The Main Stream Media (MSM) has reported on the events surrounding Vladimir Putin’s efforts to help Donald Trump win the White House, such as hacking the DNC and the disinformation campaign, but has continued hand wringing over what those efforts mean. At least since the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, Russia has used disinformation campaigns to try to separate the U.S. from Western Europe and destroy or weaken NATO. Under Putin, these goals remain Russian foreign policy objectives. Trump now rejects US foreign policy of the last 70 years as he hails for policies advanced by Putin. Putin’s efforts on behalf of Donald Trump, and other authoritarian European leaders who support the policies advanced by Putin, must be seen as indicative of his overall strategy. The MSM remains bewildered about how to report these events. It appears that Russia is particularly effective as they deceive the MSM, or maybe the MSM is particularly gullible.
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The verdant island, was self-sustaining for decades, with sugar its chief export until the 1950s. Then its economy dramatically changed as the US promoted industrialization by providing significant tax incentives that exempted tax on income originating in US territories. These tax incentives were fully revoked by 2006, and exacerbated the effects of the deepening recession in 2008 and led to poverty levels that rose year after year. Public services are unreliable; electric outages are common – including an island-wide outage in September. The unemployment rate of 15% has led to an exodus of Puerto Ricans leaving for the United States.
We need to understand how Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump- not to hurt Hillary, but to avoid future losses for the same reasons. A reluctance to fully understand what went wrong, even if it is painful, especially to Hillary should not diminish any examination of the 2016 election. Hillary may not have been one of the best candidates to ever have run for President but she was far from being the worst one. She was not the devil, she has long demonstrated her capacity for handling complex issues and preparing for challenges. Why then did she not beat the least favorable candidate in U.S. history and the candidate who, as she described, presents a true threat to the US? Many are saying “don’t look back – don’t look back, look forward”. The point is we must look back until we feel we understand what happened so that we can work on solutions for the future. How should Democrats prepare for future races?
In April 2016, during the democratic primary contest, we published an analysis of Hillary Clinton as a candidate, then contrasting her with Bernie Sanders. We described Clinton as having economic blind spots, somewhat based on her loyalty to President Obama, and some based on her political philosophy hardening during the Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 2016 she was half-hearted and unconvincing as she moved away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) largely because she had long held free-trade beliefs and was defensive about the downsides of the North American Free Trade Agreement, originated by President George HW Bush, and signed by Bill Clinton. Hillary focused more on the proximate issues surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, rather than demonstrating a real concern for those Americans who have been hurting year after year for over 30 years. In contrast, Progressives and Donald Trump emphasized that NAFTA was largely responsible for growing unemployment and wage stagnation. Their focus on NAFTA’s negative effects may have been simplistic and missed explaining the role of automation, but were none-the-less appealing to Rust-Belt voters, who found empathy and promise.
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Trump campaigned by arousing Americans' fears - especially the fear of terrorists. While he may have thought he would increase stability and security by threatening to torture terrorists and their families, a more rationale prediction is that terrorists, not fearing death, will increase their activity. Only now, their main targets are likely to be the hotels, golf courses, and commercial products, emblazoned with Trump's name in huge letters around the world. Trump's presidency will be a game changer for terrorism.
With a few notable exceptions, Democratic leaders have been remarkably silent as the indications of what we can expect from the Trump Administration have grown. During the primaries and general election, Donald Trump has shown us who he is and we believe him. Now, with his nominees to the cabinet and appointments as senior aides, we can also glean what he intends to do as President—namely roll back all aspects of the New Deal and Great Society.
Even taunts by Republican consultants and politicians--if they had won the popular vote by almost 3 million, they would never concede--has not motivated a robust Democratic response. Democratic leaders should be ready to grab baseball bats at the sound of our house being burglarized.
Table 1: Selected explanations of the effects of events and decisions on election outcomes
 Donald Trump with Jeff Sessions
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