Paul Waldman at the Washington Post underlines the obvious: if you think Trump is going to do away with “the establishment,” you’re smoking something.

This was near the heart of Trump’s appeal to the disaffected and disempowered: Send me to Washington, and that “establishment” you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ll blow it up, send it packing, punch it right in the face, and when it’s over the government will finally be working for you again. And the people who voted for Trump bought it. After all, he’s no politician, right? He’s an outsider, a glass-breaker, a guy who can cut out the bull and get things done. Right?

But the idea that he would do this was based on a profound misunderstanding of what the establishment actually is, and who Donald Trump is.

…

An organizational chart of Trump’s transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they’ll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

Everyone. Absolutely everyone. Mr Rich Guy favors policies that help rich guys; stop the presses!

What are the priorities Trump and the Republican Congress will be pursuing right out of the gate? There’s the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, of course. “Take that, establishment!”, 20 million people can say when they lose their health coverage. Next on the list is that eternal Republican priority, cutting taxes. If you’re waiting for your fat rebate from the government once the establishment has been sent packing, you’re in for a shock. It won’t actually be Trump’s plan precisely that will pass Congress and he’ll sign, it will be some combination of what he wanted and what congressional Republicans want. But the two share a driving principle in common, and you may want to sit down while I tell you that helping regular folks is most definitely not it.

No, their commitment is to be of service to that most oppressed and forgotten group of Americans, the wealthy. Trump’s tax plan would give 47 percent of its benefits to the richest one percent of taxpayers. Paul Ryan’s tax plan is even purer — it gives 76 percent of its cuts to the richest one percent in its first year, and by 2025 would feed 99.6 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent.

One in the eye for those establishment types, right? Making the obscenely rich even richer; that’s how it’s done.

Now to be clear, the fact that in some ways — hiring lobbyists, cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting regulations — Trump is going to be little different from any other Republican president doesn’t mean that he isn’t uniquely dangerous. He’s reckless, impulsive, vindictive, hateful, and authoritarian, and his presidency is going to be somewhere between disastrous and cataclysmic, likely in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

But one thing it will not be is a threat to the establishment, or the system, or whatever you want to call it. The wealthy and powerful will have more wealth and power when he’s done, not less. There’s a lot that Trump will upend, but if you’re a little guy who thinks Trump was going to upend things on your behalf or in order to serve your interests, guess what: you got suckered.

I expect what will happen is that an army will come to all our doors, break them down, and take away all our stuff to sell on eBay, proceeds to benefit the rich.

Michelle Goldberg considers the role of misogyny in the recent disaster.

Forty-six years ago, Germaine Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch, “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.” Well, now we do.

On Tuesday, faced with a choice between a highly competent if uncharismatic female candidate and the deranged distillation of the angry white male id, America chose the latter. (Or, at least, the Americans whose votes count most in the Electoral College chose the latter: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.) We don’t yet have a full picture of the electorate, but according to exit polls published by the New York Times, 54 percent of women voted for Clinton while 53 percent of men chose Donald Trump. Men—joined by white women, a majority of whom voted for Trump—banded together to award the presidency to the most shamelessly misogynist candidate in modern history. They’ve given us a kakistrocracy because they couldn’t bear the sound of Clinton’s voice.

But we’re told it wasn’t that at all, it was a Rebellion Against The Liberal Elites, it was The Working Class Pushing Back Against Trade Deals, it was The Economy Stupid.

I don’t begrudge any Bernie Sanders supporters the consolation of thinking that their man could have saved us from this calamity. All of us are grieving, trying to make sense of the worst thing to happen to our country in modern history. All I can say is that I’ve been to Trump rallies in the Midwest, South, and Northeast, and I never saw a single sign or T-shirt about free trade. I never heard chants about NAFTA or TPP. What I heard was “Trump That Bitch” and “Build That Wall.” When Clinton delivered her heart-shredding concession speech, traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange reportedly booed and chanted “Lock her up!” They know Trump’s victory was no rebellion against Wall Street.

It would be very odd if it were, given his bank accounts and his stated views.

Clinton ran for president on an explicitly feminist platform and promised a half-female Cabinet. Her victory would have been a sign that the gender hierarchy that has always been fundamental to our society—that has always been fundamental to most societies—was starting to crumble. It would have meant that men no longer rule. We have to come to terms with the fact that a majority of men would rather burn this country to the ground than let that happen.

They’d rather punch women in the face than let it happen, too.

I thought we were going to get there. I thought my daughter was not going to be consigned to a lesser life than my son. I no longer do. We are going to lose Roe v. Wade. There will be no push for paid leave (whatever Ivanka Trump might promise) or a higher minimum wage. If Trump’s campaign is any indication, our new administration will be a priapic junta. Roger Ailes was too toxic to remain at Fox News but not too toxic to be a close Trump adviser. Campaign CEO Steve Bannon has been charged with domestic violence and accused of sexual harassment. As Indiana governor, Vice President–elect Mike Pence signed a cruel law mandating the burial or cremation of miscarried fetuses. Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed a female reporter so hard he left bruises on her arm, then tried to smear her as “delusional.” Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller took journalists to a strip club the night before the Las Vegas debate. “Women, you have to treat them like shit,” Trump once said. It might be America’s new unofficial motto.

The era of President Pussygrabber begins.

Damon Lewis on Facebook:

What do you tell your kids?

You tell them the truth.

You tell them that the majority of Americans are good people. But, you also tell them they can’t rely on the good people of this country to protect them from evils because here, being a “good person” does not require actually being good. Being a “good person” merely means not being actively evil. Here, you can still be a “good person” if you don’t stop an evil. You can still be a good person if you don’t even try. You can still be a good person if you just maintain an unawareness that you’re being evil.

You tell them the truth that the majority of Americans are either hateful or find hatred acceptable.

You tell them the truth that you are very sorry that so much is being placed on them, but that not telling them this will leave them unprepared for the inevitable day they find out on their own. When someone grabs a woman by the pussy. Or rips off a man’s turban. Or chokes out a man for selling loose cigs. Or builds a wall. And all the good people will do nothing. And you’ll be tempted to be yet another good person.

You tell them being a good person is not enough. You tell them being a good person is a participation trophy. Evil thrives off the existence of good people. You tell them do not accept being a good person.

You tell them to be a great person.

Voting for Trump isn’t just voting for a very right-wing person or for very right-wing policies. It’s voting for a profoundly bad person, bad in many ways – ways I’ve been enumerating for months, along with many other people. It’s a vote for badness. It’s a vote for cruelty, insults, assault, contempt, ridicule, shaming, mockery, bullying – for nearly every kind of moral badness you can think of. That’s what Trump stands for. Not the rage of the underclass, not a rebellion against the elites, but badness.

President Pussygrabber tweets again.

Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

Nine hours between the two. I suppose somewhere in those nine hours one of his handlers reminded him he needed to start acting presidential now.

Good save.

Another reason Trump’s win is so distressing – the fact that being relentlessly horrible didn’t cause him to lose. I’ve realize that the reason I was feeling so cheerful in the last few weeks was because I thought his hatefulness was causing him to lose. It looked that way.

But no. His hatefulness was exhaustively documented, and he won anyway. He won because of it.

That makes me feel sick, and profoundly alienated.

Cruelty and bullying should cause people to turn away in disgust. They did many, of course, but to many others they were like catnip to a cat.

He’s demonstrated that cruelty and bullying are rewarded. That’s very bad news.

Garrison Keillor says Trump voters aren’t going to like what Trump does.

Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.

The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.

Or like Twitter trolls, 4chan, Reddit, Breitbart.

But the mayhem Trump will cause is going to hit the Trumpers harder than anyone else, he says. He also points out that cruelty is bad.

We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days — boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive — and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them. But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty. Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study. The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters. He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Herbert Hoover. His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin.

I hope that’s true, but I doubt it.

Oh dear god – the Breitbart guy might be chief of staff. Breitbart. Twitter trolls running the country.

Steve Bannon, the conservative provocateur and Mr. Trump’s campaign chief, is now a leading candidate to become White House chief of staff, but he’d have to beat out another campaign veteran in the running, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Mr. Bannon, the executive chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, who took a leave to help manage the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign, is well liked among Mr. Trump’s circle of overlapping advisers, who see him as a favorable influence on the president-elect.

What’s a “favorable influence”? I have no idea what that means.

After the White House, it was on to Capitol Hill to meet with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Ryan only reluctantly endorsed Mr. Trump, called his attack on a judge of Mexican heritage the “textbook definition” of racism, and then stopped campaigning for him after a video emerged of the candidate bragging about sexual assault.

On Thursday, it was all smiles.

“Donald Trump had one of the most impressive victories we have ever seen, and we’re going to turn that victory into progress for the American people,” Mr. Ryan said, “and we are now talking about how we are going to hit the ground running to get this country turned around and make America great again.”

One of the most impressive victories? What’s he talking about? It was a squeaker, and he didn’t even get the popular vote.

Mr. Trump added: “We had a very detailed meeting, and we’re going to lower taxes, as you know, health care, we’re going to make it affordable. We are going to do a real job on health care.”

How?

How are they going to make health care “affordable”? And what does that mean anyway, when different people have different incomes? What’s affordable to President Pussygrabber isn’t affordable to me.

Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and an ardent opponent of immigration, has been added to Mr. Trump’s transition team, according to local news reports.

Mr. Kobach, who provided guidance on immigration policy to Mr. Trump during the campaign, will help the president-elect in the weeks before he takes office, according to The Wichita Eagle.

He told the paper he did not expect to get an offer to serve in the Trump administration, but just having him in a formal role in the new Washington could send shudders through the nation’s immigrants. Mr. Kobach has been one of the loudest anti-immigration voices in the Republican Party for years. He added Mr. Trump’s call for a border wall along the southern tier into the party’s platform over the summer.

Great. What’s David Duke going to be doing?

A collection of tweets from Day 1.

https://twitter.com/ManikRathee/status/796408766518292480

Someone on the streets of LA just yelled at one of my girl's Latina coworkers to "go back where you came from." #TrumpsAmerica

— Alex/Apex Gale (@AlexGale) November 9, 2016

https://twitter.com/Chris_Weatherd/status/796384091260207104

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/796750646196191233

It’s strange, I’ve just noticed, having a soon-to-be president who has expressed angry, loud, hostile contempt for most of the population.

You’d think someone campaigning for the job would think of that and decide it might not be such a good idea.

I realize he endeared himself to a segment of angry white people, but he did it at the price of wholly alienating massive demographics. That’s not usually how presidential campaigns play out. We get candidates who seem brutally indifferent to our concerns and needs, but not ones who get up at 3 a.m to express furious contempt for us.

I don’t see this working out well. He’s lit a whole bunch of fuses, and he has no plans to stamp them out, and we can’t forget that he’s the one who lit them.

We haven’t done this before. Maybe Nixon was a little like that. You got the feeling that Nixon hated everyone, but you didn’t have hours of tv footage or hundreds of tweets in which he told us so.

No, I just can’t see this working out well.

Robert Reich points out that the Clintonistas abandoned the working class. I agree with him about that, but I still don’t see how it translates to voting for Trump. He lays out a lot of true claims, but doesn’t explain the ===> Trump part.

Recent economic indicators may be up, but those indicators don’t reflect the insecurity most Americans continue to feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do the major indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power, stagnant or declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of democracy by big money.

Median family income is lower now than it was 16 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Workers without college degrees – the old working class – have fallen furthest. Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to [the] top. These gains have translated into political power to elicit bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, favorable trade deals and increasing market power without interference by anti-monopoly enforcement – all of which have further reduced wages and pulled up profits.

Yes. I know. But how is that a reason to vote for Trump? Trump benefits from that system too, and he doesn’t share any of his gains with people who don’t.

The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting votes from upper middle-class households in “swing” suburbs.

I know. But Trump doesn’t represent the working class either. The fact that he’s a racist pussy-grabbing abuser doesn’t make him working class or a champion of the working class. He’s a filthy rich racist pussy-grabbing abuser. He’s deeply vulgar, granted, but that doesn’t make him working class either.

Bill Clinton and Obama also allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify – with the result that large corporations have grown far larger, and major industries more concentrated. The unsurprising result of this combination – more trade, declining unionization and more industry concentration – has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft the working class. This created an opening for Donald Trump’s authoritarian demagoguery, and his presidency.

I don’t see it. I don’t see what work “an opening” does there.