Reading List: December 1, 2016

One more month until this accursed year is over.

At CounterPunch, Ted Rall wonders what a Hillary Clinton presidency would have looked like. He goes through her likely appointments and policies, and finds that she would have been, at best, less awful than Trump. Mostly.

Hillary fans can credibly argue that she would not have made things worse, or at least not as bad as they will be under Trump. By objective standards, however, it defies reason to claim that she would have presided over a halcyon era of progress. At best, President Clinton II would have held the line against Republican attacks. As we know, however, voters are not in the mood for more of the same.

And in 2020, we’d be right back where we are now. Four years into President Hillary, the anger that unleashed Trumpism would turn into boiling rage.

Frank Rich, writer-at-large for New York, delivers a fiery take on the incoming Trump administration’s conflicts of interest. Rich also discusses Romney’s humiliation (excerpt below) and the Hamilton-Pence distraction.

Trump’s prolonged torturing of Romney has been a priceless spectacle, worthy, as many have said, of Celebrity Apprentice — though minus Omarosa (at least so far). If Romney now fails to get the job, we have to wonder if that was the intention all along: to exact the most excruciating and humiliating revenge that Trump and Steve Bannon could possibly devise.

Ari Berman writes at The Nation that the country should be very concerned about Trump’s indications he’ll pursue voter intimidation and purges. Berman’s been on top of voter issues for years — his take is always interesting and informative.

If you want a better idea of the lengths a Trump administration might go to suppress voting rights, take a look at what Republicans are doing in North Carolina right now. A month after the Supreme Court ruled that states with a long history of discrimination no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government, North Carolina Republicans passed a “monster” voter-suppression law that required strict photo ID, cut early voting, and eliminated same-day registration and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Andre Roberge and Raven Payne express their hopes for a new DNC at Progressive Nation.

The party will have to make itself open to new members and allow them to be more easily involved. This includes allowing open primaries, same-day registration, and easier caucus processes (or eliminating them!). Along that vein, the influence of superdelegates must be greatly diminished or even removed. If they do these things and we begin to see signs of true unity around issues of everyday people, the Democratic Party will expand their base and be on their way to being a party of the people instead of the donor class.

I had the pleasure of attending a Corey Robin lecture for work, my report can be found here.

Robin said Trump doesn’t represent anything radically different than others in the Republican Party.

“In many ways Trump is textbook conservative, straight out of central casting,” Robin said. “He’s often depicted as different, but in my belief I think he’s very consistent.”

Finally, Clickhole has a great piece on Fidel Castro’s death.

This is truly a black eye for American foreign policy.

The United States has certainly racked up its fair share of embarrassing, hair-brained attempts to take down Fidel Castro over the past 60 years, but what happened this morning may have been our government’s most cringe-worthy attempt yet: The CIA just completely bungled an attempt to drop a piano on Castro’s funeral procession.

30 days kids.