We Have a New President But The Nightmare Isn't Over

Photo Credit: Sky News

On Saturday, November 7, just before Noon, four days after Election Day, after Pennsylvania’s votes put him over the 270 mark, the election was finally called by both the AP and CNN : Former Vice President Joe Biden beat out the incumbent, Donald Trump, to become President-Elect Joe Biden.

I don’t have to tell you that I was ecstatic. It appeared all week that this would be the outcome but with every passing day the doubts grew. Not that the count would be wrong but that the Trump regime would figure out a way to delegitimize the people’s choice.

As Ari Berman wrote on Twitter:

They gutted the Voting Rights Act. They sabotaged the Postal Service. They closed polling places, purged voter rolls, attacked mail voting, tried to throw out ballots. And yet voters turned out in record numbers to overcome these barriers & make their voices heard.

So here we are, sure it has happened, but on tenterhooks because the Big Baby in the White House refuses to accept that his tantrums haven’t worked and he’s on a time-out with no end date.

This morning we woke up to the news that Arizona has finally called it for Joe Biden. That puts him at 290 electoral votes, well over the 270 needed for a win. Five million more voters checked the box next to Joe’s name than they did for Trump. Top election officials said yesterday, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history”. Yet Donald Trump refuses to concede and all but a handful of Republican Party leaders are unconscionably silent. If they’ve congratulated Joe Biden at all, they’ve done it secretly, passing the message along to a Democrat who then passes it along to Joe Biden.

The Republicans are miserable cowards, held captive by a man who is wholly unworthy, increasingly unhinged, and a danger to the security of the country. In refusing to acknowledge the inevitable they’ve prevented the Biden team from beginning the all-important transition to the presidency. Biden should be receiving daily intelligence briefings by now. He needs to know before he takes over just what in the world he’ll have to deal with. He’s being shut out and nobody can predict when or even if he’ll be let in.

This is the kind of third-world stuff tin pot dictators try to foist off on their country. We keep saying we’re not that country but where’s the proof? We’re looking more and more like it.

For all intents, Donald Trump has given up all pretense of leadership, wobbly and wacky as it was. He’s holed up in the White House, grieving, no doubt, and, if he has any sense at all, scared out of his mind. In two months he’ll lose the protection of the presidency and become a private citizen. Justice is waiting for him. So are his creditors. There appears to be nothing but ruination ahead. His bombast, his lies, may finally let him down.

He botched the coronavirus pandemic so badly we’re counting deaths in the hundreds of thousands, the cases in the multi-millions. Early in the year he bragged about being in complete control of the virus and he would never let anything bad happen. It happened and he refuses to take the blame.

But we expect this from Trump. He’s incorrigible. He’ll never change. The blame now is on the Republicans. They’ve had the power to control this scourge for the entire four years this obviously unfit pretender has been in office. They have the power to insist on getting intelligence briefings to President-Elect Biden. They have the power to legitimize the election and begin a smooth transition. They have the power to force Trump to concede. They could put into action their notorious unity — to a person — and end this travesty today.

Why won’t they? Is it their fear of losing their power? What good is that power if they refuse to use it for the good of the country? Are they hiding secrets? If so, do they really think they can hide them forever? Are they afraid of Trump’s rabid base? Do they know if they give in to them they become their base? They’ll have to pander to them forever.

Trump’s bad guys with the big guns are rallying at the National Mall in DC tomorrow — armed militias, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, all gathering to scare the country into believing that their president has been wronged and the illegitimate Democrats are fomenting civil war. This is the climate Trump encourages. He lives for this.

So nobody believes the fairy tale that calm will be upon us on January 20. Nothing magical will happen, even if the Democrats should win the two Senate seats still up in the air in Georgia. The Biden administration, the Democrats, will still be fighting against Trump’s citizen troops, knowing that every win for them will further enrage a massive frothing crowd that will never believe their administration won fair and square.

I’m all for celebrating our victories, but I can’t yet celebrate a return to any kind of normalcy. Biden, et al, will inherit a mess. They know that. WE know that. And while they’re working to get a pandemic under control, to slow nature’s move toward destroying us, to force our weakened courts to practice justice, to create good paying jobs and rebuild a strong middle class, they’ll be fighting against those forces still convinced they can create a theocratic oligarchy, intent on keeping the masses controlled and subservient.

And through it all the specter of Donald Trump will haunt us. He’s not finished with us yet. This is our history now and it’s one for the books

(Cross-posted at Indelible Ink/Medium)

My Years With Joe Biden: I Didn't Vote For Joe but I've Always Loved Him

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

We’re exactly two weeks away from the election of our lives and I’m getting nervous. I keep thinking I’ve said all I can say to convince everyone to vote for Joe Biden. Apparently I haven’t gotten through yet. Let me give it one more try.

Some of you may remember that I didn’t vote for Joe during the primaries, and wasn’t all that thrilled about him even being in the race. Then Rep. Jim Clyburn gave a speech in South Carolina and I changed my mind.

I’ve known Joe for a while now — not personally, of course, but I’ve been watching him for years. On January 20, 2009, the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as our 44th president, I started my political blog, Ramona’s Voices. Over the years I’ve mentioned Joe Biden many times, and even devoted entire posts to him, including one post I wrote in 2012 called, ‘I Love Joe Biden. I Mean It. I LOVE Joe Biden’. (In case you had any doubt.) I wrote it after Joe stood before a group of military families who had lost loved ones and talked to them about the raw pain of grieving. I was crying as I wrote it, and maybe it shows.

Before that, in March, 2011, I wrote about him in my weekly feature, Friday Follies. (Included in case there are those who still think Biden is faking his pro-union stance.):

Did I ever tell you I LOVE Joe Biden? I do. Yes, he can be slightly wacky at times but in a good way. A cute way. He’s fluffy tough and the reason the word “gaffe” was invented. But the other day he spoke to union activists and every word was a keeper. Try parsing THIS, Faux News! Ha!

“You guys built the middle class,” said Biden in a virtual town hall conversation hosted by the AFL-CIO. “I would just emphasize what Hilda [Solis] said and say it slightly different: We don’t see the value of collective bargaining, we see the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining. Let’s get something straight: The only people who have the capacity — organizational capacity and muscle — to keep, as they say, the barbarians from the gate, is organized labor. And make no mistake about it, the guys on the other team get it. They know if they cripple labor, the gate is open, man. The gate is wide open. And we know that too.”

In ‘Women, Gays, and Obama’s Ear’, Joe got taken to the woodshed for seeming to go against Obama. They called it a ‘gaffe’, of course, but couldn’t make anything stick. I wrote, Note to Joe: It’s far better to be gaffe-prone than to be mean-prone. So far, you’re okay, man. Because I thought what he did was admirable, and Obama could do worse than learn from it.

And in September, 2015, when we were waiting to see who was going to run for president in 2016, I wrote ‘Please, Joe, Don’t Run’. I did it for his own good. I wanted him to take care of himself.

But somewhere between Hillary’s loss to Trump and the beginning of the 2020 Democratic primary season, I lost interest in Joe Biden as president. I wanted a woman in the White House, and, thankfully, there were plenty of good women to choose from. Joe was so far down my list I barely remembered he was there. I voted for Elizabeth Warren and I was devastated when she couldn’t get to that place.

 Now we’re easing into the end of October and I’m thrilled that Joe Biden is the candidate. Yes, thrilled. As Trump spirals out of control, Biden is building the greatest coalition of good guys and experts I’ve ever seen. What it tells me is that if we can pull this election off, barring all roadblocks coming from the other side, we will have a central government that can be trusted to begin the rebuilding after so much destruction. They will work as if our lives depended on it.

‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’ will no longer be quaint wishful thinking, it’ll be the way we are. It wasn’t always the way we were, but if the Trump regime’s bulldozing of our government has taught us anything, it’s that we really don’t want such drastic relief from big government. We need big government, we know that now, but we have to make it better.

Except for a few holdouts, the Democrats are coming together as a formidable bloc, getting behind Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the top jobs and supporting and donating to the Democratic candidates down the ballot. Some of them are raising more campaign funds than they could ever even dream about. Every time Trump and his Republican cohorts do something awful in these final days, the funds roll in for the Democrats.

All signs point to a Biden win, but we Democrats are still shell-shocked over 2016. We tell ourselves we don’t dare jump the gun this time, and there’s some truth to that, but Donald Trump is a known entity now. He’s still a novice, still knows nothing about government, and it shows.

Trump has made some deadly decisions based on nothing more than how they’ll make him look. His mismanagement of the COVID pandemic has raised America’s death tolls to horrific levels not seen anywhere else in the world.

He has alienated everyone the world over, but thinks if he plays to his base everything will be all right. He doesn’t know it yet, but most of America has moved past him. As a leader he’s a disaster; as a chaos agent he thinks he’s not done yet. But the country has grown tired of his antics and Joe Biden looks like the necessary antidote. We’re watching the two of them in public and the differences couldn’t be more stark.

Joe Biden has to win but he has to win in a landslide. The Democrats have to win in a landslide. It looks imminent, but it’ll take each of us working to get out the vote. This may be our last chance to get it right.

(Cross-posted at Medium/Indelible Ink)

The Politics of Emotion

We’re scared, we’re confused, we’re enraged — and that’s the way they want it

AFP photo

This last week has been a doozy. An entire thesaurus of emotions bombard us every day, every night, and we’re at the point now where those of us who think, who care, who take the burdens of the world personally, are on sensory overload, dangerously close to imploding. Exploding. Doing ourselves no favors by feeling emotions so raw, so painful they render us, in the end, helpless.

The catalyst this time? Another Black man’s senseless death at the hands of the police — say his name: George Floyd— and it’s almost more than we can bear. The Minneapolis cop who killed him did it in front of us, in broad daylight, gloating, smiling for the cameras, his knee pressing harder against George’s neck as George pleaded for his life, called for his mother, said I CAN’T BREATHE.

Three other cops stood watch over the killing. According to witnesses, at least one of them helped to hold George down. The crowd around them pleaded for the cop to stop but he didn’t move, didn’t ease the pressure, didn’t consider the minutes it took for the life to seep out of George Floyd’s bones. There were nine of them. Nine minutes. Two of them were probably a waste of time. At seven minutes George was already beyond help.

As reports of George’s death began to surface, sorrow turned to rage. And rage turned to helplessness. It happened again. We couldn’t stop it. That portion of our nation who feels these things sat back and cried. Some of us did it in public, in front of the cameras, as we tried to grapple with emotions so out of control we couldn’t put words to them.

We watched as people who built their reputations on giving us the words that eased us, motivated us, energized us, fell apart before our eyes, reduced to weeping out of sheer frustration.

And Donald Trump, seeing us as pitiful, as vulnerable, as easy marks, grabbed at the chance to twist the knife and make it worse. The president-in-name-only didn’t rise to help a nation get through this, didn’t give the speech that would comfort or settle us or make us believe justice would be served. No, he took to Twitter and instigated. He teased, he taunted, he threatened. (“When looting starts, the shooting starts.”)

Inevitably, the outrage took over and the protests devolved to riots in the streets across the country. Stores looted and burned. Some would say emotions blew it all up; others saw it as rank opportunism. Whatever it was, fire lit the skies, entire buildings were reduced to rubble, and we were left to feel. What the hell is happening?

After a few days we were back to protesting for the right reasons — because George Floyd was dead and because black lives have to matter. Thousands of us marched peacefully, without incident, and the rest of us, watching from home, rejoiced at the numbers, at our unity, our solidarity, our humanity.

But Donald Trump wasn’t done with us. He spent the riot days hiding in a bunker beneath the White House. We got wind of it and we let off some steam by making fun of him. So he put on his “I’ll show them” face and upstaged us by marching a few hundred yards, in broad daylight, looking for all the world like a tinpot dictator, a coterie of sycophants marching a few steps behind him, along a route lined with armed guards, to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where rioters had done some damage, and where he then stood, unannounced (and unwelcome, it turns out), muttered a few unintelligible words, held a bible over his head, and walked back to the White House.

AFP/Brendan Smialowski

                                       

It took maybe 20 minutes, but in order for Trump to make that walk, the crowds lining that street had to first be dispersed. Nobody knew it was coming. Suddenly the police came from out of nowhere and began forcing the crowds away, pushing, shoving, spraying them with tear gas, spattering them with rubber bullets.

Those of us watching in real time at home were horrified. It made no sense. They were more than a half hour from curfew. They were protesting peaceably. They had the right to be there. And uniformed men in riot gear came at them as if they were mad, snarling dogs.

Our hearts were in our throats. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Was this it then? Was this the battle we’d long been afraid of? Would we now be fighting for our very lives?

No. It was just that Donald Trump wanted to make a show of walking those few yards because we made fun of him hiding in a bunker and because a damaged church made the perfect backdrop for his phony piety in these times of crisis.

Or something.

And we come away from this scared, confused, exhausted, wondering how many times we can go through this without just coming apart or just giving up. Knowing that’s what they want. They want us to come apart. They want us to give up.

And we can’t. When our emotions get the best of us we have to stop a moment and rewind. We owe it to ourselves. But quit? Can we? You know we can’t. Because this is who we are. And that’s who they are. And it’s either us or them.

(Cross-posted at Medium)

Let Democrats Be Democrats: It’s not chaos, it’s Democracy

We've just come away from the sham impeachment trial of Donald J.  Trump.  Everything we predicted about the trial once it got to the Senate has come true. All but one Republican (Mitt Romney) overlooked every crime, every attack on the constitution and the rule of law, and gave Trump yet another free pass.

The Democrats put up a good fight--often a brilliant fight--but it wasn't good enough. The fix was in even before they entered the room and, predictably, they lost. That will be the takeaway. The Democrats lost.

The Iowa Caucuses happened. Big screw-up and it took weeks to get the results. The takeaway: Who lost in Iowa? The Democrats. Of course. If they can't even get their act together in Iowa, blah blah blah.

The circus came to town at the House of Representatives as the Clown-in Charge performed Politics Porn before a captive audience in what was billed as a State of the Union speech. It was, as expected, a campaign speech, an "Impeachment, hell" speech, a pack of provable lies. Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Medal of Freedom during that hour and a half. RUSH LIMBAUGH. When it was over, Nancy Pelosi, the Mom-in-Charge whose House the clown had just trashed, tore up his speech in a display of total disgust. And who was attacked the next day? Nancy Pelosi. The Democrat.

The New Hampshire primary came and went and the press fell all over themselves deciding which of the Democrats no longer had a chance. (All of them except Sanders and Buttigieg. Show's over, folks. Exit at the rear.)  Never mind that actual party members might have other ideas.

The mainstream punditry has a nasty habit of talking down to Democrats, treating us like underdogs while openly admiring the bullies who hold all the power.The media narrative has to change and it's not on the Democrats to do that. It's on the media.

I am a Democrat, capital D. My loyalty goes way back, long before I could cast my first presidential vote — for JFK, when I was 23. I remember cheering in somebody’s living room when Truman won over Dewey in 1948. I remember crying in my classroom when the teacher announced the news that FDR, our beloved president, had died. I’ve lived my entire life as a Democrat.

I love my party, warts and all. Through thick and thin. Just as I love my country. Warts and all. Through thick and thin. My loyalty demands that I endorse and support both my party and my country. We’re in crisis now. What would it make me if, after all we’ve been through together, this was the moment I chose to abandon either one?

I can’t. And I won’t.

We Democrats have always prided ourselves on our diversity. We ought to think it’s funny that people think we should be anything but what we are. Instead, we’re guilty of the worst case of inferiority complex the world has ever seen.

I use that word “guilty” advisedly, since we tend to want to latch onto it every chance we get, but if we’re guilty of anything it’s that we tend to half-believe every rotten accusation against us, no matter how outlandish.

When Will Rogers said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat”, it wasn’t an insult, it was a compliment. And when he said, “Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they’d be Republicans”, I took that to mean, “The Republicans are sheep.”

The Democrats are a Big Tent party, more inclined to accept our differences than to shun them. Democrats in public offices across the country are out there working for the disadvantaged, the disabled, the disenfranchised. We have to work harder to protect them now, because too many people have bought into the Republican/Right Wing lie that the simple act of pulling up imaginary bootstraps is the answer to everything.

It isn’t, of course. Everybody needs a helping hand, even those people who pretend they actually have bootstraps — or even know what they are.

We’re inclusive and we’re proud of it. Our very brand is inclusivity — we invented the damn Melting Pot — but we’re not fools. Try to imagine the Democratic Party embracing Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Steve Mnuchin, Brett Cavanaugh, Betsy DeVos, Mitch McConnell, Jared Kushner, Donald Jr., Eric, or Ivanka Trump, and putting any of them in positions of power over our people and our country. 

We’re in the fight for our lives this year and only the Democrats can save us. That’s a fact.

“The Democrats” are members of the Democratic Party. That’s a fact.

If you detest everything about the Democratic Party, that’s not just your problem, that’s our problem. You make it harder for the Democrats to win in November, and the Democrats have to win in November. That’s a fact.

So who are the candidates who have the best chance of helping the down-ballot Democratic candidates needing to win in the House, the Senate, and in state, county, city, and village races? They’re the candidates who already work to get the job done. The candidates with the best track records for working consistently to bring equality, equity, and good government to the people, and who do it from within the Democratic Party.

Of the party candidates left, only Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar have the experience, the know-how, and the willingness to keep the party strong enough to withstand the dirty fighting ahead. They can do it without mobs or popularity contests. They can do it by being healers and fixers — and their experience shows they can do it. (Yes, I'm aware that I left Bernie Sanders out. even though he has experience. I wish with  all my might that Bernie would stop trying to divide my party. Until he does I don't consider him a Democrat.)

The GOP will pull out all the stops to keep Trump in the White House — and themselves in the catbird seats. Their attacks are specifically against Democrats. And the Democrats have to win.

We lost some good fighters when Democrats like Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke and Eric Swalwell were forced to drop out. We could have had Sherrod Brown and Stacey Abrams in the race if we had given them the encouragement and the funding they needed. We should have worked harder for them. Every one of them deserved it.

But we still have a chance if we ignore the noise from within and without, if we remember who we were and who we are, and if we rise up as a party — as the Democratic Party — to take the enemy down.

Because the enemy isn’t us. It’s them. 

A Government Of the Women, By the Women, For the People

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

I want women in the highest offices in the land. It’s long past time.

Note: When I started this essay, Kamala Harris was still one of the three candidates figuring into my story about wanting a woman in the White House. Now I have to revise this, because yesterday afternoon word came that she was dropping out. The money just wasn’t there. She might have had the support but without the money she couldn’t go on. (Meanwhile, two male billionaires will be able to stay in as long as they want, never mind that neither of them has a chance in hell of winning the nomination.To say our election process is kerflooey is an understatement.)

So instead of the three women I thought I could highlight, I’m now down to two. But I’ll go on:

Until now I’ve been on the fence about Democratic presidential candidates, but a couple of nights ago, in the wee hours, it came to me that what I really want is for a woman to win. I’m down now to either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar.

I want a woman in the White House, I want female majorities in the House, in the Senate, and, if we could ever pull it off, in the Supreme Court. I want those women to be Democrats, but I’d give Independents a hard look. I can’t think of a single female Republican I would trust with those jobs, and if that sounds harsh, too bad. They’ve brought it on themselves.

But back to my two:

Photo: Kathleen Gilligan — Detroit Free Press

Both women are smart, qualified, and are working on plans as we speak. Neither of them are novices. They’re seasoned politicos who know the system. They might look for compromise, even when compromise is seen as weak and namby-pamby (and kind of girly), but they’re both strong enough (and seasoned enough) to see past the BS and get what they want.

They’d both work well with Nancy Pelosi.

They’re tough cookies you never have to be afraid of — unless you’re on the other side. Their own unique assets are their weapons, but they never have to hit below the belt. They’re not hiding anything. They don’t think they’re God’s gift to humankind.

They’re not men.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is from academia and is smart about a whole lot of things, but her strongest asset is that Wall Street sees her as their most formidable enemy. They’ll do everything they can to make sure she doesn’t win because they know she’ll be working even harder to take away their power. They’ve had run-ins with her before. A sorry spectacle.

She exudes a kind of scholarly wisdom, but in a way that’s sort of down-home friendly. She doesn’t brag, she doesn’t talk down, she gets up close and personal. She’s savvy enough to to know how to get under Trump’s skin, and she’ll always come out on top. When he resorts to silly name-calling, she’ll resort to plain facts. And she won’t let up. She won’t back down.

Amy Klobuchar is a rock-solid Midwesterner with a blue-collar background. She’s a former prosecutor and a senator who announced her campaign entry while standing outside in a raging blizzard. She’s no white-bread sissy, so you can get that out of your head. I wrote about Amy a while back — musing about my own need for her kind of strength and comfort — and she’s still growing on me. I could see her dealing with our adversaries, both at home and abroad, and coming out smiling. Nothing seems to trigger her. She’s unflappable.

And now a word about Kamala Harris. I’m sorry she had to drop out. I know her campaign had problems, and maybe she didn’t strike that chord — whatever that chord is — but there’s no doubt she could have done the job. If she had won the primary I would have worked hard for her. She would have brought a refreshing take-no-prisoners toughness to the White House while caring deeply for children and the underclass. But she’s still a senator and a damned good one. Her time will come. I have no doubt.

I want a woman to be president in 2020. My choices now are either Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar. I don’t care about their histories, their ancestry, their flaws, or their “likability”. I care about their hearts, their minds, their vision, and their ability to do the job.

I know for a fact that each of them would choose cabinets reflecting the needs of a country battered and exhausted by an authoritarian regime bent on creating America’s first dictator. When Donald Trump is gone, when the Republican cowards who enabled him are gone, I want a leader who can start the healing process and bring us back to that place where we don’t have to hide in shame. I want a leader who is a government insider who understands the constitution and the rule of law. I want a leader who sees no problem with nurturing the sick, the poor, and the miserable. I want the next president to be a woman.

We formed the presidency in 1787. That’s 232 years without a single woman as president. It’s time. It’s long past time. And if it doesn’t happen in 2020, it’ll be because of a concerted effort to makes sure it’s always men in charge. It won’t be because the female candidate wasn’t worthy. That’s not going to wash this time.

(My apologies to Julián Castro. If it wasn’t for my very real need for a woman in the White House this time, you would be right up there on the list. I really am sorry. You’re one of the good guys and it’s a shame, but even you have to admit a country having been established for more than two centuries without once electing a female president is really pretty ridiculous.)

(Update: Michigan's primary is on March 10. I've cast my absentee ballot for Elizabeth Warren.)

I Would Make a Better President Than Donald Trump

Man, that guy in the White House is quite the amateur, isn’t he? What a screw-up! Hire professionals, I always say, especially when the job is the absolute highest in the whole damn land.

But if you just can’t bring yourself to trust a seasoned, professional politician, next time try me.

First off, if I came to the White House through some fluke (which is how it would have to be), I would know, without anyone having to tell me, that I was an amateur. I would be looking to the experts even before I went out into the Rose Garden to congratulate myself for getting to that place women hardly ever even dream of anymore.

I would admit that, at 82, I may be missing a few marbles, but not to worry — my BS-Meter is still working overtime. I would take a few questions, and if I didn’t know the answer, I would say, truthfully, “I don’t know.”

I’m not good at small talk or bullshitting but I would make a few jokes, just to get the press corps laughing again. (Because, lord knows…) They would be self -deprecating, but not so awful that I look really bad. Then, when someone gave me the secret signal to wrap things up, I would toddle off, waving, promising it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life…

Right after lunch (in the White House!!!) I would call my cabinet together and we would get to work. My cabinet would be mostly made up of experts in their field, but might include both Jon Stewart and George Takei. That’s still up in the air, but I feel like I’ll need them.

I would take my cue from FDR and hire people who wouldn’t shrink from the words “constitution” or “common good” as if they were inscribed on wooden stakes aimed directly at their hearts.

If I didn’t understand them, I would say, “I don’t understand. Can you talk down to me, please?”, and they would, because, as I’ve said, I know nothing.

I would leave the big money talk to the experts, and if they couldn’t agree among themselves, I would call in Robert Reich to settle the matter.

I would ask Rachel Maddow to become my Chief of Staff, and anything else she wanted to be.

I would hire Lawrence O’Donnell to be my speech writer.

Dan Rather would be in charge of Communications.

We would reinstate the press briefings and Connie Schultz would be Press Secretary. Jim Acosta and April Ryan would get reserved front row seats.

I would make Chelsea Clinton our Good Will Ambassador.

I would ask Christiane Amanpour to be my Secretary of State.

Merrick Garland would be Attorney General.

The Secretary of Education would be a public school educator.

The Secretary of the Interior would be an environmentalist.

The Secretary of Commerce would send shivers through big business.

I would beg Dolores Huerta to be my Secretary of Labor.

Malcolm Nance would head Homeland Security.

I would put Beto O’Rourke in charge of gun control.

I would reopen every closed Planned Parenthood clinic and make plans to open more.

Jacob Soboroff would take over the investigation into the refugee crisis on the border. Heads would roll down there until those families are reunited.

I would create a Citizen’s Committee on Congressional Oversight and put Maya Wiley in charge of it.

I would make few demands, but one of them would be that Ruth Bader Ginsburg must live forever.

And lastly, I would never, ever do anything to make Nancy Pelosi mad at me.

(Did I forget to say Maxine Waters would be my Vice President?)

So now that you’ve seen my hypotheticals, I hope you’ll think about them. Think hard. But don’t, whatever you do, write me in as a candidate! I mean it! Don’t do it! Don’t you dare write in R-a-m-o-n-a G-r-i-g-g.


(Cross-posted at Medium/Indelible Ink.)

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Please Note: There is no comment section until I can figure out what went wrong. If you would like to comment, you can do it at the cross-posted link or write me at ramonasvoices@gmail.com. Thanks.

The President’s Mission: Let Him Entertain You

Trump loves schlock, shock, and chaos, especially when the theater is on fire.

Image: Reuters

Remember that day in mid-June, 2015, when Donald Trump rode his golden escalator down into the depths, digging deep into a Chaplinesque version of Benito Mussolini as he announced he was going to run for president and not only save a dying America but build a great wall and make Mexico pay for it ? Remember how we laughed? 

I wasn’t the only one who saw his imperious ride down the escalator as tongue-in-cheek performance art, a bid to push that crazy idea he’d been tossing around for years — a run for the presidency — and,what the hell, give it another shot. He drew the cameras and the crowds, and his addiction for attention got the hit of all hits.

Remember his nonsensical attacks on President Obama, pretending he had proof Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii but in Africa, where Trump’s agents were already scouring the countryside, talking to people who, he said, swore they remembered his birth, swore they saw the future president in swaddling clothes? Remember when he promised to reveal all? Soon?

He knew he had nothing. WE knew he had nothing. But he got the attention he craved and he rewarded us by giving us something to talk about.

Getting attention is everything to Donald Trump. He craves attention and it’s an addiction that consumes him. He ran for president, not because he and he alone had to chops to get the job done, but because he craves attention. (It’s clear he never expected to win. It was never his intention.)

When he saw he would be just one of 12 other candidates on the debate stage, he knew he couldn’t compete politically so he chose to do the thing he does best: He went all entertainer. He built an act around teasing and tormenting his fellow candidates. He called them silly names. He made airy promises that nobody in their right mind believed. When he wasn’t painting the government as weak and inept, he was sloshing bright red MAGA paint all over a government he portrayed as dark and sinister.

People — even those who saw right through him — sat up and took notice. The press loved him. The deplorables loved him. And he loved that he finally found something that would make them love him.

Nothing excites Trump’s Vaudevillian brain more than a rapt audience. So to that eternal question, “Is he serious?” — no, he’s not serious. This is what he lives for.

When he uses the words “beautiful” and “fun” in totally inappropriate sentences, (“Kim Jong Un writes me the most beautiful letters”. “Are you having fun? This is fun. Right?”)he wants us to be entertained. It keeps us from looking beyond his carefully built caricature to see how ugly his ugly side really is.

But he’s a weak man, a pretender, and he can’t go on hiding his weaknesses behind a clown face forever. He is not a president. He’s not even a comic example of a president. He’s a menace because he isn’t serious, and he isn’t serious because that would require studying and contemplation — two things this president works overtime avoiding.

His only function is to keep the Trump legend alive. We knew before he was president that he’d go to any lengths to promote himself. We knew, for example, that he became “John Barron” and sometimes “David Dennison”, pretending to be his own press agent. We heard the tapes of his phone calls and recognized not just his voice but his distinctive speech patterns. We knew it was him. He denies it.

We knew he was dishonest and corrupt and given to fits of red hot revenge, but if we thought we could shame him by exposing him, we learned early on it was a lost cause. He feels no shame, no remorse, no regret, no guilt. Any human feelings were long ago replaced by his need to build the character he plays into someone the world would see as heroic.

We’ve suspected there’s something more — that he’s not all there —but we keep waiting for the constitutional checks and balances to kick in. It stops being funny when this president uses his formidable powers to attack and destroy at will, and counts on his popularity to keep the madness going.

Under his watch real people, including refugee families held at the border and often separated from their children, are suffering in ways so horrific we want not to believe it.

Under his watch the economic and military experts, the scientists, the teachers — the country’s caretakers — have been labeled inept and rendered useless.

Under his watch our infrastructure and our safety nets are disappearing.

Under his watch thousands of brown-skinned hurricane victims have been left to die.

We’re in deep trouble, but in order for Trump to keep it from seeming as impossibly awful as it is, he has learned to go for the giggle. How bad can he be if he can make people laugh?

So when he says he wants to buy Greenland, or be president forever, or maybe even be God’s chosen one, he anticipates the deliciously satisfying fuss and he can forget for that moment that he may someday be indicted for various criminal activities, that history will not be kind to him, that the stage lights will dim and the crowds will disappear and he’ll go back to being that Donald Trump that nobody liked, that Donald Trump that everyone saw as a joke.

It’s those last laughs that will finally get him.

. . . 

(Cross-posted at Indelible Ink) 

Political PTSD is Real. I'm Living Proof

It has come to this: I can no longer call myself a writer. Trump has broken me down. I'm a basket case trying to follow the illogical, the stupid, the crazy, the nonsensical, the sheer volume of lies and strutting and demagoging and denying and. . .

I can't do it. I can't. For months now I've been reduced to 280 character bleatings on Twitter--when I'm not annoying my friends and family all to hell with my spitting and sputtering and useless hollering, trying to explain how I'm FEELING throughout all of this.

You want to know how I'm feeling? (I know you didn't ask and you're just here because you saw that title and you're curious, but this is about ME now. Okay? And yes, I used ellipses separated by spaces in that first paragraph. Stop the damn judging!)

Well get in line, because I don't know how I'm feeling and until I do, anything I write here is gibberish, likely to change as the seconds change on that clock on the wall mocking me for wasting so much time trying to make sense of feelings when any feelings of a powerless old liberal woman are laughable in this new America whizzing along, leaving me so far behind I might as well be a speck on the horizon, a dust mote, a dot at the end of a sentence nobody wants to read.

Did that sound like I'm feeling sorry for myself?  Damn right I am. When I started this thing 10 years ago I thought you people would listen to me. I thought if I put words into somewhat complete sentences that didn't always suck at punctuation and grammar you would pay attention. I thought I had something to say.

I did have something to say but it turns out Donald Trump was elected anyway. I was on the side that lost the battle and I hate that. Anything I've written since then has been in protest to Donald Trump. A total waste of time. He's still president, and I'm still sitting here wondering where I went wrong. Why couldn't I make a difference?  Was it something I said? Or didn't say?

So now you're thinking, who the hell does she think she is? Nobody could make a difference. Not Eugene Robinson, not Sarah Kendzior, Not Steve Schmidt, not Robert Reich, not Elizabeth Warren, not Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, not Rachel Maddow, not any of those other people whose names escape me right now, since I'm in the throes of a PTSD flare-up. Fill in the blanks. There were literally hundreds of voices out there warning against a Trump presidency, using the American language for all it's worth--smart, elegant, forceful, jeering, demanding, begging. Using facts as cudgels, as swords, as bright beams of light--all for nothing.

Now we're in the midst of a government shutdown, in effect for over a month, and real people are in real pain, trying to stay safe while the monster is still at large, still out there breathing fire, still creating such chaos nobody knows what to do.

And that's the least of what's happened over the past two years. They tore kids from their parents' arms and put them in cages. They "lost" some of them. They're sending people back to countries where their deaths are inevitable. We're on the verge of forgetting that. That's how bad things are.

It's as if we're at that point in a horror novel where the village is under attack and everybody is still at the hand-wringing stage. They're all yelling, getting out their torches and pitchforks, but nobody has a real plan.

 He's out there breathing fire and nobody has a plan.

Because they've never seen anything like it and they didn't prepare for this. And on top of everything else, they have to fight those few crazy citizens who think the monster is a good guy and everyone else is over-reacting.

 If this were fiction, this is where it would start to get interesting.

 So okay, that's it then. Gotta go. I'm scaring myself again. And besides that, I'm not a writer anymore.


(Cross-posted at Medium, where you can clap as many times as you want. So please clap. Thank you.)

Hello Civility, Goodbye Rage

I'm sick to death of having to see, hear, and worry about Donald Trump.  I'm sick of having to wonder how we got here, living in a country where a ludicrous, ignorant madman is in power, where the party in power is turning a blind eye, and where midterm elections are only days away and we're still not sure the good guys will win.

We're living through times so crazy we couldn't even imagine them three short years ago. We were different people before Trump crashed through seemingly impenetrable barriers to get to the White House. We were nicer. Now even the best of us have become loud-mouthed name-callers. We use F-bombs and C-words as safety valves. We look to settle arguments by twisting knives in already gaping wounds. We work hard at it, to the point of neglecting real issues.

 We spend hours on Facebook and Twitter savoring the need to turn the air blue. We can't get through the day without using CAPS and exclamations (!!!!!!), posting links and memes intended to satisfy our rage--as if that's even possible.

We gladly follow people whose strength lies in clever insults, expressing the kind of vitriol we say we're working against. When they insult fellow followers who dare to disagree with them we give them a pass, hoping against hope we never say anything they might take wrong. (You know who you are, Twitter denizens.)

I don't want that anymore. I don't want to do it anymore. (Because, yes, I have.) I want to be among people who fight for decency by being civil. I want to go back to being strong without being cruel. There's enough cruelty out there without it stinking up my own circles.

On both Facebook and Twitter, I'm dropping or blocking people who use rage as their only tool. I don't want to be around them anymore. Rage is contagious, it's exhausting, it's meaningless in the long run.

Rage is a catalyst. It's never a solution.

I'm not going to drop either Facebook or Twitter. Wouldn't think of it. In times when we need more than smoke signals to get to the truth, both sites become useful war rooms.

But I'm tired of fighting the good fight through muck and mire. Starting today, I'm looking for civil warriors. No name-callers, no body-shamers, no sniffy moralists with axes to grind.

I'll see how it goes.

Kavanaugh Didn't Have to Happen

I'm sickened by the vote to make Brett Kavanaugh the new Supreme Court justice. I know you are, too. The Republicans clinched it, and they want us to know there is no action, no protest strong enough against them. We can't win. They hold all the power and they're looking for more.

Nothing humanly possible can stop them when they're on a mission. They own us. Lock, stock, and barrel. The thought of making us miserable comforts them.

Millions of people protested this vote. Thousands of lawyers warned against it. Twenty four hundred law professors warned against him. An ex-Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens, warned against him, citing Kavanaugh's temperament, if nothing else. Judges, senators, representatives, governors, mayors, women's groups, the ACLU, dozens of newspaper editorial pages--all begged the Senate to vote no on Kavanaugh.

Every Republican in the Senate gave them no heed, including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jeff Flake, who all pretended it was a decision most wrenching for them. In the end, two of the three did what they were always going to do--they gave him their vote. Murkowski voted "present" in order to protect the "yes" vote of an absent Senator.  They weren't cowards, they were collaborators.

In doing their dirty work, they twisted the knife already long embedded into Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford's gut by publicly scolding her for causing so much trouble.

In the end, with no proof of his innocence, with still unchallenged money problems, with only a handful of requested documents provided to the Democrats, with hair-raising real-time public rages, with biases against anyone not leaning to the Right, all while waving his entitlement like a huge red flag, the Republicans, to a person, opted to push through Brett Kavanaugh.

He lied under oath, behaved like a child, battered the committee with preppie privilege, and snarled at anyone who asked him something he didn't want to answer. And none of it mattered.

Trump got to put through TWO Supreme Court justices, one of whom was clearly unfit and unqualified, the other one almost sure to go along with killing off Roe v Wade.

So, yes, I'm going there, and to hell with anyone who feels offended: None of this would have happened if Hillary Clinton were President. None of this would have happened it the Democrats had taken hold of Congress. The Republicans are gloating while we, their opposition, are pained and embarrassed and scared.

Terrified children separated from their parents wouldn't be crying in cages.

Insidious Russian influence would have been nipped in the bud.

The vicious Religious Right would be mere voices in the wilderness.

We would be kinder, gentler, more inclined to work on essentials like health, welfare, foreign relations, and infrastructure.

Corruption in our government wouldn't be rampant.

And Donald Trump would go on being a buffoon, but without an ounce of power.

This is wrong. So wrong. Everything about Trump's regime is wrong, but our fight against him gets us nowhere.

We'll have a chance at fixing some of this in November. All that's required of us is to vote.

We have to vote Democratic.

If you just can't do it, and the Republicans win again, they won't thank you. When they're done with you, you'll be right back where you were before. Or worse.

Right back with the rest of us.

And we won't be happy to see you.

If you're still not convinced, take a look at this message from our "president":

This is what absolute power without care or conscience looks like. We have the power to change this.  It starts in the voting booth. Vote as if this is our last chance.  It just might be.

(Cross-posted at Crooks & Liars)

The Culture of Rape is over. Get The Hell Out of Our Way

I'll make this short and to the point: If you're a man and you've ever tried to undress a woman when she didn't want you to, if you've ever forced her legs apart, manhandled her, scared her into submission, tried to shame or coerce her into having sex with you--if you've ever used force to get your way?  You're either a rapist who succeeded or a rapist who failed.

The Department of Justice describes rape this way:

“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” 

We're now, thankfully, coming into an age where women can feel safe coming forward with their stories. For centuries, that hasn't been the case. In certain countries, even in modern times, rape is used as punishment or retribution. It's because rape is an abomination. The worst kind of violation. The thing every woman fears.

Rape is a violation, and so is attempted rape. If it has never happened to you, you can't even begin to understand the trauma it causes. You don't need to understand it. You only need to accept it.

If you caused it, own it. No matter how long it takes, no matter when it happened--own it. You did this. You.

We're talking about this now because we just came off of a Senate hearing where Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's candidate for Supreme Court justice, was called on to respond to attempted rape accusations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. The incident happened more than 30 years ago, when both of them were teenagers.  Kavanaugh, now a circuit court judge, says it didn't happen. Dr. Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, says it's seared into her brain and she'll never forget it.

The description of that assault is excruciating. Imagine sitting before millions of people having to tell that story, knowing before you even begin that viewers by the millions--including half the committee before you--all of them men--likely won't believe you.

Then remember that there are millions of other women who know that, too--that they won't be believed, that they'll be told to get over it--and will feel safer keeping their secrets to themselves. It'll haunt them forever but that's the price they'll pay not to have to be shamed again. And the worst of it? The person who did this to them will go free.  No guilt, no shame. It'll be as if it never happened.

There's a long-standing culture that says men should be able to satisfy their sexual needs. Women are there to do that. Sometimes they have to be "convinced". The male sex drive is strong, so when it gets out of hand we can't blame them. (The dark side of this is that when women are willing sex players they're considered whores and sluts. Boys and men have more respect for the females who fight them off than they do for the females who enjoy sex as much as they do.)

Cultures change and now this one must, too. If you're a man working to keep women in the place you've designated for them, we're coming after you. You will not be safe from us. Women are rising up, working to eradicate abuse and the ensuing shame. The blowback--as expected--is going to be fierce.

We're ready.

Now get the hell out of our way.


Cross-posted at Medium and Crooks & Liars

America's Fault Lines: How Trump Thrives

I haven't written here for a long time, but it's not my fault.

Somebody's to blame and I'm going to find out who it is.
 
I'll check on it and get back to you.  I promise.

So, we're good?  Okay, moving on:

Donald Trump is president of the United States (I know!) and the reason he's president is because  nobody in the entire country cared about the little people left behind when the gazillionaires took over until the billionaire with bigly ideas came along.

We might have had Hillary as president! Think of that! Thank goodness for those emails! Nobody liked her, anyway.

More than a year and a half in, Trump is still president but it's okay because the Democrats are wusses and it's a tough world out there. Nobody likes them, anyway.

Trump is a congenital liar and a verifiable weirdo but a whole bunch of Americans seem to like that in a president. It can't be them. It must be us.

Vladimir Putin might be pulling Trump's strings but Obamacare is dead in the water and poor people won't be allowed to game the system, so that's something. Right?

They're separating refugee families, kidnapping their kids, losing them and adopting them out, but it has to be done to send a message that asylum in America is not available to brown people.

We have to put up with Trump and his regime because if we don't we might be stuck with judges who just don't get it that atheists, non-Christians, gays, blacks, browns, blues, women, poor people, sick people, and all-around non-Republicans don't have a place here, either.

The stock market is up! We're doing great! Okay, maybe not you or me, but that guy over there is ecstatic. Well, no, of course he's not one of us, but look how happy he is!

The UN, NATO...those outsiders are sucking us dry! And how about that China, folks? North Korea? Venezuela? Iran? England? France? And now CANADA! It's a good thing Trump came along when he did. You have to admit, nobody handles those foreigners like our guy.

Big guns, massacres, and the NRA. It's America. We have a right to shoot ourselves up, no matter what the second Amendment says about well-regulated militias or some such.

Flint, Puerto Rico, New Jersey? Terrible what happened to them but can they quit whining? After all we've done for them?

Lots of people are writing bad things about Trump and his administration. Just awful.  Books, articles, essays, blogs...all against the president the most like Lincoln on this earth. This man who has the best words and hires the best people and who alone can fix us. The American press--enemies of the people--can't stand his success.They're so jealous.

And then there's God. God has taken to shining His countenance upon Donald Trump. I'm having a hard time with this one, too, but the people saying it swear on their dog-eared bibles that that's what God has told them. So let me ask you--has God ever spoken to you like that? No? Me, neither. I rest their case.

But the kicker is abortion. Yes, lets just say it. It's the be-all, end-all perfect scapegoat and the thing that cements Donald Trump in his cushy digs inside our White House.  If we could just eradicate abortions we wouldn't be where we are right now.

But everybody loves the president. He's the most successful president ever.

EVER.

And if he's impeached it's the voters' fault for not voting to keep him safe from Democrats.

Democrats who, we all know, are wusses, snowflakes, losers, and getting meaner by the day.  Really, really crooked, those people.

The whole thing is silly. There's nothing wrong here. It'll be fine. It'll be better than fine. It'll be so great!

As Dear Leader says--and I quote: "Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

So in closing I'd just like to say I'm not responsible for anything you've just read here. The truth is, I hardly know this person. Met her once or twice. Maybe had my picture taken with her. But that's it.

(Cross-posted at Crooks & Liars and Medium)