The Elite's--and Hillary's--Screw-Up

Interesting interview of a guy named Siegel (HT AOSHQ) who talks about liberalism.  He seems to think that modern-day liberalism actually began in the 1920's or so (he's about 400 years late on that estimate) but has some interesting things to say.  Since he was a member of the DNC and an advisor to a few (D) campaigns, he's not talking out of his....patoot.

...So this elite comes together, it looks across the Atlantic, it looks across the Pacific, but it doesn’t look at the heartland. The rest of the country recognises that. Whatever you want to say about Trump, he was the only candidate in either party who recognised that globalisation and immigration are the burning issues for much of America. One of the things he talked about early in the campaign, which was largely set aside, was the enormous mistake of allowing China into the World Trade Organisation in 2001. President Clinton pushed for this, President George W Bush pushed for this, and I supported it at the time. In retrospect it was an enormous mistake. If you draw a map of the places where jobs were lost due to competition from China, and look at the areas of Trump support, there’s a tremendous overlap....

Earlier in the piece, he mentioned Hillary's techno-elite campaign management, which told her that she did NOT need the Midwest to win.  Guess what area of the country paid the most for that WTO screwup?

Back in the day, I was absolutely certain that China's Most Favored Nation/WTO deal was suicide for the US.  Thankfully, we're not dead yet--but the Clinton/Bush elites are dying.

(By the way, Bill Clinton TOLD Hillary's campaign that she MUST campaign in the Midwest.  Heh.)

A little more:

...Liberalism has taken on a religious aspect. It’s a belief system, and not a system that represents political interests. Liberalism is seen as a source of grace, in religious terms. It is hard to talk to people, when you are effectively suggesting they are not among the blessed (or, to use Thomas Sowell’s phrase, the ‘anointed’), that they are in fact mistaken....

...when you tell them that Trumpism is not peculiar to America. In the Czech Republic, in Hungary, in Poland, in the Baltic states – you have variations on Trump. Liberals are incredulous. First of all, they don’t pay much attention to Europe, which I think is unfortunate. Second, the idea that there is something larger at play, that it’s not all about Trump’s venality, is inconceivable for many American liberals. When I was a kid, to be liberal was to be open-minded and highly educated. Liberalism doesn’t represent that today. It represents a secular version of baptism....

The Closing of the American Mind, Part Two, eh?

Finally: he has absolutely ZERO use for California Democrats.  Zero.