This was not my least bad among the possible electoral outcomes. But now that it has happened, it is worth looking at whether anything good might come of it. I see three possibilities:1. Trump might turn out to be better than I expect. Judging by the campaign, he is a skilled demagogue with no particular political principles of his own, which makes him a high variance actor. Looking at his list of what he plans to do in his first hundred days, it is a mix of things I am strongly opposed to, such as restrictions on trade and immigration, and things I am strongly in favor of, such as support for school vouchers and legalizing the sale of health insurance across state lines. Trump might decide, for reasons of politics or ego, to act mostly on the ones I like. One can always hope. 2. One of the problems which I think partly explains Trump's victory is the arrogance and condescension of the coastal elites towards "flyover country." In one online exchange, someone responded to that point by explaining that they were just acting that way because the people they treated that way were all racists and misogynists (by memory, so not verbatim), thus nicely illustrating the problem. Arguing climate issues online, I am struck by how poor the scientific understanding is of most of the people on both sides, including the ones who imagine that they are the upholders of science against the deniers thereof.With luck, Trump's victory will jolt some of those people into rethinking their self-image as the ruling elite. For a first step in that direction, from just before the election, consider Cass Sunstein's proposed reading list for liberals, books intended to let them see that there exist serious critiques of their views. I will forgive Cass for not including anything of mine since he starts the list with Seeing Like a State, a good and interesting book by someone who makes it clear that he isn't a libertarian–while writing things that libertarians will very much like.3. If, contrary to my hopes in 1 above, Trump continues with the positions that won him the nomination and the election, that will mean a Republican party less friendly to libertarian views. That plus Trump's victory might make the Democrats willing to think seriously about how to pull libertarian voters into their coalition, something I have been hoping for for a long time.
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