liberal Socialist philosophy and politic is light years distant
from proper direction.. In an "us and them" America ... correction of all of you - "thems" to a right way of thinking
is the country's only future hope
1
From what source are you claiming a knowledge of the Mueller Report?
The Barr?
1
Where's the testimony of trump campaign web guru who ran the bots; Facebook ads and twitter clutter and disinformation that helped swing the election to a man who doesn't even start his oval office day until 11 AM and spends most of it zonked in front of Fox News?
Mueller investigated the wrong crime. Of course Trump’s gang was unable to orchestrate anything. Putin was in charge of hacks, trolls, smears and all things anti HRC. Trump’s crime against America was not colluding with the sly FSB...it was submitting to a quid pro quo, indebted & intimidated by Putin’s gang. All policies since gaining office have been gifts to Putin and betrayals of US interests.
Mueller was not asked to investigate If Trump was blackmailed or simply a greedy dumb asset- but we know he was up to his neck in Russian bail outs!
3
It’s not our job to determine whether or not there was illegality,” says Dean Baquet. Perhaps. It is perhaps not surprising that those who promoted partisanship refuse to be accountable for the failure of their hoped-for outcomes and predictions (a basic no-no for investigative journalism).
Throwing all eggs into one basket by promoting one-string political violinists, while downplaying and ignoring probity and caution can only lead to the long-term loss of credibility.
Stop saying we elected trump. We did not. He did not win the popular vote. At least 3 million people in this country did not want him to be president. Stop saying we wasted 2 years. Crimes have been committed, people are going to jail, Russians were present in our election. Trump is still a lying creep, and he is not off the hook yet.
1
@Lynn Winning the popular vote is to winning an election like scoring the most yards is to winning a football game. Both are interesting statistics and often, but not always, lead to a victory.
Mr. Trump, despite his many flaws, won the popular vote in the states that count under the current rules. His campaign staff was smarter than Ms. Clinton's in picking where to campaign, and the result showed that.
1
One will find that most Trump bashers who name call Trump voters don't actually know any Trump voters. It's a travesty against the stats that parallel common sense to say that 40% of your fellow citizens are automatically stupider or less caring than you because of the way they voted. It's self told lie, a delusion, a nonsense.
The fact is, those stupid rubes who voted for Trump were AHEAD of the American good government loving curve, and it is my Liberal side who are now playing catch up. Trump was a protest vote against the GOP. Ten or so GOP heavyweights were right there to be picked, and they were all rejected. My fellow Democrats, four years later, are TRYING to accomplish the same move forward past the existing party, and not at all surprising is that it's the old timers in their party trying to stop them.
So in one of those you-had-it-backward ironies of human fate, the Democrats must now accomplish against the machinery what the GOP did in electing Trump: reject the status quo. Yes Trump has turned out to be same old same old, but the GOP did the best with what they had to work with. We are far luckier, we have Sanders.
1
There is a great muddle- Trump has a quid pro quo deal with Putin but no clue how to run the troll mills & Wikileaks release of hacked DNC emails to distract from Trump’s appalling lurid taped boasts ( in retrospect he seemed only able to grab porn stars...) with Billy Bush.
The facts are clear- Trump has promoted pro-Putin policies as if he were both afraid & indebted.
No- dim Donald Jr did not orchestrate a brilliant collusion nor did candidate Trump need to provide anything more than compliance. Mueller investigated the wrong crime.
1
Could you possibly wait for the report to come out before waxing philosophical, pontiff?
Thanks so much.
So well said. Thank you.
1
24-hour news channels and similar are the genesis of this opinion piece. Most of the complaints about journalism regarding the Mueller investigation are the result of confusion about the definition of journalism. Programs running 24-hours a day offering “news” to the public are not journalism though they may contain some. That’s entertainment in competition for viewers which attract advertisers who cover the expenses of producing “news”. They use sensationalism and opinion, not fact. They are not there to inform and better society but to make money. The more drama, the more viewers attracted. Journalism relies upon verified facts only without opinion and serves to inform the public. Actual journalism has contributed only a little to our current problem: we need NO MORE MISLEADING HEADLINES (I don’t have time to read every news story in its entirety and I’m tired of being misinformed by your headlines); MOST important facts must be summarized in the 1st paragraph fleshing out the details in subsequent paragraphs as was done in the age of print so if some of the story had to be cut the editor took it off the end without affecting understanding or leaving readers who didn’t read the entire story misinformed - now busy readers have to do their own cutting; and no mixing commentary into news stories - it’s nice to have context, not nice to have opinion masquerading as fact. I am tired of having two sets of facts in this country. I never tire of the millions of differing opinions
1
Um, I think you forgot to blame the Supreme Court for, well, whatever.
It’s amazing to me that there isn’t a microgram of contrition in this story.
Do you really think that the Democrats’ lurch left had nothing to do with Trump’s election? And that the Socialists running for president won’t hand him four more years?
The delusion continues...
Trump and the Russians - obvious bed-artners to ghet him elected - has taken what for the United States is possibly an uncontrolled descent into dictatorship.
The maniac now says he is vindicated - innocent - it was all a witch hunt. Which to his eight-year-old mind, tells him that he has done nothing wrong and that more - and worse - of the same behavior - will follow, since Trump now knows that nothing and no one can or will stop him.
And if that is not bad enough, his talentless daughter Ivanka has been quoted as saying she will succeed him to the presidency as the next step in the Trump dynasty.
That whole family should be buried deep in the rocks with their fellow lizards and insects. How much nicer a world we would be in today if daddy-dearest and tutor of value systems Fred had never had a child.
1
Bottom line: Russiagate is nothing but a non-sensical bogus mass distraction. Oafish-boorish Trump was selected by the Electoral College by a landslide, in total contradiction of the popular vote, yet those without critical thinking skills or understanding of the electoral system opt for to blame Russia for their own corrupt electoral system. Those who haven't been stripped of their critical thinking skills understand that Trump has done everything contrary to Russia’s interests so far. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to admit that a war criminal Hillary Clinton could not win in spite of having twice the budget Trump had, the whole political machinery, AIPAC, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the CIA, the media, the super PACS, the fossil fuel mafia, Wall Street, Hollywood, Obama and Michelle as cheerleaders, a large part of the Republican Party including the Bushes and even Madonna giving out tricks for free?
1
It is hard for me to understand why anyone is surprised by learning that Russia attempted to influence our elections.
What do you expect the Russians to do? Be supportive of the results of our elections or be indifferent to them?. Those are the only other alternatives.
Why do you think the Russians paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for 20 minute speeches? Why did they donate millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation? Hot flash people! They were trying to influence the then-current Secretary of State and possible future President of the USA.
And it worked!!! They got a Uranium deal.
We can handle the Russians trying to interfere with our elections so long as we prosecute the Clintons and others for selling out the American people.
"We" did not elect Trump -- it wasn't fair and square -- he had help from Russians. Knowingly or unknowingly. The Russians are still at it -- they have not stopped. WI, PA, MI -- how many more states have been compromised. How many more states have fraudulent election activity that we haven't caught yet.
Trump needs to be removed, but an election in 2020 may not do it. A NYTimes piece says that Mueller finished "without finding a criminal conspiracy" -- so the NYTimes knows exactly what is in the The [unreleased] Mueller Report.
Barr showed that Mueller could not find a direct conspiracy with the "Russian Government" -- Mueller said nothing about a lack of conspiracy with people outside of the Russian Gov.
Yes, it is disappointing that the Democrats and the media were as wrong about Trump's collusion as it was about championing Hillary's assent to the Presidency. Their perception of reality and truthfulness has been exchanged for apoplectic enmity to the point of becoming unhinged. The table has been turned on Adam Schiff, who publicly lay claim to having evidence of Russian collusion, called the President a liar and invoked his impeachment. Now who's the liar, the one not to be trusted, the one who needs to vacate their seat of power?
Taking this just one step further, how about the NYT slogan, "The truth is more important now than ever"? Where is there one ounce of truth to be found in the past two years of NYT one sided coverage of the Mueller investigation? Pushing a political agenda based on bias and hatred is the NYT method of pursuing truth?
When I was a kid waiting for my mom to checkout at the grocery store I used to look at the National Enquirer and Star. Even at a young age I knew that was fantastical entertainment and not to be taken seriously. I see now that those who wander around in 620 Eighth Ave were cut from the same cloth.
"It's our own fault we elected Trump."
Yes. An adult has shown up at last to place responsibility for where it is due. Thank you, Mr. Manjoo.
"It's our own fault we elected Trump"?
No. It isn't "our" fault. I do wish that people would stop saying that. No. 'lil DJ Trump isn't "the president we deserve". No, "we" didn't elect him.
Trump's presidency is the result of the US Electoral College system, and of some ignorant voters wearing silly red hats.
1
Mr. Manjoo-
I was never content to ignore the storm. Income inequality has plagued my life personally for 25 years, and I've succeeded quite nicely by my standards.
I smelled this stench storm years ago.
As I see it, you nailed it.
Good point. It wasn't that the Russians were in cahoots with Trump, providing a lot of help, rather it was our own gullibility, naivete, and lizard-brain attraction to autocrats. Shame on us all.
1
Very well said.
It is clear from this article that the author has no understanding of the Constitution or how the Republic was founded.
1
Seductive to whom? Seriously. Who would be attracted to this and why? There were plenty of voices saying it was fake. The House and Senate both investigated, too. Nothing. This was seductive only to those whose reasoning is so motivated by their politics, that they cannot be convinced of anything other than what they envision through wishful thinking. Here is the take-away for 2020. Trump is not easy to like or support. Ppeople will vote for him again, if Democrats keep up their scorched-earth strategies and insist on lecturing their inferiors rather than persuade them. No rigged primaries will help, too. When the last debate comes, Trump must make sure to ask if Democrats will accept the outcome of the election this time, since they have shown to the harm of us all that they have not accepted 2016.
I like a lot of your columns but this is foolish.
Mueller reported actual collusion in the Stone and Manafort indictments. Read up on them.
26
The primary mission of the "Mueller Investigation" was to "ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The partisan feeding frenzy wants to make the whole thing about Trump, as does he, of course!
Mueller delivered: 26 indicted Russians with links to Russian intelligence that were found to be interfering with the election.
Who is freaked out about this? Who's hair is on fire to figure out how to prevent this in 2020? My recommendation to everyone: shed your partisan fervor, and focus on the root cause. If all else fails, we need to vote the bums out. Every one of them that thinks this is all a partisan game. Its actual a cyber invasion, and we are at war.
1
Yes, please let us focus on the task ahead instead of this endless handwringing over 2016.
And, could we please stop with the references to Hillary Clinton not visiting Michigan? She visited Pennsylvania several times and she lost here too.
1
I agree with what Manjoo is saying insofar as the blame for Trump is on us. Putin had fertile soil in which to plant his anti-Hillary misinformation campaigns. Let's hope we all learn. But I disagree that the Mueller investigation was a waste simply because he didn't find indictment-worthy evidence of collusion. Yes, we have many deep unaddressed problems in this country, evidenced most glaringly by the fact that we elected Trump. Perhaps we had to go through this exercise to finally accept the blame. I don't think brushing what certainly appeared to be collusion under the rug would have helped us move forward. Putin might well have acted alone, but the question is why was he so invested in Trump winning over Clinton. And why was he so successful?
Democracy is based on a voting system that functions without proven Russian interference and without massive GOP voter suppression that was carefully implemented over an 8 year period.
It is a serious mistake to say: "Democrats lost - just accept it and move on."
It is to ignore the greatest threats to the survival of everything this country has fought and died for.
1
As much as I hated to read this and have to think about it and myself, this is beautifully written!
1
Very tired of hearing “we did not elect him, the electoral college did”. We knew that we have an Electoral College and we understand exactly how it tilts against the populous states. So shame on us all for not acting more decisively to persuade the undecideds, especially in less populous states, to vote FOR a better way rather than allowing a “vote against” to prevail - and helping to move the electoral college in a different direction. We really need to stop blaming “them” and accept that WE are all members of the house of “they”. If the American experiment fails, it is on all of us, not on “them”.
Collusion was not a seductive delusion, it was an obvious conclusion based on the evidence.
So. If it wasn't collusion, what was it? It wasn't normal. It wasn't open and aboveboard. It wasn't anything that any one associated with Trump's campaign or Trump himself was willing to admit to or acknowledge. So what was it?
Getting to see the Full Report might answer that question, but for some reason, Barr and Trump don't want us to see it. What is that reason? What is it?
1
How can anyone seriously believes that Trump really won with his tiny margin of 70,000 votes spread over three key states that were heavily targeted by both Russian and GOP social media endlessly covering Hillary over with lies and propaganda? How many voters just sat the election out in the face of this carefully crafted digital smear campaign? It is the antithesis of the obvious to accept Trump's "win" as legitimate.
4
Farhad Manjoo is absolutely on target with his assessment. He may be too young to remember, but many decades ago the great cartoonist Walt Kelly in the daily comic strip "Pogo," said pretty much the same thing: We have met the enemy and he is us!
2
Your review of the key issues that need to be addressed to save our democracy is on target. However, there is one critical omission from your list of deep-rooted problems that places our Nation's future in question that is best captured by: Laws, rules and regulations are like a spider's web, they catch the small flies, the weak and the poor, but allow the big flies, the rich and powerful, to pass straight through.
Examples of how our system of laws and criminal justice enables the rich and powerful to corrupt a flawed political system are many and might include: how a wealthy person can defraud Medicare of tens of millions of dollars, claim there was no intent to defraud and then that person may move on to become a governor or a senator. Contrast that situation with that of a kid who is stopped, frisked and found with drugs in his pocket, then sent to jail for intent to sell. I guess if you are poor or a person of color your intent can be directly known by the law. However, if you wealthy and connected your intent cannot be not be directly determined by the law without extensive documentation that is easily avoided by white-collar criminals and politicians.
Most likely the people who frequent Mar-a-Lago are joking about how easy it is to avoid the web of laws when you can shape that web and choose who will shepherd you through the web. History has shown that Presidents, the wealthy and politically connected often pass through our Nation's web of laws with ease.
The column puzzles me. Trump lost the popular by three million but won a majority of the electoral college votes because of very narrow wins in three states. And this results is because of "tectonic failures" in the national media? Really?
3
@PeterE
Spot on!
Furthermore, via Paul Manafort, known Russian operative and Trump's campaign manager,the Russians had access to timely Republican polling data that was invaluable in targeting those three key states with their digital warfare.
2
The article correctly describes what led to Trump’s victory in terms of the underlying disillusion with the system and how a demagogue won.
It also conveniently leaves out names. Manafort, Gates, Flynn, etc. These are indicted and convicted criminals that were intricately involved in a Russian scheme to elect Trump. Since the author has not read the report, he cannot know more than the public. Lack of a smoking gun or unwillingness to prosecute due to existing DOJ policies does not mean there was no conspiracy.
Regardless, it’s good to see that polled voters don’t give a hoot about the Russia matter, only the media does.
Collusion was no delusion, it's a clear cut conclusion. The only delusion was that Mueller could not be bought or scared into line. Putin poison, microwaves, toxins in the face, envelopes in cash, you name it, but something brought down the vaunted one. Either he got Trump's taxes, which makes it all the more egregious, or he did, which makes it even more more egregious, Mueller folded.
2
True, Trump is more a symptom than a cause, and is part of a nationalist resurgence seen fro Poland to Japan, the Phillippines to Hungary, and points in between - most notably Russia. And in retrospect, while the Russians clearly preferred Trump to Clinton and did everything in their power to get him elected, they would never have brought him into a conspiracy because they saw the downside - his people had nothing to offer them, and Trump couldn't be trusted to keep his mouth shut.
Mr. Manjoo seems to be one of the most intelligent NYT columnists (from what I can judge). He's clearly trying to work through the situation. His claim of "tectonic failures within the mainstream news media" is on the mark. But his conclusion that the mainstream press, in sum, helped Trump and hurt Hillary is ludicrous. ONLY Fox cable news supported Trump among the mainstream - and this was only AFTER his nomination - and the press didn't act against it own interests. Mr. Manjoo might want to reconsider his belief that Trump and his supporters are the racists, misogynists and bigots that they're portrayed to be. I suggest it's the result of SELECTIVE reporting, perception and memory. (The late Edward Said wrote about this in "Covering Islam".) Our press reacted to homeopathic levels of facebook and instagram activity by Russians (which actually targeted both campaigns) and gave us an allergic response close to anaphylaxis. Mueller's investigation is just one product of a few well spent rubles seeking general discord. (Trump couldn't actually win.) Lastly, FAR more significant voter suppression occurred at the primaries/caucuses (which are FAR more important than general elections for representing will of the voting public, when they have only two sides of an establishment coin to choose between). The democrats EXCLUSION of newly registered Democrats and Independent/non-affiliated voters (who are FAR greater in number than either party's members) is simply corrupt.
1
the Manuchurian Candidate of story was a dupe, not a recruited agent. and, he was set up to be assassinated by a malign foreign power so that an even dupier dupe, unelectable in his own right, could step up at the last, fraught moment and assume the presidency... only to be controlled by the foreigners' asset, his wife, who was herself controlled by their sway over her beloved son, who was brainwashed as a POW in North Korea into assassinating the nominee. the only similarity to our current situation is that President Trump seems to be a foreign dupe... and compared a military confrontation, had on the cheap. personally, I'm looking forward to either the musical or the end of the world, whichever comes first.
1
Empires rot from the inside before being conquered and torn apart by outside foes.
2
Then if it's our own fault as you say, we need all the more to crush him in 2020. He is not worth the breath he takes away from us every time he opens his mouth. This man will not succeed in destroying this country of institutions,liberties and haven for immigrants. God knows, he will not succeed at getting rid of our health care.
1
I will never understand this about America: the market thought her $400 speaking fee was fair price. Is argument that she can’t command high speaking fees and still be an honest? Hasn't she been investigated to death? Karma’s dirty trick is ‘presidenting’ now. Subconsciously or not, people who should know better still buy into a decades’ long slander. Hillary is everyone’s favorite whipping gal and that includes the mascot of GOP disgust, the morally bankrupt, absolutely disgusting Judas who couldn’t discarded his best friend fast enough to become Ivanka’s fixer. The American Quisling is threatening to investigate her. Again! Her fellow citizens are mum, content as ever to pile on. When did it become okay for a whole society to vilify an individual to this level, for this long? What has she really done that has not been done in spades by male politicians? When will it stop? Hillary has, and will always be an inspiration for some. Americans may not value her, but plenty of us carry on doggedly because we’ve seen it done with grace and dignity by one of the world’s smartest woman. Long before Michelle Obama, Hillary showed us what was possible. I believe people when they say, it’s not because she is a woman. Seeing Hillary as a woman requires humanizing her, and that is a step too far for some. It’s America’s loss, not her’s that we missed her presidency.
2
Well done, clarity achieved, ... now to go forward with a purpose
18
Farhad- excellent piece. You’ve succinctly summarized what’s been going through my mind for the past 2 years. Where do we go from here? An ingaged informed citizenry supported by a responsible 4th estate? Nice but unlikely.
1
"It's our own fault we elected Trump."
"we" didn't elect trump. the electoral college did
1
We need to deal with the electoral college. First Bush and then Trump who lost the popular vote, we cannot have a democracy when the minority can rule over the majority. Two of the worst Presidents were chosen by a 200 year old antique process originally designed to limit democratic processes.
2
Not focused on collusion. For me it's that we have a president that can be so easily influenced, even duped, by foreign powers. That we have a President, too arrogant and self-serving to read, be briefed, study the history of situations foreign and domestic and make conscious, thoughtful decisions, a President that doesn't respect, isn't humbled by the melt, caliber of stellar advisers who are committed to serving him and our country enough to listen and take their advice. We can be partisan all day, but people ...Russia hacked us, we have rattled, confused, negated alliances that are paramount to our safety and our ability to trade with other nations, we have put our service men and women at risk.We are building a wall that will be paid for by our children's wages, Social Security and Medicare... in front of our face we know that dishonest in business translates easily to dishonest in government, but we still want to debate, die on the field of,separate on party lines, shut down the government, tie church to politics, trash, speculate about pretty thorough prosecutor who did his job for America under extreme duress on the field of ugly partisanship...not the partisanship the Constitution had hope for. America is multicultural, more than bipartisan, small town, large town, cities, art culture. Choosing only one piece, one color, one creed, one party, one race eventually hurts us all and eventually brings down the flag that covers all of us. There is not a wall for that.
Manjoo is still caught in the echo chamber he is just now suspecting might have led to his myopia and that of his vast number of colleagues and fellow travelers. The Clinton email abuse was not a kerfuffle. It was a serious violation, not to mention repeated, of laws and practices that she was entrusted to enforce,e not break. Her free pass proved that we have a two-tiered system, as if those who have done time for less were not proof enough. She called many of deplorable, and did not forget to campaign in Michigan. She chose to ignore it, blind to her own arrogance and supported by elitists who also assumed the blue-collar rust belt was still in the bag for Dems. Finally, those who seriously mistrust Democrats and their ultimate motivations now know that if they cannot rig primaries to get what they want, if they cannot destabilize the country with a false narrative to get what they want, then they will destroy the very elements of the Constitution that guarantee us all a voice to get what they want. Direct Democracy is a huge mistake. We need to protect the Constitution from Democrats.
1
"The ease with which a racist, misogynist, serial con man had slipped past every gatekeeper in American life suggested something deeply sick at the core of our society."
That is the wrong conclusion to make. No one who voted for Trump thought he was a saint- far from it. But they perceived a real threat to their culture and way-of-life that if unchecked could result in societal breakdown on a real and violent level.
Trump was the only candidate who "got it."
Do you?
I am still a strong supporter of the man.
@steve "perceived a real threat to their culture and way-of-life that if unchecked could result in societal breakdown on a real and violent level." Yes, this was at the heart of Trump voter thinking in November 2016.
I am not sure that Mr Manjoo or many Times readers would have any inkling of what you're saying.
This essay is excellent and I commend Farhad Manjoo for it. The idea that the Mueller investigation was going to “get” Trump was wishful thinking. Thinking that allowed us to avoid the hard work Farhad pointed out was necessary to avoid calamities like electing Trump. But I give Trump credit for recognizing how a symbiotic relationship with the Russians would benefit him while keeping him out of harms way. I don’t doubt for a second that he WOULD have colluded but he didn’t NEED to. The Ruskies had it all figured out and all Trump needed to do was to stay out of their way to get what ever benefits they might serve up. But who could have predicted how horrible a candidate Clinton would be? How could she have lost such a sure bet? Arrogance and a sense of entitlement. Apparently she though she would be carried in on a sedan chair because, after all, how could there be enough hicks out there in those flyover states to elect that clown?
As an earlier commenter mentioned, I too am not convinced we can fix this mess using the current system.
Thank you for stating so eloquently and in such an organized manner my sentiments exactly!!!
Republicans are spinning as hard as they can so to set in the publics mind an opinion about the Mueller report before the report has been released. All this nonsense about investigating the investigators, something that will either never happen or will result in everyone being cleared, an the last inspectors report did.
People have only so much space in their heads for a given thing - event or person. With the 8 Benghazi investigations they poisoned people against Hillary - the Republicans are trying to own the conclusion about collusion.
No, we did not elect Trump. The Electoral College, skewed to give depopulated red states a much greater vote than the blue states to which their best and brightest moved, elected him. Thos of is who actually put in the time and effort to be educated and informed should not be subject to the tyranny of an uneducated and willfully uninformed minority.
Terrific analysis Mr. Manjoo.
Mueller made a mistake. The investigation should have been for the crime of incitement to commit a crime, not conspiracy. The investigation would have taken just a few minutes, since the evidence has been published around the world: "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing."
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It is way too early to engage in this sort of self flagellation Mr. Manjoo. There is far more to this story than Mr. Barr's rendition of the Mueller investigation. That is not to say the rest of the ugly picture in America is not worthy of consideration. However, the Trump-Russia odyssey is far from over. There is too much evidence laying around in plain site.
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Bad article. Dumping on hilliary ignores the facts that far from being broadly unpopular she won the primaries and the popular vote in the general election. Systemic problems we have in spades, largely growing from unaddressed racism. But the author mentions that not at all. So what we get is the usual white ineffective handwringing, and this fella isn’t even white.
It has been reported that Manafort, as Trump's campaign manager, gave Republican polling data to Ukrainian oligarch Kilimnik who is alleged to have close ties with the Kremlin. I want to hear Mueller's testimony. First is this true, and Second if it is true, why does this not rise to the level of conspiracy?
Wrong: there is still conclusive evidence that without Russian meddling Trump would not have won. Additionally, the report has not been released yet: all we have is the AG, who has a political agenda as all AGs do, presenting his summary of how he read the report.
Talk about knee-jerk reactions ...
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Don't forget how the Dems and the Press (especially the NY Times) did everything in their power to shaft Bernie Sanders, who actually would have beaten Trump, and handily. Everyone kept saying that Bernie couldn't win - and conveniently forgot to mention that every poll showed him 8 points ahead of Trump, whereas Hillary was only 3, which is a statistical tie as we found out. They also chose not to mention that 42% of the country are neither registered as Dems or Reps...but rather as independents... which is exactly what Bernie is. None of that shows in Primaries where independents don't get to vote - but it would have slaughtered Trump in the real election. If this had all been spelled out correctly... we wouldn't be discussing this here. And the NY Times? On Super Tuesday, Bernie won 8 out of 10 states and the NY Times talked about Trump and Hillary and mentioned Bernie in approximately ONE sentence! The NY Times is as guilty of "collusion" as anyone here! And it is all starting over again. The Dems are asking people to show online which candidate they prefer... Bernie isn't even on the list, and he's the front runner! Here we go again! Nothing has been learned by those who are running the show. Good luck to them all...
HRC hijacked the DNC, intimidated all but Bernie Sanders to run against her and put forth her only reason to elect her as "I will be the first woman President. She was an unappealing candidate and was the ONLY candidate that DJT could beat. The media could not bear 4 years of Trump and helped spread the lies of collusion. He won fair and square as it turned out and the losers think the system was rigged. Do better, work harder and have a clear vision of the future and maybe, just maybe there won't be a second Trump term.
Speak for yourself, Mr.Manjoo. The Resistance isn’t just a hashtag, despite what you seem to think. From the Women’s March to the midterms, many of us have been working tirelessly on the problems you claimed “we’ve” all ignored.
It was clear very early on that Trump’s supporters would stand by him no matter what the Mueller report said. A few months after election, the NYT reported on people shrugging off the idea that maybe Trump had “cheated” with Russia’s help, because at least Clinton wasn’t President. Anyone who thought Trump supporters weren’t going to either deny the findings (13 Angry Democrats) or find some other way to justify him was fooling themselves.
As for the press, I’ve seen huge amounts of substantive news on every single topic you claim was ignored. If you yourself hadn’t read the coverage, you wouldn’t have thought to complain about it, because you wouldn’t have known they were problems.
Perhaps you sat back and thought Mueller was going to save you. If that’s the case, make up for lost time. But don’t assume everyone else made that mistake.
We did not elect trump. Our cockamamie Electoral College system did.
The Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians. Fine. One down, 12 to go. Now let's move on to his alleged crimes in NY. Money laundering, bank fraud, insurance fraud, and any thing else that's been mentioned.
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Yesterday brought a storm of back-patting beginning with Trump, but seconded by his opponents who do not dare to disagree. “this is the greatest country in the world.” Of course this proposition is a logical absurdity. But on a more clinical level, myriad statistics paint a different picture. If we really want to move on, it is far past time to discard the quaint and arcane notion of American exceptionalism.
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@Chuck Burton
The "quaint and arcane notion of American exceptionalism" that you mention could be translated into our being the "policeman of the world". If we continue to play this role, it may well be our ruin.
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I agree with Jim Comey on one point: We the people got ourselves into this mess and We the people have the responsibility to get ourselves out of it.
We have the president that we as a nation deserve.
The entwinement of entertainment with news has messed up Americans' perception of reality to the point where the voters are acting primarily in response to surface stimuli rather than facts, so nominating someone with a flat affect like Hillary Clinton was fatal in a battle with a Trump. With a voting public as distracted by shiny objects as this, it's going to take someone with a lot of charisma to beat Trump: a Theodore Roosevelt or Fiorello La Guardia could put him in his place. But is there anyone out there with that kind of big personality? In addition to a candidate with real ideas that attract people, we need someone who can sing a loud enough aria just to wake up the public so they can enjoy the show.
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The author of this piece has nailed it. Shame on all of us who allowed Trump to be elected President of the U.S.
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Thank you for putting the fiasco of Trump in the proper perspective. Sadly, such a sobering analysis does not excite the attention of a "sensational story" seeking press.
Great article. Yes, it it too much to bear to think the fraud in the White House wasn't an accident. He represents the worst of America; he is us, he is what we have become. Like a true horror story, we search for a reasonable explanation so we can adjust to the inexplicable events we are forced to live with. I do blame the media during Trump's candidacy for treating him like a celebrity and giving him a pass on digging for hard facts to present. But, I blame the complacency of the American voter as well as the fetidness of our political system. Our government is as corrupt as any other in the world. Politicians are only there for self enrichment and to lie to us. It's something that is done to us, not with us. Politics are as foreign to most voters as another language. No one really pays attention to it. We don't matter, anyway. So, perhaps, Donald Trump is what we deserve. Hopefully, he is a wake up call. America is better than this. We can do better. But, will we?
I agree. There is a lot of blame to go around and none of us are getting away without dirty hands. The media created Trump for ratings, the media patronized theories and paranoia for ratings, and now the oncoming storm will be another opportunity for more ghost stories and playground ugliness. Somewhere in this country there are adults, but I sure don't know where they are at the moment. This nonsense has to stop. I'm stepping back from this newspaper, the Washington Post, and getting out a long lens. I'm not going to gleefully praise, condemn, or thrust out my chest. I'm going to look for the next chapter, and hope it makes sense.
The best I've read about the reality and meaning of the Russian-collusion-scandal and post-Barr report. Russian interference or cyber invasion should have been the main focus from the beginning. Still, I'd add that the Mueller investigation was needed to expose the shortcomings of our system and the importance of the full disclosure requirement for presidential candidates in the coming elections. One's character and life story matter. Parties need to vet a candidate on his/her record in civic participation and public service, not just a tabloid-endorsed, "anything goes" TV personality and a proven loser and fraud. GOP establishment really did a major disservice to the country and the whole democratized world (conventional allies) by nominating a person with a corrupt intent (personal and familial gains in wealth and business). One upside is that the informed public now knows who's a true conservative and who's not, and who's judicious and principled and who's not, and who's corrupt and who's not. A downside, though, is that the public has learned so many GOP senators and representatives failed the test. Many jumped up at the opportunity to serve as partisan hacks, instead of serving their constituents/public interest and more importantly the long-term national interest. We are living in the "anything goes" world. Rather, has it always been this way? Or, Trump the Crusader liberated all the "deplorables" and deluded them into self-proclaimed legitimacy. Hence goes the nation.
Great article....and still....the true horror of the 2016 election is the Electoral College. When the loser won the popular vote by nearly 3 million there is something terribly wrong.
We must have fair representation or I fear the radical right minority will continue to rule the more liberal majority.
Does anyone in America honestly believe that a Republican-owned Supreme Court would do anything as bipartisan as returning voting to a truly representative, democratic process, not the grotesquely-biased and dishonest one your country insists on calling the greatest in the world? Especially crooked Kavanaugh? Come on, America, the world is watching you stumble.
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We have not seen the Mueller Report we have seen only the BARR Report. I don't know anyone can draw conclusions about anything until you see the facts in Mueller's Report.
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Unquestionably the best summation of the last 2 years! If Trump gets reelected it will be because of the extensive wasted energy spent pursuing this unlikely possibility. Rather than focus on Trump's unworthiness, a better question to ask is what terrible conditions had to exist for decent American voters to believe he was their best choice? Focus on solving that problem. Address the underlying conditions and put forward an intelligent, moral, and demonstrably fair person for the presidency.
I wish pundits and commentators would stop blaming the Electoral College for the result of the 2016 election. Wake up, everyone - since 1792 we have had an Electoral College system, not a nationwide popular vote - it's not as if this is new! And it's not changing, there is no way small states will allow such a constitutional amendment to pass. Without this provision and the equal representation in the Senate the small states would not have agreed to the Constitution in the first place, they feared being dominated politically by the larger states of the time (NY, VA, MA, PA). So stop whining about it and figure out how to win enough states to win the election (start by contesting them and actually spending time on the ground in them, rather than spending so much time in states like NY and CA that are certain to be in the Democratic column!).
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One of the best columns to date. If nothing else, trump’s election and its aftermath has exposed the weaknesses of our constitution and system of electing and removing presidents. The Founders wanted to guard against a despotic president, but never foresaw a despot enabled by a complicit Congress, in turn enabled by social media and foreign intervention. Couple all this with a stressed out, fractured electorate unable to avoid falling into the clutches of a pathological liar running for President. Some day a more enlightened group of citizens will realize it is time to retune our founding document.
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Thanks for an analysis that shows without detour how complacent we all can be with reality. It doesn't make a big difference whether it's about Trump win that couldn't possibly take place without some collusion with a Russian devil, Saudi killings fields in Yemen which would be a price to pay for Middle-East stability, Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory all the same, Climate Change that should be hard fought while dismissing nuclear-generated electricity, European Union systematic weakening for the sake of America First, China First, Russia First or the like, hence the bilateral support to illiberal governments while mainstream media indulge in condemning centrist governments that take on extremists, etc. etc.
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meanwhile: climate change rolls on.
because human population increase, carbon energy generation, consumer society and corporate profiteering rolls on.
as the gladiator said: "Are you not entertained?"
politics as entertainment, AKA politics as distraction from the real issues, AKA politics as the opiate of the masses, AKA politics as just not paying attention to what really matters.
Excellent column. But one other point, center Democrats couldn't accept the Clinton loss and became obsessed with the Russian conspiracy as an excuse. If they continue they'll give 2020 to Trump. Clinton Democrats need to finally accept their co-responsibility for the growing inequality and failures of neoliberalism. Focus on real issues that affect people's lives, that's what won the midterms.
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So Democrats can't win an election based on the rules, i.e., the electoral college. Instead, the electoral college is called "perverse"? And you claim here that votes are "essentially uncounted" because of the electoral college?
I get it - any republican who wins a presidential election but loses the popular vote is now deemed illegitimate. The electoral college is now in the same category as illegal vote suppression.
Hillary's positions were pretty unclear, but her record was of more war. Just look at what she did in Libya, in the removal of Qaddafi. Many voters heard a pretty clear message from Trump - less war, lower taxes, less regulation, conservative judges, bringing back manufacturing and, most importantly, stopping illegal immigration. Whether or not he carried out these policies successfully is beside the point. His message is a patriotic, pro American, populist message.
This will continue to be a winning mix of policies that are favored by enough voters in the right states to win presidential elections.
I see very little focus in terms of what are winning policy mixes, and far too much attention on shortfalls in the electoral process, Russian meddling, and outright attacks on the ill informed citizenry. I think its pretty simple - Trump said the right things to the right people in the right states to win, and Hillary did not.
well, Reps could not win majority of the population, so they are clinging to perverse rule that gave them to win the Presidency without winning hearts and minds of American people. Trump won not because he said the right things (he lost popular vote, clearly majority people didn't see his words as right) , but because of the crooked rule.
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All of the pundits who are jumping on the "No collusion" surrender bandwagon really need to take a breath. All that we know of the Mueller report on "collusion" (an inexact term at best), is that Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government with respect to the two Russian interventions he did find (social media and hacking). That is it.
Bear in mind that the criminal threshold is very high (beyond a reasonable doubt) and conspiracy is always very tough to prove, especially where a key conspirator was never interviewed and is extremely adept at avoiding paper trails and using winks and nods. It does NOT mean that collusion never happened.
The fact is, publicly-known information supports that Trump's campaign engaged in a quid pro quo with Russia, and Americans deserve to find out every detail of that exchange.
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Collusion delusion, yes. But also obfuscation delusion. Most of what is wrong with the USA presently was already in place before Trump. For example the disastrous national health care with its shrinking life expectancy, worse in the developed world. And inequality became higher under Obama than under the preceding Republican president, and it's under Clinton, not Trump, that Roosevelt's Banking Act of 1933 was gutted.
Also a Democratic president, Carter, gave the secret order of launching the Afghanistan War, on July 3, 1979... A war Trump is trying to end. Calling Trump names is of no import. What is important is to suggest progressive policies, looking forward.
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Manjoo might have mention the spread of paranoiac lunacies. I giess he thought that part was obvious.
You make a lot of good points, but like so many you downplay the effect of the Electoral College as currently designed. Please don't tell us that Trump was the misbegotten choice of the American citizenry: c63 million voted for Trump, but c72 million voted for someone else. And while it may be true that, in some circles, Clinton is "deeply unpopular", she received c3 million more votes than he did.
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We have not seen Mueller’s report. We have seen a puppet’s spin. We are now jumping to conclusions as quickly as we did formerly. We know Trump has been involved with Russian oligarchs, so it might be degrees. But please don’t jump to conclusions from an installed AG who was placed because he would protect the POTUS.
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I think a rather important point is being missed here. Mueller was unable to establish that anyone in the Trump campaign actively conspired with Russia to help win the election. The key word there being "conspired."
But it has been well established that Russian WANTED Trump to win, and the Trump campaign was very eager to ACCEPT whatever help Russia provided - even if it can't be proven that the two worked together to get the result they both wanted.
Russia doesn't have our best interests at heart, so it stands to reason that they wanted to pick the candidate they thought would be the worst for the job. I don't think that give the GOP cause to celebrate.
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Whenever a list of presidents is presented, I wholeheartedly recommend that Trump’s name have an asterisk. *MISTAKE.
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As I saw the GOP and Democratic primaries winnow down to the finalists, Donald vs. Hillary, some key dynamics began to emerge.
First, Donald Trump has eternally grateful to Democratic voters for offering up a female candidate who had been taken to the woodpile for nearly 30 years by right-wing media. She was already damaged goods, despite how intelligent and experienced she had been since 2000.
Second, the HRC campaign were ecstatic that a madman, con artist, business fraud, and consummate liar was their opponent. Then, just when it looked like Access Hollywood tapes would sink the Trump campaign, Hillary's emails made the news again.
What should have been a slam-dunk for Hillary turned into a disaster. With WikiLeaks, the Russian hackers and Trump operatives like Roger Stone as choreographer of spin, and after Michael Flynn brought the RNC convention to its feet leading the chant of "LOCK HER UP," Hillary was on her heels. The fact that she took Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan for granted, was another factor in her loss.
With more than 3 million more popular votes, how did this happen? Was it gerrymandering? The right-wing media gasbags? Was it rejections of dynasty politics (I deserve it.)? Too many voters staying home because they assumed Hillary would win? Did Bernie do enough to swing his voters to Hillary?
It would all be just another election except for Trump's continous damage to our international relationship with allies. Our democracy is in tatters.
@David Ohman
I always read that Trump is damaging our relationship with our allies, but I never see any specifics. Has some country told us to mind our own business? Or kicked our troops out?
Wikileaks published proof that the Obama administration tapped Merkel's phones and those of her ministers. Where was the outrage that Obama is damaging our relationship with one of our closest allies?
Selective partisan outrage does not work anymore. There are too many online sources now to completely discredit unfair, partisan, or false narratives.
Yes, we all deserve blame for our predicament and with the current POTUS ability to perhaps appoint another SCOTUS justice our future generation will pay the bill. Please vote in 2020 and staunch the bleeding.
Here we have another instance of being a bit too quick on the trigger finger, by the author of this article, not those who smelled a rat. What we witnessed with the Mueller Investigation was a reaction to contacts with Russians by seventeen individuals connected to Trump, and Trump himself, in the run-up to the election, and in Chapter 1 of 'Suspicious Activity 101' this rates a look-see.
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The fact is that candidate Trump incited crime when he beseeched the Russians to uncover the missing Clinton emails. His incitement passes the USSC test laid out in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which the two conditions to be met are: 1) advocacy of the use of force or of law violation where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and 2) is likely to incite or produce such action. Trump stated his wish, and later that same day, the Russians began a phishing attack aimed at finding the Clinton server and granting his wish.
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I have read the NY Times every day for the last three years (at least). It is simply untrue that the Times went "all in" on the collusion theory. I also watch MSNBC every day. Not even MSNBC went "all in." Some their guests and one or two of their hosts were pretty aggressive on this, but MOST were not.
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"Robert Mueller seems to have concluded after a definitive investigation, Mr. Trump’s win was not the illegitimate product of a treasonous conspiracy."
This is so wrong it's journalistic malpractice.
Look I actually agree with a lot of what this column says, but the opening remarks are just parroting the PR spin presented by William Barr as if fact.
Far too many are just accepting the Barr letter as if it's "the Mueller Report". It's not. He doesn't quote one complete sentence from the report. The media has been played here, and this is one of the worst examples.
William Barr wrote an article saying that charging the President with obstruction would be wrong, and once that got him the job of AG, he now concludes that the President didn't commit obstruction. He decided this, not Mueller or the Special Counsel's office. This author presents any objection to this mockingly in italics as "We still haven't seen the whole report!" No, in fact we haven't seen *any* of the report, or virtually none of it.
Imagine for a moment that after a two-year investigation, Mueller this weekend announced 37 criminal indictments and laid out all the evidence that Trump committed obstruction of justice, in a report to Congress also made public, much like Comey's in 2016. Do you think that might have had a different impact?
Instead, a bizarre sleight of hand happens and we get a "summary" from Barr saying that he decided not to charge obstruction, despite all the evidence.
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"Collusion was a seductive and convenient delusion. For many Americans, the simple truth that Mr. Trump really had won was too terrible to bear." This is silliness.
Pre-election, the publicly known facts in real time were: Russia was interfering, Trump was speaking very well of Putin, Trump was enjoining Russian hackers to help him win and Trump spoke like an authoritarian.
Soon after his inauguration, we learned - after Trump's serial denials of Russian contacts, that most everyone in his orbit was speaking to Russia. Jared proposed a backdoor channel to Russia, secure from our intelligence agencies! This smacks of conspiracy and is no delusion. However, I trust Mr. Mueller, his investigative vigor and his conclusion that the available evidence of conspiracy was not prosecutable.
Regarding obstruction, Mr. Barr made his stand with his unsolicited opinion months ago. I have no faith in him. It is now time for Congress and the public to see the full evidence, as the law will allow, to make our judgements as to whether Trump is faithfully executing his office.
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Albeit somewhat pessimistic a strong and biting analysis which if read and understood will turn more than a few away from their path over the cliff.
There is, as you note, "something deeply sick at the core of our society" and that something is the thin contaminated thread of lies we have unquestionably allowed to be woven into the fabric of our so called democracy.
Ms Clinton lost as much by her continued acceptance of a philanderer, as her allowance of the hulking giant she was debating to creep around behind her, topped off as you point out by Comey's timing. And with all due respect to awareness, this is still a society which turns to male mythology for guidance.
Wish I didn't feel well meaning people felt so positive about where others should be headed
Mr Trump's estate in Florida, like his apparent fondness for things golden, is a testament to the necessary bravado and ego any kid from off the block in any street in any city has to have to make it.
Monticello wasn't built by union labor.
A republic in name only.
If you don't have a political system that prevents Trump from being a serious candidate for the Republication nomination, to say nothing of a political system that allows him to get the nomination and then win election; if you don't have a legal system that is able to get rid of him despite all his illegal activity before and during his presidency; and if you don't have a governing system that can chuck him out of office for egregious governing corruption, dereliction, and incompetence, then you don't have a country worth living in.
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Best analysis I’ve read in a long time examining what has been missed while we got caught up in the collusion debacle. Trump was elected, like it or not, for a reason. The electorate chose him and are now reaping a messy democratic mashup of epic proportions. This conman, while enriching his brand for himself and his family, is the Pied Piper leading the electorate (and country) down a path that will be hard to pull back from. I fear this debacle has given him a gift, the momentum, that will pull him over the finish line in 2020. Dear God, Democrats get your act together. He will bamboozle you again if you get caught in his gaslighting web. He is very clever.
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“Mr. Mueller's indictments show that Russian agents interfered with the 2016 election by sowing discord on social media and hacking and disseminating Democrats' emails. “
No, the Mueller indictments claim these things; they don’t show them.
While strong evidence points to the DNC emails being leaked from within, not hacked.
So there are two levels to this fake news: A “confusion” between asserting and proving, and a pretense that something is established, when it isn’t.
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This is an OUTSTANDING piece ...
Well-thought-out and well-said ...
"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves" ...
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thank you so much for those insightful comments, right on the mark.
Some of us are happy with him. Just a gentle reminder because the "we" and "us" seems a bit out of touch, quite frankly.
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I admire Farhad Manjoo for taking the POGO position--"we have met the enemy, and it is us".
Still, we have to consider how we became our own worst enemy, and there is plenty of blame to go around.
Allowing such practices as vulture capitalism, lack of white collar statute enforcement (how many bankers went to jail for tanking the economy into the Great Recession?), gerrymandering, voter suppression, killing the Fairness Doctrine (which is a big part of how Fox News gets away with what it does), purposeful disinformation as to war rationales, and a whole raft of others have led to a political environment in which apathy and distrust are the default, leading us highly vulnerable to any snake oil salesperson who merely seemed unrestrained and different from most politicians (not that our lack of civics education and Evangelical illogic as to the state of the world didn't leave many of us vulnerable to grifters even well before).
To be blunt, we've become decadent and stupid, entitled without earning it--"here we are now, entertain us" (I'm sure if Kurt Cobain was around, he'd have a lot to say on this).
The question is how do we reverse this trend, if that is even possible and if we even want to. Given human psychology and our tendency towards self-justification even when we've been had, I'm not optimistic--even if we dump this one, the next Trump is right around the corner, and we'd probably take a spin with that one, too, because it'd be the next shiny thing.
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Excellent commentary. Trump is the president because he read the American mind. Look at the political map; America is a sea of red with tiny islands of blue. At least 40% of Americans are fearful of ‘those people’ and want to be entertained rather than governed. All Trump had to do to win the presidency was promise to build a wall and lock her up. The notion that he or any of his accomplices could have carried out a conspiracy with the Russians without getting caught or bragging about it to someone is ridiculous.
Collusion was always a long-shot in terms of securing an indictment. That most reporters now write only of the absence of an indictment is telling. That trump's obstruction of justice was deemed by Barr too public and blatant to be chargeable is exactly why Barr was selected for AG.
Turn the page. Release the report. Let congress gather and reveal the facts. Let the SDNY investigate and bring all charges that the facts warrant. Trump is a criminal, yet we have larger problems to address. Electing a president who is fit for office is the duty of all good citizens. There is much work to do.
The photo accompanying this piece is priceless. The look on Melania’s face says it all.
"Democrats, meanwhile, dismissed the economic and social unease roiling their ranks and nominated a deeply unpopular candidate who lacked any novel vision for American life.”
“ … a citizenry mired in partisan mistrust, seething with racial grievance …”
The author has somehow neglected to note that Americans are fed up with illegal immigrants, and that this was a primary reason many voted for Trump. Most are not racial bigots. They are worried about the economy and the social landscape (eg. 40% of children are being born out-of-wedlock). Why, they wonder, are we spending so much on illegal immigrants instead of using this money to retrain and otherwise help our own citizens?
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Yes, but is the electoral college still a perverse system when Democrats win it, but lose the popular vote? You can say that will never happen, but it could. And anyway, it aint gonna change before 2022, so stop the hypocrisy and lamentations, move on, please!, and win the electoral college next time. #reality
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As an independent who did not vote for or support Trump, I have watched the Muller investigation with skepticism. And Mr. Manjoo's column certainly validates my concerns. While he makes many good points, his description of the Clinton e-mail scandal as a trifling concern shows his gross partisan bias. Further, his condemnation of the electoral college system is laughable -- we are the United States of America after all, not a Republic. I would have thought that his liberal arts education would have shed a little more light on American history. And, if Hillary Clinton had won by electoral votes rather than popular vote, I do not believe for one second that the liberal pundits would be crying for an electoral college amendment. Finally, characterizing Comey as grandstanding rather than admitting that the FDA Director likely changed a presidential election is the most egregious euphemism. When Mr. Manjoo says that the Trump election was a rotten egg hoisted on media establishment, he is close. The truth is that the media establishment is the rotten egg.
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Hallelujah! A clear & thoughtful analysis. As Pogo (Walt Kelly) said, “ We have met the enemy and they are us.”
The way to end this chimera of a Presidency is to follow Nancy Pelosi’s lead to the 2020 ballot box.
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Number one...we didn't elect Trump. He lost by 3 million votes. The outdated electoral college elected Trump.
Number two....James Comey is not the only reason Hillary won. It was a combination of Fox News and Donald Trump conning the American people, Hillary being a lousy candidate who stupidly and callously called Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables", Putin flooding the internet with false information and providing Wikileaks with stolen emails. But without Comey, Trump loses the election.
Number three.....The collusion is far from a delusion. We all saw it. Trump asked Russia to find the emails. Trump praised Wikileaks, an arm of the Russia cyber community. Mueller didn't find evidence that would constitute a crime. But we already had the evidence that Trump was a cheerleader for Russia intervention.
For some reason when I write comments about Trump that are not supportive, I get replies about Hillary and what she did. People assume an attack on Trump means the attacker is supportive of Hillary. I'm not. I think there was sufficient evidence for her to be prosecuted for using a private server. The irony is that if she had been prosecuted Bernie Sanders would have won the presidency.
But the electorate's inability to see how Trump was conning them was and is the main problem. And as stated in the article this was made possible by the sad state of our political system and the lack of education that characterizes much of our country.
This column reminds me of that school building that collapsed in Mexico during an earthquake. All the people in the press were on continuous live coverage, and every ten minutes a new story "broke" about the rush to save people trapped beneath the wreckage -- bringing water to them, talking about how many voices, etc. etc.
Then suddenly the rescuers announced there was nobody left alive under the building. And what did the press do? Without missing a beat they "continued" covering the "breaking" news that there was no one left alive under the building.
Sorry Farhad, if you'd written this 3 weeks ago, I'd have thought it was breaking the mold. Now, though, it seems too much like an effort to position oneself above the fray. It was your own newspaper that covered the investigation as you're describing, your timing indicates you weren't the wiser.
1
Election results are multi-faceted, Russian interference being one factor. Notwithstanding other factors, like the influence of dark money, fossil fuel lobbyists, clever messaging, AIPAC, etc., the press needs keep their eyes on this story for which the fog machine continues to distort. We should note that Trump, the narcissist who can't keep his disorder and mouth under control, continues to act guilty. Still lying. Still distorting. Still spinning. Still attacking. Why the lies. Why hasn't he acknowledged the very events that Mueller has now confirmed beyond any doubt - the Russian interference in the election? Pundits are advising the Democrats to get down to business and avoid over-investigating. Somebody needs to tell the Don that. As he attacks the media today he's telling you something. He's worried about the corruption investigations. He knows he tacitly coordinated with Russia. He hired his own lawyer who I have no doubt had the letter prepared before the Mueller report was issued. Times....keep digging.
So let's be honest. The media was seduced by Trump back when he was candidate Trump. He was great fodder for the 24 hour/day news cycle. He was headlined daily mostly because he was the shiny new object; no one actually believed that a carnival barker would actually win a presidential election. AND his outrageous campaign behavior was a ratings grabber. But candidate Trump chipped away, gained momentum, leveraging the free publicity. And who wouldn't? No such thing as bad publicity, right? And when the media started to realize the shift in tide and the strength in his following, it was too late. Candidate Trump ascended to President Trump and the media started back peddling the narrative, no longer fascinated by the headliner but horrified by the Frankenstein they created, vilifying his every action. Some warranted, some, not so much. But make so mistake. We got here because the news media was seduced and there are 24 hours to fill, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for 4 years. Well, 1 year and 9 months.
61
@sadjoepafan
OK, let the media be accountable for its part, but I don't believe you can boil it all down to your penultimate sentence. I wanted to know all of it. I read to be educated about candidates, and every Candidate Trump story gave me hope that my candidate, not Trump, would be elected. IMHO, we Democrats should take responsibility for not being entirely sure of what we stand for, and going forward, figure that out. We need to unify behind the candidate who represents that and can do the job, while not alienating those who disagree. We will be happy about how the media covers that.
7
@sadjoepafan two words: false equivalency. Never never do that again. Fair doesn’t always go with balanced.
1
@sadjoepafan. I worked for more than 35 years in the news business and watched it evolve into what it is today...news as entertainment. Too much consolidation has always meant losing independent voices.
7
Wow! The naked truth comes out, in all it's raw content, of our systemic failure for lack of participation and contribution to maintain a democracy worth it's name. Our complacency in the status quo, in the maintenance of our deep and odious inequality and persistent segregation in education, housing, health care and jobs, and lack of economic justice, all of this making us easy prey to a vicious demagogue and constant liar, intent in reining with a mantra of 'fear, hate and division'. In truth, we helped elect him by our credulity and petty grievances. But does it have to be this bad?
39
What is wrong with everybody?!!? We know that Russia right up to Putin did everything they could to swing the election to Trump. We know that MANY people within the Trump campaign had connections with the Russian Government. Does anyone actually believe that candidate Trump himself was unaware of these things?
Muller's report appears to have concluded that criminal conspiracy could not be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. That is a far cry from saying that there was no collusion!
106
@Dymphna Actually the Mueller investigation concluded precisely that there was no collusion. What's the benefit in hanging onto your opinion that there was collusion, or at least collusion by some personally held definition? It's time to move on and focus on what's in store for the future and let 2016 go...
3
@Dymphna, Agree. I think when the full report comes out, (IF it comes out!), we will see that Mueller found evidence of conspiracy, just not enough evidence to bring a successful case, as you state. I still agree with most of this author's points, however- that we need to examine the problems in the country that led us here. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, in my view.
7
After the Mueller report, our choices are either:
1) we continue to allow Russia/Trump collusion speculation to dominate our politics and divert our national attention away from issues that matter—we embrace the partisan charade and allow it to divide us further, or
2) we admit that if Mueller couldn’t find evidence directly tying Trump to Russian meddling, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will—why would Mueller stop the investigation if he thought there truly was collusion?—and then we attempt to MOVE ON in good faith to remedy the real problems affecting Americans.
You seem to want the former.
I prefer the latter.
5
All the Blame is on the poorly run campaign of Clinton. I am not Trump was her major message, and threatening more government regulations over businesses, which may have been productive, were not well received by voters in key states. That, and the fact Mrs. Clinton was clueless on how close the election was, are the reasons that allowed Trump to win.
1
Wasting time. Here we sit wasting time. That is the priceless advice of the author, and he is correct.
Liberals point out that Trump’s dysfunction and chaos masks the other awful things his administration is doing. And not doing. We sit and let the Republicans obstruct and avoid doing anything to solve the problem of our rapidly deteriorating atmosphere.
Time slips away. We watched our grandparents grow old and pass away, their dreams and concerns vanishing, except for those we chose to adopt. We watch as our parents pass away, leaving us with total responsibility for the future of our own children.
Time slips away. As does our opportunity. The bottom of our boat is filling more quickly every day. Some of us have the gumption and good sense to bale out the boat, but many still want to eat the rations and laugh at the delight of our wealth and comfort.
Our children’s chins are below the waterline. Price pollution before their noses go under. HR763 Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Write your Member of Congress today.
3
To all those who don’t want to give up their favorite toy of collusion, let me ask you: what do you think Russians actually DID? The smooth words like “interference” roll off the tongue but please explain the concrete actions that these words describe. As far as I can tell, several semi-private and governmental Russian entities hired internet trolls to post anti-Clinton propaganda on the social media. The thing about the social media, though, is that unless your posts go viral, they mean nothing. I can post that Mueller is a reptilian alien on my FB page and...no I take it back, I’m afraid that some of my more unhinged anti-Trump friends will share it and who knows where it ends? In any case, the people who shared and re-shared the Russian posts and who took them to heart were ordinary American voters. At most, you can blame Russians for expressing well what Americans felt but were unable to articulate (which is not a compliment to our public education). Why would you need a “conspiracy” for that? Even hacked DNC emails were only significant because American voters paid attention to them. Russia does not need Trump to sow discord. In fact, Trump is not popular in Russia; certainly less than he is popular in Iowa. This excellent article clearly says what I have known all along: Americans have elected Trump, and if the Democrats won’t let go of their collusion obsession, they will re-elect him.
68
@Mor The tRump Facebook campaign was very effectively targeted. It worked. I know several people who voted for tRump, and they have all said they were motivated by FB ads.
3
@Mor So you don't believe that advertising works. As an advertising practitioner for forty years, I can assure you that it does work. Not very efficiently, but it works. And the Russians advertised where it works, and to an audience it worked on. The technique the Russians used is called FUD--fear, uncertainty and doubt. They appealed to the fear, uncertainty and doubt of millions of people. About 80,000 voters determined the outcome of the election, out of 60 million. Do you think advertising could have swayed those voters?
13
@Ray Clark No, I don’t. You confuse commercial advertising with political propaganda. Those are different because people invest in their political ideology far more than they invest in their favorite brand of toothpaste. There have been excellent studies of how political propaganda works. They show that propaganda helps people align their identities with a particular party or leader. The Trump base was not created by Russians. It consists of people who are angry and disenfranchised, and who have found a name fir their anger. This name is Trump. Russian trolling may have helped them along but it was Trump himself who gave a voice to their resentment. Unless somebody even more extreme comes along, the MAGA voters will stick with their brand, and no advertising will change the situation. MAGA is not what they like but who they are.
8
For the record, Hillary Clinton was not a “deeply unpopular candidate.” She got three million more votes than Trump.
3
@Artie
Did not get out the same number of voters in female, African American, and Latino voters.
Misdirection is the finest trick of the trade. We always get caught looking the wrong way. Totally agree with Farhad, maybe it’s time to fix democracy. How about a 50$ fine if you don’t vote. Voting is more than a right it is an obligation. Above 80% Americans voting who wins in 2020?
Every-time we wince at trump, the republican’s winced double at Obama, his 2nd term, health care for all, Nobel Peace Prize, and bailing out the financial mess the Republican Party got us into in 2008. But this is old news and going forward we are all smarter to the happenings and what to look for as far as manipulations and if Russia can manipulate so can China and so can North Korea. We are more intelligent than this and so I call out to the Ladies give us a female President
Could not agree more. Dislike all Trump is, but we, as a nation with flaws, are responsible for all that he promotes.
1
“In particular, Mr. Trump’s win pointed to tectonic failures within the mainstream news media”: exactly right. At its worst, the MSM is more dangerous to American democracy than Putin ever was. This is sad, because the MSM is full of brilliant people. But those brillliant people seem as willing to do whatever it takes to get high ratings as congress people are to do whatever it takes to get re-elected.
And no matter how many errors the MSM makes (remember the coverage in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq?) the MSM never admits error and is always ready to present itself as morally blameless.
During the 2016 election, for example, Anderson Cooper did an interview with Julian Assange in which he did not challenge Assange’s claims in any way. Cooper’s posture bordered on the worshipful. And yet he was still in the thick of things covering the interference in the election in which Assange played such a prominent role. Cooper is a great journalist, but he, like so many cable news journalists, always wants to hang out with the cool kids. If Assange is the cool kid today, he gets a soft interview. ... Of course, journalists have to get ratings or get off the air. But there must be a middle ground somewhere....
1
Thank you for this articulate summation of all our ills. Even if collusion had been proven, what would anyone have done? Nothing, most likely.
2
Collusion was always an unlikely indictment because, I believe, you must show both sides acted in concert to collude. Putin is smart enough to avoid leaving evidence of his plans. He was KGB and he is still KGB. Did Putin influence the 2016 elections? Maybe so, but he didn't need to work directly with any political actor: He picked the one most favorable to his agenda and sent his propagandists to work to get that person elected.
However, I agree that the onus of the 2016 election outcome lies with the citizens and politicians of the United States. Citizens should probably be smarter about their sources of information and politicians should probably be smarter about reaching out to everyone. As human beings, we have so many common needs, it is surprising we cannot find more common ground.
53
@JKM
I relied on the old-fashioned newspapers, of various orientation for my news about the candidates. I saw no redeeming value in DJT and voted for HRC as a viable alternative. No recounts needed as America got what they asked for.
1
Putin hated Hillary Clinton for a bariety of reasons, and wanted her defeated above all else, that it turned or to be Trump who ran against her was the icing on his blini.
3
This essay is SO good. Can't agree more. My favorite part (not that it's necessarily the most important point he makes):
"In particular, Mr. Trump’s win pointed to tectonic failures within the mainstream news media, whose leading brands had fanned the showman’s rise with copious television coverage; indulged his every gimmick with yet more attention; and elevated his opponent’s trifling email-management kerfuffle into a scandal of world-historic import."
Golden shower indeed!
18
Sir: You completely negate that the "result" of the Mueller Investigation has been reduced to a simple headline. The headline itself is misleading and written in a way to be deliberately misleading. To begin with "no collusion," which seems to be where the President and most people stopped reading, completely minimizes the second part: No Exoneration. Either the president and his followers don't know what exoneration means, or they are deliberately placing the focus on "no collusion."
The deliberate over simplification of the full report is inexcusable. Once again, it's profit motive and political manipulation over facts.
Also, Trump did not win the popular vote. Far from it. Mrs. Clinton had about 3 million more votes than he did, albeit in states where she really didn't need them. The Electoral College will always be in question until we design a better more fair system. You are right that many people have been disenfranchised and that needs to be changed - a fairly easy task.
We will not really know what is in the Mueller report until it is released in full to Congress and the report is assessed in it's entirety. Until then we can expect headlines that will simplify to satisfy and many will never look past them to find the meanings gleaned in the entire Mueller report.
2
The concept of or the actual electoral college is not to blame here.
Best case or worst case take a look.
The electoral college is the selection process in our constitution to select a president. The reason the last election was so lopsided in the electoral college is the method that States have chosen to allocate their electoral votes, votes allocated based on population. Allocating 100% of a States votes to a winner take all is a shade on the wild side. But look at what would happen if the state pro-rated their electoral votes based on actual votes received. I only propose this because you will never pass a constitutional amendment to change it.
Clinton 256+
Trump 250-
Other 32-
No one reached the majority. Hence it goes to the House where each state gets 1 vote to select.
Based on States won (50 plus DC):
Clinton 21
Trump 30
The system isn't flawed, the candidate was flawed. Recommendation: get a better candidate that the country as a whole will accept.
1
@Matt If you honestly believe that the current administration happened because of a "bad" opposition candidate then I have some nice beach property here in Kansas I'd like to sell you. The problems are much much deeper than the fact Hillary was unpopular. Get out a little more, talk to some Republicans, read some Republicans, you will find that there is a lot of hate for Democrats there, that hate has been there for a couple of generations. It's easy to blame the "bad" candidate, it's also intellectually dishonest.
1
the electoral college is not perverse: everyone knows how it works, which is to balance out elections so that the US does not become two or three control centers with the rest as mere hinterlands. gerrymandering should be addressed, but it doesn't make the system itself "perverse"
the investigation was useful, several people and a few corporations were charged, enforcing the rule of law is always useful. if it didn't go according to plan, so be it - onward.
6
If course, it is perverse, because it allows minorities to select the President over the will of majority. It divide the country, and creates the feeling of cheating and injustice.
This same system that produced the Trump result also generated the Obama election. The real problem is that new social media communications technologies are fueling wild delusions among very troubled persons who are lost in only the current moment. A deep breathe and a remembrance of historical context should deflate these tendencies toward delusional mania. This American system, that recently elected our first African American as President, and many more diverse leaders across the nation and states, is working. And it will work to measure all the various pressures that resulted in Trump’s election, and move beyond his time to the future.
6
@Bill Bluefish social media, and particularly algorithms to control the message (a field known as social physics) is incredibly powerful technology. you can see a bit of what it does when you look at AI applications even on a commercial level: rest assured they will improve and already have at information intelligence levels. how to regulate that power without infringing on freedom of speech is worthy of much consideration.
3
It did, but in this case the system matched the will of majority, that's why the flaw of the system were not so noticeable. Every time when the system produces the result contrary to the will of majority, there is always bitterness that divides the country even more. The political climate can not be normal when majority feels cheated.
Collusion alone is not always a crime. Collusion against our national interests to give aid and comfort to our adversaries and enemies, is treason. We have all witnessed Trump secretly collude with Putin and Kim against the United States. After those secret meetings we have watched him fight against the interest of the American people to give aid and comfort to Russia and North Korea.
He has worked hard to eliminate sanctions on those countries, the most recent being this week where he withdrew sanctions imposed by his own administration on North Korea. Against totally overwhelming evidence, he has sided with Russia against the United States on Russia's interfering with our elections. He has tirelessly worked against our military and economic alliances, and weakened the United States both internally and externally. We were now becoming internationally isolated and internally divided. Just about every one of his political statements cause more division and hate. Those statements appear to be calculated to enrage BOTH his supporters and his opposition. Trump is the only US President to deliberately seek to divide us; and he does it constantly. Commentators now seriously discuss a second United States Civil War.
We don't know what was said at his secret meetings with Putin; Trump has made sure of that. But we do know from his conduct that we have all witnessed that, what was said was both collusion and treason--regardless what Mueller's report says.
21
"It's our fault we elected Trump."
Several problems here.
Have you heard of the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations contribute unlimited amounts of money to presidential campaigns?
Have you heard of the Electoral College?
Have you heard of gerrymandering?
Have you heard of restrictive voting rights?
12
And here we have another erudite explanation for Trump's election that dismissively devalues the millions of votes cast in good faith by those Americans who felt unrepresented for so long by those in power. These were not all anti-Hillary 'trier' votes Sir. They were, in many, many cases, the votes of those who decided that character mattered less and outcomes more. And many, many of these voters are more than pleased with the outcomes Trump has engineered, even as they may at times cringe from the character flaws.
7
@Henry
It's not clear what outcomes Mr. Trump has achieved that any of the other Republican candidates in 2016, arguably all of better character, could not or would not have achieved.
6
”The ends justify the means” is not a founding principle, nor an admirable one.
@Henry
So what you are saying is honesty, truth and character is irrelevant to a Presidency. All that matters is, “Win, Baby, Win!” (Al Davis). And where did that get the Oakland Raiders; two decades at the bottom of the pile.
1
Russian collusion was a perfect reason not to examine the failings of the Democratic Party.
Trump's election should have been a reckoning; an inward examination of the root causes of his election and how Democrats had lost the very people who should have been their strongest voters; the working and middle classes.
Collusion meant that we could not possibly have been wrong or done things that actually hurt the people we swore to help and advocate for. People have to have been manipulated because how could we ever be wrong. We're always the good guys right?
8
The allegations against the President, from the beginning were a lie. They carried weight, because people could believe Trump could do the sort of things alleged.
After 2 years, what we've learned is, just because Trump is accused of something that doesn't make it true. Now more than ever, it is sensible to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Add to this, everyone that cast a stone, should not believed, going forward. How could they be believed. Listening the the daily montage of the left wing talking heads, there is clearly a source for the daily screed.
Aside from the "Trump is evil" admonition, every liberal said everyday, "Mueller must be allowed to finish his investigation. Everyone that appeared before congress had to give a blood oath, that Mueller would go unimpeded. Now?
We must see every word of the investigation, because Mueller must have missed all of the evidence. Even Mueller has to think this getting old.
8
@Mike
No one throws more stones than trump, so let’s not go there. “Benefit of doubt” is a constant flame fanned daily by trump. The sad reality is that our fearless leader is an uncompetent, ignorant bully.
I do agree that we should all see the actual report, this was a breathtaking work of nearly two years of investigation. The house Judiciary Committee should receive this report and begin their work. Only then can we begin to heal and correct our massive easily hacked Democracy.
1
They were not a lie. Rosenstein himself explored the possibility of wearing a wire. Why? Because he was incredulous to the point of alarm. And now we’Re supposed to give Trump, a known sociopath for as long as I remember with documentation to prove it, a man who abused his first wife and was on the verge of being charged for it until she was paid off to drop charges, a man whose administration has been assessed as a kindergarten by REPUBLICANS and been described as a “....moron” again by Republicans, etc, ad infinitum, THE BENEFIT OF A DOUBT?
1
Only there was collusion. Mueller may have found that it didn't rise to the level of criminal conspiracy, but there definitely was collusion as evident by the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
Then there is the changing of the party platform, the numerous times campaign officials met with Russians and lied about it, the Moscow tower deal, and on and on.
I know of no other campaign that acted in this manner. If it is not a crime then we need to change our laws to make it a crime.
19
Pretty much exactly what everyone from northern Europe has been thinking all along... I recall a women in San Francisco asking me in 2016 whether we were surprised at the election of Donald J. Trump. I told her "no, it seemed like the logical conclusion". For us watching from afar, it's not particularly surprising that the state of the United States of America (and indeed much of the rest of the world), would lead to the election of would-be autocrats.
17
Any individual working for any campaign for the office of POTUS would have called the FBI upon being approached by an individual working for a foreign power. Trump’s people met with them instead. The Trump family and those who work for them are corrupt to the core.
29
I didn't vote for Trump in large part because I didn't like his announced policy vis-a-vis Russia. But I never thought he was a Russian agent or co-conspirator, and I am happy to see that Mr. Mueller has laid those fantastic charges to rest. In any event, I've been pleasantly surprised by Trump's actions as president, and horrified by the radical left takeover of the Democratic Party, so I might have to vote for him in 2020.
13
There was not enough evidence to conclude that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with the election, so such collusion may not have been a clear contributer to Trump’s victory. Fine. However. We still do not have any explanation for Trump’s odd support of Putin and his actions, and what we have seen so far of the Special Counsel’s report doesn’t at all address that concern. The investigation was authorized to pursue “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” There may be financial, political, or other motives for Trump’s stance toward Russia, and that still merits further probing. The carefully worded and selectively shared topline statements from Barr don’t represent that no ancillary concerns or findings related to the presiden’s behavior arose from this investigation. Game not over.
12
@Susan There is nothing wrong with a sitting President supporting another foreign power or dignitary in political matters. When the democrats do it do you complain? I see it as more troublesome in the deep state supporting dictators and communists. Did you notice not a single democrat coming out to lambast Trump on saber rattling with Venezuela or North Korea? The peace loving liberal democrats love war and the financial windfall from their puppet masters.
@SRD-BCCM
I am concerned about the administration's reluctance to denounce Russia's interference in our elections and wish to better understand the motivations for that position; my post was only meant to address that topic in response to the editorial by Mr. Manjoo. I wish the Obama administration had been more forceful in this regard as well when the Russians' activities were initially discovered. I'm not a fan of dictators, communist or otherwise, and would expect any administration to take action to oppose and prevent bad actors from any foreign power who interfere with our democratic institutions.
2
There’s a little confusion here. You acknowledge that the Mueller investigation confirmed Russian interference in the election. You note that it did not find actionable evidence of collusion. So far so good. Let’s go a step further and say there was no collusion at all.
It doesn’t follow that the election of Donald Trump was not at all due to Russian interference. It may, as you say, be more profitable to examine the underlying problems with American democracy, but that’s a separate question.
We should also remember a couple of other things:
If Trump so much as thinks he owes his margin of victory to unsolicited Russian help, he has an incentive to impede recognition of that fact.
Entirely apart from the election, Trump could be a Russian puppet on account of financial indebtedness or illicit dealings.
So the about-face that you propose on the subject a Trump-Russia connection should perhaps be dialed back to 45 degrees.
16
It's like the nuts calling Trump a racist ..... even after finding illegal aliens working in his avocado gardens. Trump is too arrogant and egotistical to bow down to Russia or anyone. That persona leveraged by a commitment to truth and honesty is a TOXIC mix feared by the political power structure. He's not a democrat. You're lucky to have him as your leader. Believe it.
Some relevant points:
There was an active Russian influence campaign working in Trump’s behalf during the election. The M.O. was the same as in other countries such as the Ukraine and in Great Britain (to push for Brexit).
Whether or not there was provable conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia does not preclude the probability that Trump — who by his own son’s admission obtained money from Russia sources when American sources dried up — may well be beholden to Russian lenders regardless of any conspiracy.
BTW, less we forget, Trump’s campaign manager came to him only after his previous gig dried up. That gig was installing and supporting a Russian friendly candidate in the Ukraine. Oh, and Manafort was working for free, despite the fact he needed the money.
These are established facts. Where you go with them without further evidence would be speculation, but the facts are quite bad enough.
26
You’re grasping for straws.
You’re clinging to a few hand-picked details that give you hope.
Every detail about Trump/Russia that reaches your brain is filtered through a deeply biased lens. And by the time the information has reached your consciousness, it has already been formatted/edited to fit a narrative: that Trump colluded with Russia to rig our election.
Mind you, the same mental gymnastics happens with ideologues on the other side of the aisle.
But at least admit that your mental gymnastics is of the same brand as that of right-wingers re: Benghazi and Deep State.... trying to will a fantasy into reality.
1
The Neo-Liberals have been just as responsible as the Neo-Cons in ignoring the real economic and social pressures on ordinary Americans, which is why millions voted for Trump and Sanders (against elitists) in 2016.
Populist issues like healthcare turned the House in 2018, and widespread concerns to "Fix American capitalism to work for everyone" are at long last being discussed.
With Mueller out of the way, let's have far more oxygen for policies that address widespread concerns.
7
The author is dead wrong in several ways:
1) Trump was not exonerated. Rather, the report found insufficient evidence to prosecute. By all legal standards short of the inanely ultra positivist, this means that although we think he's guilty, it cannot be presently proven.
2) "We" as a nation did not elect Trump. Rather, he's a product of the collusion between two social classes-- the ultra wealthy and the rural poor.
That the latter aggregate has swollen to electoral college proportions is the fault of the Democratic Party that neglected them.
So if the Russians influenced the vote (with or without Trump), it's because they grasped the consequences of neglecting a significant portion of the working class far better than The Democrats.
Strange to tell(!), the turn to demagoguery after failed reforms is part of their lived history; for more, I'd recommend Figes' "A People's Tragedy".
9
One of the better columns I have read in the NY Times
since Trump became President.
There are deep faults/wounds in American Society
that need thorough cleaning and then healing.
32
@John Brown You need to read The Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair.
Terrific. Eloquent. Devastatingly accurate. Unfortunately, the readers of high-brow journals like the New York Times do not run either the country or the many subsets of the system. Fan out across the US of A and check to see who pays attention to think-pieces like this. You will find a distinct minority. Here's the fact no one wants to face: a primitive, corrupt demagogue had his way because most people hear only what they want to hear. And "most people" operate on the most crude and self-involved of wavelengths. The only real answer to this situation is to find a way outside of politics and the dependence on a fake and bankrupt democracy, as impossible as that may seem.
28
It was never my perception that the media had staked out a position on the results of the Mueller investigation. The media simply reported on the investigation without drawing any conclusions. To be sure, there was plenty of speculation. But anyone who pretended to know that some conspiracy would be uncovered were being naive, at best.
Does any of this mean that there should have been no investigation? Absolutely not. The seamy underbelly of the Trump administration got a lukewarm washing with plain water, a handful of people got indicted and convicted. We've learned a lot about what goes on in Washington, and just as we guessed, it isn't pretty and is often illegal. I don't think Trump will be able to credibly utter the phrase "drain the swamp" again, because most of the draining has been the of the filth he pumped into Washington.
9
Excellent piece. This next election needs to be about making BIG changes in the workings of our "democracy". The political parties have failed us and given us a corrupt judiciary as well. If we elect enough radicals in 2020, then a Constitutional Convention is in order. There are numerous things to fix, as the author partially enumerates. Interestingly, the founding fathers envisioned the need for periodic constitutional conventions, acknowledging that the Constitution wasn't perfect and that change is the only constant. "The people have the power", if only we use it in the next 2 years.
6
I agree! We in fact need only two amendments, which read "The 10th amendment means what it says, and the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches shall interpret it literally. Laws in contradiction to it shall be phased out, taking care that entitlements to individuals already granted by payment of taxes and fees (and only by such payments) shall be paid, by general revenue funds, but no new ones shall be created."
and
"No copyright held be an individual shall last longer than their life, and no copyright held by a group shall last longer than 40 years. No patent shall be granted on any medical object, process, procedure, drug or other medical invention. This Amendment shall be applied retroactively, no other clause in this Constitution withstanding."
This is the best op-ed I've read in a very long time.
Thank you for reorienting us to what matters.
We (Republicans, Democrats and Independents) embrace speculation as fact.
We equate gossip with analysis.
We've fallen hook line and sinker for "us versus them reality TV" politics.
We're addicted to it.
We choose partisanship and division over unity.
We choose to surrender our own judgment to that of the political parties and the punditry, so detached from the reality of ordinary Americans.
We hope, above all else, that the "other side" is wounded during the next news cycle.
We have forgotten that good faith debate is the only way to move forward.
We've given up on the chance for good faith debate (and thereby progress) by treating the "other side" as an enemy that can't be trusted.
Despite all of this, we're somehow surprised that Trump was elected.
We need to look in the mirror.
On a daily basis, you, me and everyone else chooses to ignore what matters: unity and cooperation for the betterment of all.
22
@DK I think all of the pronouncements here are great. Tell it to the republicans and let's see if they will change their behavior.
3
We were much better off when we all watched the same networks for our news, and when shrillness wasn’t sanctioned.
18
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and meekly accept Trump’s criminality. As has been noted, the Barr report was released yesterday, not the Special Counsel’s report. AG Barr is compromised - as per his promise during his job interview. Trump can’t be pristine given the many convictions and indictments related to his campaign after a two year investigation. It simply doesn’t make sense Where is a Bob Woodward when we need one.
8
@Ted - Exactly.
Not so. The majority of voters did not vote for Trump. It's not our fault.
13
I becoming so very disappointed at everyone's misunderstanding of the investigation: the investigation resulted in 33 indictments!!
That group is composed of six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. All incredibly important information from this investigation. It seems the criteria for a formalized campaign conspiracy/collusion did not have sufficient evidence. Let's hear more about the report before saying such strong things as NO EVIDENCE. Just perhaps not enough, or the right kind to make the indictment without a doubt. The investigation was important, no doubt. We still have more to learn. Patience people.
18
And did not England ‘interfere’ and the bankers of Continental Europe? Russia did not seriously damage our economy with illegal and unethical banking the last years of President Bush and the first of President Obama. England, Belgium, and the Netherlands Banks had a ruthless, corrupt sets morals and practices. They did more damage than to us in those years than Russia in a hundred.
I strenuously disagree. The Russians interfered with the election; Mueller agreed with the conclusion from several intelligence agencies. The fact that Trump and his election organization didn't overtly collude (or at least can't be proved to have done so) does NOT mean that the election was a fair measure of the will of the people.
There were SO MANY subversions to a fair election:
- Russia/Fancy Bear on-line influence
- Voter suppression of many kinds, mainly in GOP-controlled states
- Gerrymandering, again mainly in GOP-controlled states
- Comey's last-minute politically toxic announcements about Hillary's emails
- An Electoral College process that gives more weight to voters in rural, more conservative states
- Election funding that permits unlimited spending by invisible rich people and corporations
The list goes on. Sure, this is one accusation against Trump. But remember that Hillary won the popular vote, by a lot. In our (perhaps justified) flagellation about the Mueller report, let's not forget the main issue: Democracy is being systematically subverted, regardless of the narrow question of Trump's overt collusion with the Russians.
19
@David it sounds more like you strenuously agree with the main points of the author.
I don’t know this guy. But he’s good.
There are some simple fixes with the right political will:
Get rid of Citizens United, gerrymandering, and the Electoral College.
12-year term limits for all members of Congress.
And shorten the election season so that a single national Primary takes place in September of the election year.
A flat tax would drastically lessen the influence of lobbyists.
They won’t solve problems like man’s inhumanity to man or his search for meaning, but it’s a start.
4
@David Weber Sorry to sound cynical but none of the changes proposed here are even remotely possible. That's because they are against the perceived self interest of the Republican party and their corrupt, powerful, wealthy backers.
Finally. Someone in the NYT put the blame for this debacle squarely where it belongs: in the Great American Mirror. Its been far too easy to put the blame offshore and direct it away from our own failed systems. But as long as we do that, the systems, whether political, economic, or media, will go unfixed.
21
I think it would be best to wait with these sorts of columns until everyone has had a chance to read and review the entire Mueller report.
The details in it are likely as important as the conclusions, especially since the only thing we've seen is a summary prepared by the administration.
8
@MJ. Agree with you 100 percent. This columnist is just parroting headlines by our idiotic media which has completely lost it’s analytical abilities and is completely agreeing with the Trump spin that the Mueller report completely exonerated him. It doesn’t. The media should be writing and shouting at the top of their lungs that Barr’s summary is written by a political appointee whose ridiculous, unsolicited memo discrediting the Mueller probe is now being legitimized by the AG to say that Trump did not commit a crime or had any intent to comit a crime. How does the AG know this? Did he interview Trump? Was he, in 2 days able to go through all the info that Mueller went through in 22 months and still couldn’t reach a conclusion. This columnist should be making rational headlines rather than blindly parroting false ones which most media outlines are making without even knowing what is in Mueller’s report.
1
1. Donald Trump repealed Obama care and replaced it with something better and cheaper, on the first day.
2. Mexico paid for the border wall.
3. North Korea gave up their nuclear weapons.
4. He balance the federal budget.
5. He rebuilt Americas infrastructure.
6. He appointed judges that have overturned Row versus Wade.
7. He increased taxes on hedge fund managers.
8. He restored a future for coal mining.
9. He eliminated the EPA.
10. He achieved 5% GDP growth.
He said he was going to do every single one of these things. Maybe I missed the news coverage, but I haven’t an actually seen these things.
17
@Revoltingallday
Lets be very glad that items, 1,2,4,6 ,8,9 were not done
Regarding the popular vote vs electoral college thing: It's called the U.S. Constitution. The rule of law. Don't like it? Call a Constitutional Convention, or simply seek an amendment. Get over it.
9
@Bobby
No, don’t get over it. CHANGE IT!
Excellent summary of the sad state of affairs in the US of A as the rest of the world is looking on and wonders how this could have happened.
4
The problem is we have a political party to defend the economic interests of the 1%, the republicans, and a political party to defend the economic interests of the top 10 to 15%, the democrats. But we no longer have a major party sticking up for the economic interests of the rest of the country.
In 2016 most Americans did not have anyone they could vote for who had their backs, economically speaking. And they knew it. Will this situation be rectified in 2020?
25
Yes! The Democratic Party and the mass media have fiddled for decades while the republic has atrophied. I would add that the election of Donald J. Trump as president resulted from a failure of our educational system. If Americans were educated about our republic, what it is supposed to stand for, and how it is supposed to operate, they would not have voted for Trump.
12
I guess no one actually read, the Investigation Summary was given by Mr. Barr. It is his interpretation of the Muller Report. We the public have not seen the report, just someones's opinion and out of context quotations of the Muller Report. According to Mr. Barr there was no conspiracy, God knows what the actual report says and whether or not the conspiracy is unable to be proven because of the obstruction of justice which, again, cannot be determined unless we view the report.
It was a two year investigation with subpoenas issued by a judge from a grand jury where the only way to get those subpoenas is with probable cause. Three people have been found guilty ( Papadopulis, Manafort and Cohen) and two have PLEADED GUILTY ( Flyn and Gates). Michael Flyn was interviewed four like 19hours, and nothing?
Lets have the transparency of the report with redactions, of course, but let us not kid ourselves thinking that the Barr Opinion is the Muller Report.
10
If AG Barr said something the Special Counsel felt false, would not he or someone on his team said something? They are not bound to silence now. Their silence is a pretty good indication the AG summarized it exactly as the Special Counsel told him.
3
@Michael Blazin Wrong! The people on Mueller's team need jobs. They are not wealthy semi-retired lawyers like Barr. To speak up loudly now would guarantee no employment in government for as long as Republicans are in power.
Best analysis I’ve read yet. It illustrates a country whose citizens are spending all their energy to hate and fight each other. As a result, America is as weak as it has ever been. Will it take an external shock to snap them out if it?
15
Come on Farhad - don't hold back - tell us what you really think! (I'm joking. Well done!)
For far too long the USA has been too big a consumer of its own press, assured of its greatness as well as its power. With Trump's election, it has endured a rude awakening to its true (lowly) status, but it has all the resources it needs to form a much "more perfect union". It only has to really start to try. Electing a truly progressive Democrat president would help a lot. The world waits in hope.
16
As distasteful as it might be, it is hard to dispute Mr. Manjoo's major thesis, namely that we Americans are the main architects of our national political dyspepsia.
To discount the misbegotten Russian interference entirely, however, would be for us to sandbag any further investigation of the intrusion. This would suit the Kremlin so much to a tee that it is already crowing about it on its own state-controlled national media.
Russia interfered with out presidential election. We know this, notwithstanding whatever the Mueller report contains.
Yes, we need an effective domestic mirror to confront our own collective shortcomings, but if we choose to ignore what we already know about Russian malfeasance we also encourage a continuance of its Constitution-destroying meddling.
11
No matter how you slice the cake, Donald Trump is a bombastic, brutal, bellicose excuse for a human being.
I didn't vote for him. As a matter of fact, neither was I a voting nose-holder, as many claim to be. I enthusiastically voted for Sec. Clinton. I thought she did her homework. She reminded me of my daughter. Always working hard. Always familiar with her subject matter. I didn't always agree with her positions, but I never doubted she loved the United States. (And for what it’s worth, I often don’t agree with U.S. government policy decisions. But, I don’t think Donald Trump is in the ‘Peace is Our Profession’ business, either.)
This current hot mess is the result of capitalism run amok. The monetization of everything, from an ambulance ride to the schoolhouse to a ride in Air Force One. We're encouraged to be so worried about socialism (like libraries, for instance), yet we had no problem building up The People’s Republic of China. Why? Because we (not me) saw an endless supply of customers. What's 300 million compared to 1.4 billion? That's what left Trump supporters in the dust. Cheap labor costs and endless consumers. Republican nirvana.
And then the aggrieved voted for this guy. And, they continue to support him.
Who needs a drink?
28
@itsmildeyes
One wonders how you describe Americans who haven't been able to accept the simple fact that he won. Aggrieved would be putting it mildly.
2
@AACN - There is a difference between "not accepting that Trump won" and blinding following him. It appears that Trump's followers would rather blab about how Democrats want to change the elections results than take a long look at the problems that election has created. Following a leader who is divisive, disturbed, inept, entirely unqualified to do his job is one definition of either not paying attention or insanity. As we slide down Trump's slippery slope to anarchism, It is the welfare of country and the people the Democrats are concerned with, not the results of the election.
3
AACNY, my friend,
If Trump supporters thought they were voting for the counterculture, they have been grievously mislead.
3
All you defending Hillary,
She lost any moral stature when she bought the control of the DNC in Sept. 2015; Before the Primary.
It was further damaged when her campaign surreptitiously retained Steele to "fashion" the Russian Dossier; she kept that fact hidden well into 2018.
She has her part in Trump's victory.
She dumped the working class seeking an eldorado of refugee moderate Republican suburban votes. Trump got 53% of the White female vote. She failed.
Russiagate was a wag the dog op meant to bother Trump and to keep the public from observing the malpractice of her campaign.
"For every Blue Collar vote we lose, we gain two, even three moderate Republican suburban votes in Pennsylvania..
the same for Michigan and Wisconsin". Chuck Schumer
17
@Clark M. Shanahan
Slight correction...
Before the primaries all four of the Democratic candidates, Bernie included, signed a letter of intent with the DNC to financially support the organization as well as support and campaign for downballot candidates. Hillary Clinton fulfilled her obligation and donated both her money and time to the DNC and downballot candidates... Bernie did neither. Don’t blame Hillary for Bernie’s failings.
As for Steele... Hillary’s campaign retained the services of a well know and accredited op research firm, GPS Fusion, who subcontracted with Steele when their research into Trump turned up his extensive Russian connections. GPS Fusion testified before Congress, with full documented evidence that Steele was never told who he was gathering evidence for, and that the Clinton campaign was never told of Steele whatsoever. This is all on the record and easily verified.
Seriously, do you just make this stuff up?
@Clark M. Shanahan
Right on.
1
@James Constantino
"Seriously, do you just make this stuff up?"
No,
You sure know the company spin, work for David Brock?
The Clinton "purchase" of the DNC has been well covered, starting with Donna Brazile, and regretted by others.
the dossier:
"The person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential client matters, said the arrangement was brokered by Marc Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and his law firm of Perkins Coie".
Guardian: Oct 25, 2017
Report: Clinton campaign and DNC helped fund Trump-Russia Steele dossier
and another source:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/25/what-did-hillary-clinton-know/
.
We have met the enemy, and it is us.
8
This statement is just wrong 👎
Mr. Manjoo touches on many salient reasons that contributed to Trump's victory in 2016. Unfortunately, he gives only passive acknowledgement to the most important factor, the complete failure of the DNC to generate a viable campaign. To emphasize the Electoral College as the main culprit is preposterous, given that all sides were well aware of the rules. (Should losing basketball teams blame the rules when the other side made less goals but more 3-pointers and won?)
When Obama ran, the DNC enlisted ACORN to bring out the vote, which they did in spectacular fashion, though their methods were legally highly questionable. Where was a similar group working for the Clinton campaign? The DNC & HRC were victims of their hubris, plain and simple, and they made her look less appealing when the unexpected primary challenge of Sanders had to be thwarted with "superdelegates."
Yes, without the Electoral College she would have won; however, in that case she could have simply campaigned in red states with the largest cities and ignored the rest. Michigan would have been irrelevant.
16
@Laura Ingersoll
Correction: I meant that she only would have had to campaign in "blue" states, not "red."
Sorry!
Thank you Mr Manjoo for an extremely pragmatic Op Ed.
As a bi-partisan American, I’m heaving a sigh of relief that the Mueller investigation is finally over. Without diminishing its significance, of course - paradoxically and regrettably, it was also turning into somewhat of a political reality show: Generating wild spin cycles (and early morning Tweets, of course) from both sides of the political spectrum. Very distracting and disturbing indeed!
This is the ideal time for the Congressional Democrats to take advantage of their majority status and to put their noses to the grindstone to facilitate the preparation of a constructive and commonsensical legislative roadmap for the country. They should also stop issuing avalanche of subpoenas over numerous Trump related investigations (primarily New York centric). Let the prosecutors of New York’s Southern District handle these legal issues.
Personally, I totally concur with the overall premise of the recently burgeoning legislative agendas like Medicare for all, Green New Deal, Higher Taxes for the rich etc. However, as Speaker Pelosi suggested that the Democrats should proceed incrementally.
Democrats also need to have a cohesive campaign agenda with a centrist Presidential candidate for all Americans and not just for the left wing. It’s time for all of us to unite as Americans - country over party that is. Very sick and tired of this hyper partisanship oriented toxic and nauseatingly polarized national environment.
10
A better opinion column than most. Showing the forest for the trees.
Diagnosis in hand, is there a treatment? 'The public', in this country as in others, never really learns from his (or others') history. What is needed is a structural change to our democracy, and sadly these kind of changes are never born by evolution.
The Democrats must look at 2018, not 2016. What are the issues that Americans really care about? Health care, for one. Income/wealth inequality is another. Climate change is important. So far as Russian interference in our elections is concerned, Democrats should concentrate on making it as difficult as possible for the Russians to do it again. Yes, let the investigations of Trump corruption continue in the House committees. Let the U. S. Attorneys in various districts continue their work, and also the Attorney General of New York State. Go after the real crimes that Trump and his underlings have likely committed. Let's see his tax returns. But generally, Democrats should concentrate on the 2020 election and its most important issues, issues that were winners in 2018. Work locally as much as possible.
7
I've been saying this since 2016. And so were many many others. It is unfair for you to declare that "we" wasted these years, when in fact only the political and media establishment held on to the security blanket of collusion. Is it a coincidence that this "mass collusion delusion" is highly correlated with the same people and institutions who strongly backed HRC and believed she had the 2016 election in the bag? And if you think nobody else has been doing anything in this period, then you must have your head in the same sand. While you slept, a powerful grass roots movement has been growing and making inroads and changing the national conversation. Perhaps now is a good time to wake up and pitch in. The Democratic party will lose to Trump again in 2020 if it insists on maintaining an extremist status quo platform and candidates...what fantasy will they then invent as a salve for their sore loss?
10
To be fair to the voters, although we did elect Trump on our own, our other choice was Hillary Rodham Clinton. What were we supposed to do?
20
Our country has never given voters equal weight in elections, it's that way by design of the electoral college. In 2000 Bush won the election by the electoral college without winning the popular vote. We didn't do anything then to address inequality among voters even though we did not have a two year special investigation to distract us. Clearly we aren't going to do anything about it now. Although the senate could bring greater equality though a majority vote to change their rules by eliminating the filibuster. In addition, by majority vote in congress they could increase the number of representatives from 435 to 1000. This would go a long way towards equalizing votes in California and New York with votes in Wyoming and Alaska.
6
Thanks for speaking out this inconvenient truth and therby probably facing the wrath of the neoliberal mainstream media. The Russia gate was really just a sorry excuse for not accepting how failed and out of touch the corporatist DNC agenda ulitmately has become with an economy that simply does not work for most working Americans.
12
I’m smart enough to understand the concept of plausible deniability and obviously, the President and those who support him not only know what it means but how to use it as a weapon against democracy and those that support it. I’ve been following this Russia/Trump story all along and am smart enough to know that the facts that are public, uttered by the President’s own mouth, are far beyond the former minimum threshold of what would have been an impeachable offense in the past. There is no cloud lifted and no conspiracy disproved. Anyone paying attention is not surprised that the President was not found guilty of any crime nor found guilty of conspiracy. Such are the times in which we now live. The fact there is controversy on this point is due to too much punditry, talking heads spinning nonsense to raise their ratings, being called journalism. There is real journalism, still, for the discerning and those willing to only consume information from primary sources that have been independently checked and corroborated. I was informed all along this would be the result of the Mueller investigation. No surprising news stories here. I expect Trump to be elected again in 2020. It’s in the journalistic tea leaves.
5
a further indictment of Hillary's lack of trustworthiness with voters; even Trump was more palatable.
still waiting for an investigation of her basement email server with the open kimono exposing so many of our national secrets.
9
Russia did not cast, change or erase a single ballot. They did use social media and Wikileaks to propagate their slant on the process, and the ignorant and gullible among us bought their message. Of course, they were aided by the ineptness of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who provided Russia with all of the information that they needed.
But why isn't anyone looking at the U.S. meddling in foreign elections? The CIA has been doing this since its inception in 1947. This, combined, combined with 900 and counting military installations in at least 130 countries , represents an extreme degree of meddling.
So, I agree, collusion was a seductive delusion, and an ill conceived one at that. And it is our fault that we elected Trump, although he was greatly aided by having Hillary to compete against. And as for the Russians, we gave them all of the material they needed! What a script!
15
Thank you for finally admitting “we” the people voted in Trump exactly like our Constitution calls for. And we’ll do the same thing in two years.
8
Whaddaya mean "we elected Trump"?! "We" (that is, the majority of American voters) elected Hillary Clinton. Trump was appointed president due to the "winner-take-all" construct of the Electoral College, as perpetuated by the Republican Party and accepted by all except two states. Trump was not "duly elected;" as you note only towards the end of your piece, voter suppression and the "perversities" of the Electoral College is what got Trump where he is today. The ugliness of the Republican Party and far too many Americans is what keeps him there.
14
Donald Trump is President because voters weren’t paying attention.
7
I realized America is not particularly moral starting from about 9/11/02 up to the present. And it never really was, nor was Britain or France or any other nation. I blame Trumpism and the collapse of the center on Reagan and Dubya. Reagan for his nastiness and Dubya for incompetence. Obama was flawed as well and simply never would have left Chicago if not for Dubya. Considering Bush was practically a terrorist, I am as yet really surprised by Trump. If Trump can avoid a military debacle he may even go down as a decent POTUS as far as morals go. Compared to Dubya and the neocons Trump is almost a Christian ascetic.
1
Not only did his victory show us there is systemic failure, but almost 62,000,000 American voters voted for DT even after the Billy Bush videos and even after the belittling of the parents of a US fallen soldier. It is pretty terrifying that for half of the voters in America, Trump is actually a better representative of their prejudices.
14
Jim Comey's "grandstanding" was not a minor factor leading up to Trump's election.
4
Very well said; I never thought this would amount to a hill of beans quite frankly...and you said it best Mr. Manjoo, "In particular, Mr. Trump’s win pointed to tectonic failures within the mainstream news media, whose leading brands had fanned the showman’s rise with copious television coverage; indulged his every gimmick with yet more attention; and elevated his opponent’s trifling email-management kerfuffle into a scandal of world-historic import." Let's get on with it now and NOT make the same mistakes in 2020 that we did in 2016.
7
Trump won because the majority of the country isn't the Bay Area.
8
@applegirl57 The majority of the country isn't the Iowa state fair.
6
@applegirl57
This is twice now they've been dramatically wrong about Trump. Twice. Sensationally wrong. And they're willing to take the entire country down in the process of being wrong,
1
@AACNY
They’re taking the country down? Funny, along with many prominent political scientists in America, I thought the Republican Party was taking the country down in a decade-long attempt to crush the Republic and become the leaders of a fascist coup. Boy, I must be a dummy. And all those political scientists must be crazy lefty, commie, red whatevers. Remind me to stop reading them. What do those eggheads know anyway, right? Bunch’a lefty radical academics. Time to get them all fired, in the grand Republican Party strategy of stomping on anybody who gets in their way. Stomping is the right word. As in storm troopers.
You don't even mention the real reason, the only reason that mattered in the end. The fundamental reality is that there were enough Americans on the same page with Trump's messaging that he could squeak out a win even though a serious majority thought he not only shouldn't win but couldn't win.
So, shame on all those who embraced his message of rejection of immigrants, a free press, minorities, all those things he denigrated, or who bought his con about wanting to help the working people, and shame on all those who just didn't show up to vote.
10
This is the most intelligent and powerful description of where America is at the present time. The political leadership failed the people and a dangerous, erratic government is in place. This is the key sentence: "The ease with which a racist, misogynist, serial con man had slipped past every gatekeeper in American life suggested something deeply sick at the core of our society." Fiddling is not going to fix the "core." Major surgery is needed.
3
@Frankster
Likely because so few are wearing those heavy identity filters that see everyone as "racists", "mysogynists", etc. They reserve those accusations for the real thing.
2
Farhad:
What is at fault here is a constitutional system that has reached its limit. It badly needs an overhaul, from the electoral college to the number of representatives, it needs to be updated to meet the needs of modern society.
The problem is the minority that is benefitting from this structure is simply not going to change it.
Trump is just the unbridled id of the founding fathers. It’s the same as the monster that ran loose through slavery, suffrage, civil rights. At every stage, real change has only occurred after a period of violence, as that is what the ruling class responds to.
The next phase of this coup is Trump exacting his revenge. This is what we need to prepare for in the short run. In the long run, the Republic is done.
4
You forgot one Mr. Manjoo, and that's okay.
No third parties, no matter how tempting they seem.
No protest votes for third parties. The stakes are too high for protest votes, no matter how attractive they are, they are also shiny objects.
The left and moderates need to put aside their differences, with no litmus tests on health care or anything else, and unite, no matter who gets the nod in 2020 for the Democrats.
6
@RefugeeFromNY I think if there was a candate who had the money, and could unite everyone, maybe, but I've seen third parties be too disrutpive to be like that, whether it was the right with say, Johnson, or the left with Nader and Stein. And only if whoever was the incumbent poised to win in a landslide. I have some moderate positions myself on some issues, so I know what you're saying. and i do wish there were liberal GOPers like say Millicant Fenwick, or Betty Ford for that matter again. I think that would help too.
1
@RefugeeFromNY And I agree with you about the center and me generations/greatist generation, and the elites of both parties. It's why I want the left to unite with the moderates, and yes, for the GOP to get rid of their extremes and move towad the center. I know for me, I am not comfortable with Sanders, Warren is my candiate, and Biden if she falters. I also think that third parties might be more viabile too if we got rid of the electorial college.
@RefugeeFromNY I know what you're saying here too, I think if the canadate in question, and I think both Biden and Warren would, just the way Pelosi has with her left wing in the House, were able to appeal to both, but also told the loud left to get in line, and offered them ways to do so, I think they would, knowing they had common ground, that is defeating Trump.
If only “we” had gone to Wisconsin.
5
No proven collusion doesn’t mean Russia didn’t push him past Clinton.
5
Can one be more disrespectful to the Americans who actually elected Donald Trump? Maybe instead of raving it would be better to actually learn something from the event? Keep it up and they will elect Trump again in 2020. And who could blame them.
5
As a contented Republican I proudly voted for President Trump in 2016, and will do so again in 2020.
It’s the identity politics Democrats who divide America by race and gender, and use discrimination based on race and gender to reward their political base, that are our biggest danger. It’s Democrats who are racist misandrists.
@David.
Well I could blame them, as long as you’re asking. 52% of them admit to pollsters that they think black people are stupid or lazy. So yeah, I blame them for putting a racist lunatic in the White House. They knew exactly what they were doing, but they didn’t know he was interested in a fascist coup d’état. And when it happens they’ll be the first to extend their arms high. There’s a streak of authoritarianism running through this country, it’s been there for a long time, and it’s about to take over.
I was wrong. There was no way I thought ex KGB spymaster Putin was innocent in this. But it seems the Barr memo clears him of any collusion.
2
God, that is a masterful piece of writing. Brilliant, Mr. Manjoo!
5
"In the years we’ve spent chasing the fantastical ghosts of collusion, we have all but ignored the structural weaknesses plaguing every corner of the American establishment..."
Soon after being summoned to an impending disaster that only he could prevent, meek, mild-mannered Robert Mueller, cleverly disguised as a career bean counter, stepped into the phone booth and began quietly removing his suit and tie....
And, years later, at the end of the saga the long-awaited conclusion is: underneath it all Robert Mueller, alas, was never more than a bean counter.
The big loser here is the myth of Establishment competence and its fail-safe mechanisms for self-correction. Manjoo focuses on the lumps taken by the national media. But one can argue that the primary victim of Mueller's feckless unwillingness to address the big-picture consequences of the many details his team investigated is the national security bureaucracy.
Comey and McCabe targeted early on the Russian interference threat and staked their careers on Mueller following through on their leads. But Mueller fumbled the baton. He became paralyzed by the unresolved legal issues surrounding his authority and chose institutional safety over a more risky strategy designed to deliver the Republic from its peril.
The conclusion is that the Establishment's fail-safe system aborted under stress. Its chance for a managed correction is now gone. That reality will inevitably push the focus of action further toward the streets.
3
Not everyone was enamored of or taken in by Mr Trump. In his home district of Manhattan he got 10% of the presidential vote.
This was was not an overwhelming preference for Ms Clinton, it was total disgust for Mr Trump.
1
@OSS Architect TRUMP 2020 and lets give him another two or three terms because you need the medicine that bad.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Czars...
2
You neglected to mention someone in particular whose fault it is that we elected Trump - Hillary Clinton.
9
@Jay Orchard
Never mind. I re-read the column. Farhad, you did give blame where blame is due. My bad.
Mind your pronouns, Mr. Manjoo! 'We'did not vote for Trump. It was his opponent who garnered almost three million more votes than him. I accept that in this political reality of non-representational government, Losers indeed 'win', As a citizen who voted against Trump in this last presidential election, I resent being lumped in as part of the problem with your careless use of words.
3
We never want to blame ourselves for the tragedy we’re living in.
2
@MBG
Why should I blame myself? I’m not a member of the fascist class of Republicans yearning for one-party autocratic rule. As we have seen throughout history, and certainly in the 20th century, once a dictator gets his way in, he’s very hard to get out. Especially what he’s got a Republican Senate intent on installing fascism. Don’t trust me. Don’t listen to anything I have to say. Just google Christopher Browning. Or Steven Levitsky. Or Timothy Snyder. They’ve all said it a lot better than I can.
Praise the Lord, a hard-bitten analysis ringing with truth. And, you know what, there was an analysis in this very paper very early on arguing that the true story about Trump's election wasn't about "collusion" and it wasn't even about Russian meddling, it was about exactly what Mr. Manjoo points out. Which includes, devastatingly, us, all of us.
I agreed with that story then, I agree with Mr. Manjoo now and I had little doubt as Dems, and their amen corner in the media, who kept railing about "collusion, collusion, collusion" were going to rue the day. At this point I'm so disgusted with their idiocy that it might serve cosmic justice if Trump wins a second term.
And the even greater cosmic justice will be when this country becomes another failed banana republic precisely because Trump is reelected.
2
Well, so, where do we go from here? Do we simply acknowledge that we live in a bigoted country with a broken electoral system left over from the era of slavery and leave it at that? How is playing silent spectator going to push the nation in the right direction? The man occupying the White House was legitimately elected but that does not make him our legitimate leader. Mueller may well have cleared him but he obviously welcomed the influence of a hostile foreign power. We all witnessed it first hand when he said, "Russia, if you're listening..." And it is too easy for someone with hindsight to say it was all a pipe-dream. This investigation had to be done even while Trump was always the legitimate winner. We did not seriously suspect that Russia was pulling votes. They were only influencing our existing societal flaws. Congress must continue to govern with one eye constantly on the man in the Oval Office. He must never be allowed to relax. Let him bask in the failure of the Deep State. He is a fool. He is a troll. He will never be my president.
1
Excellent column and right on point. We need massive reform in all of our institutions - and the investigation and abolition of the neo-fascist, criminal Republican Party that has been undermining our democracy for 40 years.
3
Mr. Manjoo, you nailed it. Hindsight is now, of course, 20/20, and every word you have written is the sad truth. The question that remains is how to move forward with at least a modicum of hope for a better future.
2
OMG, does no-one understand the difference between collusion and a criminal conspiracy to defraud the American public? The Trump campaign colluded in public view (which is not illegal, the standard created by Trump & Co and parroted here and elsewhere in the NYT today). While I believe it's unlikely there was a coordinated conspiracy (no need for it as interests were already aligned), even if there was, the ability to make a legal charge is VERY, VERY difficult w/o documentation or someone who will testify with direct knowledge.
As for headline searching? One need look no further than the mind-boggling misleading headline on the top fold of the NYT today.
People will walk by the news stand today and mutter, "Wow, the president was acquitted after all."
Not a proud day for this paper.
2
This is an excellent column and straight to the point. Thank-you, Mr. Manjoo!
2
Another excellent analysis, Mr. Manjoo. Bravo!
1
Farhad Manjoo seems to me to be about the only columnist to put the cause of Trump’s victory where it belongs: the stay aways.
Too any people thought neither candidate was satisfactory and stayed away.
I hope these stay aways will see the light in 2020 and in every election. It is better that they “throw their votes away” by voting for an “imperfect” candidate than let others elect a candidate they would never vote for.
1
My biggest concern is that Trump's DOJ gets to appoint the special-counsel to give the next Democratic elected to the Whitehouse a two-year special-counsel proctological exam. Assuming the other side is corrupt, and endlessly holding out to prove it will be a great price for our democracy that will keep giving.
Overall, well said!! The Democrats needed Russia to be the explanation, as the alternative that they had lost touch with the voters was too hard to swallow - so 2 years of time to connect with mid-west voters was wasted hoping it was someone else's fault.
I didn't vote for Trump, but of friends I know that did, I believe it was an anti-establishment vote rather than a pro-racist vote. I get very impatient with my liberal friends that dismiss each and every one of the 52 million Trump voters as racist, misogynistic pigs. They still haven't learned the lesson - Clinton was the ideal establishment candidate in an anti-establishment election. The GOP learned this the primaries when Trump cut-down 17 establishment candidates. Trump didn't win the mid-west, Clinton lost the mid-west, a sin that liberal's still can't bring themselves to accept.
I don't want to vote for Trump, but this Mid-west voter won't be earned with a coastal liberal that doubles down on socialism.
41
@Tom Stoltz
" so 2 years of time to connect with mid-west voters was wasted hoping it was someone else's fault."
So, true. Yet now they are making up for lost time, just not in the right way.
AOC has certainly "connected". In very clear and no uncertain terms middle and working class Americans now understand very well what is coming their way.
They way they see it, AOC just threw away thousands of high paying jobs for NYC. What will she (and Democrats in general) do for them?
As an Independent who voted for Hillary, and will never vote for Trump, it is a very very sad day.
I hope Democrats can heed Mr. Manjoo's advice, but fear they will not.
4
@Tom Stoltz wrote: "I didn't vote for Trump, but of friends I know that did, I believe it was an anti-establishment vote rather than a pro-racist vote."
Unfortunately, that doesn't explain the continued base support for Trump. What's his approval rating among Republicans, 85%? It also doesn't explain why the Republican political establishment is so completely in bed with Trump.
2
@Tom Stoltz I, too, don’t believe that all who voted for Trump are racist, misogynistic pigs(my husband & many friends voted for him) and, although I voted for Hillaryand supported her run early on, I think you’re also spot on in that it was an anti-establishment election. I also feel there were many who voted for Trump because of his promises to deregulate and support the business community in trade,ect. Nothing else really mattered to them. Trump was chosen to run as the Republican candidate(although many would have preferred other less vulgar Republican candidates) and so they voted for him. Their bottom line is everything to them and us Democrats tend to hurt their bottom line with our social and environmental agendas.
I will never vote for Trump nor probably any Republican candidate because to appeal to their constituency in this age they have to veer too far right for me. But I fear for the present Democrat party that is veering farther and farther left to far too broad a platform with many unrealistic goals. If we don’t come up with a workable platform that zeroes in on our most important and realistic goals we’re going to loose to Trump in 2020 too. And the long awaited Mueller report has swung the pendulum towards him for even those Republicans who were wavering. We have our work cut out for us.
In 2015 - 2016, I can still remember the screaming on the networks, Morning Joe in particular “Coming up in the ? hour, candidate Trump would be calling in!!, All the networks held us in suspense for that “big call”. Then Trump came call with with bravado- “ I will fix this, stop that, I am the best...ad nauseas. No other candidate was given that privilege. They only have themselves to balance.
1
The electoral college seems to ignore the popular vote. This may get worse as population continues to shift to the coasts.
All citizens votes should be counted equally. The fact that the Republicans can hold the Senate with by only winning 17% of the countries votes is a problem for all Americans not just Democrats. Because it allows them to ignore the will of the people and enact agendas opposed to the popular interest.
Moving to a popular vote system would force both parties to treat each vote with equal importance and would provide a moderating influence on the nations politics. Politicians would have to appeal to the majority, instead of riling up their bases with extremism on both sides.
1
Trump won because he (disingenuously) promised people jobs-jobs-jobs and health coverage that would be "bigger and better" than the Affordable Care Act. The Democratic Party has wasted two full years during which they could have been working to turn people's heads with a solid plan to save Medicare and Social Security and get the profiteering out of our so-called healthcare "system."
Nina Turner called it early in 2017: "Voters in Flint, MI wouldn't ask you about Russia and Jared Kusher. They want to know how they are gonna get some clean water and why people are still losing their homes."
4
"In the years we’ve spent chasing the fantastical ghosts of collusion, we have all but ignored the structural weaknesses plaguing every corner of the American establishment, from its political parties to its news media to its tilted economic landscape and, most important, the unfair machinery of its democracy."
The more cynical political leadership knew that, and it is why they did it. They did not want to answer for all that. They did not want to change themselves.
We had a problem before Trump. Now we've got the problem of Trump too. That does not make it any less important to fix the problems we already had. We mustn't just go back to those problems because "at least they are not Trump."
12
Yes. Using the Russians or the electoral college to delegitimize Trump seems very similar to the goals of "birthers" against Obama. I think the actual number of birthers may have been far less than indicated by the press. I wouldn't even be surprised if the term "birthers" was a media creation in support of Obama. IMO, our press flipped (from the post-9/11 period) to the liberal side our political establishment, sometime after Bush got re-elected - and haven't looked back since.
4
@carl bumba
Except Obama never laughed about it, lied about it, or said "Hey Hawaii, if you could forge me a birth certificate, I bet the media would reward you greatly".
Trump coordinated with the Russian hack in public. In front of all of us. Anyone who believes he's somehow innocent in all this is being played for a fool.
I voted for Hilary but I did not expect her to win. On a trip to California in July 2016, I was stunned at the lack of interest in the race. In 2012 I had the opposite response to the Obama re-election campaign when I visited California. Nothing was taken for granted in 2012. I don’t know who to blame for this but to this tourist it was shocking.
It is quite discouraging to live in a state that doesn’t matter. My oldest son lives in Ohio and his vote makes a lot more difference than mine does. The electoral college certainly depresses participation here.
8
@Bruce Kleinschmidt So sad that two presidents in this decade have NOT been elected by the popular vote. And that gerrymandering continues, unabated.
3
@Bruce
It was also discouraging to this voter to be told the night before I voted in the primary to be told by the press that Mrs. Clinton had the nomination sewed up.
1
If a Democratic candidate asked Iran to find and publish Kushner's communications made on a non-governmental server would that be okay? If that candidate was secretly informed by Iran that Iran actually had stolen damaging communications yet did not tell the FBI but instead advised Iran about the most propitious time to release them in order to help the candidate and hurt Trump would that be okay?
Do we really want foreign powers to be selecting our elected officials with at least tacit approbation of those candidates?
If Mueller sees some innocent explanation for all of the lies and other behavior of Trump and his campaign with relation to Russia, we deserve to know that story. I have always been doubtful that there is such an innocent explanation but my mind is open to be convinced otherwise.
If the Trump campaign, in spite of all appearances, found effective means to counter any attempts at foreign influence that would be good to know as well so that others could be on the lookout and adopt effective countermeasures.
This should not be over. Congress has a responsibility to see to it that our elections are secure from foreign influence.Congress still has a job to do here. Mueller and Barr must testify and the report should be released with all of the evidence about the major parties. Especially Trump. He must be above suspicion.
5
Well, no. The Russians were definitely working to get Trump elected, it's just that there was apparently no indictable criminal co-operation between them and Trump's campaign. I suppose you could say that Putin isn't as much of a "puppet master" as if Trump was actually a paid (or blackmailed) conscious agent, getting instructions from Moscow. But he was Putin's choice, and the Russians did what they could to help him out, and he and others in the campaign were probably aware that the Russians were helping out. So, did he "legitimately" win the election? I myself think the Russians' contribution has been exaggerated in some circles: Putin didn't install him single handedly. But, he did help out, for his own purposes, and it was an extremely close election, so he probably gets a share of the credit.
3
@John Bergstrom " apparently no indictable criminal co-operation between them and Trump's campaign"
well, no. There may not be any the the Mueller report, but did you notice they are using it to discredit other reports?
@Geekoid: True, there are other investigations going on, and there is stuff we already know. We don't even know the extent of the coverage of Mueller's investigation, until we see the whole report. But yes, Trump and his supporters are using Barr's conclusion as a blanket denial of any problems at all.
@John Bergstrom Putin is very powerful. More than the million$ that Hillary had that Trump did not. Putin totally can sway any American.
I fully agree with the statements made in this article. We have only ourselves and our gullibility to blame for the state we are in. And we have no desire to look in the mirror.
8
Great column. Perhaps our greatest hope it that the American public already understand what the media, and right and left oligarchs do not. WE did allow for the election of a vile human being to be OUR president. And that is our fault. The midterms were won by the Democratic Party because of that fact.
The danger now is that Democratic Party will not pursue a big tent strategy and recognize that this country is one of incrementalism, and instead pursue policy ideas that out of step with the mainstream. And, the press, as it did with Trump, will be drawn to hyperbolic and vapid ideas of inexperienced freshmen congressman who don't deserve media attention.
8
So ridiculous to take the Barr report at face value. The guy was cherry picked to squash the investigation. The conclusions on the narrow definition of collusion fit perfectly with the definition proposed by Trump, but not by the definition as any of us who accused him of it. Utter hogwash by all these Times commentators.
The old fool colluded in public and somehow that's not part of this case. Why fire Comey then invite the Russians to gloat? He asked the Russians to hack Hillary in public, and then they did. That's conspiracy by any other name. So stupid. Hard to believe all these liberals buy the rag written by this prejudiced AG and the deputy AG who was an accessory to the obstruction of Justice when Trump fired Comey. They should have been refused, and Mueller should've done his job. He let America down. Now journalists are doing the same. Shame on you all.
6
Mr. Manjoo:
I agree with what you have to say. I would like to summarize for the simple nonpolitical types who are like me: We the ordinary people can't do very much. So maybe it's best to remain ignorant and let the politicians hump each other. Ruff ruff.
1
@Bull
I believe this is one of the most important columns I’ve read in two years. We, the ordinary people, can and must do everything we can. Yes, we can.
Most of all, we all must vote and help get out the vote. If we live in a swing state, the responsibility to help get out the vote is doubled.
If you can afford it, give to the DNCC to elect as many Democrats to Congress as possible. This morning I contributed as much as I could afford, for now.
1
"...seething with racial grievance..."
That, Mr. Manjoo, is a product of convenience, emanating from your imagination. You seriously need to get out more, spending some quality time talking to fellow Americans who didn't vote for Hillary Clinton ... listening with as much sympathy as you would like your words to be received with. But if Americans who disagree with you are racists, then there's no need to listen ... right?
3
@Charles Becker
There are many possible rational reasons why someone might have voted against Hillary Clinton. There are absolutely no rational reasons why someone would have voted for our current President. That leaves only irrationality, ignorance, and bigotry to explain his victory.
1
@Brad Blumenstock,
You make my point.
2
@Brad Blumenstock,
Your post is a replica of Hillary Clinton's name-calling "basket of deplorables" comment which is what actually cost her the election and gave us President Trump. Have you and your allies learned nothing? Or are you satisfied with the results you get "fighting fire with fire"?
1
Whachoo mean "our", op-ed man?
1
America, wake up! to win in 2020,
1. left and east coasts need pay attention to the middle: under-employment; under-education; poverty; working poor. job insecurity.
2. marginalization of middle American values (which used to be shared) before globalization and tech and "big education"
3. even the playing field
4. Dems need become party it once was -- lower middle class; middle class base; urban base; minority base; immigrant base.
5. race - we need fight the fight all over again.
6. voter rights/gerrymandering - we need fight the fight of 1 person 1 vote in the courts and at the polls (at state level).
7
@Mark Agree. Can you say more about what you mean by 'big education'?
This is actually really helpful. As broken as our system is on so many levels, it helps to focus on what we can change. I've long thought that the Democrats failed too often to lead when they had the chance, not least post-2008 with the bailout of the banks, not homeowners. So much more to say but here's hoping for a new generation of creative economic policies and ideas that can help set us on a better course...
8
I disagree with the central premise that Democrats were concerned about Russian interference because of disgust he was elected in first place. We were concerned because of the consistent lying about contacts, the preferential treatment given Putin and half a dozen other suspicious activities.
17
@Brian: Right. I've heard Republicans normalize the Russian interference "Oh, everybody does it, all the time, it's just ordinary politics, nothing to get upset about." But I doubt that that's actually true. Yes, countries have preferences about other countries administrations, and do this and that to support one candidate or oppose another. But some of this is legal and acceptable, and the illegal parts should be investigated and repelled whenever possible. Bank fraud is common too, but that doesn't mean we just ignore it... or, it shouldn't mean that...
3
@Brian. Well, Brian, Obama gave them the Crimea. Hillary gave them our uranium. And Obama did nothing about Rusdian interference. So elaborate on what you think is preference
I think the author conflates several different threads in inquiry into one. There are still 20 more state and federal cases open with prosecutors investigating Trump & Co. He is definitely not in the clear.
If he did not collude with an adversarial foreign government, does not mean he didn’t trade policy changes or voter information or dubiously earned checks for financial or business benefit.
7
The Electoral College exists for the same reason that every state receives am equal number of seats in the Senate: because only such enticements persuaded the less populous states to join the United States back when the constitution was written.
2
@Quiet Waiting
You are talking about the 13 colonies.
But the error came later, letting in large empty spaces and giving them 2 Senators each.
7
To the people in 1800, Maine was a large empty space.
Mr. Manjoo gets it right that the democrats continue to waste energy by fighting Trump rather than by setting a positive agenda. I believe that Hillary Clinton missed an opportunity after the first debate to clearly state what policies she was FOR. The legacy of that mistake continues to the detriment of our citizens and our republic.
6
@Fintan: I think the kinds of energy required for pursuing positive agendas, and for investigating corruption, are such that we can do both at once. There are a lot of Democrats, that goodness, and they have office staff, and interns and so on.
The thing with somebody like Trump is, when you stop fighting him, he is going to just get more outrageous. Has he given up on locking up his political opponents? I doubt it.
(I agree with you though, I'm always glad to see Democrats coming up with positive programs, and defending people's access to healthcare and so on...)
@Fintan
She announced her campaign at the FDR memorial in NYC and put out detailed policy proposals -- the problem was not that SHE failed to talk about them--- I watched cspan---she did talk about them.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
The problem was that the MEDIA didn't cover them---much easier to ask about emails yet again rather than delve into the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to address problems
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/7/16747712/study-media-2016-election-clintons-emails
1
Lots of truths here. Now let's see if the Democrats have learned anything. If the next months are spent 1) railing about getting rid of the Electoral College (a fool's errand, getting Congress to pass and enough states to ratify will not happen in the next decade); and 2) shaping a ticket based on identity politics (vs. what combo can beat Trump whatever the age/race/gender), we'll be settling in for four more years of Trump.
8
One of the best analyses yet on this toxic presidency. The only thing he omits is that the US is quickly losing friends around the world. China, in spite of its human rights violations, is looking to be a better bet. It doesn't help that the US is also guilty of human rights violations.
21
While I agree with almost all of this column's opinions, especially about the reprehensible Republicans, it seems worthwhile to point out that most Americans voted against Trump. The knowledge that my vote for HRC was discarded, along with nearly 3 million others, still rankles. The Russian "meddling" definitely had an influence on Electoral College results, as well as social-media messaging. As far as I'm concerned, Trump is an illegitimate president who is now accusing the Democrats of doing what he's guilty of himself, as usual.
23
@carrobin. The meddling happened under Obama, remember?
Dead on but it’s the long version. The short version is this: Trump won the 2016 fair and square because he struck a cord with millions of people that felt ignored for decades. Many were in denial on election night and many were in denial that he won fair and square for years. His Presidency is disgraceful but hopefully now the middle ground in both parties will listen to the ones that have been ignored and claim our country back in 2020.
6
@Cosmo Brown: Well, there's some truth there, but there's a twist: he gained a lot of votes by lying to people about practically everything concerning the economy and the dangers of immigrants. He appealed to people's racism and sense of victimization. In fact, the people he appealed to hadn't been ignored at all, they had been the beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid and public schools and Social Security, and so on... all Democratic programs under attack from the Republicans... but Democrats hadn't been sending demagogues around to stir them up. And in reality, there are very real problems with the economy that can't be blamed on China or Mexico or immigrants or even entirely on the 1% (sorry, Occupiers). There are real problems, and the Democrats are going to be the ones to confront them. The Green New Deal is probably a good start.
3
@John Bergstrom You raise some good points but, to clarify, the people he appealed to have indeed been ignored: they don't consider the social programs you mention as qualifying for being paid attention to. They want their dignity back. That comes with work, not hand outs. It's about jobs that make them feel fulfilled. They lost their jobs due to globalization and there was no replacement for them. Some people are wired to work with their hands, not at a keyboard. It's their basic need. So if Dems keep thinking it is about social programs, they will lose again. Once that basic need is filled, there will be no need to blame races, immigrants, other countries. Without making it about jobs and human dignity, the vacuum again will remain a vacuum that Trump - or some other power and fame and power driven person -- will gladly fill again with falsities.
That's great - just because Mueller hasn't been able to find any evidence of coordination that would stand in court, somehow everybody is entirely ok with the fact that Putin actively helped Trump get elected? The report doesn't say that never happened. In fact it appears to say fairly clearly that yes, Russia did heavily interfered in the election on his behalf.
That "collusion" may have been a "seductive delusion" indeed, in that everybody was expecting so much out of the investigation - no less than seeing Trump in handcuffs, I guess - that nobody is shocked by the awfulness that's still there... And really, Mr. Manjoo - you are 100% positive that Trump would have been elected without the Russians's help?
I agree it's "our own fault", collectively, that we let it happen. There's no way those dumb Russian-made online memes would have worked in a healthy society... But they did appear to have worked. And I'm absolutely not ready to feel like that was ok - whether Trump coordinated with them or not.
13
@Leonid Andreev It was not because of the Russians, it was because of what the US has become over the last 30 years and especially since the financial crisis.
@heinrich zwahlen I've seen a thousand of these arguments before; I'm sure you and I both know exactly how they go... But ok, I'll play - sure, the Russian interference was not the ONLY factor. Obviously. The trauma of the financial crisis that you mentioned, as well as the post-industrial decline of manufacturing jobs, and the changing demographics - those were all contributing factors too; there must have been many others. But with the hair-thin margins of Trump's victory, you can argue that pretty much any contributing factor may have been a decisive one too. And once again, I'm not ok with the results of an election where Putin's meddling may have been a decisive contributing factor.
The Electoral College voted for Trump. The majority of Americans didn't.
20
@Marlene Nakamoto Would never have happened even with the electoral college had the Dems not been hellbent on nominating Clinton.
2
The majority of Americans did not for for Secretary Clinton either.
@Marlene Nakamoto And your point is? This is in our Constitution.
Most annoying to me, aside from the very existence of the Electoral College, is the failure of Dems to have acknowledged its reality in the last election. Wednesday morning cries of foul were embarrassing; was this a 200-year-old secret being kept from one political party? Before the election it was a boastful "She's got this." After the election it was the impotent rage of pink hats. And since then, as the author points out, it's been chasing a mirage.
5
Excuse me:
"WE" did not elect the demagogue - Putin's brigade has not been cleared of a thing - and, come to think of it, neither has Trump.
WHERE is the report?
Two years do not get summed up by two pages based on tons of evidence, leaving not a single Trumpanista indicted found innocent, by someone who has had the material in his hand for a day.
But back to point 1.
We the voters elected Hillary Clinton as President of the United States, by a fairly significant margin - more than 2.8 million votes.
The Electoral College, a body that should have been dismantled with the original method of recommending the top vote-getter as President, the #2 vote getter as Vice President was supposed to be made of true MEN, loyal to the Rule of Law, who would select the candidate, based on the will if the people, prepared to dismiss any braggart, thin-skinned, lying demagogues with delusions of monarchy, if they should happen to claim victory.
Get your history right.
9
@Eatoin Shrdlu We the voters did NOT elect that criminal Clinton. The one that cheated Bernie Sanders by rigging the General Election. Get YOUR history right first. Both "candidates" were shameful, deceitful, criminals.
@Blingling: Don't blame Bernie; he was thrown under Hillary's bus. Blame the DNC.
We wound up with "Hobson's Choice"; two candidates, who were equally unpopular, except to their respective bases.
7
@Ponsobny Britt
Bernie lost by over 3.7 million votes, by 289 state delegates, and by over 550+ superdelegates.
Bernie lost all the big states, lost all the southern states, lost more open primaries, lost more closed primaries, and even lost caucuses that weren’t in lily-white states (ie-Nevada). There literally was never a single day in the entire primary where Bernie was ahead in state delegates. Not. One. Day.
Bernie didn’t just lose, he was completely blown out... and it was the primary VOTERS, not the DNC, that blew him out of the water.
So by the logic you keep throwing at Clinton, I guess Bernie was just a weak and terrible candidate, huh?
@Ponsobny Britt Two lousy candidates, let’s do better in 2020!
1
@Ponsobny Britt, of course, Clinton was qualified, and 'lil DJ Trump is incompetent.
This is an excellent column!
It helps not to have a television, I think. I knew very clearly that only a change candidate (Sanders or Trump) would win in 2016. Too many Americans are hurting financially, and it's not just in the Midwest to vote for the status quo. Think of young adults, bent over with student debt, unable to get jobs that can pay it down and start a family. Think of all the people living in their cars. The amount of economic anxiety here (and in many Western nations) is extremely high - hence the rise of nationalism, Brexit, Trump, and the Yellow Vests. The Democratic establishment will ignore it again at their (and our) peril. Unfortunately, politicians of both parties are more responsive to corporations and the wealthy than "we the people".
5
Mr. Fanjoo's article is a breath of fresh air. It speaks to one of the greatest political/societal comments of a time delivered by Walt Kelly's endearing character POGO. "We have met the enemy and he is us"
12
It's not a constitutional failure---the Electoral College is a feature of our republic to prevent the larger states from dominating the smaller by mobocracy.
Given that minus California Trump won the popular vote by about 1.5 million votes I'd call it a big success.
10
@ras If you look at State population per electoral vote, it brings home the disparity in representation.
California - 680,000
Texas - 750,000
Ohio - 575,000
Iowa - 440,000
Wyoming - 190,000
I find it shocking to think that I am not represented in the same ratio as residents of other States. If Ohio and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary, the candidates would have been virtually tied, which would negate your large state argument. This is the 21st century and we no longer have to cater to Southern slavery. I for one would like my vote to count equally with every other voter. I also would prefer equal Congressional representation, but then I also would prefer to live in a district that isn’t gerrymandered.
5
@ras
States are just lines on a map. Small ones do not need to be protected from the bigger ones. It's not like they are some sort of endangered species.
What matters is not states or counties or land but people.
People vote for their interests and a healthy majority did not vote for Trump. I don't know why you feel it's important to diminish the importance of California voters. All citizens votes should be counted equally. The fact that the Republicans can hold the Senate with by only winning 17% of the countries votes is a problem for all Americans not just Democrats. Because it allows them to ignore the will of the people and enact agendas opposed to the popular interest.
Moving to a popular vote system would force both parties to treat each vote with equal importance and would provide a moderating influence. Politicians would have to appeal to the majority, instead of riling up their bases with extremism on both sides.
5
@ras The constitutional failure is that the electoral college, and what a name that is, is a feature of our presidential elections.
3
Sorry, I think this is malarkey. We can walk and chew gum at the same time; it's possible to build a political resistance at the most meaningful level (see Elections, Midterms 2018) and investigate a venal administration filled with grifters, perjurers, and authoritarians. I doubted that Mueller would find a smoking gun, and if he did, Mitch McConnell would have fired it at Hillary Clinton. There's no way that we would ever get to 67 votes in the Senate due to the sycophantic infection in the GOP system (see Graham, Lindsey). But please don't pretend that anyone interested in the Mueller investigation was ignoring everything else. That's simply wrong, and simplistically so; had you been given a choice, you'd probably have said that Democrats in 1973 should have simply focused on the mid-terms. It turned out that they--and we--can do both.
21
An excellent article. We need to cool our jets, accept the fact that this Russia thing was a blind alley--if only because the whole thing was overseen by part of the executive branch over which Trump presides--let the courts in NYC and elsewhere do their work, and, most importantly, unite behind WHOMEVER becomes the Democratic candidate and help that person win in 2020 instead of playing spoilsport and refusing to vote if our favorite candidate doesn't win the primary, a behavior which has handed more than one victory from Democrats to Republicans. NOBODY, Republican or Democrat or third party, could possibly be as a evil a president as Donald Trump is. Let's take this as a wake-up call and start working to save our democracy before we lose it completely.
7
How did a major political party nominate an inexperienced candidate who had never held office before? These are questions that remain unanswered. True, we do know the math involved, but not the reason why. Many hoped that Mueller would provide a clear answer, perhaps some outside force pushing qualified men like Jeb and John aside. There are strong forces which have brought us to today, forces that support this administration, forces within the media, the financial markets, and within religious organizations. That so many could be indicted from within the Trump camp is a startling truth, no matter how Trump and his associates spin reporters around his merry-go-round of alternative "facts". Time will tell. In the meantime, the opposition must become adult, approaching 2020 with extreme vigor. Mueller was no Messiah.
4
@et.al.nyc: Unanswered? Or is the answer just too depressing. It was pure demagoguery: he got people screaming at his rallies, he lied, he appealed to their basest instincts, and they loved it. People kept saying, now he's gone too far, but his base turns out to love that stuff. Then once he won the primaries, the so-called mainstream fell in line, for the sake of the tax-breaks, and the anti-abortion judges. They'd been primed for years by Fox News, talk radio, Sarah Palin and Duck Dynasty. Depressing, but there it is.
1
Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward!
— Walt Kelly, June 1953
1
Donald Trump just picked up a few more electoral votes for 2020.
Democrats have not done much of anything besides cry (Will someone please hand Hillary Clinton a tissue during her next interview? And why is she still being interviewed?)and bluster since Election Night. And the Kavanaugh thing, which I haven't heard a peep on in months now. And the debutante debut of New York's answer to capitalism, Rep. Alexandria "Tech Jobs Are Bad" Ocasio-Cortez. Quite a list of accomplishments for heartland America to laugh at!
Meantime, the U.S. economy is humming and the Dow is north of 25K. Europe is still wishy-washy over Brexit and the Italy-China pact, and Russia sits satisfied with the status quo. Sure, China and North Korea are wild cards (check back in 50 years on the China issue), but not much is going on to rock the boat when oil is at less than $60 per barrel.
This Presidency has done what it set out to do, and that was to stop the federal government's encroachment into commercial regulation, energy regulation, 2nd Amendment rights, and states' rights.
People vote with their pocketbooks, and the Democrats at local, state, and federal levels are all screaming "More taxes for special programs". No thanks.
Throw in assaulting Obamacare and I would say Trump's mission was nearly accomplished in only 2 years. I am calling it now, Trump by popular vote (51 to 49%) and 60% of electoral votes in 2020.
14
@James, how amusing.
Yes - the American people voted for Trump as president. That is not the fault of the Russians or the media, or the American electoral system. Enemies always try to influence each other politics. Media always goes for drama, hyperbole and ratings. And any democratic system can produce anti-neoliberal/Anti democratic results. See Germany 1932/33 or Turkey in recent years. Demagogues and populists have historically been able to get elected on occasion. If the democrats present an engaging/rational balanced alternatives - the pendulum will swing their way. If they present left-wing demagogues/populists - we all will suffer with Trump for another 4 years.
14
@Barry
You have summed up key issues very nicely.
I printed your comment, and taped it to my desk.
The right path forward can indeed be described in a concise way.
1
@Barry
Democrats with national name recognition: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Back to the drawing board, people! Trump is salivating at debating any one of these "tax until you are penniless" leftists. AOC's mother even moved to Florida to escape NY taxes, yet she preaches a socialist utopia with no jobs!?
No conspiracy, which is not actually surprising, does not mean no meddling in the electoral process by Putin et.al. which leaves him a considerable role in the election.
And the denial of this by the Trump Administration is collusion in plain sight regardless wether this is legal issue or not.
And having talks with Putin without witness and without report to his own admin. is conspiracy just without courtproof evidence.
7
@Thomas Heimes You cannot be right. Hillary had every advantage and blew it. Calling people petty names like "Deplorable" removed all doubt on who I was voting for. Trump's student loan scam should have been easy to vote against. However, Hillary's influence for $$ scam with the "Foundation", was more disgusting to me. Talk about Russian influence... #UraniumOne
Great article! Let’s hope Dems can get focused. The media failed us with the 2016 election and instead of doing their research, they sat back and watched the Trump reality show. Let’s face it. Even Trump didn’t think he would win. I never felt that collusion won Trump the election. However, I felt it definitely occurred because of: the numerous Russian contacts by Trump associates and even Trump himself with the back slapping and celebrating that Comey was fired and “the heat was off” in the White House with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister; the discussion about lifting sanctions that Flynn had with the Russians; the request and attempt by Jared Kushner to establish a communication back channel with Russia; the Trump Tower meeting; Trump’s revision to Donny Jr.’s statement about that meeting; the repeated lies by Trump, his family and associates about their many Russian contacts; Trump’s repeated flattery of and inability to stand up to Putin; Trump’s constant fits and maligning of a legal professional and war hero like Robert Mueller; the Trump team’s inability to get their stories straight with their attorneys, especially Giuliani; and, Trump’s refusal to disclose what was discussed in his numerous private meetings with Putin. I have one question. Why? Mueller could not find collusion because Trump’s lawyers were persuasive enough to keep Trump from sitting for an interview which would almost definitely have resulted in findings of both collusion and obstruction.
5
Excellent analysis of where we're at today! Aside from Russian interference - with or without Trump's help - we have many problems still to address. The failure of both parties, the MSM, and our election system, all contributed to this unimaginable outcome. What's deeply troubling is that none of these things are likely to be fixed any time soon. But I hope that others in the media take up your analysis and give it voice so that maybe, just maybe, something can be done.
All that said, while we can't lay the whole blame at Putin's feet, he certainly deserves a good portion (and I'm sure he'll be glad to claim it). And we don't know for sure, despite Mueller's hedging and Barr's quick sweeping under the rug, that Trump or his cronies did not collude. Given the lies and obstruction proven - even without guilt assigned - we cannot really be sure that this didn't occur.
Moreover, it's a very forgiving definition of "coordination" and "conspiring" that doesn't include numerous documented meetings between Trump operatives and Russians that discussed using information that could only be obtained illegally.
Contrary to a headline in an earlier edition of the NYT that claimed that "The Cloud Has Lifted", the cloud is still very much hanging suspended over us, and it will make seeing the other issues you mention nigh impossible to see, let alone address, but I hope columns like yours can sweep away some of the fog.
5
Thank you Farhad. For once someone speaks the truth. Trump is the face of the USA as sad and horrific as it is. It is about time to reflect on the many years of complacency that led to this catastrophe.
7
Register, vote and donate to voter registration organizations in record numbers, America.
That is the only way out of this right-wing, Republican-sponsored Jim Crow Trump nightmare.
We all know that there is one thing that the GOP can't stand: democracy.
Let's give it to them good and hard in 2020.
16
Daniel 12:12 King James Version (KJV): Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
In other words, it's looking like we're stuck for the full four years
5
Collusion was less a delusion than a political line pushed by some liberal commentators, former intelligence officials, and Democratic politicians. They diverted attention from the three intertwined crises in the American body politic that created Trump—the destruction of the middle class, white racial anxiety, and yearning for authoritarian rule. They gave Trump a gift he didn’t ask for, and while the leading Democratic Presidential candidates did not fall for the Russia/impeachment diversion, they now have to fight uphill against an ascendant right.
4
What a clown this guy is. We the Democrats are at fault for thinking that Hillary was the best choice to be President and that's why we voted for her.
It's our fault, not the Republican voters, eh?
She didn't campaign in Michigan? I have never attended a campaign rally but I have enough knowledge and motivation to vote on who I think is the best candidate.
Hillary got 3 million votes more than Trump, where she got hurt it was because there were enough Democrats who resented her for not being Bernie.
That's where the fault lies, Bernie divided the Democratic Party.
17
@Blinging...I had trouble following your logic, but I believe that, yes, Democratic voters and the Democratic Party are in part to blame. There was a candidate, Bernie Sanders, who used his legitimate right to run and ignited a passion among the young and many who do not often vote. The Party had other ideas and scratched together enough voters to nominate someone who was disliked in historic numbers by many polls. Someone who then assumed that the road to victory was hers and sat back waiting to be elected.
Perhaps in 2020 the Party will listen to the voice of the people. Perhaps this time those who stayed at home will realize that there is a great difference between mediocrity and evil. Perhaps this time we should listen to the voices of our impassioned young people. We have driven the human species to the brink of extrinction. Let the next generation at least have a voice as they try to salvage what remains of the planet that we have very nearly destroyed.
4
@Blinging Good point...Bernie did split the vote. So what are you going to do this time?
@Blinging Bernie did nothing wrong. That criminal Clinton cheated Bernie. The DNC and her rigged the Primaries yet no one had any problem with it. People need to face the facts and stop acting with double standards. Neither General Election "candidate" was fit. The true opportunity was lost when people couldn't think for themselves and vote third party.
1
He has done a few very substantive things:
The ridiculous Tax Bill.
The alienation of long-standing allies.
The non-existent maintenance and upgrade of our infrastructure.
The ridiculous supply-side-trickle-down Tax Bill.
Issuing “props” to Putin and Jung-un.
Elimination of banking regulations
Undermining EPA regulation.
7
"It's our own fault we elected Trump."
We did not elect him. His opponent had 3 million more votes.
The distorted, disgusting Electoral College elected him. The US is not and never has been a democracy.
8
@Penseur That's right...it's a republic...and I bet you'll feel a lot differently about the electoral college if New York, California, and Florida were all solidly republican. If so, according to your plan, a democrat would never be elected president.
1
@Penseur We didn't elect the criminal Clinton either. The Electoral College decides the Presidency for a reason. Blame Hamilton for that. Many people didn't vote because they were scared to vote third party but couldn't stand the idea of either crook being in power.
1
Mr. Manjoo writes as if there was no "smoke" whatsoever. This is selective amnesia in the service of self flagellation.
The tremendous amount of effort and lies by trump and his "best people" about the hundreds of contacts with Russians both in and near that government were worth looking into.
All the cherry picking (or leaving on the branch) in the world won't change that.
7
“The collusion delusion”
That about sums it up.
Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, I suppose it will never go away.
6
Good one, good points. But you left out the DNC ... and the stacking of the deck for Hillary. My wife and I would have voter for Bernie over that pot-head guy we voted for. We where both considering voting for Hillary despite her many shortcoming ... but after the "deplorables" we could not vote for someone who declared that if you are not voting for me you are an economical loser or simply "deplorable". If all was fair Bernie would have won the nomination and presidency. So it is not some huge defect in a system that just gave you Obama (twice), no it was in a the DNC that was stacked in favor a bad (already lost the nomination to a new comer 8 years before) candidate.
10
Yet another piece that continues to miss the point of what happened in 2016, per se.
What really happened is the Democrats failed to field a meaningful candidate for President. The delusional and deluded acolytes believed, completely erroneously, that their Anointed One would be swept into office. Why? Because she was the Anointed One! So how could anyone, other than deplorables of course, vote for anyone else. It's unthinkable! Sacrilege!
But they incorrectly read the pulse of middle, literally, America which has always been somewhat conservative. They voted, enthusiastically, for Mr Obama. Twice. For change you can count on. But the only changes they saw was the shrinking change in their pockets, amongst other empty promises. They did see a whole hearted enthusiasm for silly things like bathroom arguments. And delusional promises like training coal miners to be programmers.
So they were faced with two choices.
A rich, old, multiple divorced, white man. His achievements were stupid TV shows, publicity stunts, and questionable business achievements. But making it clear - he understands it. Life has not been getting better, only worse.
A rich old white woman whose life has revolved around public service for decades. Questionable ethics over time and no real achievements of any magnitude. Parroting the same tired old Socialist promises, which, not coincidentally, benefit her base in the centers of Socialism.
And Democrats still don't get it.
18
@Mark, so Clinton had "Questionable ethics over time and no real achievements of any magnitude."
Wow.
2
@Mark
50 RECOMMENDS form the Mid-West!!!
2
@Mark
Brilliant! And Hillary still doesn't get it, preaching Democratic values from a compound in bucolic and exclusive Chappaqua, NY.
1
Oh please stop the whinging as the Brits would say. Everyone is so dramatic. We survived world wars, watergate, Vietnam war, c’mon the system will survive Trump. The founding fathers knew it was an imperfect system but it’s better than the alternatives. We are a striving hopeful and generous people, not perfect but not evil and hopeless like these letters imply.
9
It is wonderful to see the shock and horror of Libs today realizing Trump was in fact legitimately elected.
Almost as good as Election Night itself.
9
@Jay Lincoln, um, "Libs today realizing Trump was in fact legitimately elected"?
uh, pretty sure the "libs" recognize that 'lil DJ Trump was, in fact, elected.
Unfortunately, the Electoral College didn't do their job, by recognizing that 'lil DJ was incompetent and unqualified.
Just ask him a question, and watch him flail his arms, and tweet some irrational "thoughts".
He's incompetent.
Change any one of many things and the election would have come out differently: No Comey press conference, Hillary visiting Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia, Democrats voting for Jill Stein, and, yes, Russian interference, and then the election would have come out differently.
OK. So we lost in 2016. And, at least for now, the President is not an (indicted) crook. The task at hand is to be sure to win in 2020. Period.
9
And the Democrats still don't get it.
7
Mr. Manjoo,
You nailed it!!! Thanks for placing the blame right where it belongs. The reasons we have the Trump presidency are well-laid out. Russia did not elect our president. I hope the cold-war detractors will end and we deal with the serious problems you address.
G La Riva
3
Great piece.
1
Says you? There was a sturdy portion of the electorate that knew Trump was a fraud. And - as the US electorate goes - as the Brits before them have gone - Americans are leery of one party dominating government. I may add, sometimes not to their benefit. Even while Trump has been president - with his alt-right belligerence - a rapid change and re-working of demographics and economic "classes" has dynamically changed. It's harder and harder for our "middle classes" to buy a house, send their kids to good schools. What's more - people have to move out-of-state many times to keep up with job and salary availability. Trump is a guy who exploits economic vulnerability. Trump is not solely to blame for the tensions here now but he represents the worst of capitalism and free-enterprise. What - four bankruptcies? A fake University? Hiring hundreds of undocumented workers to build his buildings and clean his hotels and golf courses? Shame.
2
Excellent article Farhad. Have always enjoyed your tech pieces, but this column demonstrates your impressive talents as a reflective and insightful opinion columnist.
Facts: Jared and Don Jr met with a representative of Russia to get dirt on Hillary. Trump composed a letter for his son lying and claiming that it was a meeting about Russian adoption. Manafort provided secret Republican polling data to a Russian operative. No collusion? Sadly, Mueller turns out to be just another loyal Republican.
2
@LAM I'm thinking Mueller might know more than you.
This just about nails it. Because of this whole mess, Trump will likely turn out to be the most consequential figure of the 21st century - for the consequences of his vindictiveness, dishonesty, and destructiveness that we've yet to experience - and all of it will have been our own doing.
@Mark, not "OUR own doing".
It's Trump's', his family's', his [usually temporary] appointees', and his voters'.
1
@Mark
"Most consequential figure of the 21st century" might be even a bit too much hyperbole for NY Times readers' comments. You could probably argue Kaiser Wilhelm II was the most important person of the 20th Century until another German leader came along...so please wait another 81 years before calling someone a person of consequence.
Right on, Farhad! You have told it like it is!
Unfortunately, the reason behind the focus on the Muller report was because the task of addressing the problems you outline, particularly the constitutional challenge, are so daunting as to look impossible. When one political party is the exclusive beneficiary of the corruption while the other is perennially disfunctional, the odds of getting the corruption removed look pretty slim to me.
1
A lot of commentators agree with the author. What I want to know is where were many of you during the last two years? As many point out, Trump is not capable of managing a collusion gambit. Come on! Months ago, I turned off CNN and MSNBC (Fox, never did have it on). All of these baby commentators telling us about "collusion this" and "collusion that" . . . over and over and over. There HAD to be collusion. How else did Hillary lose - to HIM? She did! And, look at who's number one in the Democratic polling right now? Sanders, an old "socialist." If you don't like where the "progressives" are leading the party, then speak up - now - and keep at it! Glad to see you on board.
8
Yawn; most people had already concluded that Trump would not be indicted and nobody cared when all his close associates went to Jail. This is a mafia operation, where the boss knows how to hire hit men and designate fall guys. The problem that plagued Bill Clinton was the clean man image he nurtured, was tarnished by slick activities. When a guy has a dirty image, it is hard to indict; where do you start? The only loser in USA. But the collusion for that will be the people who voted for his hate-filled approach not minding US's loss in the World.
2
Give me a break.
They know the Russians helped and supported Trump. They even asked to assist and did so either way.
They also said they are unsure how to handle obstruction of justice when it occurs in broad day light in political rallies and Twitter. They punted that portion to Barr. Basically shrugging like what do we do?
The guy benefited from a foreign government that wanted him elected. If this were Obama he would be impeached and out of office.
One party controls our government and it is painfully obvious at this point.
2
Well written article. But you cant get caught up in dismantling the electoral college. It really does help guard against the tyranny of the majority. Simple majority would be a seriously flawed and bad decision.
4
“We have found the enemy, and he is us.”
1
Just a reminder here that "we" didn't elect Trump. A corrupted Electoral College process put him in office, despite his having received 2,864,974 fewer votes nationwide than Hillary Clinton.
4
Where do we begin? Our fault? Collusion?
Certainly, nothing about Trump has anything to do with me, ever! Nor Bush. There is no collective that I, or even, we, are part of that elected Trump. If the parties only respond to the 1% am I responsible for that? I could work politically more than I do, but I live in Manhattan. There is not much I can do here. I volunteered my technical skills, but if they don't fit with what they need, again, our fault? I donate to political causes. We?
As for collusion, I never expected that to come true. Trump and his cronies, while corrupt, are clueless, and were at worst pawns of the Russian state, or paid henchmen for the state. Besides, the mandate was for criminal collusion and crimes from that investigation. Even then, a Republican (Mueller) with integrity is still going to side with Republicans. A Republican without integrity (Barr) is going to present the findings as limited and will certainly not investigate further.
That said, I am very happy to see the investigations and prosecutions of Trump and his cronies going forward. There is not much doubt that they have engaged in criminal activities, or so close that it is obscenely unethical. But then again, we already know the latter. It happens almost daily...
2
You nailed it. And the "collective complicity" that you mention includes those of us (including me), who loathed Trump but let flawed polling, naivete about the rot at the heart of our political and media establishment, and complacency about the resilience of racism and patriarchy in our society blind us to Trump's electability. The silver lining of Trump's quasi-absolution is that Dems will now be more compelled to run on issues, which favor them, and not a simple anti-Trump platform.
1
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
Well some of us anyway. And his has nothing to do with the Mueller investigation.
The media's "copious television coverage" of Trump's campaign may have been ratings driven, but it also couldn't help but highlight his corruption, ignorance and racism.
"Republicans created an environment in which a racist demagogue could swallow them whole". Yes. But that environment did not include mind controlling drugs in the water supply. 63 million Americans voted for the racist demagogue.
Hillary "forgot to campaign in Michigan". Were voters in Michigan (or elsewhere) unable to make an informed decision without hearing a stump speech in person?
"The ease with which a racist, misogynist, serial con man had slipped past every gatekeeper in American life suggested something deeply sick at the core of our society."
That some American citizens seem to need gatekeepers to stop them for voting a "obvious racist, misogynist, serial con man" is indeed a sickness.
Let's give the 63 million Americans Trump voters the respect due adults and hold them accountable for their actions. Political parties and the media may have failed us. But 63 million Americans failed a basic responsibility of citizenship in a democracy: Don't vote out of ignorance, fear of the other, or hate. Don't vote for a crook.
And if you find your political beliefs "informed" by a stranger's post on Facebook or a Hannity rant on Fox, just don't vote. You're not ready.
4
I think what has been proved beyond any doubt is that the NYT and other mainstream media joined with various political figures to spread an untrue and unverified story that Trump had colluded with the Russians.
After spending almost two years and more than $25 million on a bogus investigation, that is the conclusion that Mr. Mueller reached.
Yet I fail to see any wellspring of apologies coming from those in the media who promoted such false stories.
I am a lifelong Democrat and would love to see Trump lose the 2020 election, but I think we Democrats are making a big mistake by endlessly bashing Trump; even the dumbest people in fly-over land can tell a phony-baloney story when they see it.
How about the NYT and the mainstream media pushing the Democrat leadership, whoever that might be, to develop a compelling platform (not free everything for everyone) that will appeal to the great majority of Americans, including those whose needs and concerns were ignored in the last election?
7
@Mal T
"dumbest people in flyover land" are the type of statements that got Trump elected in the first place. Remember, there are many smart people in flyover land, and many dumb people on the elite coasts. Please do not generalize.
1
Finally a voice of sanity emerges from the huge investment the NYT and the political interests it speaks for made in the Russiagate project.
3
This is a column that deserves attention, because it addresses the major flaws that have allowed Trump's election. Progressives are in for a long fight against a corrupt political and economic system fueled by the marketing of information to whips up strong feelings but doesn't do enough to encourage responsible citizenship.
Now that the Mueller report is fading into the rearview mirror, let's not continue being distracted by the noise of Trumpworld. Democrats need to stand for a program that people can believe in and will vote for. We need the strongest candidate we can find and must unite behind that person to remove the scoundrels from the White House and not replace them with other scoundrels or people so willing to compromise that they lead from behind.
1
Mr. Manjoo writes the truth. I live in Tennessee, a state where 69% of the population voted for Mr. Trump. I work as a software developer for a large multi-national corporation. In the days following Mr. Trump's election, i had to come to terms with the fact that at least 50% of the people with whom I work voted for this schmo. So much for workplace friendships.
The simple truth is he was elected by a vocal minority of the country whom the electoral college has given effective majority status. They see these times as their one chance to roll back all of the advances of the last 150 years (14th amendment, civil rights laws, global trade, equal rights for all gender classes, women owning their bodies, Miranda, etc) that have made this country no longer "theirs". Good luck convincing them that their champion is a liar and a thief, especially when there is undoubtedly a sneaking awareness on their part that they're not a majority anymore (voter suppression, anyone).
Bottom line to all. Stop focusing on the stupid Mr Trump says and does. It's not news and the never ending outrage is numbing. Mr. Trump represents the worst American society has to offer and those that voted for him are fine with that. And those that aren't have no voice right now at the national level, a state which will continue if Mr. Trump is re-elected.
So regain your voice. Vote the bum out of office. And his party too.
4
Hillary won the popular vote. Stop blaming her!
1
@Susan Angel
you win the game when you pay attention to the rules of winning not by whining about the rules after the fact. Had the rules been about getting a majority of the popular vote, you can now only speculate on what the outcome might have been.
@Susan Angel
She was terrible in every way. Face it.
I really liked this piece. Manjoo is saying what many Americans don’t want to hear: Trump is an expression of a deep malaise in their country. “But I didn’t vote for Trump,” you might say. True, but you live in a political and economic environment that enabled his election. Working on the structural issues that Manjoo talks about is what will turn things around, not hoping for a “gotcha” moment, or indeed following every idiotic move the president makes. I do hope the Democrats can find the ideas and leaders that are required.
7
Wrong, we did not elect Trump, it was the Electoral College.
3
Even if it is true that Russians were guilty of “hacking and disseminating Democrat’s emails” (the Intelligence Community Assesment by the NSA said they had “no proof” - annex B page 13) what the “hacking” showed was the corruption within the DNC and the electoral system. Every word, as recorded by political operatives themselves was true and showed who was really responsible for “interfering” in US elections and placing our democracy in peril: party hacks who placed a greed for power above the national interest. If the Russians, or anybody, hacked, they did us a favour, inadvertent or not.
1
Re " The ease with which a racist, misogynist, serial con man had slipped past every gatekeeper."
I would like to know the basis for this statement. Mr Trump by all accounts loves women. What about JFK and B Clinton?I know of no assertion that the Trump organization discriminated against women or other people by race.
This is the mantra of a HATER because Trump opposed Muslims entering the US and frankly for some good reasons - despite the fact that it sure looks like a 'racist' thing to do. He also has wanted to stem the flow of brown skinned people through our Southern border and to collect illegal aliens among us and deport them. Frankly what is so bad about enforcing your borders and deciding who you will let in? I do not understand what HIGH GROUND Democrats occupy because they defend border crashers and the children of people who sneaked in and embedded themselves in America. Invoking the rule of law is not prejudice. I there are a lot of things about DT people do not like. But if anything the Mueller report makes all his squirming and protestations all the more understandable because his hard fought fairly won election was being being undermined- and it was. If anything all Donald Trump's protests now look a lot more righteous. And who is responsible for that? Prejudicial hating sore-loser Democrats who think of themselves as liberals. Shame on the lot of you! Trump is no angel but your unfair actions sure make him look good in retrospect. Good job!
5
Spot on, Farhad. I think you should write more regularly, and perhaps educate your colleagues while you are at it. Your colleagues, at NYT and NPR, are all the ultimate Paul Ryanists. Serious in look and demeanor, and empty suits inside.
Your colleagues, meanwhile, have wasted valuable airtime and news-space on delusions and pointless exceptionalism.
5
Lots of folks, I mean lots, will tell you that Trump, the lesser of two evils (being Trump and Hillary) in their mind, is doing just fine.
Lots.
A fact the NY Times appears to be fully, completely, head in the sand around.
Nobody knows if Hillary would have been a better President or the sponsor of a nuclear war resulting in holocaust.
Correct? How did she do on Syria and Libya?
7
@Michael
Exactly. For all the bashing from the NY Times and Washington Post, Trump actually has not really done much. In fact, many voters appreciate that the status quo is being maintained without Democratic legislation having a chance at executive signage.
1
Line, "it's our fault...,' righto, you are right. The folks living in states with electoral votes did it. Never mind that HC was unpopular in the fly over states (I voted for her). This headline is just one more example, unwittingly, of an arrogant, I know more than you, attitude. That is OK. The D party is imploding leftward. You ignore D that survive and win in scary places, like NC, AL and LA No matter, we will lose again. Put a candidate up that know the hoods
- and people.
1
I respect many journalists individually. But today's "media"? Not so much.
No, Mr. Manjoo, we the people are anything but "just about content" with the situation of this country's ugly devolution toward the gutter and the pitchforks in the past 2 years.
We once lived in a country where journalists avoided showing a president in a wheelchair, out of respect for him, his office, and the country he led. How quaint it seems now. We will never return to that level of decency.
The NYTimes editors, on the other hand, seem to relish the chaos and enjoy stoking the insanity. Or perhaps they just enjoy oogling Trump's many macho possessions almost as much as he does. Is it just we digital readers who get subjected to such money shots, or do they also occupy more precious, but presumably less readily-monetized real estate in print? I hope not. Such editorial choices are an ongoing cheap shot at the public psyche.
We really don't need to have our noses rubbed in the hubris and dysfunction of Trump values every single minute, do we?
Further waving of the red cape is truly not needed. The bull is sufficiently enraged to take action. With or without journalists and editors inciting it, count on this - we are sick unto death of the value system displayed by this administration and we will act.
We have had more than enough of the madness.
Enough with the cape. You disrespect your readers in the extreme by continued mud wrestling with the pigs. Exercise some restraint.
Winston Churchill once said there was nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at and missed. Maybe that is the ultimate seduction--operating criminally in plain view -untouchable...........
Oh the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Are things really that terrible? Are the Gestapo rounding up disidents in the street? Are there bread lines and starvation and disease? Are we in an endless war consuming our nation’s youth? Is there mass unemployment and deep economic depression?
You all are a bunch of whiny spoiled brats. I hope you never get your way. Maybe you’ll grow up to be adults some day.
2
Just brilliant.
"Our" implies that the majority of Americans had a hand in in installing Trump. Trump was not even the choice of the majority of voters, let alone most of America.
1
@Randall "It's our own fault we elected Trump," writes the Times's headline writer, misrepresenting the gist of the piece.
I've regarded collusion as a real possibility not because it relieved me from thinking poorly of my fellow Americans (ha!) but because a raft of Trump cohorts and administration officials perjured themselves while denying any political connection with Russia. Is lying so commonplace in Trump circles that they didn't feel any need to tell the truth even while under oath? This continues to perplex.
6
Yes, but hang on a sec.
The movement in states to do an Electoral College workaround, whereby electoral votes would be apportioned by candidates' percentages of the total vote, is gaining steam. New Mexico just passed its bill.
Let's put our shoulders to the wheel.
5
@Taz
"...electoral votes would be apportioned by candidates' percentages of the total vote..."
Is that right? Sounds a lot more sensible and fair than the anti-Electoral College Pact the blue states seem to be plugging for. All i can think of with that is that the Repubs will win the popular vote and the blue states would have to toss all their electoral votes to them, even if the Dems took the states.
The Republicans who know that Trump is not fit to be president but who have gone along with him out of pure cynical political expediency are the individuals most disappointed by the Mueller report. Witness Lindsey Graham, after multiple slanderous attacks against his friend John McCain, own that he told him to give the Steele report to the FBI. Those spineless Republicans who have sold out on their principles of free trade, balanced budgets, and US international/superpower leadership had the highest hopes for the Mueller report. For those who haven't been watching, Comey, Rosenstein, and Mueller are all Rs. The failure to remove Trump via the Mueller report is the last gasp of the Republican establishment and ends the R party as we knew it. The Democratic Party should wash its hands of this whole mess and, as the author of this piece notes, focus on the issues facing this country. The American people agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, witness 2018 midterms. And one should note, Trump's trade and foreign war positions could have been written by multiple Democratic Party leaders from the left wing of the Party. Even on immigration and notwithstanding Trump's cruelty towards those seeking haven here, Democratic and labor economists have been skeptical of open borders where undocumented labor is underpaid, denied a range of basic rights and exploited by corporate America as a source of cheap labor at the expense of the working class.
5
@jsf Dems support tariffs and attacks on NATO? Hmmm -- I missed those.
These apoplectic ramblings are getting tiresome. Democracy is ending! Trump is ending the American experiment! And on and on. Look, I didn't vote for Trump (or Hillary), but the sky isn't falling. There will be another election in 2020 and again 2024. The country will move on.
I also am getting tired of hearing that Trump is a racist and misogynist. I just don't buy it. I don't think Trump is any more racist than the average guy on the street. I also don't see the misogyny, unless you are (still!) referring to Access Hollywood, which was nothing more than a caught on tape example of what many (most?) guys have said at one time or another in closed settings. Or is it because he has a model for a third wife? Who cares?
Enough already. I don't like Trump for a lots of reasons, mainly his disregard for fact based policies and anti-intellectualism. But stop the hysterics.
97
DRS, Iran has held elections regularly, as did Sadam Hussein's Iraq and as has Russia and numerous other political entities. Though somehow those "democratic elections" often were anything but. What makes you think that can't and won't happen here?
21
@DRS Let me guess? You don't see color and you think boys will be boys?
31
@DRS I remember when Saddam Hussein won the election with almost 100% of the vote. Perhaps you'd like to explain why we invaded Iraq?
9
Does the author think it's our fault that we were unwittingly the target of a highly-organized and planned, multi-faceted attempt to put us against one another and destroy our faith in our electoral system by a foreign power that, with the exception of certain parts of WWII, has been either a foe or our enemy for the last 100 years? Or that, likely thanks to that foreign power, we have a President who has done zero to punish or repel the Russians and their helpers for what they did and attempted to do to our people and our country?
4
@Electorate:"by a foreign power that, with the exception of certain parts of WWII, has been either a foe or our enemy for the last 100 years? "
That's quite a posture there.
Progressives have told me over the years that the West was responsible for the Cold War and that the Soviet Union was only defending themselves against another invasion from the West.
Insofar as having a president who did not protect us - the winner is Obama.
2
Spot on and best analysis of our wish to rewrite the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election through the Mueller investigation and report. tRUMP was duly elected....like it or not. We have wasted precious time and political capital in this quest. Instead ...the Dems should have focused on understanding and responding to the rising tide of dissatisfaction with the status quo in government and with our politicians that propelled tRUMP to victory...electoral college votes or not. The media ( NYTimes included) deserves special scorn for allowing and continuing to allow tRUMP to dominate every newsday. The choir already understands how file a man and President he is. His core of supporters will remain loyal.
3
After a visit to California in July 2016 there was no doubt in my mind Trump would win. There was no passion for Hilary. I had visited California and the mood was incredibly different. I appreciate the New York Times but they don’t know how to count. The coverage of Amy McGraft was just as flawed. I wrote and pointed this out to no avail. Wishing doesn’t make things so!
1
Spot on. But why focus on the Electoral College? We have an unrepresentative Senate, with four senators from Dakota and two from all of California. Above all, we have a King-President who goes by the same title as George III (Commander-in-Chief) and has the same powers as George III (executive privilege, pardon, veto, and the power to raise armies for 60 days without the consent of parliament/congress).
So where do you think Madison got those ideas? He kept the system as it existed in the UK in 1787 (King, House of Lords and Parliament became President, Senate, House of Representatives). The British learned their lesson from the American war.
They Disneyfied the monarch and finally got rid of the House of Lords. Instead of worshipping the presidency, we should think instead of getting Disney involved.
But let's at least start with the dismantlement of the Electoral College.
5
I think most of those who are unhappy with Trump made a mistake calling for his impeachment based on his Russian Connections. There are lots of things we don’t like about him and, yes the focus has included them, but there seems to have been this feeling that once “the Report” came out, that Trump would be exposed and the next stop for him would be jail. It’s not that simple, and the very fact that Muller took that long and so little came out (in spite of his close mouthedness) I think it should have been obvious that Trump has to be rejected for the kind of person that he is, and that is a bit complicated, given how loyal his base is.
I’m worried that it is now so easy for the right to brand the left as just malicious and guilty of the very things Trump and the right are guilty of… They are very good at corralling the left into that pocket and if they pull it off again, then do expect to see a second Trump presidency and a Republican House and Senate… and let’s not forget what kind of Supreme Court we will really have then, and how long with that last given all the mischief they will then be able to revel in…
2
@Stephen Suess. Wow. How long it took - two whole years! I was around for the Nixon debacle, and it took much longer than that. Just because Americans have become enamored of everything being delivered immediately (instant gratification takes too long!), does not negate the fact that doing a job right means taking time to do it. And so little came out of it? Wow. That's the problem with all of these revelations coming out in small doses over those two years. It seems that some people were waiting for some HUGE revelation. Never gonna happen. I for one am plenty dismayed at what I already know, and I didn't need Mueller to reveal some big thing for me to know that there are things in this administration that don't smell right.
2
@Stephen Suess We don't now what's in the Mueller Report. All we have is the word of his handpicked AG. I want to see the full report to make up my own mind. Meanwhile, Trump continues to degrade America's position in the world -- and Putin looks on with great satisfaction.
3
This column should have appeared two years ago. Agree with almost all but have two comments. It is not a constitutional failure, we are not a democracy of popular vote and it should remain that way. Second, we needed Trump to remind us what is not working - the political parties, the funding model, the broken mainstream media, the inept Congress, the extremism of political correctness, and much more.
Yes, we should take responsibility for him getting elected and not blame it on him or the Russians. If we do not learn and move on as citizens, we will have more surprises until we snap out of that delusion.
12
@UpClose Don't blame me. I saw this guy for what he is long ago, and I have been trying for years to dissuade people who were enamored of his "business" acumen.
3
Trump knew that Russians are helping and that is conspiracy.
Trump asked them publicly to help and this is conspiracy. Does not matter was it publicly or secretly because they responded.
Trump tried to shut and discredit the investigation every day in many possible ways. If that is not obstruction of justice than obstruction of justice is obsolete in American judicial going forward. Miller removed it. Layers can now use it as a president.
5
@Mike
Actually, neither of the two examples you give meets the definition of "conspiracy", "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful" (from google).
3
@Mike Don't mean to be a stickler, but merely knowing about something illegal does not make one a conspirator and Trump's campaign bluster ("Russia, if you're listening") is insufficient by itself to meet the legal threshold for an affirmative act necessary to create a conspiracy.
2
@D. Cassidy
OK, so, if I know that the group plans to do something unlawful for mine and their benefit and to endanger national security what it is if not conspiracy? It must be something.
I am not a lawyer by the way. How about obstruction of justice? Thanks for your input.
1
Brilliant introspection and analysis! In the end, we the citizens, deserve the kind of government we have now. Elections have consequences.
And now we have Trump with all his flaws but he is just one individual. He cannot by himself alone undo our long established democratic institutions and ideals of human decency. It will take a “village” of unquestioning and blind followers to aid, enable and abet him.
6
@Fe R...He’s already got a village of unquestioning and blind followers to aid and abet him. It’s called the U.S.Congress.
This is the single best column I have read on the Trump phenomenon. Among its many other failures, the left (that includes me) attributed too much significance to the Mueller report, hoping it would find Trump guilty of collusion and hastening his impeachment. And now, when that hope was not realized, the left is trying to spin the report in a way that opens doors to more investigations, more charges, etc. Too many reporters are doing the same, as babbling babblers opine away on cable news, sometimes seeming to question the findings of the report because, let’s face it, its conclusion do not fit their narrative, that awful, overused word. In the meantime, there is comparatively little or no discussion of foreign policy, income inequality, the environment, infrastructure, and much more. The Democrats and many in the media need to stop all this and move on. Trump won this round. Want him out of office? Select a good candidate with good ideas and defeat him.
And as Mr. Manjoo’s brilliant column suggests, Trump was no accident. We elected him. The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.
85
A bit hyperbolic in its criticism of Trump, but the gist is all true. This was enabled by the same media that first excoriated Bush II for purportedly starting a war in Iraq knowing full well that there were no weapons of mass destruction, which wasn't true, but which was repeated often enough that it became the "truth" so many believed. So too, with this collusion. Fed by the distaste (dare I say, revulsion) many feel for Trump, the collusion theory covered a lot of bases, was easy to spoon feed to the masses, was reinforced by our elected officials, and somewhat made up for the revulsion, which runs so deep nothing he ever does will be acceptable let alone lauded or praised. Brandeis said that, "sunshine is the best disinfectant" - and we should let the sun shine in and expose how and why we came to this moment - including how the investigation came to be - so that our society may be disinfected of this horrible state we are in: endless lobbing of cheap volleys at each other, while nothing is done to civilize the national conversation or to work towards legislation for the benefit of all Americans. Congress needs to get back to work also. It's not all about their reelection; it's about their creating legislation to benefit us all.
7
And let's not forget that the WMD narrative was similarly promoted by those who were profoundly unhappy with the results of the Bush/Gore election, and who would/could not accept the decision of the Supreme Court. So, George W Bush was painted as an unintelligent warmonger, who rode in on his daddy's coattails (despite not having won reelection); similarly Trump's win could only have happened with the help of an influential partner, and collusion, and since there's no collusion, we must now turn our attention towards getting rid of the electoral college, packing the Supreme Court, etc. etc. It's endless.
3
@PWD I don't get your point. Bush assured us that there were WMD. There were not. That "narrative" had nothing to do with the fact that Bush II did NOT win the election or the decision of the Supreme Court. Don't try to blame the left for the sins of the right!
@9aclock Bush won the election with Gore (so concluded the Supreme Court) much to the distress of Democrats. While there were no WMDs, Bush didn't LIE about them, but was given bad intelligence, which came out later. This led to the narrative that he lied to get us into the Iraq War. So too, here. Many felt the election was "stolen" from Hillary Clinton; any opportunity to discredit Trump would be seized, and the collusion story fit that bill, distracting the country for almost two years. What were the "sins" of the right in either of these instances? Nothing. What caused these faux narratives to be concocted and spread? Unhappiness with an election. Now too, this extends to the AG: the narrative is: since Barr is a Trump appointee, his conclusions and actions are all suspect.
Let me offer a simpler summary: The left, including Democrats but mainly Democrats, would have done, and still would do, anything to get rid of Trump, never mind that he was duly elected, and it was fervently hoping that Mueller would do the job. Now that Mueller has not done the job, the left is in disarray and crying (again). It is looking for new illegitimate ways to get rid of Trump, instead of relying on the ballot box, because it is afraid of the ballot box. And rightly so: the very attempt over the last two wasted years to engineer a de facto coup has made in much more likely that Trump will be re-elected. Well done, Democrats.
21
@John Xavier III. Well, perhaps the left would feel more comfortable relying on the ballot box if the Republicans didn't spend all their time disenfranchising voters they don't like, or voters they think might go for the other side. See Georgia, Florida, ah, just look at the recent elections.
11
@John Xavier III
See my reply.
Trump can point to zero Democratic initiatives or ideas during his re-election campaign. Who is going to debate him, New York's Rep. Ocasio-Cortez?
1
@9aclock
The left should run a candidate that can beat Trump decisively, then the issues you cite won't matter. So far, I see none.
1
This is a good article. I have one big problem with it (well, a few more than one, but I only have 1500 characters). All of the columnists that write for the NY Times assert (with the notable exception of the excellent analysis of Mr. Jamelle Bouie) that if we elected presidents by popular vote, no doubt exists that Hillary would have won. Don't fool yourselves. If we elected presidents by popular vote, Trump would have focused his campaign differently. He would've played by that set of rules instead of the Electoral College rules. It's like playing Monopoly and when you lose, saying well, if we played by the rules of Clue, I certainly would've won. Get real. Also, if the Dems thought they had a strategic advantage in the Electoral College, not a single columnist with the NY Times would argue to abolish it. They would sing praises to the heavens about the inherent virtue of the system and the Founding Fathers' wisdom. We all know that. The Republicans are no better, by the way.
27
Trump had no election strategy, he actually didn’t want to win. Republicans have won the popular vote once since 1992. Trump was shocked as most of us that he got elected. He was a victim of the electoral college in that sense.
6
@BK
Most Americans are too foolish to understand the clever structure of the Electoral College. When the Democrats screaming for popular vote realize that many of their policies will be voted down because of popular vote, then their tune will change.
The most important people in Trump's (and any) campaign are the campaign strategists, statisticians, public relations, and political consultant personnel. You are 100% that the rules determine the strategy of the game.
2
This is very interesting and, while one might quibble with elements, the core is sound. All the same, I suspect there was collusion. More importantly, Clinton was warned about not campaigning in my own Michigan and elsewhere but she persisted in taking inept advice and this did more damage than either Putin or Comey. Let us begin again, starting with getting presidential candidates in their seventies with baggage of all sorts to get out of the race (I am seventy-seven so shut up about ageism) and let the next generation have room to get real about restoring the constitutional order.
3
Vote. Encourage others to vote. It's the only thing that anyone who is unhappy with our current situation should focus on because until and unless there is a massive turnout in 2020, the Country will continue to be run by this cabal.
3
Mr. Manjoo’s title is correct - collusion was a seductive delusion - but that’s a very long way from accepting that WE elected Trump fair and square. Somehow he has skipped over the part about Russian interference.
Just because there was no collusion doesn’t mean there wasn’t an illegal, shameless (and successful) attempt to sway our election. Yes, we need to look to ourselves to understand how so many could have legitimately voted for Trump ... but also, to look at our institutions that didn’t detect and prevent the Russian interference, prevent FBI director Comey from commenting about an unindicted subject of an investigation (Mrs. Clinton), etc. If our institutions had worked better, Trump would not be president.
3
@Alec Hansen agree 100%. The article went too far. Just because there wasn't collusion doesn't mean the Russians didn't manipulate social media to help get him in.
5
@John R
Russia did what Russia does, the media did what media does. Very few people were actually swayed by the nonsense, and those have been and will always be easy to manipulate with nonsense. Trump won the Republican nomination fair and square. Then almost all republicans - including those revolted by him, voted for him - because of promises and policies that served their narrow interest. The Democrats lost because their candidate was not able to get Democrats to come out and vote. She received about 4 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008.
2
Thank you for writing this. I've been failing to communicate why I wasn't excited or disappointed regarding the report, and this lays it out clearly and succinctly.
Moving forward, we need to not just defeat Trump but Trumpism. This fiasco presidency has highlighted the failings of our democracy, of Americans, and it's not going to be an easy single-person scapegoat nor an easy fix.
2
I truly hope that those of us that oppose this president do not take the approach that this piece suggests; this article basically admits to Trump's charge of the collusion investigation being nothing more than political revenge. It wasn't. It was an investigation of which we are only beginning to understand its full contours. Anyone that thought that Mueller would submit his report and Trump would be escorted out of the White House, handcuffed and scowling, was being utterly delusional.
Let's save our postmortems for the occasions that truly warrant it. This president represents the gravest threat to our system since the Civil War/Andrew Johnson, so let's not do the usual thing of moping to the circular firing squad just yet.
5
@Chris You were all hoping and working for a coup without gunfire. You wanted to overturn an election because you lost and you don't like the guy. I'm not even a fan of Trump, but am aghast at what was being done by all of DC and the press. I will not soon forget this and I know a lot of people who feel the same.
5
@Moira Rogow
Really none of that is true.
Let's remember that the Mueller probe was started by (Trump selected) Rosenstein and was in no way a "plot" or "coup" attempt by Democrats. Furthermore, Democrats hadn't even really had a meaningful hand in the process until this January, and *that* had nothing to do with Mueller.
The choice is now yours as to whether we go further down the authoritarian route and declare any and all investigations politically motivated. I'm sure revenge politics will make for good TV, which is all that seems to matter these days.
The mainstream media's obsession with the secret Mueller investigation and its ultimate conclusion was a gift to Trump. Instead of focusing daily on his horrible policies, some cable outfits speculated endlessly about an investigation none of them knew anything about.
Now Trump can spend the next 2 years yelling about "fake news" and "fake conspiracies" to his base. Thank you cable news.
The time is long past due to actually engage in a factual debate about Trump's policies and how the Dems plan to respond with policies of their own.
14
If we voted against, spoke out against, worked against, and even contributed against Trump, how dare you say that the 3MM majority of us, the 65,845,063 of us who voted against him elected him? What do elections mean if everyone collectively caused the outcome? Yes, we have to live with the consequences, but saying we are stuck with him does not mean it is Our failure.
If the levee bursts, don't blame the folks who were piling on the sandbags trying to save it.
12
Good points, but saying Hillary "didn't campaign in Michigan" is overly simplistic.
Even if she won Michigan and Wisconsin, she still would have lost unless she also won Pennsylvania - where she campaigned heavily.
It feels like an unhelpful and over simplistic swipe to imply her failure to campaign in the midwest cost her the election, when the election was ultimately lost in PA.
14
Let's get something straight. Hillary was a "deeply unpopular candidate" you say. Recall that when she decided to run her favorable ratings were 65%. She became unpopular because the news media, as you say, defined her solely on the pseudo email and foundation scandals, Bernie Sanders savaged her, and the GOP criminalized her.
61
@Annie Wrong. Hillary actually went after Obama much more aggressively and he won. It is also a FACT that about 25% of Hillary's voters sided with McCain while about half that percentage of Bernie supporters (12%) sided with Trump. The polls actually showed Bernie doing better than Hillary against Trump before he pulled out. And finally, Hillary went out on the campaign trail on her behalf more aggressively than she did in support of Obama.
10
@ScottW She most certainly did not go after Obama the way Sanders went after Clinton. Sanders went after her character (corrupt shill for the correct Democratic establishment. Unqualified. Election rigged). And it is simply false that 25% of Clinton supported McCain. Finally, it is well-known that her support for Obama was aggressive and whole hearted after conceding to him. On the other hand, I've heard your Sanders talking points 500 times. OK. I'm persuaded! I'm feeling the Bern!
4
All valid points about the media, the election system, and the campaign, but the media is now helping Trump yet again by wiping from memory what actually happened: the Kremlin went all out to elect Trump and succeeded, albeit with several key assists. There may not have been a conspiracy in a legal sense, but Trump welcomed Russian interference and said so. What's most incredible about the financing and the media response is that the evidence was clear without any special investigation. Now, in rushing to your the narrative Trump already built for you, including his term 'collusion,' the media is back at it, boosting his chances once again.
7
True, but couldn't the whole Mueller report prove to be valuable to us all–both republicans and democrats–in the end? In that it will provide an assessment to the levels that an outside entity (in this case Russia) will go to influence our electoral process. This could still happen again, you know. It's more likely than not it will. We need to be able to evaluate what happened, no matter who is indicted or not indicted. And even if an election outcome is fair and square, it's still not okay to allow foreign operators any way in to our system.
3
Perhaps "we" got ourselves into this, Mr. Manjoo. But as someone who voted for Mrs. Clinton, my conscience is quite clear. That said, I do understand the import of your column, and you raise a number of significant points.
That said, there is really no rehashing what has gotten us here. What will be exponentially more difficult is getting our nation out of this horrific situation.
Some forty percent of our citizens love Trump, and love living under a dictatorship. The rest of us, presumably, do not. But we are certainly acting like we don't mind. Our silence today was deafening.
Now, as an American in my 60's, I cannot remember a time when our nation was more divided, and I remember the Viet Nam era and Watergate quite well. And as craven as Nixon was, we never once thought that he would try to seize absolute power indefinitely. But this is exactly the situation we are faced with now.
We are exhausted. We are emotionally drained. We see no way to return to the nation we once were, now that Trump has a toadying Attorney General and a Supreme Court with five votes in his pocket. And we may well see this Court rubber stamp the fictitious "emergency" Trump will declare before November 2020, cancelling the election.
We Americans are not used to a dictatorship. We have no idea what is needed to bring one down. We have no idea how to topple a totalitarian regime. But we are going to learn very soon that many of us will pay a heavy price for trying.
40
@Kirth Gerson:
as to bringing down dictatorships:
the US has done it abroad many times.
now at home ... it's a different story.
4
@Kirth Gerson Excellent comment reflecting my own thoughts, as well. I am even older than you, and remember the dark times of Watergate and Vietnam, too. But this is different, and worse in so many ways.
We haven't been a real democracy, not for some time. Gerrymandering, voter supression, long lines at the polls, corrupted elections, and Citizens United have undone the whole concept of one person-one vote. Our democracy is like the frog being immersed first in warm water, who is dying now as the water nears boiling.
So many people talk hopefully about the "next election." Like you, I think it unlikely that there will be a next election. When Trump suspends it for a "national emergency", a few people will be in the streets until the National Guard arrives to send them home. The Supreme Court will rule that the election can be delayed. And delayed again. People will go back to taking care of their families and working, and watching sports. Our democracy will die not with a bang but with a whimper.
6
Excellent article. Ever since the election, liberals have used the Russia collusion foil to avoid any self reflection on blowing the most winnable election of my lifetime.
"Democrats, meanwhile, dismissed the economic and social unease roiling their ranks and nominated a deeply unpopular candidate who lacked any novel vision for American life. And then she forgot to campaign in Michigan."
This quote really gets to the heart of it: Our political culture and democratic institutions are deeply sick, and generations of downwardly mobile victims of 40 years of neoliberalism were not going to buy a "things are actually pretty great" campaign, and understandably stayed home. A few ads on Facebook didn't matter one way or another. People were hungry for change, and a the profound flaws of the opposition meant that a billionaire grifter actually appeared less oligarchic than the competition to some people.
11
Except that we didn't really elect him did we... we have a flawed electoral system that allows a candidate that does not enjoy the support of the majority of the voting citizenry to none the less prevail in the election.
Let's never forget that this president was NOT the choice of the people.
26
@Mystic Spiral
I would suggest that we never forget that everyone understood the rules of Presidential elections and that amending the constitution is nearly impossible. This is the most insipid and tiresome rants of the left -- if only the constitution was how we wanted it, we would have won. Of course, if they had won by electoral college, the narrative would be completely different.
@Steve Anderson
You should study your history. The electoral college system has already been changed once, so it's pretty clear that it is not impossible. It has actually never functioned as the founders wanted or expected it to - the last go round, the best practice, would have been to abolish it entirely, but that was far to scary for states with large populations that were ineligible to vote...
It's time now - In my lifetime, we've been brought the worst two presidents in our history via a glitch in the system, we need to fix that glitch.
1
" . . . don't overlook . . . the Trump victory itself." That's what this entire exercise has been about, the Democrats' intense desire not only to deny that they lost, but that Mr. Trump won. Have the Democrats learned, are they learning, from this? When we look objectively at their program going into 2020 we see all their candidates' feet planted firmly in leftist fantasyland. Mr. Trump, for all his failings, is at least dealing with economic, political, and international reality. Don't think voters don't see this.
5
@Ronald B. Duke:
what realities is he dealing with?
where are his tax returns?
has he impressed north korea?
new all-out nuclear arms race anyone?
does he slow down global warming?
any plans toward sustainable development?
corruption, CONfusion, lies, defamation, demagoguery.
[and countless flights to mar-a-lago.]
you are right about democrats having to be extremely
wise in the choice of their election programs and aims.
@Ronald B. Duke
Exactly. The Democrats didn't "get it" and it's looking they still don't. But we'll have to see how Mr Biden's efforts play out.
And this is why I don’t support anything bipartisan.
Yep. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. That's Occam's razor.
6
The authors main points have been known for 2.5 years or more to everyone who's paid attention. A lot has happened to address many of the issues he brings up, largely through political groups that have sprung up since 2016. They are the reason the 2018 election went a little differently than 2016. Certainly Fox propaganda has proven to be a far larger brainwasher of Americans than anyone connected to Russia. Diminishing the power of those propaganda sources, and overturning Citizens United, are also known as important objectives. The Mueller investigation never distracted from those issues. However, making the needed changes will require a string of political victories, beginning in 2020. We need to tackle one election at a time, and gain sufficient political power each time to gain back something resembling a democracy. It won't be easy, but its our only option for change.
6
Categorical Imperatives for Democrats: 1. Overturn Citizens United, 2. Enlarge the Supreme Court, 3. Eliminate the Electoral College.
1
Mr. Manjoo, I appreciated some of your points until you felt the need to bash Hillary Clinton. If she was "deeply unpopular," why did she win the popular vote? As for her supposed lack of any new vision, people voted for Trump, whose novelty consisted of being utterly unqualified to serve. Finally, the Russians did not sabotage Clinton nearly as much as Comey and the American news media focusing on her alleged misdeeds as if they were the equivalent of Trump's.
Why do you feel the need to make her a scapegoat?
88
@Emily
Good Points. Trump's victory was the culmination of many of the rotten elements of our failed democracy: citizens' united, gerrymandered districts, denied voting rights with access to a polling booth, a weakened journalism body unable to muster high quality news, and more.
We should remember that during the Mueller probe, other stuff was going on: the Dems ran an election and took the House back from the GOP. The problems associated with a slanted Electoral College, gerrymandered districts, and so on, are being addressed to the extent possible.
I don't think Mr. Manjoo is saying there shouldn't have been a Mueller probe, or even that the probe itself was inappropriate, but I read that the press let itself lose sight of other important issues that failed to win any air time.
Finally, let's not forget that Jared was looking for a back channel direct line to the Kremlin, that many of Trump's associates lied about Russian connections, so there really was something to look into. How pundits and politicians handled the issue deserve some criticism, but don't lose sight of the facts revealed.
7
I really appreciate this column. We all want to find a reason to explain Trump's being elected but the real truth of the matter is that America's political system is broken + there are too many Americans standing by or at least willing to condone blatant racism and sexism. Until we accept that these are the matters we need to address, no significant change will be created. Even if Trump is voted out in 2020, it wouldn't be surprising if the system allowed for the election of another terrible candidate.
5
That Trump didn't collude doesn't mean that Putin bore no responsibility. What a logically-challenged essay!
6
I'm no Trump fan, but this is the best possible outcome for the Mueller report. Suppose he had found collusion? The Republicans in Congress would not believe it and would likely not take any action against the President. We'd be left with another 18 months of sand in the gears of our political and governmental systems that would serve no other purpose than weakening the country.
Now, as it is, Democrats can focus on the next presidential election which is the best way to remove Trump from office in the fastest time frame possible.
My fear? Democrats are so incompetent and so beholden to their free-ice-cream-and-puppies-for-everyone liberal wing that we won't be free of Trump until January 2025.
6
Interesting thoughts!
Yet now it seems impossible for Trump to lose reelection in 2020...Historically Presidents get two terms...IF Trump was smart, he’d adopt a calmer disposition and perhaps push through a huge bipartisan Infrastructure bill...That’s would guarantee reelection...
1
@buster
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party ( and the Republican Party) are beholden to their corporate and wealthy donors, not the rest of us.
1
Bravo to your bottom line.
There is a stain on America for electing him, a stain on much of the media (especially this one and CNN) for pretending for 2 years plus that it was the fault of someone else, and a stain on Congressional Democrats for being distracted from the real scandals (Trump emoluments; cabinet members' conflicts; security clearances, etc) revealed over the past 2 years. But it may be too late; much of American will now tune out.
I am appalled as anyone by the resident of the White House, but maybe, maybe the 2020 election will now turn on issues rather than personalities.
But I have grave doubts. Just look at recent Times reporting: "Is the Force with Beto?", Klobuchar's management style and comb-eating, Warren's ancestry, Booker's girlfriend Rosario, ....
19
I guess I'm just stubborn Mr. Manjoo. Besides the "deep-rooted problems" you list, I still believe the election was manipulated. I just don't think we know the truth behind what happened. I've had suspicions ever since I heard an NPR interview about the subject:
"And we also can't rule out that elections haven't already been manipulated in this way. We just don't have the capabilities, . . . to do forensic analysis of the machines. And we don't have the will . . . to examine that. So when you see statements from election officials and from the federal government saying that there's no evidence that the votes were changed or that the voting systems were hacked, it has to be done with the caveat that, actually, no one really looked."
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/20/538312605/the-insecurity-of-americas-old-and-underfunded-voting-systems?fbclid=IwAR1o0UZJ54ZjVo0efMGHTr1LCgSN0vFo9Ibe6Tb1QAWdX3fnTJw3-6VPg4w
4
The central thesis here-- that we elected the clown and not Putin--seems incontrovertible at this moment in history.
The idea that our democracy is in serious trouble is also incontrovertible.
Those of us who abhor Trump and what he stands for cannot just wring our hands. The institutions which are central to the survival of our republic are under sustained attack by the elected representative of grift and ignorance. And they are winning.
12
Manjoo is mostly right but partly wrong. He is partly wrong because we don't truly know anything about the Muller report until we see the Muller report.
But let's focus on the mostly right. The cause of the Trump election is our original sin; slavery. He is president because the president before him was an African American. We need to atone and acknowledge the historical crime and then hopefully come out better in the end, whether it's in two years or six.
6
I remember all the Obama bin laden. He’s a Muslim etc. I agree. The response to him was Trump and it is based in bias and hatred for all things liberal.
1
WAIT. Trump's election win WAS aided and abetted by criminal behavior on behalf of a foreign adversary. Full stop.
16
This is the best piece I've read on the whole thing yet, anywhere. Powerful, concise, and dead-on. You're a good tech reporter, Mr. Manjoo, but I believe you are on the wrong beat.
8
The best column I have yet to read about our national catastrophe.
3
"It's our own fault we elected Trump" - well, except for those who voted against him.
8
No it's not our fault. The elites of both political parties bear the blame for the election of Trump. Democrats and Republicans have pursued policies that favor the 10 or 20% most affluent Americans, and immigrants- legal and illegal. Typical working American citizens have gotten the shaft the last 30 or 40 years and the only way for average American citizens to protest free trade and open borders was to vote for Trump.
7
@Marigrow trade wars hurt us more than anyone else. An there have never been open borders. Not under Obama, not under Bush. America needs to join the rest of the world instead of pretending it can go it alone. It's 21st century and we are melting a planet we stand on.
Where are the stories on the foundation of the FISA warrants?
Where are the stories retracting the “evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia?”
Where are the articles regarding the 24 hour news cycle and social media obsession with the collusion stories?
Where is the analysis into the effect these stories have on the credibility of the news media?
In other words, how did the media get it so wrong, and why?
4
Did you read the letter? It didn’t exonerate him. They basically said he looked guilty but this is unprecedented and they didn’t have a smoking gun.
Basically people can go on stage and ask a foreign government to assist in attacking a political opponent at this point. It is totally legal to do so and they don’t know what to do about it.
Russia supported Trump in gaining office because somehow they knew it would benefit them. And this is only the memo!
1
Hats off to Farhad Manjoo, for having the guts to call a spade a spade.
"We know now that under our shambolic democracy, a man as unfit as Mr. Trump really can legitimately acquire all the terrifying powers of the presidency "
and the senators from his party will shamelessly support him, even when they think /know he is being cavalier, cantankerous, irresponsible, just to get a couple of Supreme Court nominees on the bench.
and the ludicrousness of the Electoral College! Don't get me started.
3
Who actually thinks Trump won only or mainly because of Russian support? I've never met such a person before or after the Mueller report.
2
In other words, we needn’t fear the Russian Reds.
It’s the red states that represent the greatest threat to our democracy.
Been saying that for years.
2
We all should read this column every day for the next however long it takes us to come to our senses.
Remember when Trump was elected -- that November night? We were stunned and remain that way because so many tens of millions of people voted for this buffoon. And I blamed the Democratic Party for pushing out everyone but a cautious, middle of the road, backward looking candidate (of my age!).
Mueller's report will be public one day, but we had better figure out a way to elect people who care more about the country than their own jobs. Trump is, as we thought at first, simply the culmination of a cult (previously the Republican Party).
3
Thank you, Mr. Manjoo, for this. Like most left leaners, I am sorely disappointed in the outcome of the investigation. As a former journalist, however, I couldn’t help but notice you place some blame on the media. I agree but wish you’d been more precise: The print media are largely blameless; cable media, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—and the people who rely on them for their news—on the other hand, have a lot of soul searching to do.
2
What? It was the cable and Internet media such as FoxNews and Breitbart that got the whole affair right!
It was places like the NYT that got it terribly wrong. Hint: the people are fed up with left wing lies. We are fed up with those outlets calling us (people in Flyover Country) stupid. We are fed up with articles like this one that assumes the way that the Left can win is by assuming we are stupid and generating "clear messaging" based on cynical lies, just to win. And then reneging.
Remember .. Trump is doing exactly what he promised. The tax cuts are very very real indeed, as I just noticed on my Form 1040. The promise to change our policy towards Israel to recognize reality was and is being kept. The promise to build pipelines was kept. The promise to withdraw from the worthless, bad for America and just plain silly Paris Accords was kept.
All of these things are indeed keeping the promise to M.A.G.A.
2
@Ameise
Sorry, print media bear a lot of the blame, too. Just look at all the inside-baseball/personality-driven stories we're already seeing -- Kirsten Gillibrand and fried chicken, Amy Klobuchar and her staff, anything about Beto and social media, and so on.
2
Yes, precisely. To paraphrase Marx, the collusion story was an opiate of the left. It's now time to sober up and deal with reality - and 2020.
8
Donald Trump is, as the author argues, a product of a dreadfully degraded political system. That so many millions could give him a pass on his manifest incompetence, ignorance, dishonesty vulgarity and criminal sexual acts, should tell us we have fallen a long way from greatness.
As for collusion, I was and remain an agnostic.
I'm not naïve enough to believe that because a long and methodical investigation failed to find evidence of collusion it did not occur.
Why did so many people perjure themselves in connection with a crime that officially never happened?
Not only have we not seen the report, but myriad investigations are underway. What other presidency has been so beset with so many legal and ethical woes?
But let's stipulate there was no collusion.
How can any rational person survey the shambolic Trump presidency and decide to give him another four years?
The true believers will be energized.
But for so many of us, the Mueller investigation is almost marginal. We have a president who is even worse than we could have imagined.
1
Whether Trump 'colluded' or not (whatever that means) the larger question on the Russia thing is: did they try to interfere? And if yes, can we quantify that interference effect in some reasonable way? We all knew that Trump was a mendacious cheating ignoramus before the election; and the greater lesson is that some huge fraction of the voting population - half, give or take a few percentage points - truly believes that this was no bar to the Presidency. That's the truly scary part. And this chunk has seen no reason so far to vote otherwise next time.
3
Now it is our job to un-elect Trump and his kakistocracy in 2020. Even though many people are more than willing to do this on the basis of Trump's white supremist and bigoted agenda, we must force Trump to run on his record, such that it is. He owns this corrupt mess and can no longer credibly blame it on his predecessors. Let's seize the centrist vote and defeat him once and for all!
1
Sure Hillary had flaws, but everyone who didn't like Hillary, and didn't vote for that reason, or worse yet, voted for Trump can apologize to their children and grand-kids for the destruction of America's democracy that their vote has set into motion.
8
The premise of this essay, of course, is the blind arrogance of self-righteousness, i.e., what our Sovietized mass-media suffers from ad nauseam, but that aside, he didn't just slip "past every gatekeeper in American life"; rather, he was elected with the constitution and by all those "deplorables".
If one of those DNC Politburo party-mix candidates can't draw enough of the "deplorable" vote--well, it's Trump redux in 2020 and, undoubtedly, another Special Prosecutor investigation--perhaps Kim's team of hackers next time.
2
Perhaps this will allow all of us to put the fires in our hair out and focus on finding an acceptable candidate that can beat the incumbent and restore some level of decency to the office of the President. I never thought this would amount to something that would pry him from office. While despicable, he hasn’t the native intellect to conspire at this level; he just says whatever he thinks will inspire his base and rile his opposition. His major accomplishment was to recognize that a fair percentage of the electorate is even goofier than he is, and that America was willing to bet that the country could be run better as a reality show than a serious endeavor with a constant threat of tragedy of historic proportion waiting in the wings. I fear each constituency will hold the good and reasonable hostage to their view of the perfect in 2020, guaranteeing him another 4 years.
1
Excellent. Thank you Mr. Manjoo.
What do you think Rachel Maddow will have to say tonight?
She has been pushing certain "collusion" like a horse running from a wildfire. It should be interesting. As you say, many "main-stream" media (MSM) outlets and sick and need to renew themselves with some truths and fewer myths. And they need to stop "manufacturing consent" in the Chomsky sense of promoting the populist or government propaganda. TheMSM also get "paid off" just like the congresspeople.
2
Dems don't vote. They talk and scream and shame others while wallowing in their sanctimony. But they don't vote. Donald Trump gave me a huge tax cut and he's the greatest president for Israel since Harry Truman. I vote. Trump 2020.
5
Spot on, Mr. Manjoo.
A nagging worry is, if our media and political establishment really did focus on the systemic issues, would the zero-attention-span public even be capable of paying attention?
1
In response to the headline and subhead-- Well, both. Even without outside interference, he either should have been crushed in the primaries or crushed in the general election, and we do have ourselves to blame. But that doesn't mean he wasn't in league with Russia. As Michael Cohen said, Trump knows how to keep his fingerprints off of things by cultivating a network of people who do his dirty deeds while giving him deniability. If he can do that, Putin, a career spymaster, certainly knows how to. Anyway, regardless of Mueller's findings, Trump is, if not a convictable traitor, he's certainly the most traitorous president I've seen or read about. His slavish devotion to Putin, whose response to Russian interference was a smirk, to Kim, an evil dictator who a few months back was threatening to blow up our cities, to the Saudis after they murdered Khashoggi, what else would you call it? His failure to denounce the waving of Nazi flags in American cities -- a symbol of a discredited thug and his minions who started an unjustifiable war that left hundreds of thousands of Americans dead or permanently impaired. What about his kneejerk repeal of the Treasury sanctions related to North Korea? Experts at Treasury and State probably worked triple shifts putting together evidence to support the sanctions, and Trump overturns them with a wave of his hand because he likes a dictator. He doesn't need to be anybody's Manchurian candidate -- it's engrained in him.
2
In 2016, Democrats "cleared the field" for Hillary Clinton on the theory that it was "her turn." The result was a weak primary field consisting of Hillary Clinton and a bunch of nobodies. Bernie Sanders? A back bench grouch who wouldn't even join the Democratic Party! Lincoln Chafee? Jim Webb? Martin O'Malley was the only plausible alternative, but he turned out to be a campaign trail dud. In a competitive field, Hillary would have lost the nomination.
And what was the result of this weak field? A Democratic nominee tinged with the grubbiness of Goldman Sachs paydays and Clinton Foundation "pay to play" messiness, and dogged by scandals stemming from the world's worst case of political "tin ear." (A Secretary of State using a private email server in a closet at her personal residence? I never did hear a single, non-corrupt explanation for why HRC felt the need to set up a private email server instead of using [email protected].)
And to think: even after nominating a grimy, slimy candidate with no political skills, who was under a FEDERAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION for most of the campaign, the Dems still almost won.
We can only hope that in 2020 the Dems wise up and nominate the best candidate, not the person who is "next in line." You know: someone who is HONEST and who doesn't have a cemetery's worth of skeletons in the closet.
8
"it’s been raining so long and so hard that we’re just about content to ignore the storm."
Back in the summer of 2016, after what we had witnessed in the Republican primaries, I studied the lyrics of the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic, written by John Fogerty, "Who'll Stop the Rain", which plays as the latest iteration of an eternal biblical lament:
As long as I remember
The rain's been comin' down
Clouds of mystery pourin'
Confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages
Tryin' to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain
I went down Virginia
Seekin' shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable
I watched the tower grow
Five year plans and new deals
Wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPan-rEQJA
My first thought after the release of Mueller's Report ' s conclusions was, it's always the fall guy, the smaller of the many evil men, who take the brunt of the criminal accusations in a case. I can't help but think that the Campaign Manager Paul Manafort for all his serious wrong doings in the Ukraine against its potential for a democracy, that in fact, he wasn't the only person driving Trump's campaign. And Michael Cohen wasn't a free agent.
Though author thinks we, the progressive world, missed an opportunity to take hold of the horror that is President Trump - his domination of the Republican Campaign for Presidency, or his terrible, terrible behavior after his inaugeration - essentially defaming our security organizations to the entire world, - I disagree.
Mr. Manjoo appears to be a very young looking man of 35 years. If so, he has no real experience of witnessing the "Trump" phenomena: No matter how many people intensely disliked and mistrusted this guy, he kept appearing, everywhere in the media beginning in the 1980s.
On a huge mural advertisement for the SF Chronicle located in the Embarcadero Bart Station in downtown, San Francisco, California in the 1980s, in a Tux, Trump's image was positioned like D'Vinci's man - arms and legs spread out - only, his hip pockets were turned out to which he gestured that he was broke. Trump's bankruptcies were news. Who cared? The public who believe they can be a Trump just by wishing. That's what we have to change.
1
Mr. Manjoo is correct - it is our own fault - despite all the people who will scream - red-faced - that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and this should have never happened --
Fifty years from now - young school students taking classes in American History - (if they are still teaching "American History" then) - will listen as their teachers tell them about this travesty --
Those students won't be asking about Hillary Clinton and the failed "popular election" -- they will be scratching their heads while asking with perplexed looks -- "What were those people thinking back then?!? -- How could they have elected that guy??" --
The subject of their question - "Those People" - are all of us -- and there's no escaping it...
1
Best post-Mueller-Report commentary yet.
1
Excellent column, among the best I've read about this saga. The findings are what I expected all along, not because the unmentionable at the WH is not corrupt, but simply because he is too dumb and incompetent to pull off a stunt like this. As Mr. Manjoo correctly points out, the rot is much more pervasive and will be much harder to eradicate than simply getting rid of this amoral moron. He is the symptom, not the cause.
7
I so much wanted Trump to have conspired with the Russians, who then won the election for him. Now I have to face the uglier reality: some very large percentage of Americans, over 40%, actually wanted him to be president. They wanted an openly racist, ignorant, lying con man to be president. That's just the way it was, in America, in 2016.
I'm now also reviewing my sense of the Obama elections. Now I think that a lot of people are correct: he won because he made such great speeches. I'm getting more and more convinced that, as the internet years grind on, entertainment value becomes ever more important in our candidates. How else to explain Beto?
We begin with a real split in the electorate, 44% or so unreconstructed racists and proto-fascists, 44% or so unalterably opposed to all those things,
Then we have the rest, whose loyalty goes to those who amuse them. Who better than a reality-show insult comic?
Once, when the kids were small, a convicted child molester moved into the neighborhood. There was a town meeting about him; it started out as "Let's take him out and shoot him". But he was actually there!! The police chief calmed everyone, and then our own molester said a few words; he was very well-spoken, white, and quite charming. Well, at the end of his few minutes, he got a standing O from the same crowd that had wanted to ride him out on a rail. People even offered to help him!!
I didn't learn the lesson, and expected Trump to lose in 2016.
4
Yes, but all of this was 100% predictable. You could see it a mile away. And this editorial still doesn't get it. Trump was elected because a lot of people were hurting. Not "white men still haven't gotten over being king of the hill." Not "secret Russian conspiracy." Not "white nationalists preparing to burn the Reichstag." Just hardworking people facing uphill battles to whom the Democrats gave the back of their hand. Democratic reaction: "It can't be!!! This man is a Russian agent!! All out efforts must be directed towards removing him from office." Still not listening. Still don't get it. Come on. Double down. Keep it up. "This only proves we need more investigations." For sure. Keeping showing the people who voted for Trump how much you despise them.
9
@JerseyGirl -
"Just hardworking people facing uphill battles to whom the Democrats gave the back of their hand."
Just one more demonstration of how deluded some Americans were by the successful right-wing propaganda machine that has been operating for years and the failure of the MSM to make sure that voters are better informed.
Hillary had a $30 billion detailed plan for helping ailing coal communities. That's hardly "the back of the hand". Trump, meanwhile, had a farcical promise to bring back coal mining jobs.
"Keeping showing the people who voted for Trump how much you despise them."
You know, we keep hearing a lot of whining about how those on the left despise Trump voters. I wonder why none of you are worrying about how constantly the man who is supposed to be the president of all of us and for whom you seem to have endless admiration shows his contempt for those of us who are not his base.
1
I still maintain that Charles Blow's relentless efforts to convince blacks & other people of color that among the Democratic candidates, only Hillary Clinton could advocate for them or represent their interests or promote racial justice/equality was the DECISIVE factor. If there is any one human on the planet (besides Trump & Clinton themselves, but still vastly ahead of Comey) responsible for the outcome, it is Mr. Blow.
Look at the record. In Op-ed after op-ed, he relentlessly asserted Clinton, with her supposedly deep ties to the South (marrying Arkansan Bill, & their time during his governorship), & I suppose her erstwhile tendency to say "ya'all" (apparently to strategically lay the groundwork for this assumption about her), was the only candidate for blacks, & that it was un-black to vote for Sanders (yes, who was himself a civil rights activist & participant in Freedom Summer & other racial justice/equality endeavors). Mr. Blow seemed to suggest Mr. Sanders was too white (could it be something else about Mr. Sanders Blow didn't like, but just couldn't say?) for black voters.
A corrupt, venal Wall Street toady Hillary Clinton got the nom based on blacks heeding Mr. Blow (if only more had listened to Cornel West, Spike Lee, Danny Glover, & other black celebs who so nobly supported Sanders, against the Blow efforts to scuttle him) & rejecting Sanders. Trump played "economic populist" & scooped up alienated, struggling rust belt whites who rightly distrusted Clinton.
2
This column really says it all. And, if possible, I'm actually now more depressed than I have been in 3 years. I'm still hoping against hope that Trump will be defeated or somehow prosecutors will negotiate his kids' misdeeds in an effort to get him to not run again. My hopes for him being behind bars over a year ago was clearly a pipe dream and I now feel stupid.
BUT..How can Barr be held accountable? Rosenstein? How did the Office of Special Counsel tell Barr it was okay for him to write a summary judgement on obstruction? HOW? This national nightmare continues because this administration is rotten at the core and the Republican pols continue to do nothing but abet Trump. This is unbearable.
1
Holy Cow! Has this man, Manjoo, ever heard of James Comey? Grandstanding? And does he not realize that there are states called Florida, Ohio, and Texas? He's bought the garbage about Michigan! Way to dismiss inconvenient evidence!
3
I still maintain that Charles Blow's relentless efforts to convince blacks & other people of color that among the Democratic candidates, only Hillary Clinton could advocate for them or represent their interests or promote racial justice equality was the DECISIVE factor. If there is any one human on the planet (besides Trump and Clinton themselves, but still vastly ahead of Comey) responsible for the outcome, it is Mr. Blow.
Look at the record. In Op-ed after op-ed, he relentlessly asserted Clinton, with her supposedly deep to the South (marrying Arkansan Bill, & their time their during his governorship), & I suppose her erstwhile tendency to say "ya'all" (apparently to strategically lay the groundwork for this assumption about her), was the only candidate for blacks, & that it was un-black to vote for Sanders (yes, who was himself a civil rights activist and participant in Freedom Summer & other efforts for racial justice & equality). Mr. Blow seemed to suggest Mr. Sanders was too white (could it be something else about Mr. Sanders Blow didn't like, but just couldn't say?) for black voters.
A corrupt, venal Wall Street toady Hillary Clinton got the nom based on blacks heeding Mr. Sanders (if only more had listened to Cornel West, Spike Lee, Danny Glover, & other black celebs who so nobly supported Sanders, against the Blow efforts to scuttle him) & rejecting Sanders. Trump played "economic populist" & scooped up alienated, struggling rust belt whites who rejected Clinton.
1
@Andrew - I'm not black and Charles Blow did not convince me that Hillary was better than Bernie. Bernie himself did that. I had always admired Bernie during his years in politics, although I wondered why he had had so little influence in the Senate. I was glad when he threw his hat in the ring because I thought it would add some interest to the campaign AND would provide some good discussions about Democratic policies. I quickly became disenchanted with Bernie as a presidential contender. I'm now at the point with his entry into the 2020 race that I see him as the left-wing version of Trump, a demagogue who believes that he and only he can "fix" things.
1
An extremely well written article . It is time for all of us to get out of our echo chambers and address the issues that are plaguing the entire nation. For too long have too few taken advantage of too many by creating and then exploiting artificial divisions.
The same people who voted for Obama twice, ended up electing Trump directly or indirectly. Why did that happen ??
America needs to look in the mirror and admit to collective responsibility for electing a moron.
Better to accept that , than blames others.
Many of the pro-Trump responses are gleeful to the point of wetting one's pants, and even wanting "retribution" of some kind. Its almost like Mr. Trump has overnight become a respectable person, instead of the "sad, embarrassing wreck of a man" (George Will) he still is, with a dozen or so serious personality disorders. Still, whatever is in the Mueller report, " ... Mr. Trump is sure to be under investigation for the rest of his term in office, and probably in court for the rest of his life." (NYTimes, 22Mar2019) Reminds me of the last line in the '73 movie "The Sting":
Johnny Hooker: You're right, Henry. It's not enough. But
[laughs]
Johnny Hooker: it's close!
3
Yeah keep doubling down on the racistsexistnazi histrionics, that's a great unifying message that voters definitely aren't tired of hearing yet.
The party of identity-politics whiners is not shaping up very well ahead of 2020.
4
So, who is this "we" you keep on referring to, Mr. Manjoo? Speak for yourself and the rest of the inhabitants in your bubble.
2
You make a good point. Trump was always the symptom and the GOP the disease. My question is, who, to the left of David Frum and to the right of Glenn Greenwald, ever claimed otherwise?
2
Legally there is no crime of collusion. But Americans don't think legally.
Politically there is the crime of collusion as defined by the mass media and dueling partisan interests.
Donald Trump is the one and only duly elected President of the United States of America. Unless and until he is checked and balanced by those persons and institutions who have duties and powers and responsibilities under Articles and Amendments of the American Constitution.
3
@Blackmamba
Collusion is only illegal if it is part of conspiracy to commit an illegal act. The news media used the term collusion because the crime the Trump campaign alleged committed was never defined. Instead, the allegation was that the Trump campaign colluded. Instead the New York Times and other media outlets listed lawful activities such as the Trump Tower meeting as evidence collusion occurred.
1
I appreciate the fact that you are asking the right questions, even though I disagree with your answers. The truly shocking thing about Trump's election is that he is in substance no different from the rest of the Republican party. The shocking thing is that , while the Republicans came to champion corruption as an ideology, and the Supreme Court made bribery the law of the land, the Democrats abandoned all serious political opposition to the situation. I don't care if Hillary would have tossed me a few bones along with her continued devotion to Wall Street and the military industries. I don't care if she would have, like Obama, gracefully disdained to notice the GOP slander industry instead of combating it. The Mueller investigation, the electoral college, the whining about Comey, the conspiracies & conspiracy theories, the prejudices & codes & tropes, are all about one thing: keeping the public busy while their government picks their pockets.
2
The best article that I have read since the President was elected (except the swipe at the electoral college) and I honestly think that he is doing a very good job, although I thought that Hillary was going to win, although she ran a very poor campaign, and she would have been a decent President. The NY Times thought all along up until election night with its election barometer that he had virtually no chance of winning. Some people still refuse to accept that a large number of college educated men and women voted for him. Get over it!
7
@Isle - Please tell us exactly how Trump has done "a very good job"? Traumatizing children is doing a "very good job"? Oh, right, they're little brown kids, so they don't count. Sowing discord among Americans is doing a "very good job"? I have never for one moment felt that Trump has included me as an American as he has criticized and maligned and lied about Democrats ceaselessly during the campaign and continued to do so every single day that he has been in the presidency. I don't believe any other president in history has been so focused on his own agenda and grievances (loudly and endlessly reiterated) as Trump. Is continuing a economic recovery created by Obama doing "a very good job"? Well, I guess you can say he didn't kill it--yet. But the signs for the future are not good. Is lying day in and day out doing "a very good job"? How can any American trust someone who is a habitual liar? How can any American want a president who sets an example for their children that, yes, you can lie and lie and lie and still be elected president? How is alienating your allies and cozying up to dictators and autocrats doing "a very good job"? Oh, wait, maybe it's that best ever health care plan he promised (shot down single-handedly by John McCain, I guess). And wow all that work being done on American's decaying infrastructure--that must be where the "very good job" is hiding. Right?
'We' did not elect Trump. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 3 million. Trump 'won' on a technicality; he was put in place by the Electoral College. The voters were countermanded, as they were in 2000, when the Supreme Court voted along political lines to award the presidency to Little Bush rather than Gore.
9
@mark
The Electoral College is an essential part of the American divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states.
If you think that is a " technicality" then you don't understand enough to be an American citizen.
Votes cast in one state do not count nor matter in any other state in allocating Electoral College votes. And Presidents are elected by the Electoral College. And if you don't like it then either push for amending the Constitution or...
4
@Blackmamba - Interestingly, the Electoral College undercuts divided government. It gives more power to the residents of small states than to large ones in both the legislature AND the executive branch. And, then, of course, by extension in the judiciary. Where then is the will of the people to be found?
And why this should be so in today's world is--or should be--a huge question.
1
Well said. Much needed. We are so consumed by bias in all phases of our political and personal lives that it appears to an independent verging on hysteria.
2
This is a much needed perspective, although I feel as though it makes its point too forcefully in some areas.
First, the "no collusion conclusion" does not wipe away the fact that there was a coordinated effort on the part of the Russian government to help elect Donald Trump. That DJT himself was not involved lessens the gravity of this situation, but it does not completely alleviate it.
Second, I do not feel as though we are only now recognizing many of the problems mentioned here. The media's focus on HRC's email fiasco, Comey's intervention, voter supression, losing the Rust Belt, etc., have all rightly been identified as factors contributing to the outcome of the 2016 election.
Nonetheless, the column's overarching admonition is sorely needed. I am reminded of a line from Lincoln's Lyceum address: "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." The faults that led to DJT were not in our stars, but in ourselves.
5
@Gabe - But Lincoln's Lyceum address did not prevent the Civil War, did it?
1
Mr. Manjoo's analysis is spot on, and I hope all anti-Trumpers take it to heart. The challenge now is to move on purposefully. In particular, this means that the Democrats must start making an affirmative case for their nominee, whoever that may be. In turn, that means facing honestly the genuine fears for the future that so many Americans have, whether they're kids concerned about climate change or people concerned about racial/gender disparities or simply people who think "their country" is changing too fast. All of these people matter, and the Democrats need to earn the votes of all of them. "We're not Trump" is not a platform.
12
@Rich - This kind of comment is so misleading. Trump had slogans. Hillary had policies and plans. She gave a great speech in Miami about how she wanted to tackle climate change. She had a detailed $30 billion dollar plan for aiding ailing coal communities. She had detailed plans for helping children. She was a walking example of the gender disparities that women face. And, given that 92% of black Americans voted for her, she must have been doing something right to convince that huge majority that she was a champion for them--even in the face of Russian efforts to convince the black population that she wasn't on their side.
What did our media do to get that information out? Will they do anything better in the 2020 election if the sick Trump reality show and the right-wing propaganda machine suck up most of people's attention?
The problem with saying that "it's our own fault we elected Trump"
is that the 2016 election was not a clear cut referendum, yes or no, on Trump.
For many people the 2016 election was not a referendum on Trump but rather a choice between Trump and Hillary.
I voted for Hillary, but too many saw Trump as the lesser of the 2 evils.
not quite a clear cut as Farhad thinks.
5
@David - Ohmigod, it was as clear cut as crystal. Unfortunately, Trump's own skills as a scamster, the Russian efforts, and the long years of tried and honed Republican propaganda managed to create a fog that helped obscure that fact for some voters--but they shouldn't have. Trump is the crook, not Hillary.
There is little doubt that Russia interfered in the election. But, as in all crimes, one must look to motivation. What has Trump's motivation always been? Money and affirmation. Look at his pattern of behavior: Inflating his worth and trying to find admiration. He couldn't get far in New York. Most decent people knew him and wouldn't do business with him. However, though he wasn't particularly motivated to be president, the Russians were very motivated for him to be president but knew the best way to seduce him was to show him their world of oligarchs and that he could become one. Through that he could make the money he wanted in Russia and through Russia and fulfill his real dreams of becoming a billionaire. Meanwhile, Russia could install him as president whether he wanted it or not, and thus avoid a Clinton presidency. Trump was motivated for the money. Russia was motivated for destabilizing the west and is doing that in the US and the UK. Well played by Russia. They always know what makes people tick. Trump never cared and just wanted the money. Always, always look to motivation.
1
@Berry Shoen - Oh, I think Trump absolutely wanted the power that he believes should go along with the presidency as well as the money and affirmation. I think it's naive to believe that Trump was not seriously after what his flim-flam man tactics managed to get him. Claiming that he only wanted the money deflects from the tactics he--and the Russians--used. Donald Trump is incredibly skilled at creating illusions. Ironically, his tactics don't usually get him all the money he claims to have but they do get him attention and power.
1
Mr Manjoo has written the best and clearest description of the sad state of our (once great) democracy that I have read to date. A couple of weeks after the election we learned that Russians had not hacked into voting machines and changed votes. After that reassurance, I was no longer interested in whether Russians had tried to influence the election or even if Trump had colluded with them to do so. If there are voters who want to believe that HRC is running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor, then it is the voter who is at fault, not the Russians who planted the story or Facebook that spread it.
We didn't come to this state overnight, there has been a tendency by leaders of both parties to NOT investigate, much less punish, many violations of law and Constitutional principles going back at least to the 2000 election: no investigation of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris for their corrupt conduct of the Florida election, no investigation of the use of phony intell by Bush and Cheney to lie us into the worst foreign policy disaster in modern US history, no investigation of bribes to a Supreme Court justice prior to Citizens United, no investigation and no criminal prosecutions resulting from the financial collapse of 2008. We stopped being vigilant a long time ago, we have rotted out internally, it certainly wasn't caused by Russia.
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@Susan - H-m-m, and how many of those can be laid at the feet of Democrats?
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@Annie The Obama administration failed to investigate the false intel and the illegal invasion of Iraq. They also failed to investigate or prosecute the financial failures. I have never figured out why Democrats are so eager to "move on." rather than investigate serious violations of law by public officials. I suspect its because they fear payback when its "their time in the barrel."
The Republicans do the same thing. They ignore obvious examples of malfeasance and corruption in their own ranks.
For example, the suit against Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause is being brought by private Trump competitors, not by any public agency and certainly not at the insistence of the GOP in Congress.
When enforcing the Rule of Law is optional as it is now, you no longer have a functioning Constitutional government.
2
@Susan
Susan - you might find the tactics of the Yellow Vests in France to be interesting. Discouraged by all political parties, they have refused to align with any (see "Among the Gilets Jaunes", Jeremy Harding - London Review of Books, 3/21/19; also "The Twilight of the Elites", Christophe Guilluy, 2016). Speaking out eloquently and simply about the effects of income inequality, and showing up persistently to protest, they have rattled the Macron government in some important ways. An actual dialogue and some soul searching are now taking place in France.
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I think it is wrong to suddenly conclude that it was wrong to pursue investigating his Russian connections. Since we have yet to see the report should we conclude that the Steele dossier was totally bogus, despite the highly respected reputation of its author? While it may be true that Mueller was unable to establish any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian effort to subvert the election, the fact still remains that Russian interference in our election via social media was enormously successful at minimal cost to the Russians. Fake Russian social media contacts in the US numbered in the millions close to the total number of voters in our election. Maybe it was done without the knowledge or assistance of the Trump campaign, but if so then that is even more disturbing that we were unaware of their actions and of their ability to affect our election. The integrity of our election process depends on preventing these types of attacks in the future.
Secondly, I don't agree that Clinton lost because she was such a terrible candidate. Terrible because she was intelligent and well versed on foreign policy and domestic policy issues? I contend that she lost because of the Russian interference , the damaging Comey's disclosures in violation of Justice Department guidelines, the Russian hacking and release of Democratic emails, and most importantly by the complacency of an overconfident electorate.
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If the voting populace believes we are better than the Trumpian rhetoric, then we need to vote for the US that represents those ideals. Voter turnout is one of the reasons why we are living in this waking nightmare. Democrats (and Republicans and Independents) need to unite under one candidate and not fight through primaries to have a chance against Trump. He will always hold onto his hardcore 40%. The 60% scattered throughout the US will make the difference.
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@R
Just be certain that the "one candidate" can win 270 electoral votes. Seen one?
No collusion does NOT mean Putin wasn’t pulling strings. We know that Russian hackers stole and published DNC emails to help get Trump elected. That’s been proven. We know that Russian hackers waged a disinformation campaign on Facebook and other social media to help Trump’s campaign and suppress the Democratic vote. Whether or not Manafort, Stone, DJT jr. or others on the Trump campaign helped plan these activities, the Russians worked hard to get Trump elected. And a couple of dozen have been indicted for that.
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This is an exceptionally well written and accurate opinion.
The Mueller report and AG Barr’s summary ironically offers a reprieve to the media, us and Democratic politicians. Everyone has been freed.
We’ll know Democrats are making the most of their reprieve when Trump is the only one talking about the investigation. We’ll know the press is rehabilitated when they are ignoring his grievances about the investigation.
There are a whole lot of important things for great TV reporters and TV journalists to cover. I want to hear about them on TV and I don’t want to wait until 2024.
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Democrats were so eager to avoid a cold hard look in the mirror at what they had become—a party almost as corrupt, negligent, and irresponsible as the Republican Party —that they searched the desert of political exile for answers and found the collusion oasis. Like it or not, our political system is broken, and the Democrats are part of that system. Eager for so long to take corporate money and, in return, provide the policy assurances expected in exchange, they all but abandoned the working class for the Davos Class. They just happened to give a few more crumbs to the poor than the Republicans along the way. By 2016, both Bill and Hillary Clinton had cashed in on their fame, but Hillary was on the ballot. And after the 2008 financial crisis, Hillary couldn’t seem to fathom why getting paid exorbitant sums of money for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs and the like would complicate her bid for the White House as a fighter for the middle and working class. Couple that with a sense of dynastic entitlement, an arrogant approach to email that would have gotten any normal federal worker fired, and an assumption that the industrial heartland was in the bag despite economic neglect, and you get Donald Trump.
Sadly, the next oasis is already out there. Rather than speaking to parts of the country they don’t already dominate, Democrats would rather abolish the Electoral College. How about this instead? Craft a better message. Play by the rules. And win.
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"Democrats, meanwhile, dismissed the economic and social unease roiling their ranks and nominated a deeply unpopular candidate who lacked any novel vision for American life. And then she forgot to campaign in Michigan."
Yep. A vote for Trump was a chance for those who felt ignored by the Dems to give them a poke with a sharp stick. And as long as they continue to feel ignored, they'll keep poking!
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@Michael Haddon - Among other things, Hillary was tarred by West Virginians for what she said about coal mining jobs. The thing is, that one sentence was not the whole story but it became THE STORY to beat her over the head with.
"Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around politics that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these under-served poor communities. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, I'M THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO HAS A POLICY ABOUT HOW TO BRING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY USING CLEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY AS THE KEY INTO COAL COUNTRY. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim? [Rep. Tim Ryan]
And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce energy that we relied on."
One of the first policies announced by her campaign was a $30 billion package designed to aid to ailing coal communities.
But, right, Hillary was ignoring them--or worse, she hated them and wanted to destroy them. The right devotes a lot of time to finding any gaffe, from tiny to major, then both distorting the truth behind the gaffe as well as making the gaffe THE issue being discussed, not that reality behind it.
4
I happen to be bullish on our form of government; we will survive our 45th President.
DJT is at best a distraction. He's done virtually nothing substantive outside of getting the nation to take out a $1.5 trillion (trillion with a "T") loan for the purpose of fattening the bank accounts of the richest Americans. That's it. Everything has been theater: picking fights and insulting pretty much everyone outside his family circle.
We will survive, and I'm only worried that we've become so jaded that even fewer people will vote (about one in five Americans cast a ballot for him), making it even easier to put another showman in that office.
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@Skip I suspect our NATO allies might differ with your conclusion that Trump has done "virtually nothing substantive." He has been and is continuing to align the US with dictatorial regimes around the world who are horrific human rights violators.
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@Skip
Your comment maybe fine addressed to the crowd in the USA. As I live in Germany I can tell you that the damage to American reputation is beyond repair.
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@benhibou and @Susan, points (very) well taken, but I hope the damage is not beyond repair.
2
Speak for yourself my friend. He's not my president. I didn't vote for him. And anyone who did is drunk on the Kool aid. He's not fit to run a hot dog stand. Let alone the country. He's everything a president shouldn't be. Corrupt, a racist,a bigot,a sexist. The list is too long to continue. He inherited his $ from Father Trump. He lies,cheats and steals whenever possible. It's a sad time in America.and American politics.We can only hope 2020 will be the end of this neverending nitemare.
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@Charles
"Speak for yourself my friend. He's not my president. I didn't vote for him. And anyone who did is drunk on the Kool aid."
And this is the exact attitude that will further drive a wedge between Republicans from Democrats.
8
We have to do more than hope. We hoped Mueller’s report would save us. It hasn’t. We need to have an exemplary candidate in 2020. We need to work, campaign, write networks to stop putting Trump on TB every time he calls. He and his sycophants are dragging us into a failure as a democracy.
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@Charles
He's not my president either by any means, but many of the things you used to describe why he shouldn't be president have been attributes of many politicians in power, including presidents, from the beginning. If someone called me and my friends a 'basket of deplorables', I'd be angry, and I'd make sure that all of my friends knew about it, and we'd take that to the polls. Have whatever opinion you want, but all kinds of people in our country have drunk some sort of Koolaid. Elitism is ugly, and will lose more elections.
Events like the Covington Catholic High School students being hysterically portrayed as racists, or this entire "Russian collusion" saga are nothing but a Rorschach test of the liberal establishment. Liberals are projecting their collective psychosis onto anything that Trump does. There is another name for this phenomenon: Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS. Google it!
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@Gabe
Most of the comments here focus on the relevant issues. Some, like this one, are mired in delusion. Many people - beyond the "libs" you folks love to mock - are repulsed by the amoral, incompetent, lying and corrupt human that is currently President. Far, far beyond anything we have seen in our lifetimes - including the grasping Clintons - don't even try to make that equivalency. These are troubling times.
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@Ann
I am not excusing the president nor his team. In fact, I believe that there WAS some sort of Russian interference.
However, the way the Democrats go about this Trump issue is totally insane. So much so, that I believe the Democrats do not deserve to win in 2020. These are troubling times indeed.
You know I think we were doing just fine until we elected Trump. Remember, Trump was one of two radical candidates who ran in 2016. The other was Bernie Sanders who if polls are correct, is a real threat to Trump. The underlying problem I think is entirely economic and structural. Since the Reagan administration, there has been a massive transfer of wealth to the very uppermost households in the income and wealth pyramid. At the same time, two thirds of the population has been swimming against the tide. If we want to know what has led to both right wing and left wing populist movements in the United States it is the fact that unskilled and semi-skilled workers have had either stagnant or declining wages since 1970 while the top fifth of the country has benefited handsomely, the top five percent has blossomed, the top one percent has gone through the roof, and the top .1 percent have seen a quadrupling in their wealth and fortunes in real terms.
So we have the now proverbial situation of former 30 dollar an hour unionized labor working for 12 dollars an hour. The social strains are now immense and may be getting worse. So Trump had no problem demolishing his opponents with a demagogic assault on the Republican establishment followed by a brutal assault on racial minorities and "liberals." He simply bought into the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News demographic and ran with it.
So now the problem is to take Trump down. Can we do it? We should be able to.
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It mystifies me how my Trump-supporting brother-in-law overlooks our President's obvious incompetence. When I asked him about Trump's words to Putin at the Helsinki summit ("... why wouldn't I believe him"), he said he rather believed Trump's clarification a few days later that he meant to say "would" instead of "wouldn't" and that it was an honest mistake. He then searched far and wide for a single instance of an Obama mistake (e.g., his quote about visiting 57 states) and tried to equate them. Instead of searching far and wide for an obscure mistake, I simply challenged him to listen to ANY unscripted Trump speech and to independently verify the accuracy of what was said and to judge his competence. Of course he was unable to do so.
This is the America we now live in.
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@DPW It's a cult (you can actually look up the definition of a cult, as I did, and see all the parallels). My friends' Trump-supporting family members, as well as my own, are the same way. This is brainwashing and very dangerous in its irrationality.
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@DPW
That's easy:
"I'll have a lot more flexibility after the election."
Yes, The problem for American politics is not Trump, but what Trump represents: the alliance of the 1% of the 1% (101) with a message of authoritarian leadership and nationalistic supremacy. The shock is that is the first time it happens here. But it happens often in Europe, it did in Russia after the fall of the USSR, and it is happening, strangely enough, in China.
And so, yes, instead of obsessing with Trump, the thing to do is to flex the USA democratic muscles. They are still strong witness the multitude of grass root movements that spouted in the last two years.
2018 Was a good step in the right direction. 2020 can be even better. Win the Presidency, Win Congress, and bring in another wave of politicians nation wide.
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Let's be clear - ''Collusion'' is the active participation by several actors entering into a conspiracy. The Mueller report (based on only 2nd hand assessment so far) would not (that does not mean could not - since it was left up to the Attorney General) recommend a charge of. That's it.
We have still yet to know exactly what is actually in the report, and we still do not know the extent it will relate to the myriad of other investigations (federal and state) going on.
All of the above does not exclude what we DO know (as the intelligence community has pointed out multiple times) that foreign powers conspired to undermine the American elections, AND continue to do so.
If the President (his family or backers ) KNEW about it, but some did not actively participate (which cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt), then that is another matter. It does not bend logic to extrapolate since almost every person around the President has plead/been found guilty, or has been sentenced for crimes all around the fringes of a conspiracy.
This is excluding of course that Comey came out with his press conference right before the election, along with the drumbeat of ''lock her up'' about emails. It is ironic that the same was not called for the then candidate (now President), which has shown (along with his family and backers) to do the same actions.
Of course, it is us that has the final say in voting, but certainly we did not have all of the information.
We still don't.
15
I do believe there is some coordination that went on between Russian interests, Mercer's Cambridge Analytica - it may have not been formal; it may have been people with the same interests working at the same time.
No matter what though - I am relieved that Vladimir Putin isn't secretly controlling Trump.
But what I don't understand then, is Trump's horrific surrender at Helsinki.
10
It's good to hear some acceptance of reality, but that acceptance is coupled with an insistence to focus on two issues that a) are of secondary importance, and b) can't be changed, certainly not before 2020.
The Electoral college is something of an anachronism, but it is not going anywhere. It benefits small states, and small states aren't going to support removing it from the constitution. In part because of the Electoral college, the Democratic party would be wise to have policies that had some appeal, or at least didn't actively antagonize, rural voters.
Voter suppression is a bad thing, but probably isn't changing the results of many elections. The way to fix it is to elect Democrats to state Secretary of State positions, and to elect state legislators in general. But the key to winning in 2020 is to not make it so close that the small effects of voter suppression might actually affect the outcome.
Democrats need a candidate and a policy slate that appeals to all Americans, not just the coalition. Bill Clinton and Obama had that; we need to choose a candidate with appeal to most Americans. Campaigning to the left will turn out more left leaning voters, but will also turn out more right-leaning voters (to prevent the election of the lefty). We need a president who is a Democrat, and who inspires confidence and calm. He or she will sign whatever a liberal progressive Congress sends from the Hill. The hard part will be flipping the Senate.
6
@Tom
You are 100% correct. Sadly the Democrats seem to be doing all they can to make Trump look like the lesser of 2 evils. More to the point I'd rather put up with 4 more years of President Trump than embrace EU style Socialism and the hyper regulation and 50+% tax rates on everyone required to finance it.
4
@Tom Excellent comments by Tom. The Electoral College isn't going anywhere, and there are sound reasons to keep it. Voter suppression refers to a range of activities some of which have a plausible justification, and can best be addressed by electing officials with integrity at the local and state levels
1
@Tom
Bill Clinton and Obama campaigned to their left, but governed from the center.
Let's go over this again, they WON by running to their actual left, and governed as moderates, whereupon they were overwhelmed with Republican victory 2 years later.
So we can finally put to rest this ridiculous notion that America has a moderate center to be pandered to, and that leaning left will hurt the Democrats. It's how we maintained near solid congressional dominance for 60 years, from the Great Depression until the early 90s.
5
I just think this is wrong. "Collusion," meaning criminal conspiracy, wasn't a "seductive and convenient delusion." Given the publicly available evidence of Trump's wrong-doing, up to and including criminal behavior (campaign finance violations), it was a common-sense prediction. Mueller may be right in finding no crimes, but that doesn't mean his findings aren't highly counterintuitive. Nor did "we" want to think that Trump was only elected because Russia tipped the scales. That was never clear, and didn't need to be.
Among the things that have never been less than crystal clear are Trump's utter unfitness for the Presidency, his malignantly narcissistic and corrupt character, and the contempt he shows daily for his oath of office, and the office itself. I don't know what "we" the author refers to when he assigns responsibility for Trump's Presidency to "us." If we're responsible, then Paul Ryan is off the hook for allowing House oversight to become a propaganda machine for Trump between 2016 and 18. Mitch McConnell is off the hook. The Republican party is off the hook for deciding that the interests it shares with Putin's Russia are more important than those it shares with non-Republican-voting American citizens.
"We" shouldn't let them off the hook.
11
Actually, the 2016 election story is this: If Trump had not won in the electoral college, we would be talking about his campaign as a spectacular failure. Indeed, his popular vote loss means he won IN SPITE of his strategy, not BECAUSE of it. No one expected him to be president, not even him. Let's remember that and stop acting like we all should have known 2016 was inevitable.
11
Ummm, yes. While I do believe the Mueller report was necessary and important, it still remains that about one half of this country voted for this depraved man, and nearly half still support him despite everything we have seen since the election. The moral center of this country and its purported values are in question. But really, one only has to look at our history squarely in the eye, without the rose colored glasses and mythologies, to understand that in some deep and real ways, it is Trump who represents this nation most accurately, not the founding fathers or any of our better lights. It's well past depressing.
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@William Andrews. Yes: the hideous realization on election night was that something like half the electorate thought he was OK. Based on the people I have lived and worked and played with over the last 30+ years, I would have expected that perhaps 10% of them would see some merit to this man as President. It's not as if his character was hidden from us; far from it.
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@William Andrews
Gosh that's scary ... but true.
11
@Andrew It seems as if the character of the people around us was what was hidden all this time. Remember that many people who voted for Trump said they deliberately misled posters about who they were going to vote for so that people would think Clinton was a shoe-in and maybe not bother to vote.
6
Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee because many, many, many of us Democrats voted for her in the primaries, not because some back-room committee selected her. That makes her deeply popular, not deeply unpopular, per your (and other male pundits') description.
She also had the fortitude and stamina to continue after being attacked relentlessly for more than 20 year, far more than any male candidate has ever had to put up with.
But the bros in my own party needed to catapult a wild-haired, done-nothing-over-30-years into the public eye just to make sure a woman wouldn't be elected; the FBI director likewise had to publicly release information about a molehill turned into a mountain, right before the election, TWICE, to make sure a woman wouldn't be elected; and the NYTimes had to write 63 articles about this nothing issue because, well, establishment sexists were against Hillary Clinton and the press always has to treat the establishment as though it is credible-by-definition, right?
There IS a systemic failure here. And you identify much of it, but remain yet another part thereof.
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@LF
After 8 years of Obama (who was elected on a "change" platform after 8 years of Bush), Hillary represented a continuation of what we already knew.
Donald Trump was a "change" candidate, harnessing the power of that word in his vile way. So was Bernie, in his own way, a change candidate, from Obama, from our status quo. Might have been a very different election between those two.
Not trying to downplay the clear sexism of 2016. Awful, obvious, saddening. But H didn't have a compelling campaign beyond what her election would have meant to gender equality. Momentous as that would have been, it couldn't vault her above her clear association to everything that seemed to need changing in politics.
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@LF As an Independent voter disgusted with Mr. Trump, I could not vote for Ms. Clinton. Her baggage includes major campaign donations from the wife of pardon-seeking Marc Rich (he got the pardon), and exorbitant "speaking fees" from Wall Street companies. She seemed to consider these things bad "optics", I see them as bad ethics. And BTW, I did vote for a woman whose policies I agree with.
61
@LF This kind of conspiracy mongering is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Hillary Clinton lost not because she is a woman, but because of $400K Goldman Sachs paydays, a "private email server in a closet," Clinton Foundation unseemliness, Bill Clinton's grossness, and a federal criminal investigation. Oh, and she's a lousy campaigner. If she'd faced a competitive primary field in 2016, she likely wouldn't have received the nomination. Because she's a lousy politician.
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The Electoral College system was installed EXACTLY so that one or two large states would not swing a federal election.
13
@Lee Try reading Federalist Paper #68. The Electoral College, which did not work as intended after 1796, was "installed" exactly to prevent a demagogue from becoming President.
40
@David in Toledo
The intent was to prevent a con artist from lying their way into office, via a popular vote, because the founding fathers didn't trust the electorate to accurately assess candidates. They judged them, correctly, to be easily swayed by sham promises.
11
@David in Toledo
No, this misunderstands both the Federalist Papers and the Electoral College. The Federalist pages were part explainer, but also part pro-ratification "propaganda." In the case of the Electoral College, Federalist #68 is just a proverbial fig leaf.
From the records of the Constitutional Convention and other writings, we know that most there -- including James Madison -- supported direct election of the president. But the slave-holding states balked -- their candidate would lose every time if decided by popular vote, so their delegates insisted that the presidential election be determined instead by a weighted representational scheme -- the same one already implemented in the determination of apportionment in the House of Representatives, i.e. the 3/5ths Clause.
The Electoral College i nothing more than a vestige of slavery, a bulwark against democracy, not some "noble" firewall for demagoguery.
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The writer’s point is so important - the president’s critics need to stop getting ensnarled in Trump’s sideshows and convince voters in 2020 that he doesn’t deserve reelection.
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@Rick Heffernan If there exist voters that don’t know that Trump doesn’t deserve re-election, and should never have been elected, there’s no convincing them. They are delusional.
The key to 2020 is not winning over the deplorables. To hell with them, let’s not pander. The key is turning out all the sane, reasonable, progressive voters, of which there is a vast majority.
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@Rick Heffernan I've been convinced for as long as Donald Trump has existed that he shouldn't be President. Just get new voters to the voting booth - there will be no new converts.
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@Rick Heffernan Surely reporting on Trump's 'sideshows' is one way of convincing voters to vote for someone other than Trump in 2020. We can't just ignore the 'sideshows'.
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Collusion and our own tendency for self destruction are not mutually exclusive in this sad scenario. The collusion may not rise to the level of criminal conspiracy but if Trump was aware of help from Russia and welcomed it rather than calling it out that seems like collusion to me.
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Our election system certainly is not perfect, but isn't it in large part due to a lousy campaign by the Democratic Party and their Presidential candidate that led to the Donald's victory? Yes, we can blame the Electoral College system but to some degree let's admit that it teaches us that running for this highest office based on being the lesser of two evils without addressing the real needs of all potential voters will be punished.
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Buy “lousy campaign” do you mean running a woman as candidate?
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@SirTobyBelch
I don't buy that trope anymore. Voters also bear responsibility - especially those who did not vote. Trump had a lot of help via the well financed Mercer hate machine as well as dark money. Julian Assange and Pizzagate - this is what we've reduced ourselves to? And decades of hating the 'other' or 'liberals' found their corrupt knight in armor. The biggest con man joke of all.
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The result of the next election will show if morality is still a major human value in America. I am so worried.
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@Roland Berger
Generally true. However, if Bernie Sanders and his intersectionalist regressive brand wins the primary, morality won’t be so clear.
Yes, Bernie is probably a nicer guy than Trump. But, one could easily argue that a Bernie Presidency might cause more chaos than even a Trump.
I’m a lifelong Democrat, but choosing between Bernie and Trump would probably drive me to vote third party.
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@Cass
A "lifelong Democrat" would recognize an FDR Democrat when she/he sees one, and not the co-opted taken over by conservatives in the early 90s. You either aren't one or have a very short "lifelong" to be speaking of.
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@Roland Berger when I was in Montreal last month I apologized for Trump to nearly every Canadian I had any kind of personal conversation with. Many. Now I'll apologize to you as well. And hope we can alleviate your worries in 2020.
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