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.

The Cabinet…

Donald Trump‘s transition team has prepared a preliminary list of potential Cabinet members for his upcoming administration.

The list, obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveals a number of familiar faces including Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and others being weighed for multiple positions.

In total, the list includes 41 names and covers 14 different departments. A source told BuzzFeed that the list is not final and will likely be changed in the future.

Attorney general picks include Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani.

Newt Gingrich, John Bolton and Bob Corker are listed as potential picks for the secretary of State.

Ben Carson is under consideration for Secretary of Education.

Christie is also being weighed for secretary of Homeland Security, and Carson, Gingrich and Florida Gov. Rick Scott are potential picks for secretary of Health and Human Services.

Sarah Palin also makes a surprise appearance on the shortlist, mentioned as one of seven potential candidates to become the secretary of the Interior.

Nothing but the best.

Now it can be told –

Russian government officials had contacts with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday, in a disclosure that could reopen scrutiny over the Kremlin’s role in the president-elect’s bitter race against Hillary Clinton.

Facing questions about his ties to Moscow because of statements interpreted as lauding Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, Trump repeatedly denied having any contact with the Russian government.

…

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency, said that “there were contacts” with the Trump team.

…

Speaking to Bloomberg News, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russian embassy staff met with members of Trump’s campaign, which she described as “normal practice.” Democratic Party contender Hillary Clinton’s campaign refused similar requests for meetings, she told the agency.

Probably a sign that it’s not so normal, yes? Or is it just that Clinton’s people are too shy to talk to strangers?

Tasneem Khalil on Facebook:

5 rules: How to write about Trump, his supporters and nationalists

1. Never use words like racists and bigots to describe racists and bigots. When people vote in overwhelming numbers to keep “Polish vermin” out of the United Kingdom or “Mexican rapists” and “Muslim terrorists” out of the United States, you must try to see the wisdom of the crowd. That is the beauty of democracy. If you deviate from this rule, some people will get really offended.

2. Refer to the abandoned white working class. Do not look at exit poll data that would show the working class in the United States actually voted for HRC and most of the Trump voters are actually among the richest people on this planet. Talk about how the white people are the real victims of a system that survives on blood and toil of black and brown labour.

3. Propose that we listen to the concerns of angry white men wearing red caps — the kind shouting “Kill Obama!” and “lock her up!” during the pussy-grabber-in-chief’s victory speech. Psychoanalyse them as much as you can. For this analysis, you can rely on hundreds of newspaper profiles and interviews of such men. However, always remember to propose that the media has failed to grant enough attention to the said demographic.

4. Blame the elite; mention the crisis of inequality; and, note the role of capitalism. What we are looking at is actually a revolution of sorts — the masses had enough with the elite, capitalist bastards, and now they have elected Donald J Trump as their president.

5. Always remember: Most of the nationalists are decent people with decent concerns about foreigners, people with different skin colours and religions. This, as opposed to the feminist, LGBT-loving, refugee-hugging, weed-smoking liberal elite tree-huggers “who just don’t get it!”

One of the first headlines I saw this morning –

Private Prison Stocks Are Surging After Trump’s Win

Oh, of course they are. Obviously our massive prison population should be an opportunity for somebody to make a yuuuge amount of money by giving prisoners bad food and worse medical care. What could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections helped shares of Corrections Corp. rise as much as 60 percent before paring their surge to 34 percent by 10:14 a.m. in New York, while GEO Group Inc. was trading 18 percent higher by the same time.

Those moves mean the stocks have recouped some of the losses they’ve registered since August, when the Department of Justice said it would start phasing out privately run jails. Analysts say President Trump would be likely to reverse that policy, and see an added windfall to the companies stemming from the difficulty of implementing his deportation agenda.

Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t the US a glorious country? We throw millions of people, most of them black and brown, into prison for drug offences, and thus provide an opportunity for corporations to gouge profits out of their misery and maltreatment.

“Private prisons would likely be a clear winner under Trump, as his administration will likely rescind the DOJ’s contract phase-out and ICE capacity to house detainees will come under further stress.” analysts at Height Securities LLC wrote in a note published this morning, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement body by its acronym. Mass deportation of illegal immigrants would be likely to run into legal obstacles, “further necessitating a sizable contract detention population,” the analysts said.

Maybe by this time next year a third of the population will be in prison, clocking up the dollar bills for the stockholders.

The Times’s editorial summary of what we face:

So who is the man who will be the 45th president?

After a year and a half of erratic tweets and rambling speeches, we can’t be certain. We don’t know how Mr. Trump would carry out basic functions of the executive. We don’t know what financial conflicts he might have, since he never released his tax returns, breaking with 40 years of tradition in both parties. We don’t know if he has the capacity to focus on any issue and arrive at a rational conclusion. We don’t know if he has any idea what it means to control the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

Here is what we do know: We know Mr. Trump is the most unprepared president-elect in modern history. We know that by words and actions, he has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people. We know he has threatened to prosecute and jail his political opponents, and he has said he would curtail the freedom of the press. We know he lies without compunction.

He has said he intends to cut taxes for the wealthy and to withdraw the health care protection of the Affordable Care Act from tens of millions of Americans. He has insulted women and threatened Muslims and immigrants, and he has recruited as his allies a dark combination of racists, white supremacists and anti-Semites. Given the importance of the alt-right to Mr. Trump’s rise, it is perhaps time to drop the “alt.” David Duke celebrated Mr. Trump’s victory on Tuesday night, tweeting, “It’s time to TAKE AMERICA BACK!!!”

The Ku Klux Klan endorsed him, don’t forget. White racists are all for him.

When Mr. Trump has looked beyond our borders, he has said that he would tear up the agreement to prevent Iran from building nuclear arms and that he would do away with the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has said that he would repudiate last December’s Paris agreement on climate change, thereby abandoning America’s leadership role in addressing the biggest long-term threat to humanity. He has also threatened to abandon NATO allies and start a trade war with China.

We know that, with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Mr. Trump would be able to restore a right-wing majority by filling the Supreme Court seat that Republican senators have held hostage for nine months.

Republicans will soon control every branch of the federal government, in addition to a majority of governorships and statehouses. There is no obvious check on Mr. Trump’s vengeful impulses. Other Republican leaders, including his running mate, Mike Pence, have largely made excuses for his most extreme behavior.

By challenging every norm of American politics, Mr. Trump upended first the Republican Party and now the Democratic Party, which attempted a Clinton restoration at a moment when the nation was impatient to escape the status quo. Misogyny and racism played their part in his rise, but so did a fierce and even heedless desire for change.

That change has now placed the United States on a precipice.

The BBC tells us about some world media reactions to the election of The Pussygrabber.

Media across the world have reacted to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anxiety. There is also a large measure of uncertainty as to what the future holds.

In the US some heavyweight papers have published leader articles that are unprecedented in their contempt for the future president.

The New York Times says Mr Trump “is the most unprepared president-elect in modern history” and “has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people”.

The Washington Post sees little cause for optimism about the vote, recalling that Trump “has promised to deport millions, rip up trade agreements and international efforts to fight climate change, each of which would hurt many people”.

The Los Angeles Times asks in its editorial “How did that happen?” The paper says “the campaign, and the candidate, played to the worst in America, and it has left the electorate scarred”.

The election of a misogynist racist ignorant narcissistic hatemonger has no silver lining then?

The Miami Herald says in an editorial: “The losers, still stunned, must acknowledge that Mr Trump managed to read the mood of much of the country better than they did, tapping into the frustrations of people who had come to believe that the government was no longer working on their behalf or even understood their problems.”

Oh horseshit. Trump appealed to racism and hatred because that’s who he is. People voted for him because that’s who they are. There’s no connection between people’s belief that the government isn’t working on their behalf and voting for Trump. Trump isn’t going to work on their behalf. He’s a very rich thief and cheat, and he thinks everyone who isn’t also a very rich thief and cheat is a Loser. That’s not understanding people’s problems, it’s dismissing them with contempt.

“How could this happen?” is a similar headline on the website of German daily Die Welt. It says Trump is as “unpredictable as a hurricane”.

The main German public service news programme Tagesschau tries to provide an answer, saying Trump “owes his electoral victory mainly to white male voters” who voted for “the political outsider”.

The French business daily Les Echos is forthright in its assessment: “Racist, populist, male chauvinist, arrogant and unpredictable. We do not know what is most terrifying in the personality of Donald Trump.”

The Washington correspondent of Spain’s El Pais stresses that Trump “goes to the White House with massive support from white voters discontented with elites”.

If they don’t like elites it wasn’t very clever to vote for Trump. Ignorant racist bullying isn’t the antonym of “elite.”

Papers in Italy agree, with La Stampa seeing the result as “a hurricane of discontent” that comes “from the belly of the nation”.

Russia’s state-run rolling-news TV channel Rossiya 24 carried Trump’s victory speech live instead of its 0800 gmt news bulletin.

The station aired an animated graphic, showing Trump dancing ecstatically and making faces at Clinton, who is sitting despondently.

“The epic defeat of Hillary Clinton… is a resounding slap from the people to the US political elite” is how the official Rossiyskaya Gazeta paper sees it. “No less resounding than the slap that Britons earlier gave to their authorities at the referendum on EU membership”.

Uh huh. It’s also a “resounding slap” (or a blow to the head with a brick) from the people to the poor, the non-white, the female, the foreign, the non-straight, the disabled, the non-cheaters – to the intellectuals, the artists, the eccentric, the teachers and bus drivers and nurses, the gardeners and house cleaners and fast food workers. None of those people make up the real elite.

Latin American newspapers are surprised but also anxious about the news.

A front-page opinion piece on Argentina’s Clarin calls Donald Trump “an emerging neo-fascist”.

“The phenomenon is not a one-off,” it continues. “It correlates with many European ultra-nationalist figures, and is growing at a serious moment for the world.”

Other than that…

Profound and empathetic insights on the election of President Pussygrabber from Dana Hunter at The Orbit.

Friends I love are going to die.

The things that were keeping them alive will be gutted.

Bigots who despise them have been emboldened enough to murder them without a twinge of conscience.

And you did that to them.

White folk. You did this. Cis folk. You did this. Bernie-or-busters, third party voters, people who didn’t vote because you couldn’t be arsed, people who thought all candidates were the same, people who voted for Trump because you’re either too white or too sexist or too racist or too selfish or too all-of-the-above to think it through, you did this. It’s all on you.

As a cis folk, I’m appalled at myself.

Jeff Sharlet:

I’m reminded of something the late Chuck Colson — a brutal Watergate felon who made himself over as the reigning intellectual of the Christian Right, with help from centrists — told me: “I love ‘compromise.’ I stay right where I am and they come to me.”

It’s worth noting Colson was talking about how he’d come to appreciate the Clintons as inadvertent partners in the rightward lurch of America. He was one of the engines, but let’s remember that too often the Clintons were the caboose of that train. They also did some decent things for everyday people. But they did them on the terms of knee-cappers like Colson. Clintonism ultimately worked out for the Right; it didn’t work for humanity. I voted HRC to stop Trump. It didn’t work. That time is over. It’s struggle time. In truth it always was.

Which makes me even more appreciative of something my friend Christian Haines wrote today: maybe the old labor saying “Don’t mourn, organize” isn’t quite right. Maybe we mourn by organizing.

There’s talk that we may be losing our democracy. But democracy isn’t something you can lose any more than it’s some magical thing you can just find. You don’t have democracy. You make it.

Let’s get started.