Vee

Lindy West on Hillary and Bill.

Jezebel has a surprisingly good piece which is just testimonials from teachers on their students post-Trump.

The media is absolutely responsible. They tried to normalize Trump because the alternative would've upended their usual election year ratings. (Mark Halperin, incidentally, resumed being Trumper-in-Chief this morning by apparently going on Morning Joe and decrying the dour NYT headline about the election) They and their years of resentful obsession with the Clintons are extremely culpable. Hopefully some of them will wake up. I doubt much will change unless we make it change, which we'll have to. But truthfully, we're also culpable - many of us anyway, not all of us. Many of us got so enclosed in our thoughtstreams that we got ahead of ourselves. We lost touch with the Rust Belt and we got a bit arrogant about the future; we thought that by simply partitioning ourselves from the systemic problems of ignorance, hatred and fear in the country and dismissing them we could marginalize them to the point of powerlessness in a few short years. This election proves we did not. I hate to go there because quite a few white pundits are trying to lead with this to ignore the sheer tonnage of racism, sexism and hatred that also fueled this win. But looking at how the numbers broke down there is no escaping that issue which we now have to deal with: How we lost and dismissed a lot of Middle America through complacency, inaction and just disinterest in their anxieties. Does that mean I think we shouldn't have nominated Hillary? I don't know. I think she was an exceptional candidate any other year, I thought she ran a great campaign and would be a great president, but this was clearly not the year for just 'an exceptional candidate' - clearly, given the state of things we barely comprehended we needed something more. Does this mean I think we should've nominated Bernie Sanders, absolutely not. He could never have won. But the fact is that we have to find a way to reach back to some of the people who we currently can't stand to look at - people who we, myself included, have dismissed as fossilizing before our eyes either in age or in perspective - and find a way to get them back onboard. Because not every Trump voter was part of the mass of hateful, committed bigots in the alt right or currently committing hate crimes against every minority around (although yes, I personally think all of their reasons come back to white supremacy and anxiety over the changing electorate and nation and are translated to economic and social fears). Some of them were just stupid. Some of them were anxious about the world and blind. A part of me will always hold all of them at least a little in contempt, but going forward, getting out of this, we can't afford to just ignore them. We have to deal with them, as distasteful as we find it. We have to impact them with a new outreach and a harder, more fiery populist message. And we have to reconceive the party and its future leaders. Here's Barbara Boxer, talking to Chelsea Handler in the only time I have ever watched her show: Meanwhile, things are tense at the DNC. I like Donna Brazile, I don't think it was a DNC conspiracy to deny Bernie and I do not think this year is the fault of the 'flawed candidate,' but I cannot disagree with many of the points the rebellious young staffer makes about why we should trust in the organization. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and more towards the left than the DNC often cares to admit.

Heather Graham reflects on Annie, again insists she is not in the new series. Also: The full and cryptic Mark Frost AMA on TP and the Secret History book.

Inspiring, important reads from Dave Holmes and Aaron Sorkin. Queer as Folk's Sharon Gless checks in:

Twin Peaks Archive's election reax:

He will. He never forgets. Democrats in Congress must now begin exploiting his emotional vulnerabilities.

At this point he can let it rip. I did dread calling her, but my mother is okay - like she taught me, she is saddened but still ready to work and fight and go on. She was out all day and night canvassing rough parts of Philly and all over PA, a seventysomething white lady. She was a campus radical. She was going to work for Bobby Kennedy before he was killed. She's worked in government most of her life. She's not giving up. Also, we have this. Please watch it, from last night's live election special with Stephen Colbert, which rapidly turned funereal:

I don't think Michelle Obama is going to want to see the inside of Washington for many years, if ever. She was viscerally horrified by Donald Trump and this is a profound dishonor to her husband and his legacy. I do think this is the man who could potentially actualize her as a politician running herself, someday, after her girls are grown. I wouldn't mind that. But mostly I just want to see her vindicated someday.

There are prospects. But we're going to need to tack to the left and tack strong. There's a portion of the electorate that respects the illusion of strength before anything else, and not all of that is Trump's base. The potential achilles heel for the GOP here is this: Trump does not believe in Republican principles. He has no core beliefs in anything other than himself. Five, ten years ago he was chummy with the Clintons and espoused liberal values because they were popular. He already considers the GOP establishment traitors who did not genuflect to him. He doesn't care about parties, he cares about himself. If a smart Democrat in Congress gets in his ear the right way, they can turn him, flatter him and cajole him towards less disastrous policy. All he cares about is attention, and anyone can coax and work him. Kellyanne Conway has done it all summer and fall. I'm not saying he will be turned into some sort of liberal president or great guy. That's never happening. But Trump can be worked and semi-managed, and it is possible to make him relatively ineffectual. Possible, not probable. That's what Paul Ryan has thought all along and it's what we can and likely will have to do to mitigate some of the damage. We will need someone to play lion tamer to Trump on the inside of the government while quietly building some kind of new, unified and aggressive resistance out here.

We do have to go on. The problem is not all these idiots will die out in 4-8 years. We have to mobilize, and yeah, we have to re-radicalize in some ways. It is now officially time to go further and more stridently to the left, IMO. You cannot win these people, you can only destroy them - or turn the rest with strength.

Mark Halperin recognizes what he has wrought on Stephen Colbert's now-immortal election special:

You can bawl, we all will. But tomorrow you have to live. That's the only thing we can do now, live, and in living, avenge.

Oh, no, little Jimmy will be third or fourth on the wall when the revolution comes. And no. Obama's legacy doesn't mean nothing. We have to remember it and try to fight for and honor it in our way, until this is over. Which may be a long time.

BTW, Carl, we can now officially kill all the media. They may not have all rooted for Trump, but they did work to normalize him for the sake of ratings. We can begin with Jeff Zucker, a.k.a. Future Media Minister. The only thing this election is going to do is re-radicalize me. I know how you feel. Part of me is there with you. All I can tell you is I believe America is more and better than its worst hours and deeds, and if I can't fight for that ideal and live for it then I don't know how to. I did it in the Bush years and I can do it again. Obama did, and he gave his presidency over to it. I think the least I can do is try to honor that. It only gets better if we stand our ground and work to make it better. We have to live, and we have to work. (also thinking about getting back into drugs but that is another conversation)

Yes. It also means they have no excuse in two years, for the midterms.

Because we've bred a lot of cynical, disconnected, privileged kids. They're about to get a wake-up. Kids did in the Bush years, they will again. Art will also dramatically change again.

My mother is in PA. She went up there to lock it down for Hillary. I'm so heartbroken for her.

I'm gay, Jewish and I guess very, very superficiailly handicapped, though I am not legally classified as such and do not consider myself that. It's something I think about, especially after the little boy in the wheelchair the other day, but I still pass as an upwardly mobile white guy who many people (inexplicably, IMO) mistake for straight. It's not the same thing as what you and so many others face. The rising tide of antisemitism does terrify me.

Please don't just pick up things you find on Twitter tonight and repurpose them. And I don't think this was about Hillary so much as it was about the dying of the light in older white America. But Hillary being a woman hasn't helped.

I think we all fear those things. I feel like we not only let the country or Obama down, but people like my mother. She is in her seventies and was campaigning vigorously for Hillary all over. She is far more of a worrier than me, but I insisted we'd be fine. I feel like I failed her. She lived through the '60s as a radical, she worked on Capitol Hill many years, and as a young woman she was going to work for RFK. Then he was killed. Still, she gave her life to service and though she's in very good health I abhor the idea that she'd have to leave this world while the country is still like this. I think we'll come back as we always do, in time and with hard work. That's the only way I get through tonight, or tomorrow, or whenever.

I don't think anyone short of Carl (take a bow) could have anticipated this. I'll pray for victory but all I can say is we've been somewhere like this before, and not just in my lifetime. If the worst happens I believe we can and will find our way back, but it will take time, work, non-complacency and a lot of willingness to see through to the next month, the next day, the next hour, the next minute, the next second. That's how I've gotten through a lot of bad times in my life. It's how I got through the Bush years. It's how I absolutely believe we can do again. I just wish we wouldn't have to do it like this. We'll come back. It's awful, but we'll come back. That's what America does and that's what I do. I don't know how to give up so I just keep going. Take a night, take an hour, cry, scream, whatever, then keep going. The alternative is nonexistent.

I don't think that's so.