Biting political analysis of the McCain funeral from Jeet Heer:

[JHan]

44. Yes... some of that is true..some of it not quite so much..

but speak to Iowa farmers right now and they'll tell you his policies are hurting them, but they're still supporting him because they think he's a good guy. The amazing thing is he told them he would do this shit but it didn't rank high enough for them - it was not the motivating factor for their vote. They could have looked at his advisors and seen it was going to be an elitist shit show once elected, but they were blinded by more pressing concerns like Muslims taking over America /sarcasm.

They voted for a guy with a golden toilet and a tacky tower in Manhattan.

A golden toilet They KNEW this and they voted for it. They bought his shitty merchandize which was made in China. This assumption that these people were duped and didn't know what they were voting for has to stop. There are voters out there who are malicious and vote maliciously, at best they are irrational and low information - sometimes by choice.

And it wasn't the first time they did this. Romney wasn't shy about wealth excess. He owned a mansion with an elevator for his cars and he loved to indulge in buying prancing horses.

As for Obama, I get it. People are upset Bankers weren't prosecuted but look at the place where they were prosecuted: Iceland. Iceland's pots and pans revolution was bloodless, they just shoved their entire constitution out the window. They eschewed banking reform and went after bankers for things like tax evasion and insider training. Should Obama have established some special elite unit to go after bankers in the U.S , could he have done what Bush did with the Enron Task Force? Yes, but it's not like nothing was done. Bank reforms were implemented.

The populist always needs an enemy, and the populist decides who that enemy is. Grievance is a powerful motivator. The schema is always "establishment" ( something always nebulously defined) vs "the people" and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the populist narrative Trump built on catered to WWC grievance narratives when the biggest populist movement we've ever had was the KKK. The whole populist narrative of 2016 was "abandonment of the white working class"

I would argue that it was populist rhetoric which blinded people to what Clinton had to offer - -it was the relentless demonization of people based not on substance or record

Clinton was going to tackle:

- debt-free tuition
- police brutality
- unemployment, and the minimum wage
- protecting roe v wade and choice legislation ( despite the complaints from those calling abortion " wedge issue)
- paid family leave
- universal pre-k
- greater funding for Alzheimer’s research
- wall street reform ( More detailed than anyone else in the election at the time)
- healthcare...

I could go on and on. And yet she was framed by the same populists of being a "corporate stooge"

Yeah I've had enough of populism thank you very much.