Saturday, January 21, 2017

The Positive Energy And Love Of The Bernie Sanders Rallies Swept America Today

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This isn't going to surprise any Richard Florida followers but Brookings' Mark Muro observed, soon after the election, that "[t]he less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015.  By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output-- just a little more than one-third of the nation’s economic activity." It's also completely unprecedented for a losing presidential candidate to have won so large a share of the nation's productive base. No election in decades has revealed as sharp a political divide between the densest economic centers and the rest of the country-- "high-output" and "low-output" America.



[W]ith the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won every large-sized county economy in the country. Her base of 493 counties was heavily metropolitan.  By contrast, Trumpland consists of hundreds and hundreds of tiny low-output locations that comprise the non-metropolitan hinterland of America, along with some suburban and exurban metro counties.
Not exactly: Clinton lost Maricopa County (49-46%) but won Phoenix, lost Tarrant County (52-44%) but won Fort Worth and won more urbanized Nassau County on Long Island, 51-46%, while losing more rural Suffolk County 52-44%. But why quibble. Muro makes the point that there are multiple problems suggested by all of this: "Most broadly," he wrote, "the stark political divide underscores the likelihood of the two parties talking entirely past each other on the most important issues of economic policy.  Given the election map we revealed, the Trump administration will likely feel pressure to respond most to the desires and frustrations of the nation’s struggling hinterland, and discount the priorities and needs of the nation’s high-output economic base."

He's wrong there. Well, maybe they'll feel pressure, but they have no intention of responding to that pressure, other than in completely hollow speeches. As we mentioned yesterday, moments after Trumpanzee read Bannon's inaugural speech asserting, falsely, that "every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families," he signed an executive order that, in effect, raised the mortgage payments for every low-income and first-time homebuyer in the country. Bannon and Trump apparently plan to create Fake News as the main function of POTUS... while Pence, Ryan and McConnell pass a standard, garden variety GOP policy agenda that screws the life out of the working class voters who backed Trumpanzee's election. But Moro is naively hopeful.
On one hand, more attention to the economic and health challenges of rural and small-city Rustbelt America could be welcome, especially if it focuses on the right things: realism about current economic trends, adjustment to change, improving rural education and skills training, and enhancing linkages to nearby metropolitan centers. However, Trump’s promises to “bring back” the coal economy and “bring back” millions of manufacturing jobs (that now don’t exist thanks to automation) don’t speak wisely to real-world trends in low-output America. They look backwards and speak instead to local frustrations.

On the other hand... [there are] doubts that the nation’s core metropolitan economic base will easily secure the investments it needs-- investments that has been shown to drive broader prosperity that benefits the entire nation.  Without a doubt, the mostly metropolitan counties of high-output America will need now to make more of their own arrangements, by establishing their own applied R&D centers, developing their own industry-relevant skills pipelines, and deepening local industry clusters. “Bottom up” will now be mandatory.  Yet with that said, big issues loom given the fact that no county can flourish entirely on its own.  How, for example, will high-output America secure the critical, historically federal innovation investments it requires to fuel the dynamism of its local advanced industries and the long supply chains that they support?  How will the heavily federal safety net be maintained?  And will necessary federal infrastructure investments be made in a targeted, efficient way that maximizes return on investment?

...[M]etropolitan areas are going to need to demand what they need, while taking matters into their own hands as best they can.

In the end, our data makes plain that while cultural resentments played a huge role in this month’s election, so too did a massive economic divide between relatively prosperous high-output counties and struggling lower-out rural ones.  Hashing out a serviceable politics and policy mix to serve that bifurcated reality is going to be a huge challenge.
This was reflected in the marches today. From Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, there were massive turnouts for anti-Trump demonstrations, dwarfing his thinly-attended Mourning in American Inauguration celebration Friday (despite Sean Spicer's laughable lie today that more people were at the Trumpanzee inauguration than at any other inauguration, blah, blah, blah... false, false, false. It's the White House Fake News Machine). This was an aerial view of Chicago, where over 250,000 people were marching against Trumpism:




Turnout's outpaced all estimates. At the main march in DC, over half a million people turned out, more than double what the organizers had been predicting all week. Hundreds of "sister rallies" took place over the country. Between 2 and 3 million people turned out to protest Trump worldwide today. Here were a few of them:
NYC- 500,000
Los Angeles- 750,000
Cincinnati- 10,000
St. Paul- 60,000
Denver- 100,000
Philadelphia- 50,000
Boston- 175,000
Cleveland- 15,000
St. Louis- 20,000
San Francisco- 150,000
Seattle- 170,000
Nashville- 20,000
Indianapolis- 15,000
Austin- 40,000
Charlotte- 10,000
Ashville- 10,000
Little Rock- 7,000
Memphis- 9,000
Atlanta- 60,000
Montpellier- 20,000
Lexington- 5,000
Portland, ME- 10,000
Portland, OR- 100,000
Miami- 10,000
Ithaca- 10,000
Oklahoma City- 12,000
El Paso- 1,000
Houston- 22,000
Dallas- 8,000
Detroit- 4,000
Lansing- 9,000
Phoenix- 20,000
Trenton- 3,000
Orlando- 3,000
Pittsburgh- 25,000
Boise- 5,000
• Helena, MT- 10,000
• Des Moines- 26,000
• Oakland- 100,000
Kansas City- 10,000
• Omaha- 14,000
• Tallahassee- 18,000
• Albuquerque- 20,000
• Hartford- 10,000
• Madison- 100,000
• Birmingham, AL- 10,000
• Raleigh- 20,000
• Las Vegas- 15,000
• San Diego- 40,000
• Moscow (the one in Idaho)- 2,500
Honolulu- 8,000
Pat Benatar, with co-writer Linda Perry, created a new song, "Shine," as a tribute to today's massive marches and rallies. Here's the video of the recording session:



There were also anti-Trump marches in London (100,000 people), Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Toronto (60,000), Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, in New Zealand, Bangkok, Yangon, Seoul, Tokyo, Beirut, Belgrade, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Athens, Capetown, Singapore, Warsaw, Shanghai, Delhi, Ottawa, Rome, Reykjavik, Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm, Oslo, Dublin, Buenos Aires, Accra, Lima, Bogota and Mexico City. And in Antarctica.

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5 Comments:

At 4:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There were fifteen to twenty thousand in Montpelier and Bernie made a surprise appearance!

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/01/21/montpelier-womens-march-draws-7000/96888920/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Z5s7T9WNs

 
At 7:50 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is anyone else wondering why GDP is so concentrated in about 15% of counties, when that became a thing and whether THAT might be a fundamental problem?

That concentration SEEMS to be getting more pronounced too.

 
At 9:17 AM, Anonymous Sue said...

I have been demonstrating in DC since 1965 and I have NEVER seen so many people.the metro, the streets were totally overwhelmed and we should hardly move forward on the line of mercy because there were so many of us. The was not one arrest and the cops were lovely to us. The only dark moment was when we passed that damn Trump hotel. Many boos and uplifted middle fingers. The police cordon protecting it looked a bit embarrassed...

 
At 9:19 AM, Anonymous Sue said...

Damn spellcheck!we could hardly move forward on the line of March...

 
At 8:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was in DC last summer and saw as many on the mall during a latin music festival thingie as der fuhrer drew.

Nobody will ever top the King speech though. Were you there, Sue?

 

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