Last night, Nebraska voted to bring back the death penalty. A slim majority of California voters, given the choice between abolishing state-sanctioned killing and speeding it up, opted for the latter: Proposition 66, which deprives death row inmates of certain appeals processes, passed by 51 percent. Meanwhile Proposition 62, which would have abolished a practice abandoned in all other Western countries, got only 46 percent of the vote in a state so liberal that it legalized marijuana last night.
Oklahoma, which has a less than stellar record in administering the death penalty—prison officials have a long and sordid history of botched executions—voted to entrench capital punishment in its state constitution, declaring executions free from intervention by state courts that might deem the state's execution tactics cruel and unusual punishment.
This begs the question: how exactly do all these states plan to kill people given the shortage of lethal injection drugs?
Thanks to a successful activist campaign, mainstream pharmaceutical companies no longer provide US Departments of Correction with drugs to be used for executions. The European Union forbids the sale of death penalty drugs, so companies based in Europe have to actively ensure their drugs don't end up in the death chamber needle; many drug manufacturers force their distributors to sign contracts pledging not to sell their drugs to US prisons for use in executions.
The lack of death penalty drugs has led states to turn to a wide array of unconstitutional and inhumane tactics. A handful of states have passed secrecy laws that shield the identities of small-scale compounding pharmacies that agree to make the drugs. Others have experimented with drug cocktails that have led to deaths “akin in level of pain and suffering to being buried alive, burning at the stake," death penalty critics have argued.
Let's see what California, Oklahoma, and Nebraska plan to do.
Traditionally, a three drug cocktail is used in executions: an aneasthetic, a paralytic, and a third drug that stops the heart. As part of Proposition 66, California will shift to single drug executions. Prisoners also have the option of the gas chamber. As the AP reports, two of the drugs have not previously been used to administer death. California "is engaging in nothing less than human experimentation," Ana Zamora, the ACLU's criminal justice policy director, told the AP.
How about Oklahoma? In 2014, Oklahoma temporarily stopped executions following the botched killing of Clayton Lockett. After upending its entire execution protocol, the state gave it another try with the execution of Charles Warner in 2015—his final words were, "My body is on fire." A grand jury report later found that the pharmacist who provided the drugs for the execution accidentally ordered the wrong drug. Prison officials only realized the error when they were about to execute Richard Glossip—even then, they tried to hide their mistake and proceed with the execution.
According to News9, part of the point of Oklahoma's State Question 776—approved by 66.37 percent—is to allow the state to continue carrying out executions even if some drugs are deemed unconstitutional by state courts. "Any method of execution shall be allowed, unless prohibited by the United States Constitution” and the execution protocol “shall not be deemed to be, or to constitute, the infliction of cruel or unusual punishments," the measure read as Timereports.
What about Nebraska, whose Gov. Pete Ricketts spent $400,000 in a campaign to undo the state legislature's repeal of the death penalty? Buzzfeed's Charle McDaniel has chronicled the state's tragicomic efforts to get death penalty drugs. In 2015, the Nebraska Department of Corrections blew $50,000 to obtain lethal injection drugs from a shady supplier based in India. The drugs were detained in India because as it turns out, you can't just buy and transport lethal injection drugs across international borders.
"After the shipment was blocked, Nebraska attempted to get a refund on the money it spent. The supplier declined," McDaniel points out.
“Our ideals are at stake right now, and we all have to fight for who we are,” she told the crowd gathered in Los Angeles. “I believe this is that moment in time for our country, where we are collectively being required to look in the mirror, and with furrowed brow, we are asking a question: Who are we? In California, I believe the answer is a good one: We are a great country.”
“It is the very nature of this fight for civil rights and justice and equality that whatever gains we make, they will not be permanent. So we must be vigilant,” she continued. “Do not despair. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves and fight for who we are.”
The former California attorney general ran to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is retiring at the end of this Senate session. Harris is the second black woman to serve in the Senate, the first black woman to represent California.
Donald Trump's election to the presidency is truly frightening -- but filmmaker Michael Moore actually predicted Trump's victory, and his voice bears hearing on the day after.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Moore issued his usual fiery rhetoric about fighting Republicans to the hilt next year -- but he also had some tough words for liberals who feel completely stunned by the results.
Essentially, Moore thinks that many on the left are out of touch with their fellow Americans -- particularly the Americans who live in rural areas who came out in droves to support Trump.
"Everyone must stop saying they are 'stunned' and 'shocked,'" he writes. "What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all 'You're fired!'"
Moore also slams liberals who didn't take Trump's candidacy seriously from the start -- and said they should have immediately recognized the threat he posed.
"He was never a joke," Moore says. "Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that."
One of Vladimir Putin's advisors boasted that Russian hackers might have helped Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
Putin has dismissed claims by U.S. authorities that Russia had interfered with the American election by hacking Clinton and the Democratic National Committee and then dumping their private emails online through WikiLeaks.
But Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, suggested some Russian involvement had helped Trump win his unlikely White House bid, reported The Guardian.
Markov said Trump's win made a Russian-U.S. agreement on Syria, where the two powers back opposing sides, more likely, and the Putin advisor said Americans would be less likely to support "the terroristic junta in Ukraine."
He denied allegations of Russian interference, as American officials have claimed, but admitted "maybe we helped a bit with WikiLeaks."
The report didn't offer any additional specifics about that possible assistance.
America's European allies have also about Trump and his campaign's apparent ties to Russia, which they fear could imperial the NATO alliance now that he's been elected.
U.S. President Barack Obama pledged on Wednesday to work for a smooth transition of power with president-elect Donald Trump, the Republican winner of Tuesday's election, who has promised to undo Obama's top domestic and foreign policy initiatives.
In brief remarks to reporters in the White House Rose Garden, Obama urged fellow Democrats to put aside their disappointment and tried to strike a positive tone after a devastating electoral defeat.
"It is no secret that the president-elect and I have some pretty significant differences," Obama said with a smile about Trump, who had long questioned whether Obama had been born in the United States and his eligibility for office.
"We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country," Obama said.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, campaigned hard for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to defeat Trump, acknowledging that the president's legacy on healthcare, climate change and financial reforms were on the line.
But Obama kept his remarks on Wednesday focused on ensuring a successful transition for Trump, noting that his Republican predecessor, former President George W. Bush, had done the same for him eight years ago.
"Everybody is sad when their side loses an election, but the day after we have to remember that we're actually all on one team," Obama said.
"I want to make sure that handoff is well executed because ultimately we're all on the same team," Obama said.
(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu; writing by Roberta Rampton; editing by Grant McCool and Jonathan Oatis)
She lost to Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries in 2008. Now she has been humiliated in her second bid for the presidency by political novice and former TV reality show host Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton will go down in history as a woman of frustrated ambitions.
In February, a journalist asked Clinton if she has always told the truth to the American people.
"I've always tried to. Always. Always," the failed Democratic candidate answered.
Other, less cautious politicians would have responded with an unequivocal "yes".
But Clinton, a lawyer by training, weighs her words carefully so as not to be caught out. Critics say she is dishonest.
And this apparent duplicity, despite her efforts for redemption and the support of US Democrats led by a spirited Obama, cost the party the White House in a historic repudiation that has the world on edge as it waits to see what the future now holds with a Trump presidency.
Looking back, it is clear that Clinton's defiant streak grew over the course of three decades in public life.
Back in the 1970s, when her husband Bill was governor of Arkansas, Clinton still used her maiden name, Rodham, and kept her job as a lawyer.
Local people found this odd, and questioned her love for her husband and asked what the woman was up to.
Ultimately she took Clinton as her last name. But she had already come across as too hip and too ambitious for conservative southern US society.
"I think that's another one of the dangers about being in public life. One cannot live one's life based on what somebody else's image of you might be," she told Arkansas public TV in an interview in 1979.
- First Lady -
When her husband ran for the White House, Clinton showed herself to be both an asset and a liability.
She was the former when she defended her husband against allegations of adultery in 1992.
And she hurt herself when she seemed to criticize stay-at-home mothers by saying she would rather work than stay home and bake cookies.
When the couple came to Washington, Mrs. Clinton raised eyebrows again. She was a key adviser to her husband, and set up an office in the West Wing of the White House, reserved for the president himself and his closest aides. Previous first ladies always worked out of the East Wing.
Mrs. Clinton dazzled official Washington when she undertook a reform of the US health care system. She knew the material well, worked hard and impressed Republican members of Congress.
But as the months wore on, the reform deadlocked, and critics of Clinton dismissed her as inflexible and abrupt. It was her first major political defeat.
She was fiercely defensive of her private life, and journalists found this behavior to be suspicious.
Americans considered Clinton to be smart and tough but the media asked 'who is the real Hillary?'
Clinton's popularity peaked in late 1998 when she was humiliated with the disclosure of her husband's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
It would be the last time that the American people sympathized with her.
- On her own -
Clinton long wanted to get into politics on her own merits. In 1990, she commissioned polls to explore the idea of succeeding her husband. The results were negative, and this hurt her.
She sought redemption in 2000 when Bill Clinton left the White House: she won a seat in the Senate representing the state of New York. Clinton worked hard and impressed people as diligent and well prepared.
But her unpopularity returned.
In 2002, Clinton voted in favor of the United States invading Iraq.
A young Senate colleague named Barack Obama saw his chance, running in the Democratic primaries of 2008 with a message of change and relegating his powerful rival to the ranks of establishment politicians.
So a woman who was too modern in the Arkansas of the 1980s became a vestige of another time, a symbol of insider Washington.
In naming her secretary of state in 2009, Obama resurrected Clinton and consolidated her image as a stateswoman. This completed the longest resume in the recent history of American politics.
But Clinton made a fatal mistake when she set about working at the State Department: she avoided using the government email system and used her own private server, ignoring rules on the handling of sensitive communications.
This mushroomed into a scandal, and although the FBI ultimately decided that Clinton did not deserve to be charged, critics of Clinton insisted this disqualified her from serving as president.
"I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me," Clinton said in July in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. "So let me tell you."
She proceeded to talk about her middle class upbringing, her commitments and her lifelong battle to advocate for women and children.
Friends have vouched for Clinton's honesty, and her campaign team produced videos about her that were moving and funny.
But it was in vain as American voters on Tuesday closed the book on Clinton.
Donald Trump pulled off one of the biggest upsets in American political history when he toppled Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday - and he did it using far less cash than his rival.
Relying heavily on an unorthodox mix of social media, unfiltered rhetoric, and a knack for winning free TV time, the New York real estate businessman likely paid less than $5 per vote during his insurgent White House bid, about half what Clinton paid, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign finance records and voting data. Those figures assume the candidates spent all the funds they raised.
Trump's cost-effective win has upended prevailing concepts about the influence of money in American politics and raised the question of whether a lean, media-savvy campaign can become the new model for winning office in the United States.
Political strategists and academics tend to agree, however, that Trump's performance would be tough to repeat. A household name for his luxury brand resorts, reality TV stardom, and ability to surround himself with non-stop controversy, Trump held advantages that many political candidates lack.
"I think this is a case where Trump had unique characteristics as a candidate that allowed him to pursue a different type of strategy," said Tony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Maine.
In total, Trump raised at least $270 million since launching his campaign in June 2015, a little more than a third of the money that Obama's re-election campaign spent in 2012, according to the most recent filings with the Federal Elections Commission.
With vote counting wrapping up in the early hours of Wednesday, Trump had won some 59 million votes nationwide in the general election. That amounts to less than $5 per vote for the $270 million he spent.
According to data analytics firm mediaQuant, Trump garnered about $5 billion worth of free media coverage during the election campaign, more than twice the amount earned by Clinton, a lifelong politician who served as secretary of state, senator, and first lady at different times in her career.
mediaQuant adds up all the unpaid coverage the candidates earn in newspapers, magazines and social media and then compares the sum to what a comparable amount of coverage, with the same kind of reach, would have cost in advertising.
Trump has also frequently dominated news cycles with provocative rhetoric that breaks taboos, including unabashed insults targeting women he dislikes over Twitter, or unusual policy proscriptions like his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country to prevent domestic attacks, or to force Mexico to pay for a multi-billion dollar border wall to keep out immigrants.
BIG DONORS
Trump made his self-funding a selling point early in his campaign as he fended off 16 Republican rivals for the party nomination, arguing that by eschewing big donors he was not beholden to special interests.
But once he secured the nomination, Trump changed course and began fundraising in earnest, replicating the small dollar fundraising juggernaut of another insurgent candidate, Democrat Bernie Sanders, along the way.
Clinton raised at least $521 million, according to filings.
The former secretary of state stuck to the more traditional campaigning model of launching expensive television ads and funding hundreds of staffers who fanned across the country to work to increase voter turnout on Election Day.
She spent more than $237 million on television ads and more than $42 million on hundreds of staffers.
She also benefited from spending by the Super PACs supporting her candidacy, which are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but cannot coordinate directly with the campaign. More than a dozen people, including hedge fund magnate Donald Sussman and global financier George Soros, wrote multi-million checks to Priorities USA, the primary PAC supporting her campaign, according to filings.
Michael Traugott, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, said the traditional U.S. model for picking presidents might seem odd to people in other nations, where campaigns are shorter and require less cash.
"The system is clearly broken," Traugott said.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Richard Valdmanis, Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)
Donald J Trump has declared victory in the US presidential election. The candidate took the stage in New York just before 3am local time to announce that his rival, Hillary Clinton, had called him to concede the race.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” the president-elect told a packed room of supporters at the Hilton hotel.
“We will get along with all nations willing to get along with us,” he added.
What does this stunning turnaround mean for the rest of the world? The Conversation Global asked a panel of international scholars to reflect on Trump’s election and assess its significance for their region.
Salvador Vazquez del Mercado: Mexico will face hardships under Trump
Donald Trump has won the election against all expectations – except for those of his supporters. The Brexit-like failure to predict his victory will surely haunt pollsters and hurt public confidence in polls for a long time.
The consequences of his victory will, of course, be much graver than the crisis of prediction. Even if Trump comes through with only a fraction of his campaign promises – which seems more likely now that both chambers of Congress will be controlled by Republicans – markets will react quite negatively, the Mexico peso, which has already suffered a significant depreciation, may fall further. And these are only the short-term consequences of Trump’s victory.
The peso plunged as the result became clear.
Henry Romero/Reuters
The wall along the US-Mexico border may well be impossible to build and the millions of undocumented immigrants in the US may not be immediately deported. And, hopefully Trump will not use the nuclear codes at all. But his victory still spells severe trouble ahead for Mexicans, and many other minorities living in the US, who were continually vilified during his campaign.
For Mexico, the end of NAFTA would lead to a severe restriction of trade with the US, which, added to an expected increase in interest rates south of the border and a reduction in the remittances sent by Mexicans up north, will quite probably lead to a severe economic crisis.
In the longer term, the relationship between Mexico and the United States will undergo a severe reconfiguration because, come January, Trump will probably take a very aggressive stance against the country. The future is uncharted and, in the short term, quite complicated.
Janjira Sombatpoonsiri: the end of the liberal democracy project?
Trump’s rise to power may put an end to liberal democracy as propagated by the US and its western allies in the post-Cold War era. Thailand is a good place to contemplate the trajectory and consequences of the end of this project.
Having been dominated by military governments, Thailand underwent democratisation in the early 1990s. It joined other countries in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the “third wave of democracy”. This period saw the proliferation of civil society groups and institutionalisation of progressive ideas, particularly rights and justice. Unfortunately, elected governments faced allegations of corruption and inefficiency. And Bangkok’s middle class eventually lost patience, demanding a return to strong military rule.
Trump’s presidency potentially hints to authoritarian governments in Thailand and other societies that certain norms attached to liberal democracies can now be suspended. It’s likely that the coming Trump administration could be more silent than previous administrations about the crackdown on rights groups and dissidents in Thailand, and elsewhere. American pressure on the incumbent Thai junta to hold an election soon could also lessen.
In the age of anti-liberal democracy, fighting for retaining its norms will be harder in Thailand and elsewhere. If liberal democracy is no longer defensible and authoritarianism is not an option, progressive forces around the world need to gather pace and create a new political alternative that goes beyond this dead-end street.
Jonathan Rynhold: for Israel, less tension but less security
Under Donald Trump, relations between US and Israel are likely to be smoother than under Obama. However, in an underlying sense Israel will be less secure.
There are three reasons for this: first, Trump’s erratic temperament, second his extensive flip-flopping on Middle East policy, and third, and most importantly, his isolationist instincts.
Although Trump has said contradictory things about Israeli-Palestinian relations, he is likely to pay less attention to the issue and thus allow Israel’s right-wing government greater leeway on issues of contention such as settlements. Paradoxically, this will encourage Obama to promote a UN Security Council resolution on the issue, the prospect of which very much concerns Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel benefits hugely from an internationalist America. When the US takes a step back, as it did under Obama, the vacuum is filled by greater instability and hostile forces. Trump is more isolationist than Obama and he has openly questioned whether the US would stand behind its alliance commitments. This may embolden Israel’s enemies. Still, Israel can look after itself, and fears of American unreliability may push Egypt and Saudi Arabia to deepen their strategic co-operation with Israel.
Pro-Trump posters in Israel.
Baz Ratner/Reuters
Finally, Israel views Iran as the major strategic threat. Trump has said he would take a harder line on Iran, but in the interim his disengaged approach would allow Iran to increase its power, thereby multiplying the costs of confronting Iran in the future.
Andrea Peto and Weronika Grzebalska: Trump a boost for illiberial regimes in Europe
For Central Eastern Europe, Trump’s victory is a green light for the consolidation of illiberal majoritarian regimes which promise people a sense of existential security at the cost of individual freedoms, minority rights and checks and balances.
Trump’s election will definitely strengthen the neo-conservative, fundamentalist networks and shift the global political balance in the direction of familialism, nationalism and further away from human rights and an open society. Weak states such as Poland and Hungary in which democratic transition privileged free market measures over social and cultural ones are all the more vulnerable to the loss of a strong, democratic, pro-human rights voice.
Clinton’s defeat might also serve as a wake up call to the last of the hard-headed supporters of the neoliberal status quo in Central and Eastern Europe. Those who still believe illiberal turns in Poland and Hungary are just a local, provisional backlash, who think it is still possible to go back to the political solutions from the pre-illiberal era will have to rethink their position.
With the victory of Trump, human rights supporters are pushed into a doubly difficult situation. Not only do they have to protect the little provisions there are left and create a space of resistance but also at the same time reformulate their message. This message should be different from going back to the pre-Trump era, which has been the prison of technocratic, quasi-rational policy discourse for way too long. Instead it should revive great ideologies and offer an equally captivating political vision capable of re-enchanting voters.
It is in some ways too early to think about the impact of a Donald Trump presidency on India-US relations. Some patterns between the 2014 elections in India and the current one in the US are, however, discernible.
Members of the right-wing Hindu Sena celebrate Republican Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
Trump’s election represents the victory of a strong man – “I alone can fix it” – railing against media, political, and intellectual elites in whose favour the system is “rigged”. His victory is indicative of the insecurities and resentments of the majority and the desire to return to a purer, better, “original” America, which was largely white and where everyone knew their place.
While American isolationism, exceptionalism, and xenophobia are not new, they find unique expression in Trump. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was similarly elected on premises and promises of better days and the idea of a charismatic strong man leading the nation out of the morass of poverty, unemployment, secular politics, elites, minority appeasement etc.
Like Trump, the current political leadership in India is emblematic of an us-versus-them mentality, intolerant of dissent, critical thinking, or inconvenient institutions. Unsurprisingly, Trump has many fans in India and among Indian immigrants in the US.
Richard Maher: the view from Europe
In a stunning electoral upset, Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States. Virtually every pre-election forecast suggested a comfortable or even decisive Clinton victory. Instead, Trump – a man that many European leaders and citizens view as manifestly unqualified and unprepared for the position – will become president of the world’s sole superpower in January.
Trump’s victory is almost certainly being met across European capitals this morning with alarm, shock, and dread. Trump has called the NATO alliance “obsolete”, spoken admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and said the British vote in June 2016 to exit the European Union was “a great thing”.
In London, spectators react to the television coverage of election.
Hannah McKay/Reuters
Unlike in the United States, the European public was solidly against the idea of a Trump presidency. In a poll published by the Economist on November 8 showing how other countries would vote in the US election, huge majorities favoured Clinton. According to a Pew Research survey published in June, overwhelming majorities of Europeans polled said they had “no confidence” that Trump “would do the right thing regarding world affairs”.
Now European leaders must anticipate how a Trump administration will affect transatlantic relations and the many common challenges the United States and Europe face, from an increasingly assertive Russia, a relentless migration crisis that threatens to tear Europe apart, and Britain’s future in the EU.
More broadly, Trump’s election questions the future of US global leadership. Since the end of World War II, the United States, along with key European partners, built and then sustained an open, rules-based international order defined by free trade, military alliances, and international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. With Trump’s victory, the very future of this liberal international order is in peril.
William Case: what Trump’s victory means for Southeast Asia
With so many countries in the region already leaning toward China, does Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency matter for Southeast Asia? It does, at least a little.
To see understand how, imagine what the impact would have been if Hillary Clinton had won. She maintained a strong interest in trade, even if forced by voters during the election campaign to backtrack on the Trans Pacific Partnership. She vigorously denounced China’s takeover of the South China Sea, even as claimants in Southeast Asia have begun to cave in. And she might have retained some of the good will in Indonesia — and in Myanmar — that Barack Obama was able to generate. So Clinton might have slowed, though not reversed, China’s suffocating embrace of Southeast Asia.
After all, Southeast Asia is not a topmost concern for the US. But for China, it is. And China offers leaders in the region irresistible inducements, namely, near bottomless investment and lending for high speed railways, ports, and energy grids. To be sure, as the bills come due and exclusive economic zones are lost, citizens may rue the terms into which their leaders have entered. But by then, Hillary Clinton’s presidency would have passed.
By contrast, with Donald Trump in the White House, Southeast Asia’s entry into China’s orbit will quicken. Indeed, his repudiation of trading relations and security commitments seems to leave countries in the region with no alternative. And his anti-Muslim vitriol will add steam, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Trump’s presidency, then, will accelerate Southeast Asia’s progress along China’s new Silk Road. But interestingly, by doing so, the costs for Southeast Asia may grow apparent much sooner.
Guests at Hillary Clinton’s election night rally watch returns at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.
Rick Wilking/Reuters
Jay Batongbacal: issues in the South China Sea will go on the back-burner
Donald Trump taking the reins of the US presidency could mark the sunset on Pax Americana in the Asia Pacific, and clear away any remaining resistance to China’s rise to regional preeminence.
A relatively isolationist and localised focus on the part of his administration as he attempts to fulfil his electoral promises would likely leave issues such as the South China Sea on the back-burner. ASEAN hedging patterns will cause member states to gravitate towards China even more.
What will happen in the South China Sea under Trump?
Erik de Castro/Reuters
The US rebalancing in Asia under President Barack Obama, and the country’s alliance commitments in the region could also be severely undermined given Trump’s lack of appreciation for the role played by America’s security relationships in US global political and economic leadership. The only hindrance to this lies in the fact that US geostrategic policy for the Asia-Pacific has been a largely bipartisan matter in the US Congress.
But Trump’s tenuous links to the Republican Party, lack of real leadership thereof, and non-attachment to Republican ideals, puts into question the responsiveness and effectiveness of that policy in the face of more solid and coordinated leadership within regional powers such as China and Russia, which will have an unparalleled opportunity to fill in any voids the US may leave.
For the Philippines and its President Rodrigo Duterte, this is a fortunate coincidence as it accommodates his oft-stated aversion to US influence and commentary on his domestic policy, and distrust of the US.
Miguel Angel Latouche: the triumph of anti-politics
Donald Trump has demonstrated something that we Venezuelans have known about since the 1998 election that catapulted Hugo Chávez to the presidency of our country: when people perceive problems and feel politicians don’t represent society’s broad interests; when the demands of certain sectors are not satisfied, leading to a sense of exclusion; when people want change – then a “strong man” figure becomes really electorally attractive.
With Trump, we saw an aggressive campaign by a man who said what he thought without ever thinking too over much, who called things as he saw them and who proposed simple solutions to complex problems (whether they’re feasible responses or not). For the first time in a long time, the US has a president who genuinely does not belong to Washington, nor to the party logic of his country. It’s a triumph of anti-politics.
Beyond Trump’s business endeavours, television experience and some of his scandals, we know little about the new US president. Who is Donald Trump, really? What are his political ideas and proposals?
It’s interesting to observe, for example, the profound contradiction between the aggressive tone of his campaign and the conciliatory style he adopted for his 3 am acceptance speech. But one can’t act against one’s own nature, and fundamentally Trump has shown himself to be a charismatic populist.
For Latin America, he’s promised to harden relations with Cuba and Venezuela, build a wall along the Mexico border, and tighten immigrant policies. We’re looking at a strong presidency here, perhaps too strong, with Congress on his side, and a leader that has demonstrated conservative postures but also changeable ones when it comes to tough topics. This makes him hard to predict and susceptible to change with public opinion.
It’s quite possible that Trump will return the US to a modified version of Cold War power politics. Only time will tell if Trump is leading us to a more orderly and secure world or on a march toward insanity.
While the world was focused on Clinton versus Trump, the balance of power in the Senate was decided. While not all the races are decided at this hour, it is clear that the Republicans will maintain a majority of the U.S. Senate.
The Democrats needed to swing five seats in their favor in order to take the majority of seats (or pick up four seats, with a Democratic White House win where the vice president acts as a tie breaker). The pre-election analysis made six states appear poised to possibly flip from Republican to Democratic: Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. These races were tight and had the power to change the majority party in the chamber.
Here’s how it played out.
How the critical states fared
Illinois Republican incumbent Mark Kirk ran into trouble running against a robust Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth. Duckworth has already created a national image for herself as a fiery double-amputee war veteran. Then a comment Kirk made at a recent debate was received as insensitive and racist. Duckworth winning this state was a pickup for Democrats.
One of the more interesting results of the night came from Wisconsin. In 2010 Republican challenger Ron Johnson defeated Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold. Feingold ran against Johnson this year to try to win back his old seat, and his support looked relatively strong throughout the season. In the end, the Republican incumbent held the seat, perhaps because Republicans rallied for Trump in ways that were not fully detected by the polls.
In Indiana, former Republican Senator and Governor Evan Bayh ran as a Democrat in a tight race and lost to Republican Todd Young. Bayh ran somewhat ahead for much of the race, but the trajectory was not in his favor. In the end, Indiana stays in the Republican column.
North Carolina hosted a narrow race between Republican incumbent Richard Burr and Democratic challenger Deborah Ross, who has served as a state assembly representative. The race had narrowed in recent weeks, but stayed stayed within a margin of error. North Carolina stays red.
Pennsylvania saw Republican incumbent Pat Toomey challenged by Democrat Katie McGlinty. The race was close with McGlinty projected to win. McGlinty was one of the Democrats’ bright hopes this season, against a strongly conservative and fiscal hawk incumbent. Senator Toomey retaining his seat is a part of unpredicted Trump support in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
The Senate election in New Hampshire was too close to call as of this writing. Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte and her challenger, Gov. Maggie Hassan, were practically tied the entire election season. Democrats were optimistic about picking up this seat.
Does Senate majority matter?
The Republicans will keep the majority in the Senate, but it will be a narrow majority.
Having a majority matters because the party with the most seats gets the chair of every committee and subcommittee in the chamber, and the majority of seats on every committee and subcommittee. The majority leader gets to set the chamber’s agenda, which means controlling which legislation comes to the floor and when. Assuming Republicans control of the House, Senate and White House, this may include repeal of Obamacare or strict immigration controls.
But majority status in the Senate is not as important as it is in the House. The norms in the Senate tend more toward deliberation rather than the strong-arming used in the House. For example, the Senate uses procedures like “unanimous consent,” in which all 100 senators must agree about the rules that govern a bill before it comes to the floor. Also, the filibuster means that most bills need 60 votes, a “supermajority,” to come up for a vote on the floor.
Democrats will still hold significant power as the minority party. The minority party in the Senate is significantly more powerful than the minority party in the House, because of what political scientists call “negative agenda control,” or keeping bills you don’t like from passing. As the minority party in the Senate, the Democrats have greater power in the Senate, relative to the House, at preventing legislation to which they are oppose from coming to the floor. Because of that power, majority status means somewhat less in the Senate than it does in the House.
On the other hand, even if neither party has enough votes to “run the table” on any votes in the Senate, the Republican Party has a tremendous advantage now that it controls the Congress and White House. Republicans, for the most part, will not need many Democratic partners to achieve their policy goals.
The raw emotions of one Canadian news pundit covering the U.S. presidential election struck a chord with many on social media Tuesday night.
As it was becoming apparent Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was likely to win the White House, activist Danielle Moodie-Mills disagreed with a CBC anchor who speculated that Americans could not "accept a woman in that job."
"I do not believe that this is people saying I couldn't possibly have a woman in this role," Moodie-Mills insisted. "This is so much bigger than that. This is about -- and I will say it because I have literally nothing left to lose tonight -- this is literally white supremacy's last stand in America. This is it. This is what this looks like."
"This was black people being pushed out of rallies. This was a young boy with cerebral palsy and having his wheelchair kicked," she continued. "This is hatred on a level that we have not seen since Jim Crow."
According to Moodie-Mills, Trump's shocking win was not about Hillary Clinton's likability or her email scandal.
"We underestimated as Americans how deep our hatred was of 'the other', how deep white uneducated Americans felt about the demographic shift," she said. "We underestimated that level of insidious hatred. And what you have is a man, he went around, he stoked every fire, he lit every bridge -- every bridge -- and just opened the floodgates."
Well, folks, this should be the end of industrial political polling as we know it.
Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trumpbegan his tilt at the presidency as an outlier, and even as recently as voting day was characterised by many pollsters as the likely loser.
Now he is the US president elect, an outcome that most mainstream observers regard as an astonishing upset. Comparisons with the Brexit surprise abound.
The result underscores how badly modern polls serve us. Polling is an enormous, lucrative and influential industry – Australia has lost sitting prime ministers over poll results. But the US election outcome shows how unreliable polls can be at predicting our political futures.
As the votes for Trump rolled in, Wang wrote that he’s getting ready for “bug-cookery”, saying that “the polls were off, massively”. In the late hours of voting day in the US, Wang wrote:
The entire polling industry – public, campaign-associated, aggregators – ended up with data that missed tonight’s results by a very large margin. There is now the question of understanding how a mature industry could have gone so wrong. And of course, most of all, there is the shock of a likely Trump presidency. I apologize that I underestimated the possibility of such an event.
Nate Silver, who uses statistical analysis to crunch poll data on the website FiveThirtyEight and famously called the outcome of the 2012 election correctly, was less confident than Wang of a Clinton presidency. But FiveThirtyEight did tip Clinton as the likely winner:
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Nate Silver seemed to grow reflective as the results became obvious on the evening of voting day:
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In the space of a few hours, GOP pollster Frank Luntz went from predicting a Clinton win to declaring Trump the likely next president:
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He wrote on Twitter that exit polling margins “were way off”.
Polling in the past
Polling used to be a lot easier.
Polling emerged for sound economic and political reasons. On the economic side, advertisers needed a trusted way of reading the customer mind, so they could design products and develop media plans to sell them. On the political side, legislators, political candidates and planners needed reliable means of reading the citizen mind, not only for elections but also for everyday policy affairs from welfare to housing provision.
Not surprisingly, early polling methodology experts understood that devious people or organisations might attempt to distort the outcomes of ratings and polls. In advertising, companies that subscribed to ratings and actively tried to distort them would be threatened with removal from the subscription and banned from accessing ratings.
But polling technology has changed, and perhaps so too has community willingness to participate in them.
A cultural and technological shift
Thirty years ago, pollsters could use landline phone numbers to amass a statistically representative group of people. For example, reverse telephone directories ensured that pollsters would be fairly confident on their sampling frame and the identity of participants.
The shift to mobile phones and internet polls have meant that pollsters are now faced with a more fluid situation. Not as many people are willing and able to take calls from pollsters on their home phone – if they even have one – which can affect the quality of the data. And after all, pollsters can only work with the data they have.
It might appear that with the rise of the internet, there are now easier and more reliable ways to divine the citizen mind. But what is gained from “rich data” (what people say in detail) has to be balanced against the loss of a reliable sampling frame – not everyone has access to the internet or the time to fill in internet polls. More importantly, perhaps, unlike the earlier conventions polling is no longer deliberative and participatory.
Who cares about polls?
Technologies for reading the public mind, especially recently, appear more important to the media than they are to citizens. People do not vote based on the polls.
There are usually several, slightly different elections forecasts and poll predictions are quite obviously perceived selectively in favour of one’s own opinion.
New methods of reading the public, citizen, mind are needed. Contemporary technologies of political polling are no longer up to the task.
During the general election, celebrities lined up to talk about how they were ready to move if Donald Trump was elected. Raw Story even outlined some of the places Americans could move if Trump won. But others are urging Never Trumpers to consider this a wake-up call and to reset the clock.
TRENTON -- As he claimed victory Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump praised Gov. Chris Christie, one of the first prominent Republicans to endorse his improbable run for the White House. "Gov. Chris Christie, folks, was unbelievable," Trump told a cheering crowd in New York City. Christie, who stood on stage as he delivered his victory speech, shook…
