Who is Steve Bannon and what does he have to do with Plainfield?

Steve Bannon, the brains behind a Trump administration.

 

Who is Steve Bannon and what does he have to do with Plainfield?

Trump's new "chief strategist" is one half of a dueling power structure he is setting up in the coming White House staff -- the other half being Reince Priebus, who will serve as chief of staff.

Priebus is a nod to the GOP establishment.

The real person to keep an eye on is Steve Bannon.

Bannon has been widely branded in several popular news sites as an anti-feminist, anti-semitic, evil genius of the alt-right, hell-bent on upending not only the GOP establishment, but the state in general.

You can read samples on Mashable, Medialite, Romper, and the Israeli-based Good. Is the fact that most of the stories draw their quotes from the same topics a sing of lazy journalism?

Far better are the in-depth profile of Bannon done by Bloomberg News reporter Joshua Green (see here),  the Mother Jones article on how Bannon created a haven for the alt-right on Breitbart.com (see here), and an interview this past week on Fresh Air with Joshua Green (see here), who said Bannon had a "years-long plan to take down Hillary Clinton".

It seems quite clear that Bannon is the brains behind any Trump administration, and he will truly be Trump's strategist -- as he was during the campaign.

Will he have an impact on Plainfield?

New Jersey -- and presumably Plainfield -- would be directly and positively impacted by any large-scale infrastructure projects that Trump is proposing -- provided he gets funding approved by the GOP Congress (not a slam dunk).

On the other hand, Trump's promised anti-immigrant stance, and suspicion of Muslims do not bode well for Plainfield and other communities who count these folks among their residents.

Bannon holds himself out as an "economic nationalist". If that means he will strategize to undermine US trade agreements, that could mean negative consequences for the American economy, which would trickle down to New Jersey (which has not fully recovered yet from the Great Recession) and to Plainfield (ditto).

I always keep in mind the advice given in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist --

Know thyself, know thy enemy.
A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Democrats are beginning to grapple with the first question as they try to understand their November loss.

It is important to really know and understand Bannon -- not only who he is, but what he is up to.

On these two things depend successfully moving the Democratic Party and the country forward.

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  -- Dan Damon [follow]

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