A Deplorable Thought: Trump Could Win

I was standing in line at the grocery store yesterday looking at this National Enquirer cover, trying to convince myself I'm too old to be horrified by these things anymore. It made me queasy and a little breathless but I managed to get past it and move my groceries from my cart to the belt.

When I heard a woman behind the guy behind me gasp and say, "Oh, my!" I knew without a doubt she was looking at that same tabloid cover. She was an older woman.  An "Oh, my!" sort of woman. Tiny, a little stout, a puff ball of snow white hair surrounding a sweet rosy face.  I couldn't quite hear what she was saying but I heard "Hillary".  She laughed then. She said something to the people behind her and they laughed, too.  Then she said, loudly but nicely,  "I would never vote for her, anyway!"

Well, okay. I live in Red Country.  Blood red. So red I'm not just surprised, I'm shocked whenever I meet someone who can admit out loud they'll vote for Hillary.  The Democrats up here don't flaunt their political preferences, they whisper them.  It's as if we're members of a secret cult, never letting on who we really are unless we know we're on safe ground, in the company of others like us.  Putting up yard signs for Democrats is an act of courage.

But the sweet lady in line behind me wasn't quite finished. She said something else to make the people behind her nod and laugh, and then turned back to where I could hear and threw this out: "I guess I'll just go on being deplorable."

She wasn't talking to me, of course, but it was a direct hit, a punch in the gut. The cashier handed me my change. I moved a few steps away and stood there. For many seconds. What could I say to change the mind of this woman who, I just knew, brought dishes to sick people and sent greeting cards? Okay, she may gossip a bit and look down her nose at people who get food stamps, but a Trump voter?  Inconceivable.

I left, of course, without saying anything. No magic words. What could I tell her that wasn't already out there? But I'm haunted by that woman. In another time she would be as appalled by that man as I am. Our politics might always be opposing, but on this we could agree: Never Trump.

What changed?  Do these people, nice as they may be in their private lives, really think Donald Trump would make a good or even an adequate president? Is Hillary hatred all it takes to make the thought of four years of a Trump presidency acceptable? Can't they hear him?  Don't they see he's fueled by power and hate and it consumes him?

Or is this all it takes?

For all the watching and reading I've done during this presidential campaign, trying to make sense of the rise of Trump so we could finally figure out how to fight him effectively, it took a brief encounter in a grocery line for me to finally get the message:  He could win.

Donald Trump could win.

When Hillary Cracks the Ultimate Glass Ceiling, For Some of Us It’s Personal

On June 7, 2016, after a hard-fought landmark election, Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. She's the first woman in the history of the United States to even come close to that pinnacle. It only took 227 years to crack that thickest of glass ceilings. (She'll have actually broken it when she wins.)

 If the goal in the coming days is to try and diminish this triumph, you'll fast realize how many of us are in the vanguard, protecting and supporting this woman, this former First Lady, this former Senator from New York, this former Secretary of State, this mother, this grandmother, this perennial choice for most disliked, distrusted famous American who still has the confidence and the audacity to run for president, not once but twice.

And here I'll get personal. I can't speak for the millions like myself who have faith that she'll make a damn good president, but my reasons make sense to me.

 I was born in 1937, the year after FDR was re-elected to his second term. My mother was 19 years old when she gave birth and I’m told it was no hardship for her to have to give up her five-year career as a housemaid in order to take care of me. Her eighth grade graduation marked the end of her schooling, and no amount of begging would change her father's mind. It was time for her to go to work, and employment for a 14-year-old girl in the 1930’s was limited in the main to cleaning houses. When she married my father at 17 any ambitions, any dreams she might have had were stuffed into a quiet place, nearly forgotten.

 I was the same age, 19, when I gave birth to my first child in 1957. I had no ambitions beyond being a wife and a mother, no illusions about where my life would take me. It would take me where my husband led me. It's true that I could not buy property without my husband as co-signer, could not get a credit card unless he agreed and signed for it, had to sign my name as Mrs. His Name, but I didn't feel stifled, I was not unhappy. It was the life I chose. It was the way it was.

Other women were not so lucky, and, as oblivious as I seemed to be about barriers to my own latent potential, I was acutely aware of the struggles, the burdens of so many other women, both inside and outside my circle.

The smart ones struggled to become educated, and then, once they'd climbed that hurdle, struggled to be able to use their talents to build meaningful careers.

The talented ones, the clever ones, the eccentrics, struggled to bring meaning to a natural creativity bursting to be free, to be recognized, to be celebrated.

The meek ones struggled to get through the day with their bodies and souls intact.

And then, in 1963, Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique". It was, to put it mildly, an awakening. I hadn't realized until then that I was asleep, too. I can't say I became a full-fledged member of the Feminist Movement, but I sat up and took notice. I was a charter subscriber to Ms Magazine, paying for my subscription even before the first issue came out.

No woman came out of that mid-20th century era without scars. Some were deeper than others, but none of us escaped the efforts to dismiss us, to demean us, to turn us into children or dehumanized objects.

 By the time the movement came along, I was a housewife and a mother, struggling like everyone else to make sure the month didn't end before the money, but I wasn't so wrapped up in my own life that I wasn’t fully aware of the reasons for a revolutionary feminist uprising.  I wasn’t in need of liberation, but millions of other women were. I couldn't turn my back on them.

We went through the first few years struggling to explain the need to be liberated, to be treated fairly, to be seen, and a few more decades of outwardly insisting. It should be obvious to everyone that we're not there yet. Which brings me to Hillary Clinton.

 During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Barack Obama over Hillary. My initial image of Hillary was as the embattled First Lady who messed up our chances at universal health care, and as the woman who said she would never just stand by her man like Tammy Wynette, but then, when Bill’s philandering became a reason for impeachment, she did. I had heard enough about her to believe she wasn't trustworthy, she wasn't real, she wasn't ready or fit to be president. I barely remember the arguments for her. I vividly remember the arguments against her. They’re the same arguments we're seeing this time, updated to include her time as Secretary of State, adding another seven years' worth of grievances.

When I saw she was planning another run for the presidency I wondered what the hell was wrong with that woman. Only a flipping masochist would want to be put through that wringer again.

 I thought I would be supporting Bernie Sanders. His ideas were much closer to mine. He seemed far more heroic, our idealistic Don Quixote, our everyman, one of us. His message,"We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore", struck the exact right notes after so many years of near-stagnation. But I couldn't get Hillary out of my mind. Her reasons for running had to be more than raging ambition, more than the ultimate power trip, more than a golden opportunity for payback.

Then I watched the Benghazi marathon, the interrogation set up solely to once and for all humiliate and bring down this exasperating, uppity woman. I watched the entire 11 hours, banging away on my laptop, searching out the truth, the real truth, about Hillary. How did I not know she was a feminist? How did I not know of her work with women and children all over the world? I saw that much of the work she did for so many of us went unsung. She was all about the work and not all about the glory. She took the slings and arrows and flung them aside. She never let them get in her way.

 Even before the hearing was over I knew I would support her and not look back. It took a few days before I was ready to admit it in public, but I did it, to the dismay of some who thought I couldn’t possibly be serious. And to others who saw me as a turncoat, a traitor, a goddamned vagina.

We tend to forget that Hillary Clinton is a consummate politician. She thinks like a politician, she acts and reacts like a politician, she eats, breathes and sleeps in the midst of politics. She is not perfect, she has made big mistakes, she’s not always nice. She’s not like you and me. She has spent her entire adult life working toward this moment and now she’s at the door, working to push it open, wanting to see that ceiling come crashing down. And I’m right behind her, wanting to see it, too. She’s not the only one who’s been waiting a lifetime for this.

Clinton to Trump: I'll Take the High Road and You Take the Low Road

Now that Donald Trump is the GOP presumptive nominee he's pulling out all the stops, going after Hillary Clinton, the Dem's presumably-presumptive nominee, not in ways that have to do with issues, or even qualifications, but in ways that only a blustery blow-hard of a presidential poseur would do.

Clinton, the savvy politician, says "bring it on but I'm not going there". Trump will see that as weak.  He'll see that as the woman thing.  What he won't see is the double-whammy already arcing toward him, lobbed by the many who are sick to death of his ignorant, childish bullying. 

What Trump still doesn't get--and maybe never will--is that for all his popularity he has many more haters than fans.  Those thousands filling every venue, cheering him on, are the same thousands who filled Sarah Palin's venues, cheering her on whenever she went on the attack against the establishment.  It fills a need, it satisfies an itch, clichéd beyond all reason ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"), but it does nothing to change what most everyone sees as a dysfunctional government.

The way to make change is to get involved.  In Trump's case, a first step might include a high school civics class.  The GOP nominee for president has built his case for being president by showing the world it pays not to know anything about being president.

He aced the test, not by studying or giving the right answers, but by blasting everyone who tried to tell him he's not ready to graduate.  He's the E-minus student running against the Valedictorian, having full confidence that he can bully his way to a diploma.

Everyone who has any sense left in their beaners is laughing at Donald Trump.  It's a serious issue when someone as ridiculously unequipped is this close to the presidency, but barring that, Trump is a joke gone hilariously awful.

Famously funny cynic Fran Lebowitz made an all-too-rare appearance on the Tonight Show, professing her newfound love for Hillary while eviscerating Trump: 

"[Being president] is a really hard job and the idea that they want someone who's not a politician.  It's like calling someone, saying "I have a horrible leak in my apartment.  Do you know someone who's not a plumber?"

But while we're laughing at Donald and scoffing at his equally windbaggish sidekicks, Hillary Clinton is diligently working at proving she has the chops to run the Big Things.

About Trump, she says, "I'm not running against him.  He's doing a fine job of doing it himself."  She's talking, now, about the primaries, but if she wins the candidacy she'll be running against a beast already boasting of the savagery to come.

He's less than one week into his presumptive nomination and it has already started.  The issue of Bill Clinton's affairs is like red meat to Trump the predator, so it was never a matter of if, but when.


From CNN:

"Donald Trump on Friday accused Hillary Clinton of being "an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler" of her husband's alleged affairs and accused her of destroying the lives of his accusers.

The remarks are the first time that Trump has raised the former president's alleged affairs and Hillary Clinton's behavior amidst a flurry of accusations since becoming the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. Trump had previously accused Clinton of being an 'enabler' to her husband's behavior, but he ramped up his rhetoric on Friday.

'She's been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives,' Trump said, adding, 'She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful."

Trump did not expand upon what he believes Clinton did to 'destroy' the lives of those women."

If it were anyone else but Trump this might seem reckless, and in the real world, considering the rumors about his own checkered past, he would know enough to leave it alone.  But he's confident enough to go ahead because he knows he can always count on that tried and true standby, the double standard. 

Let me repeat: The sexist double standard, double standard, double, that's DOUBLE standard. 

Yes, I'm crying "sexism".  I'm not just crying it, I'm shouting it, I'm trying to figure out how to bounce it off the moon, sending it awash all over the planet. Blatant, ugly, corrosive sexism.

(And by the way, CNN got it wrong:  This is not the first time Trump has called her an enabler over Bill's affairs.  Back in January a group of GOP women urged him to drop it.  Fat chance.)

No matter what scandal Trump wants to use as ammunition against Hillary Clinton or anyone else who gets in his way, the real scandal is Trump himself.  His behavior is not acceptable, or even normal.  Most of the people voting for him wouldn't put up with him in their own living rooms for a single day, let alone four years.  I don't pretend to know what goes on in their minds.  It's one thing to be sad and disappointed and frustrated and angry at the perpetrators of what looks like wholesale destruction of the very fabric of our society, but it's quite another not to know you're backing a goddamn idjit for president.

From Paul Krugman, "The Making of an Ignoramus".

"Truly, Donald Trump knows nothing. He is more ignorant about policy than you can possibly imagine, even when you take into account the fact that he is more ignorant than you can possibly imagine. But his ignorance isn’t as unique as it may seem: In many ways, he’s just doing a clumsy job of channeling nonsense widely popular in his party, and to some extent in the chattering classes more generally.

"Last week the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — hard to believe, but there it is — finally revealed his plan to make America great again. Basically, it involves running the country like a failing casino: he could, he asserted, “make a deal” with creditors that would reduce the debt burden if his outlandish promises of economic growth don’t work out.

The reaction from everyone who knows anything about finance or economics was a mix of amazed horror and horrified amazement. One does not casually suggest throwing away America’s carefully cultivated reputation as the world’s most scrupulous debtor — a reputation that dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton."

How many times have you seen me quote George Will, signalling that I actually agreed with him?  It's not a trick question.  This will be the first:

"Donald Trump’s distinctive rhetorical style — think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce’s “Finnegan's Wake” under water — poses an almost insuperable challenge to people whose painful duty is to try to extract clarity from his effusions. For example, on Friday, during a long stream of semi-consciousness in Fort Worth, this man who as president would nominate members of the federal judiciary vowed to “open up” libel laws to make it easier to sue — to intimidate and punish — people who write “negative” things. Well.

Trump, the thin-skinned tough guy, resembles a campus crybaby who has wandered out of his “safe space.” It is not news that he has neither respect for nor knowledge of the Constitution, and he probably is unaware that he would have to “open up” many Supreme Court First Amendment rulings in order to achieve his aim. His obvious aim is to chill free speech, for the comfort of the political class, of which he is now a gaudy ornament."

So, okay, enough about Trump.  (Oh, except, did you see that wild Twitter war with Elizabeth Warren?)

How is Hillary preparing to be president?  She's scouring the country, sitting down with actual people, lending her ear, even when she knows she'll get an earful.  She's  talking about issues and not innuendo. She's building a base of supporters, both inside and outside of politics. She's going out on interviews, presenting her qualifications, applying for the highest job in the land as if it really were a job and not a joke, a conquest, or a power trip.

We're still in the midst of the primaries so I need to mention that Bernie Sanders is still in the running as the Democratic candidate.  Bernie Sanders, to his credit, is not Donald Trump.  Donald Trump, to no one's surprise, is keeping his hands off of Bernie Sanders.  In fact, Trump gleefully announces to each and every audience that he's going to steal Bernie's best speeches against Hillary and use them as if they were his own.  (Because Bernie knows some words, I'm guessing.)

Right now, Hillary Clinton is running against two opponents and holding her own.  If she wins the nomination she'll be going against Donald Trump.  Trump's big threat is that he hasn't even started on Hillary yet.

Someone needs to remind him that he's running for president, not chief comical inquisitor.  It's serious business, and gotcha games are for kids.

But don't look at me.  I'm not telling him.  Not that he'd listen to a nasty old bag of a broad, anyway.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

It's my Party and I'll Care if I want To

 Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

No matter who wins the nomination and ultimately the presidency this year, the Democratic Party is in trouble.  For almost two decades, after the economic successes of the Clinton administration went sour, after things got rough again for the 99 percent, my party didn't try hard enough to repair the damage. They made enemies on the left and made bullies on the right.  And now, when it seems they're finally waking up, both the left and the right are going after them, loaded for bear

George W. Bush and his cohorts systematically and deliberately destroyed a thriving economy, took away the homes and livelihoods of millions of Americans, and lied their way into a murderous, protracted trillion dollar war.  And what did the Democrats do? Not a whole hell of a lot.  With all of the excesses and outrages the GOP and the Right Wing were throwing at us, the Dems were in a perfect position to build a movement so big and so strong the painful realities of the Bush years would have been left to the history books and not to the burdens of generations to come.

Instead, leaders of the Democratic Party took us farther away from our Rooseveltian roots, playing nice while the demons haunted us.  Their refusal to fight back was a puzzlement, disturbing to those of us who still believed our party could do great things.  Then our knight in shining armor--Barack Obama--appeared on the horizon and we thought we were saved.

Obama won the 2008 election, riding in on a colossal wave of hope and change, but when the Democrats were given two full years of nearly unencumbered opportunities they squandered them, allowing the Republicans to go on acting as if they were still in charge.

After the Dems lost both houses in 2010, mainly because the voters were fed up and stayed home, the triumphant Republicans found themselves having to share the catbird seat with a gaggle of new and dangerous occupants: The Tea Party.  They came in with no governing experience, making demands so outrageous and out-of-touch the Dems should have been able to turn public opinion against them without much fuss or muss.   It didn't happen. 

In 2012, we won a partial battle but lost the advantages we needed to win the war:  Obama won the presidency but the GOP took back the House and the Senate, this time with more anti-government Tea Party newbies, all willing to suck at the teat of the government while threatening to drain it dry.

Aided and abetted by big money donors with ties to the John Birch Society, the NRA, and the religious right, pushing a pro-business, anti-government agenda with help from the Right Wing media, the GOP swept the board, handing entire states over to pro-business, anti-government leaders who promptly went to work finishing the job of shredding what we bravely but foolishly used to call our unalienable rights.

So here we are, Democrats, just months away from our chance to get it back and do it right this time. Our successes during the Obama years were encouraging, considering the Congress we had, but few and far between. We've just begun to build on them and we can't allow them to be thrown away. We have two presidential candidates to choose from. One of them, Hillary Clinton, is the pragmatic establishment candidate, and the other, Bernie Sanders, is the anti-establishment, pro-revolution counterpoint.

Bernie, the Independent, is closest to our populist roots and tells our story best.  Hillary, the Washington insider, may be better positioned to build on the populist theme and get the work done.  At this writing, it looks like Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination.  Then the job begins. We'll be back to Hope and Change but this time it has to work.

We--and I'm addressing Democrats here--have drifted from being the party of good to being the party of good intentions. "We meant well" is a far cry from "We got it done".  Our party needs a good swift kick in the pants and they're getting it in the person of Bernie Sanders.  People who are disillusioned, disappointed and tired of waiting are flocking to him.  Even those of us who are pushing for a Hillary win are cheering Bernie on.  (Come on.  You know we are. We might grouse at how he's doing it, but he's pressing our leaders to take us back to our inestimable roots. Even if we're not voting for Bernie, we're sitting up and taking notice.  It's been a long time coming and Sanders' candidacy is the catalyst to move it forward.)

We owe Bernie Sanders an enormous debt of gratitude and we'd be wise not to forget it. We are the party of populists and always have been.  We're liberals, we're progressives, we're white collar humanitarians, we're blue-collar do-gooders, we're pink collar nurterers.  We're the unabashed, unrepentant caretakers of our society.  That's what separates us from the other party.  That's what makes it so imperative that we sweep the election in November.  There are people hurting out there and they need us.

If we want to win in November we'll have to work together against the Republicans.  There are two parties in a position to fill the big vacancies.  Only two. If Bernie's people abandon the Democrats, we'll lose.  If Hillary's people stay miffed at Bernie's people, we'll lose.  The anger on both sides is going to have to take a back seat once we choose a candidate, just as it did in 2008 when Barack Obama won on a message of hope, the Democrats went on to hold the majority, and Obama's toughest rival, Hillary Clinton, became his friend, his ally, his Secretary of State.

We have a chance to do it right this time.  The Republicans should, by rights, be easy to beat. (You've seen their candidates, right?)  We have more to offer than they do, but in order to get our message out, in order to draw the most voters, we have to get our leaders to get with the program and agree on what our message is.

Simplified, this is how it goes:  Down with Oligarchy!  Up with Democracy!

The message may be simple but the execution won't be.  But we're Democrats and the other guys aren't.  We've done it before, we can do it again.

Emphasis on "we".

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

When the cameras leave Flint, Michigan Will Still Be Michigan

On January 1, 2011, Rick Snyder, Michigan's new governor was sworn in.  Almost immediately after he solemnly swore to uphold the duties of his office, he made it clear that Michigan was in for a drubbing.  He was going to Make Michigan Great Again. The message was clear: "I'm the boss and you're not. I have friends in high places and you don't. Thanks for the votes, now get outta here."

On March 10, 2011, three months after his swearing-in (and five years ago, almost to the day), I wrote a blog called Michigan is Under Siege: Is Anybody Watching? It highlighted Rachel Maddow's yeoman efforts to draw attention to the plain fact that Michigan was heading toward dictator rule.  She centered her investigation on the emergency manager takeover of Benton Harbor, a poor, black city that had fallen on hard times and desperately needed help, but was far from requiring a potentate.

Among other observations on the new governor's outrageous first efforts at a full-blown takeover, Rachel said this:

Right now, [Michigan] Gov. [Rick] Snyder is pushing a bill that would give himself, Gov. Snyder and his administration, the power to declare any town or school district to be in a financial emergency. If a town was declared by the governor and his administration to be in a financial emergency they would get to put somebody in charge of that town, and they want to give that emergency manager that they just put in charge of the town the power to, “reject, modify, or terminate any contracts that the town may have entered in to, including any collective bargaining agreement."

  Five days later, in a blog called Michigan Under Threat of Dictatorship. NOW Can We Panic?  I quoted from Michael Moore's "Letter to My Fellow Michiganders", sounding the alarm:

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries -- and then ran in the general election as "just a nerd from Ann Arbor" who was a moderate, not an ideologue -- has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I've ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.

 On April 26, 2011, in a blog titled We're Michigan and Most of Us Don't Deserve This, I wrote:

Nothing unusual about a new governor being sworn in in early January, but this particular brand-new governor raised hackles in some circles (okay, in nearly ALL circles outside the corporate honchos and people still having Tea Parties in the midst of the rubble) by stepping off the podium and almost instantaneously barking orders to annihilate anyone outside his own elite space who thought they might be entitled to a taxpayer-funded public education, or wages beyond the truly laughable, or even a retirement free of toil and strife.
For most people bent on taking over an entire state that might have been enough, but some days later this man Rick found the Holy Grail.  An existing Financial Emergency Manager Law that he and his Republican-led legislature then got to work enhancing and extending until it no longer would only be used in--okay--emergencies, but could be tweaked to kill the unions, take over public education and. . .oh, let's say. . .fire duly elected officials in cities and towns that may or may not have potentially fatal fiscal wounds but do have too many poor people and thus can't keep the Gov and his court in the style to which they've become accustomed.

 On June 13, 2011, I wrote a blog called The Taking of Benton Harbor and lo and behold, the first inkling of problems with water appeared:

These Republican "small government" devotees took office on January 1 and immediately began dismantling governmental policies and protections, many of which had been put in place long before the parents of these hoo-haws were even born.  As public officials, their not-so-hidden goal is to turn the power of the state over to private interests, and Big Bucks says now is the time.  They can and they will do it, or their name isn't Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Just last week Eclectablog's Chris Savage wrote about another Emergency Financial Manager takeover, this time in Pontiac, in order to privatize the water-treatment services and hand them over to a company already in trouble with the DOJ for violations of the Clean Water Act.

Michael Stampfler is Pontiac, Michigan's EFM. He has the dubious distinction of being the first Michigan EFM to use new powers granted by Michigan Republicans to cancel a union contract. What went nearly unnoticed was that last week, he dissolved the Pontiac Planning Commission and replaced it with a smaller number of his own hand-picked, unelected members. But he also did another thing. He made a contract for water treatment services with United Water Services permanent, outsourcing the water treatment to them and laying off city water treatment officials.

And on March 21, 2013, almost three years ago, in a blog called News From Michigan, the Nation's First Dictator State, I wrote: 

It could be that with all that's going on in the world you might have missed what's happening closer to home, in the sovereign state of Michigan.  In just over two years, since businessman and venture capitalist Rick Snyder became governor, bringing along with him a Republican majority in the legislature and in most courts (including the Supreme one), with a push from the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, our beautiful state has suffered under the country's first duly elected dictatorship.

In March of 2011, two months after his inauguration, Snyder pushed through a draconian Emergency Financial Manager law, essentially giving him the authority to appoint one person to take over the governing of any municipality or school system deemed failing by Our Man Snyder.

In November, 2012 the voters, finally coming to their senses, soundly voted down that outrageously unconstitutional law.  A few weeks later Snyder's minions, ignoring the wishes of the voters, not only reinstated the law, they added wording that would keep the voters from ever voting it down again.

This slid by just days after the Republicans stuck it to the already bruised and bleeding unions by making Michigan, the home of the labor movement, a Right-to-Work state. 

Just last week, the Republican legislature was back working on a bill that would allow health care providers to refuse services to patients/customers for religious or moral reasons.  It's a transparent smackdown of abortion and contraception, but it could also affect anybody from gays to Muslims to blacks to liberal Democrats.

 The point of all this is to amplify the fact that we've been sounding the alarm for years--long before Snyder won his second term handily--and, while there has been some state and national attention from the press, it took a  disaster in Flint--a tragic, wholly avoidable man-made assault on innocent children by poisoning their water with lead--to make what has happened in our great state serious enough to warrant visits from politicians, all too aware of the opportunities, and breathless reporters standing in front of cable news cameras hoping--admit it--to spike their ratings.

On Tuesday, Michigan's Democratic primary election takes place. On Wednesday the politicians, the reporters, the camera crews, and the protesters from outside will pack up their bags and leave.  Will they look back? If past history is any judge, probably not.  The next far-off disaster awaits.

But for the people of Flint, grateful for the attention, hoping it'll finally be the catalyst they need to repair both their city and their lives, let me beg anyone who sees this:  Don't let this die.  Rick Snyder, the governor of Michigan cannot tweet his way out of this.  If he won't at long last take seriously what he has allowed to happen in Michigan, the world needs to camp on his doorstep until he does.

It should be obvious by now that we can't do this alone.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

Bernie and Hillary and Me: Can't We All Be Friends?

I agree with Bernie Sanders on almost everything.  I agree that the minimum wage should be raised--even higher than Bernie advocates.  I agree that workers are being shafted and our jobs have to come back from overseas. I agree that health care for all without stipulations or roadblocks has to become reality.  I agree that we can't keep funding wars around the world.

Photo Credit:  David Goldman/AP

I agree that the Republicans have been complete and total shits for more years than we should have allowed, and that the Democrats have been weak-kneed and back-bone-free when it comes to fighting against them.  (If you want to call that fighting.)

I agree that the money interests have taken over this country and we have to take it back.

I agree that it's way past time for a revolution. (Vive la révolution!)

I get it!  I'm as mad as Bernie is!

And I want Hillary Clinton as president.

Photo Credit:  AP

 
I've wrestled with my warring sides for a long time, wondering how I could have changed my mind when all along I was sure if Bernie should decide to run he would be my first choice.

It comes down to this:  Bernie is my first choice as revolutionary leader. As revolutionary leaders go, Bernie ranks right up there at the top. But if Bernie should win the presidency, his days as a radical revolutionary leader are over.  (Radicalism is frowned on in the White House. See The West Wing.) He wouldn't in a million years be able to accomplish as much as he might if he stays on the outside pressing for the goals he has outlined during his campaign. 

We need people like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to be the gadflies, the pushers, but it's nigh impossible to do it from the inside. I'm convinced that's why Warren chose not to run. She knows she can be far more effective as the conscience of a nation from where she is. A president has to be all things to all people. The leader of a revolution has to stay focused on the cause. Bernie, if he wins, won't be able to do that and he'll disappoint the people who are counting on him to make radical change. They'll start a revolution without him, or in spite of him, or against him.

Hillary, no matter how much she would like to be seen as the dewy-eyed outsider, thrives inside the establishment. She knows the players and knows how to play their games. With Hillary it'll be a chess match. With Bernie it'll be hand-to-hand combat.  With the Republicans, it'll be business as usual, and they'll fight dirty no matter who goes after them. 

I see more advantages to getting Hillary, the tougher, more pragmatic candidate, in there, and then helping Sanders and Warren, along with a host of powerhouse liberal Democrats, to get her to where they--and we--want to be.

Bernie has done the country a true service by running for president. He has drawn in and energized crowds of voters who had given up hope that the system would work for them. They're pumped now, as they'll have to be if we're going  to take the presidency away from Donald Trump, or any other spectacularly unworthy candidate the Republicans throw at us.

Eyes on the prize now.  Whether the nominee is Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, we vote for our side.  The Democrats have to win.  Losing at this point is not an option.
 

She Shouts

Bob Woodward was on Morning Joe today talking about Hillary Clinton, and in the course of the conversation he said, "I think a lot of it with Hillary Clinton has to do with style and delivery, oddly enough,. She shouts. There is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating."

 Joe Scarborough had to agree: "Last night I was watching her and I said to myself, has nobody told her that the microphone works?  Because she always keeps it up here." (Hand held high)

So then the convo moved to Hillary's trust issue and how she really didn't win much in Iowa because the young kids don't go for her. But Woodward, ever the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, brought it all back by saying, "I'm sorry to dwell on the tone issue, but there's something here where Hillary Clinton suggests she's almost not comfortable with herself. And, you know, self acceptance is something you communicate on television."

To which Joe brought up Margaret Thatcher and how she could skew anyone by "keeping it to a whisper".  And Ronald Reagan.  No shouting.  Not like Hillary, anyway.  (There was more. It's all here.  If you care.)

Well!  I put on my blogging frock and tilted my dainty little fingers over my lovely, shiny keyboard (No more cookie crumbs! I cleaned it yesterday.) and began looking for the words that would singe the damn paint off of my stylishly hued walls.  I was mad!

So there I was, fingers poised, at the ready, when a radical thought entered my almost-perfect-if-not-for-the-bed-head:  I've never cared about anything Bob Woodward has said before.  Why the hell should I care now?  And Scarborough?  Same thing, only stronger.

We're going to have months of this--her tone, her voice, her pantsuits, her hair, her age, her attempts at seeming human--so we need to decide early on whether it's worth it to waste time on silly distractions.  Who really cares?

She's a woman; I'm a woman.  Hillary has done things and now she's running for President of the United States. There the similarity ends, so if I'm going to support her for the presidency I have to stop wasting time defending her womanhood and start defending her ability to do the job.

So I will not care who insults her personally any more.  She has bigger fish to fry.  Hillary has known this for a long time.  I'm just now getting it.

I'm in awe of how much I'm learning from her.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog , The Broad Side and Crooks and Liars)

The Donald Dilemma: Loves The Crowds, Hates The Presidency

I've been watching Donald Trump pretty closely (How to avoid it? Dear God in Heaven, how to avoid it?) and I have a theory.  Bear with me now, because at first you're going to laugh.  I know I did.  But here it is:  The billionaire Trump would rather die than be president of the United States.  But then he'd rather die than give up the attention, the fabulous, almost surreal attention.  From the people, from the press, from the Big Guys in Washington, from the world!  It's all his!  Donald Trump's!  He can't give it up!  He just can't!  But, damn, he does not want to be president.

One day, back in 2015, the showman Trump, the billionaire Donald, ridiculed by many, unliked by most, on a lark, dipped his toe--the most amazing toe in the world, let him tell you--into the presidential pool, and something magical happened.  People--ordinary people--liked him!  They really, really liked him!  Some of them thought he'd make a great president! Not just a great president but the greatest president this country had ever seen!  Maybe the greatest in the world! Him! Donald Trump!

Photo credit:  Richard Drew/AP

He came up with a clever slogan.  Such a clever slogan, you wouldn't believe: "Make America great again!"  Word got around that this billionaire with no political ties was going to make America great again.  The crowds came.  They roared.  He roared.  They were hooked.  He was hooked.

It didn't matter that he didn't have a plan.  It was enough that he agreed to hate all the people they hated, that he spoke off the cuff, that he said the most outrageous things--godawful things--and got away with it.  It became a spectacle and the show began to run on its own steam.  It was better than any juicy, shocking reality show.  It was better because they were all in it, participating, instead of just watching it on their TV screens.

But then something happened.  Donald Trump began to be taken seriously.  Some members of the fawning press went from enjoying the pure folly of it to asking him the hard questions.  The questions any serious presidential candidate should know.  Questions about the economy, about policy, about world affairs. But that's not what interested him.  Not in the least.

He saw he would need to attack the press and make them look silly.  And again, because everything he touched miraculously turned to gold, it worked!  Beautifully!  The press, because his campaign was the best copy ever, became his lap dogs.  To his own surprise, they gave him so much free time he didn't have to spend a dime of his own vast fortune to get him to the very top.

Heady stuff, that.  Not something a narcissistic egomaniac could easily turn his back on.  So what to do?  He didn't want to be president!  Live in the White House, that tacky old relic?  Deliver him!  Deal with a Congress that wouldn't give him his way?  Not on your life!  Learn the names of all those countries, their leaders, their cultures, and whether or not they liked us or  wanted us dead in our beds?  He was a Wharton graduate--a graduate.  School was over!

So Donald being Donald, he decided he needed to put an end to it.  The president part, at least. He was enjoying the hell out of the attention--who wouldn't?--so he would have to figure out a way to keep the crowds coming, even though the idea of being president was beginning to seem like a real loser.

He would be their fearless leader, instead, demagoguing his way into their heads and hearts; he would keep those auditoriums, those stadiums filled to the rafters.  He discovered, to his utter shock, that all he had to do was talk.  He could do that!

He recognized early on that it was the throw-away, comedic insults that drew the heaviest crowds, that brought the shouts, the laughs, the catcalls. They loved him, not as a presidential candidate, but as an entertainer! Who knew?

He kept it up and they kept coming.  The press couldn't get enough of the Phenomenal Donald  He could insult them, call them "scum", point at them in their press boxes with a finger that oozed hatred, and still they would come.  What the hell was going on?  He didn't know, he didn't care.  He was Number One.  Numero Uno.  One.  As in O.N.E.

But, Good God, he might be president!  How could he tell Melania Darling she might have to leave their Park Avenue penthouse?  What to do, what to do?  One day, as he was busy bragging himself up so as to avoid having to contend with real issues,  he told the crowd that his followers were so loyal, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."  The press went wild!  The internet went wild!  No way! Did Donald Trump really say that?

He did.  He did say that.  And even though he hadn't planned it that way (I'm guessing), it could well have been the moment he'd been waiting for.   Who says something like that and gets away with it?

Donald Trump, that's who.  So far, it hasn't hurt him AT ALL.  He hasn't moved from the top of the polls, the mighty polls.

But Trump has just announced that he won't be attending the Fox News GOP debate--the last debate before the Iowa caucuses.  Why not?  Because Megyn Kelly will be moderating and he can't stand her.  At the first debate she was rude to him.  Downright mean. She dared to ask him how he would handle the criticism about the nasty comments he's made about women over the years.  In answer, he began to make nasty comments about her.  Over and over, day after day. He called her a bimbo, a loser, a bad reporter.  He suggested it could have been menstrual flow causing all that meanness.

When he heard Kelly would be on the moderating panel, he gave Fox an ultimatum.  Megyn or Trump.  He harrumphed that Fox would never give up the crowds his presence would bring.  They would have to cave.

They chose Megyn:

"Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away," Trump said in a statement. "Roger Ailes and Fox News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn't play games."

Trump can talk like that because he is not now and never will be a politician.  He is a businessman who glories in his ruthlessness, a wheeler-dealer who always wins, a showman more comfortable in an arena than in an oval office.

He finally gets it: That, while the power and the glory of the presidency could be his, it won't come without four long years of compromise and crushing responsibility.  He won't always get his way.  He'll be required to work hard and give much.  His every action will be answerable to millions of people who aren't among his gushing followers.  The Megyn Kellys of the world will dog his every step.

He won't be able to stand it.

I want to help him.  I really do.  I want to make sure he's never president.  Oh, I know he won't be grateful. He won't thank me.  But sometimes it's those thankless jobs that are the most rewarding.  So, how about it?  Care to join me?  Can we put this poor guy out of his misery already?

_______________________

Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars

Curtain Down On The Trump Show Already. Please.

I've got that thing again where my heart races and my belly hurts and I don't know whether those tears are from laughing or crying.  I'm craving chocolate, any kind will do, and I can't stop thinking the end of civilization as we know it is right around the corner or up the street or somewhere in Iowa.

I go to sleep stressing and I wake up stressing.  Terrible things are going on in the world.  I should be stressing over them, and it could be that that's what's going on, but it feels like it's Donald Trump.

He's doing this to me. I should stop listening to him. I should pretend I'm not living in a country where Donald Trump, of all people, could be a front-runner in a bid for the presidency.  I should stop waiting for him to mess up so badly there's no going back.  I should do that, but if I had that kind of self-control I wouldn't be a full-time self-unemployed political blogger on the liberal circuit.  Now would I?

I'm a mess and it's all his fault.  I have succumbed to the slump I call Trump.  Donald Trump has entered my brain and if I don't get this down fast, my words will start sounding like a three-bean salad on a bed of spinach.  (I have no idea!  It just came out.  I'm telling you. . .)

Just this week Donald Trump, the man who would be president (or Tony Soprano, depending on how he strikes you--not literally, of course, though that's not out of the question), told a Black Lives Matter activist/heckler at a public meeting to "get the hell outta here".  This was after the man had been pummeled to the ground and then kicked by one of Trump's goons supporters.  Trump then took to Fox News, and, in his best considered presidential tone, said the man was obnoxious and loud, so, "Yeah, maybe he shoulda been roughed up.  Because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing."

On Sunday he told George Stephanopoulos he has no problem with waterboarding because "it's peanuts compared to what 'they' do".  (Almost every Republican could be heard groaning.  Cheers, though, from Dick Cheney, who, until that moment, hadn't even considered pushing for the job of choosing Trump's vice president.)

Then, with cameras still rolling, Trump assured Stephanopoulos that what he'd said the night before about seeing thousands and thousands of Arab people in New Jersey cheering as the World Trade Center came down was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

George suggested in an adorably nice way that there are some--or maybe all--who can't find a single solitary bit of footage or eye-witness account that would make what Donald said even slightly true.  Donald chalked it up to reporters wanting to be politically correct, and George, not ever wanting to be branded a politically correct reporter (oh gawd no!), thanked him ever so kindly for his time.

I watched that and breathed such a grateful sigh you wouldn't believe.  At last!  Caught in his own terrible lie!  Hoist[ed] with his own petard!  Stick a fork in him! He's done!

But you know what happened, don't you?  Come on, admit it.  You know.

Trump's poll numbers went up.  The crowds loved him even more.  Fifty five percent of likely Republican voters now say they would trust him over all other candidates to do the right thing about terrorism.  (What would he do about terrorists? Namely ISIS?  He would "bomb the shit out of them!" and take the oil. Yay!)

He is a serial liar and is the number one choice among Republicans for the next president of the United States.  (These same people, so deathly afraid of refugee families fleeing for their lives, have no fear of a Donald Trump presidency.  No fear!  None at all!  But there I go again.)

You know by now--because I keep telling you--I tend to take these things personally.   My America is not a plaything.  It's not a joke.  Turning my country over to a non-politician with no government experience would be punking of the worst kind.  But even thinking for one second of turning it over to a lying billionaire braggart who has a history of taking but not giving, who calls people ugly names and shuts up anyone who disputes him, who is such an embarrassment even countries with their own embarrassing characters can't believe we've topped them--that's insanity undisguised.

There are horrifying things going on in the world.  Donald Trump's ascendancy into the heights of American politics isn't one of them.  I know and you know that he'll never become president,  (We know that, right?) but the people egging him on will still be out there, still wishing it had been Trump, and I will still have to live among them.  Festering.

Once Trump is gone, the press, never ones to let an exploit pass, will be egging on Trump's people, pushing them to find someone equally entertaining. Because when it comes to American politics, there's no business like show business and, above all else, the show must go on.

Well, curtain down already.  Footlights off.  Come out into the daylight.  It's a whole different world out here.

It's Been Fun. But Seriously, Folks, It's The Presidency.

Since at least the turn of the 21st Century it's been a time-honored tradition to bring in the clowns and have some fun with the quest for the highest job in the nation.  You would think the duties and obligations of the presidency of the United States would cause most people to turn and run and keep on running, but every four years the most unlikely characters come out of the woodwork, shouting, "Hey, I could be president!  Why not?  How hard could it be?"

Photo:  Richard Drew/Getty Images

It's like the first weeks of every new season of "American Idol".  Singers?  You want singers?  Be patient, we'll get to that. First we need to haul out the phonies and the almost-singers and pretend they're really auditioning because it's not just about finding the best singer in America, it's about the show, the whole show, and nothing but the show.

I would say the Republicans have outdone themselves this cycle, but I'm still quivering (could have been laughter; could have been dread) over the potential 2012 lineup:  Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Thaddeus McCotter. etc.--remember?

Early on, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul won the Iowa straw poll, but not before some high hilarity at an Iowa fairground, where blow-up slides, corn-dog obscenities, and fights over the size of their tents took center stage.

Earlier still, pizza guy Herman Cain ran as a non-politician who was pretty sure there was a lot wrong with the government.  His qualifications for the presidency included a vast knowledge of pizza ingredients, a build-up of a chain of pizzerias, and an economic plan that included the numbers "999"--a plan so brilliantly obtuse it shot him to number one in the polls for what seemed like a really long time for a pizza guy wanting to be president.  (Sort of like Sanjaya on American Idol.  Some things are beyond understanding.)

The Democrats haven't been immune to the silly season, either. In January, 2012, just before the New Hampshire primaries, C-Span broadcast The Great Debate of the Lesser-Knowns, a two-hour show where both Republican and Democratic wannabees had a chance to present their credentials and give reasons why America should vote for them. Among them was a wizard named "Vermin", a guy who visited all 1712 US counties and found that "people aren't happy", and a guy who had been in Real Estate but was now out of a job so he figured what the hell?  (It may have been the most fun I've ever had writing a blog.)

So here it is, 2015, less than a year away from our next presidential election and the silly season is upon us.  The Republicans, as usual, are outshining the Democrats, who, to be fair, only have three candidates in the running, all bona fide politicians.  They're way too boring for the pundits, who, if they were honest, would admit what they really want is a burlesque show.  Show us some skin!  We want pratfalls! Where are the comics?

Contrast the Democrats with the Republicans who, as of this writing, have 10 candidates running in the main, three or four relegated to the debate night kid's table, and several, including Lindsey Graham--a real, honest-to-goodness long-time politician--on the outside looking in.

Knowing they have nothing to offer their followers, the GOP keeps coming up with irrelevant attention-getters, hoping nobody will notice.  Donald Trump is a snarly, puffed-up businessman hawking his celebrity in place of actual policy.  Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon whose utterances conjure up Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener in "Being There".  Day after day, they're polling as the front-runners.  Neither of them has any political experience--an obvious asset for a party hoping for another chance to stop the damn governing already!

So last week the two Republican front-runners made political news again.  Ben Carson, because some of his words ended up forming actual sentences, was forced to hold a news conference defending his veracity.  He was accused of lying about stabbing a friend and in order to maintain some semblance of credibility (because he's running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES), he had to insist that he was telling the truth.  Oh, yes I did!  I did stab him!  I swear!

And Donald Trump managed for yet another week to keep himself at the top of the pundit dance cards. (Thus never having to spend a dime of his own money promoting his candidacy.)  Much to the delight of the press, he took a break from the hard work of pretending to be a politician to become the first active presidential candidate ever to host NBC's "Saturday Night Live".  He was able to do this even after NBC had kinda sorta fired him from his own show, "The Apprentice" and showed at least outward signs of not being pleased when he insulted Mexicans and dissed Univision, the Hispanic network that refused to air Trump's own personal beauty contest.

The Democrats made it to the news cycle last week, too, for a few brief moments.  On Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow hosted the "First in the South" Democratic Forum in South Carolina.  The two-hour program gave the top three candidates, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley, a chance to answer questions without interruptions or attempts to one-up each other. They even had some fun--Bernie laughed out loud--but there was no doubt they are serious applicants for the job--repeat, the job--of President of the United States.

I don't see that yet in either Donald Trump or Ben Carson.  Trump is busy building his brand, so to him Situation Room angst is for losers. And Carson is--I don't know--selling a book?

Meanwhile, there are real Republican politicians like Lindsey Graham, and even Jeb Bush, who don't stand a chance against this need by the media to keep politics so highly entertaining there's no danger of the dreaded channel-surfing.

Photo:  Pete Souza/Wikimedia Commons

Someday soon we're going to have to stop looking for the fun part of politics and start cramming for the hard stuff.  We're going to have to be the grown-ups. We don't let children vote for a reason.  It's because they're not equipped to read, to study, to analyze, to decide.  We are.  They don't understand the difference between showmanship and statesmanship.  We do.  They feel no sense of obligation toward establishing a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. As the grown-ups in control, we do and we must.


(Also appearing at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)