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David Brooks on the change in Romney as he breaks away from tea party orthdoxy to be the man Brooks believes he truly is.

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In this essay in Der Spiegel, Charles Hawley says that the Trump movement has become a movement of patriotic downtrodden whites, with a whole range of interests-of extreme right talk show hosts, Tea Party politicians, white power supremacists, those left out by globalization in the working class especially in the midwestern states. The danger he says is that this movement of which Trump has become a part, rejects the narrative on which America is based of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers establishing a country based on principles of "the inalienable rights of man," that have evolved through the years to include black people, women, and minorities.  To put this in perspective, president Obama writing for The Economist magazine in October 2016, puts this movement in a different context- that of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Know Nothing Movement of the 1800's, the anti-Asian sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, periods when anti-immigrant or anti-foreign sentiment gained prominence. Obama's view is that it is not fundamentally economic. In this he is right in that some of the forces on the far right do not stem from globalization. Yet he would be missing a great deal if he did not address the economic problems for the middle and working class that have given such views the support of a broad segment of the population, especially in some midwestern and older industrial states compared to say the economy of California or New York. Obama is aware of the problems in his essay as he points to the problems of workers trying to get a decent wage, of job losses through globalization, and the aggravation of these problems by the financial crisis of 2008 when some of the potential physicists and engineers as he calls them went into the financial sector to create faulty mortgages. Yet he goes back to the free trade and global networks of supply chains as having reduced global poverty, without showing a keen awareness of how it has through a combination of events and decades of policy indifference to manufacturing communities in the U.S.- as documented by experts and shown in Lyrarc, with David Autor and Gordon Hansen in the WSJ, 2016- 08-16. A Gallup Study, WSJ, 2016-05-16, supports Obama's assertion by showing that many of Trump supporters are actually self-employed and not in economic distress. Yet the movement would not have taken its proportions without the merging of different groups particularly largely disadvantaged working class voters, and fortunately Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, have a better sense of this than the president. It is by their efforts that income and wealth disparities can be tackled in a way that restores the social fusion of all parts of society- in Hillary Clinton's emphatic words in the final debate by "growing the middle," growing the middle class. This is the task of the next decade, or possibly two decades. (For Gallup study see WSJ, How Economic Anxieties Explain Trump's Appeal- And Where They Fall Short, Nick Timiraos, 08-16-2016. And for Autor, Hanson, see Tallying the Toll of U.S.-China Trade, Justin Lahart, 08-27-2011)   ...

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Fausset of the NYT looks at a rust belt city in the U.S. midwest that has suffered as U.S. manufacturing declined. Much of the decline happened in the 1980's in the steel industry in competition with Japanese imports. North of town there is a GM plant that makes the Chevy Cruze. The unemployment rate of 17% in 2010 has dropped to 7.6%. Fausset describes the life of a retired steel worker on state pension who works in law enforcement. He is Joe Marshall Jr. from the song by Bruce Springsteen about a steel worker who the singer read about in a book. Youngstown appears to be divided by people who support Trump and Clinton.

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Indifference on the Republican side, and a sense that not much is going to get done on the Democratic side, as President Obama pitches a $447 billion second stimulus plan in a speech to both houses of the U.S. Congress on September 8, 2011. Dana Milbank documents the attitudes and skepticism with which members of Congress received the proposals- a general sense that President Obama was too weak and ineffective to get things done and has lost credibility. John Taylor, senior economic advisor on the Republican side pointed out in a Wall Street Journal column a few days before the speech, that the jobs proposals Obama and economic advisor Alan Krueger were presenting were similiar to old plans that have not produced results. Taylor viewed them as placing too much reliance on government and not enough on the private sector to generate economic growth and jobs.

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Joe Nocera describes his personal situation which also reflects the situation of the average investor in his 401(K) for retirement - inexperience in handling the boom-bust cycles in the market and loss of savings, especially in the last two decades with sharp swings in the market. The Employee Benefit Research Institute statistics on savings of the average American are striking, dismal is the right word- only 22% of workers 55 or older have more than $250,000 set aside for retirement, and 60% have less than $100,000 in a retirement account. The average savings of an American near retirement are $100,000.

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Mexican president Nieto's poll numbers are at all time low of 24%, according to Reforma newspaper. He took office in late 2012 and has been hurt by human rights scandal of the murder of 43 students in the state of Guerrero, corruption issues, and failure to improve the economy. The invitation to Trump to visit Mexico left even people close to the president surprised, and was criticized widely inside Mexico. It is not clear what Trump or Nieto gained from the trip. As Trump continued his talk about building a wall on the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for the estimated $23 billion it would cost. He did this in a speech to supporters in Pheonix on the same day he met Nieto, showing the use of teleprompters and prepared script was not his way of campaigning. Just as the message to black people that Democrats take them for granted cannot resonate without the basic message delivered with compassion and understanding- such as done by the presidents Bush and Reagan- so also the message to Hispanic people is suffering from the same lack of empathy. Recent polls show only 3% of blacks support Trump. McCain and Romney gained only 4-6% in the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. The message of the wall is also baffling as an election strategy. A Gallup poll in July 2016 shows only 15% of Americans opposing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and only 24% of Republicans. There is another problem in the strategy. The rhetoric about walls and mass deportations, and the Trump temperament combined with handling of nuclear weapons is not winning college educated women in the suburbs with polls showing Trump lagging behind Clinton by about 20 points or 4 million voters with this group. It is hard to undo the damage done by this kind of rhetoric used in the primary elections as it gains distrust of voters. It would require a bad economy with illegal immigrants taking local jobs, and handling of immigration seen as weak, for such a message to gain some national traction. Both are absent for the most part with a steadily improving economy since 2012, lower unemployment, a tough enforcement policy on deportatons under Obama that exceeded that under Geoge W. Bush, and the talk of a wall comes with illegal immigration having declined steeply since the 2008 financial crisis. The real culprit appears to be elsewhere, the triple hit taken from hollowing out of the manufacturing economy that hurt the Conservatives in Canada, the insecurity created for older whites from the job losses and hits to net worth from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the increasing loss of access to health care and educational opportunities with high  costs. About 62 million households or the bottom half of the distribution in the U.S. have a net worth of about $10,000, a quarter of this group having zero net worth, according to the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen at an Inequality Conference in Oct 2014. Problems no wall is going to solve, problems that built up over 2 decades, problems that will take a generation to fix.  It shows the tech miracle of the last 2 decades as a mirage for quality of life of the middle and working class. Tech as a tool to a goal, not a goal in itself, is the better way forward. ...

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Republican voter sentiment in Springfield, Ohio. Warren Davidson is running for former House Speaker Boehner's seat in this Congressional district in Ohio with the support of Tea Party activists. The median income in the city is $31,635, $15,000 less than the Ohio median. The population has declined from 80,000 in the sixties to less than 60,000, according to Census Bureau. Only about 15% of the Springfield population has a college degree compared to 30% in the U.S. Speaker Boehner had a small group of loyalists and tight control of the Republican party in his district, leading to charges that he was too close to the establishment and business. Trump has support from Republican voters who feel the party has drifted away from them.

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This Washington Post editorial following the New York primary points out the misstatements, exaggerations, and extreme statements that have characterized the Trump campaign, about women, minorites, the media, and other candidates.

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Mortimer Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report magazine expresses his disappointment at the Obama administration's performance. He points to a "competency crisis" of the Obama administration and the President. On the Simpson-Bowles Commission's recommendations and President Obama's complete silence on its proposals, Zuckerman like other observers expresses strong disappointment. He says that he and other early supporters are no longer excited by the novelty of his candidacy and his presidency. Obama's single minded focus on getting re-elected is disturbing for Zuckerman.

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The Fiscal Survey of States, a report put out by the National Governor's Association, says that Medicaid will become an increasing burden on state budgets as help from the federal government declines. The report points out that state general fund revenue remains $21 billion below 2008 levels, just as the states prepare for less federal help.

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Ajami cites his own memories of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser, who had a way with crowds and rhetoric in the Arab world, as giving him an insight into the way Barack Obama found his way into the American imagination as a popular leader in 2008. He points out that the coalition of black people who put their faith in him as one of their own, of white educated professionals who liked his cool image, of Hispanics who had hope for better immigration policies, and working class Americans who set aside reservations of elitism to give their support, was put together on the basis of hope and charisma and the uncanny ability of Obama to let himself be seen as all things to all people. Because of the way it was put together it was bound to come apart, particularly for a candidate without enough experience, says Ajami. The aloofness of the president, reliance on Congressional leaders Reid and Pelosi, and relying on a very small circle of advisors whose eyes were focussed on reelection, made this more so. He cites as one example, the controversial decision on Syria's chemical weapons made on a walk with chief of staff Dennis McDonough. Ajami gives a picture of how Obama may be seen from the outside, especially in the Arab and Muslim world- from Turkey and Egypt to Saudi Arabia- a sense of illusions. A European and particularly a German perspective also may have similiar sense of illusions about having gone for the ride and believing the image put out by image handlers. The lack of sensitivity to German sentiments about the tapping of chancellor Merkel's mobile phone- herself a former East German resident of the Soviet backed GDR- bringing this out. A similiar sense seems to have taken hold in Brazil, after Brazilian president Rousseff cancelled a trip because of lack of sensitivity to the tapping of her phone, as she is a survivor of brutal dictatorships in Brazil. This is ironically a full circle, as happens in these situations of euphoria encouraged by politicians inevitably followed by disillusionment, because Turkey, Germany and Brazil were some of the countries where enthusiasm for the new president was highest. More so because president Lula of Brazil, Merkel of Germany,and Erdogan of Turkey were leaders Obama seemed to relate to the most. This acts as a cautionary note for the future....

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A NYT report on Donald Trump's long standing relationship with his lawyer Roy Cohn,  who was also an advisor to Senator Joseph McCarthy. The report says Roy Cohn used aggressive legal tactics in lawsuits and influenced Trump's style of doing business in his real estate dealings. It is a detailed report of Roy Cohn's influence on Trump, which the reporters say has influenced the way  Trump ran his 2016 election campaign. It shows Cohn as protecting Trump in lawsuits, and Cohn's sense that Trump would someday play a big role in New York's real estate business, as Cohn's first meeting with Trump started when Trump was beginning his career in the early 70's. 

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The CEO of the New York Times and the former director general of the BBC, takes a look at the public discourse in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in the Brexit campaign, and finds some troubling changes. The use of words that can eaily be picked up by Twitter and social media to attack opponents, the complete disregard for facts, and outright attempts to denigrate and destroy using rhetorical tactics, and a section of the public that has turned away from the facts or is disinterested in facts, is deeply troubling for Mark Thompson. When the public discourse fails, then the politics as a whole starts to collapse, says Thompson. We are children of the enlightenment, says Thompson, and were taught to look underneath statements to discern the truth. This is a crisis in public discourse. Worse it is one in which truth telling by people who say they are outsiders and tell it like it is, is not about telling the truth. Which is what makes it so dangerous. Thompson cites the statement by Michael Gove that "people in this country have had enough of experts," as another dangerous sign. He says it is time that experts make themselves understandable and talk in a way the public can understand. The media needs to explain issues in clear ways, and professional policymakers language of discourse needs to be conveyed in better ways that the public can grasp, in which the Brexit Remain campaign failed, says Thompson. Its important to acknowledge the problem, as the health of our democracies depends on finding solutions to what has happened in 2015-2016 to change the public discourse and let it deteriorate to unimaginable levels.  ...

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In this interview with Der Spiegel Bernie Sanders reflects on the 2016 election. He says that the Democratic Party missed the fact that many people in the midwest, south and other parts of the country, were worse off after president Obama left than when he came in in 2008. He also says Hillary Clinton relied too heavily on speechwriters and advisers upto the point of  having three speechwriters say why she was running for president. He finds the cuts proposed to healthcare, in the budget, and action on climate change, immoral. He also points out about the investigations that Mr. Mueller is someone everybody respects and that it would be wrong to offer a biased opinion, that Trump supporters would see this in the way that he is picked on when he just came in. He also believes Trump supporters are like other voters and are likely to look at the results, how better off they are under the Trump administration.

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The Obama first family and its many mulicultural faces from Kenyan, Indonesian, Chinese to African American and White abolitionists from Missouri. Truly a new face of the American continent. About 25% of white Americans have interracial marraiges and nearly half of all black Americans belong to a multiracial family, according to estimates made by Joshua Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. What it does is wake one up to the reality, the changes that have already ocurred in the country which most people had not realized. With Blacks, Hispanics, Jewish people, Asian Americans, the 25% of whites in interracial marraiges, recent immigrants, white women, and white males making up this mosaic of cultures and communities that makeup America. And the geographical mix is also just as varied, with the west and the northwest and the midwest and east having a bigger share of this mosaic than the south and the mountain states. Whites in interracial marraiges tends to breakup the traditional white protestant insular demographic. On the religious side there is a breakup of the traditional white demographic with Irish Americans especially those in the east tending to move away from the traditional white protestant insular demographic because of their own particular historical and cultural narrative. The Obama story is one of tapping into these different demographics and changing faces of America at the right time, when the conservative southern demographic, represented by the Bush family, combined with related demographic groups in counties and neighborhoods around the country had lost popular support from two wars and a failing economy....

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Adam Nagourney who has covered Governor Jerry Brown of California, describes the Bernie Sanders supporters and the California delegation with many Bernie supporters feeling the loss of their candidate. Jerry Brown says he expects "a convergence around the core issues of this campaign," as the effort to rally people behind Clinton continues.

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Krugman points out that about 13 million Americans without insurance gained health insurance under the Obama plan. He says if it is turned back 8 million whites without a college degree in that 13 million will lose health insurance. Of these eight million about two out of three voted for Trump, so that 5 million Trump supporters could now lose health insurance even though they are older and have more health conditions. Krugman says this aspect of the election campaign was not covered well in the misinformation and social media information of the 2016 campaign, and the lack of media focus on the important issues in the election. On manufacturing jobs he says most of the jobs lost are not returning, and only token jobs such as at a Carrier plant in the news will take their place.