I believe I always held that he might be better because he might be less likely to get into a shooting war with Russia (and I stand by that). He also might be better because he might (and he's well ahead of where I thought he'd be in this regard) cause real change by way of reaction. My eldest was understandably distraught after the election (and remains so). I told her that there might be a few things that actually got better, but the many more things that were going to get worse would overwhelm them. Still, I said, I believe that this may have a huge benefit to the Democrats and the Democratic Party if only they will learn the proper lesson. So far, they don't appear to have learned anything and consequently their party may be irrelevant going forward. There is a Science March being actively planned for March. My daughter and I are planning to join some friends from North Carolina (themselves all STEM graduates) in Washington for that march. Although there are vastly fewer STEM majors than there are the fairer sex, you don't have to be a STEM major to participate, only a "believer" in science. Trump's election motivated these people. This could be the birth of a new party, which would be outstanding.

The Clintons are gone, thank $DEITY. If the Democratic Party is to survive, it *must* purge all the Clintonistas from the party. Last night I watched a Youtube interview of Thomas Frank by Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore Show. Frank is the author of both "What's Wrong with Kansas" and "Listen, Liberal." During that interview, Frank made a compelling case for the Clinton purge. For his research on Bill Clinton, he said he only used material from Clinton supporters. The consensus among them, he said, was that there were five big successes of the Bill Clinton presidency. They were:

1) NAFTA
2) The Crime Bill
3) The Balanced Budget
4) Welfare Reform
5) De-regulation (especially the banks, i.e. Repeal of Glass-Stegall)

He noted that all five of those were things Republicans had tried to do and could not. The reason the DNC said the introduction of these policies was acceptable was because Clintons won elections. So by their own measure they have failed miserably. If the Democratic Party cannot see that they have been traveling down the wrong road, with the wrong leadership since at least since 1992 after having lost to a deranged orangutan for President, lost roughly 2/3 of State legislatures and Governorships, the House and the Senate, then there is no fixing the Democratic Party. ( Aside: If you want to understand my position even more clearly than perhaps I can express, I highly recommend viewing all three parts of that interview, here's a link to get you started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9u2aR19P3g which is NSFW due to some language).

Frank also has some pretty heavy criticism of Obama (for instance, he fired the CEO of GM, but not of any of the banks - which he had the authority to do without Congressional Approval, no Wall Street investigations by the FBI, not following FDR's guidelines to dealing with bankster criminals, etc.). He conceded that he had been duped into expecting real change from Obama in 2008 and obviously didn't get it. IIRC, he said it was "inescapable that Trump is a part of the Obama legacy." He's dead-bang right about that. Seems like I remember someone saying in 2007 that if Obama was able to pull off his con of being a Progressive, it would kill the Left. Trump might be the spark that causes it to rise again. We'll see.