With each week, Michigan looks more and more like a flip for Trump. That's a hole in the Blue Wall. If Biden loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, he loses the election (assuming he doesn't somehow take North Carolina). The lack of Democratic attention to college students and young people might finally cost them everything. It only takes a few upset defeats like this to ruin hundreds of millions of American lives. Assuming Trump squeaks out a victory, this would be the third time in 24 years that the winner of the popular vote -always a Democrat- loses the election. The sadness, despair and anger that we have felt since Trump took over the GOP in 2015 is going to become unbearable. How does everyone feel about the Democrats having a tiny majority in the House while Trump and the Senate pack our Federal courts to strengthen GOP minority rule? Won't it be fun? And all because the elders in the Democratic party thought it wasn't worth their time to listen to the needs to young people. Seriously. Leaders like Pelosi thought that young people would be a little upset about Gaza, but they'd get over it and vote in November. As unpopular as Biden is, I think young people would rescue him in November if there wasn't an invasion of Gaza. For now anyway, it appears Biden's embrace of Netanyahu's war crimes is the red line that causes millions of young people to abstain from voting this November. Biden barely had re-election in the bag! Now I am not sure.
Democrats
Democrats Petrified To Do Anything Good
It’s 2023, and Democrats are out of gas, out of ideas, and just hoping that voters don’t give Donald Trump another chance to destroy the republic. You know, it’s all they can do! They are firing of all cylinders! They are working SO HARD to save the USA.
Seriously, though. Democrats spend more time and energy fighting their left wing than dealing with their two rogue Senators who were responsible for stopping Biden’s domestic agenda dead in its tracks.
This is our party. It sucks. And the senior citizens who run it are terrible.
Follow Through And Expel Every Democrat
Why stop at the young black representatives? The Tennessee House has set a new prescient. If they can expel representatives they disagree with, then why not expel every Democrat? They can continuously expel Democrats as they are replaced. Just turn the Tennessee house floor into a never-ending expulsion ceremony. The egg has been cracked. Expel all the Democrats! It’s what the GOP wants to do, right?
While we’re at it, let’s toss out the medicine. All of it.
As we are seeing this week, the GOP is keen to set new precedents almost every day. They want to ban common, safe medications. Signaling a desire to effectively ban abortion nationwide by taking mifepristone off the market, the GOP is desperately trying to set a new precedent that any medication can be criminalized. So do it! Ban other life-saving medications. Start with insulin. Block the sale of chemotherapy drugs. Stop the sale of vaccines. The egg has been cracked. Ban all the meds!
And they want to prevent medications from being mailed to people. They are testing a dormant ‘zombie law,’ the Comstock Act, to see if it can prevent the shipment of drugs directly to consumers. It will likely fail, but it shows just how committed the GOP is to ruining everything for everyone.
And what’s the reason again? We made a black man president in 2009? We now respect queer people? We acknowledge that women and brown people have some rights? The GOP is waging a violent war against modernity and is taking down the nation with them.
All of this. All of these authoritarian actions by the GOP, are destabilizing our republic. It’s falling apart. The GOP, unable to win a national election, has decided to burn the Republic down and give their rich sponsors and friends an opportunity to plunder for a couple more generations while it burns.
It's The 2020s: Time For Progressives To Go On The Offensive
This is part two of a quick two-part post. It’s about the short term political future of the US in the turbulent, depressing 2020s.
I’m going to keep this brief, as books have been written about how the left should fight back against states pulling right. The solution is to go left. Pull back left. Do not ever surrender.
Okay, but how? While never easy, the strategy is to cut off Democrats that are furthest to the right. If progressives had their way. Democrats like Richie Torres, Henry Cuellar, Adriano Espaillat and Ed Case would be upset by progressives. The needle for the Democratic caucus would edge left, in-step with the culture. The Democratic policymakers who don’t care about women’s rights, or the environmental catastrophe or freedom-destroying red states would be purged from the party.
Locally, progressives need to pull left. Codify abortion rights. Get those marijuana decriminalization laws passed. Raise the state minimum wage. Tax the rich a little more. Make your good state better.
Run for office. Policies will not write themselves. We need progressives to win seats, no matter how minor. Get that school board chair. Get on the city council. Oust that cranky old mayor. Quit your job and run for office. You job sucks anyway and you can probably go back to the private workforce if you have a decent political career.
Policies will beat back the Right. Pointing out their hypocrisy does not work. Shaming them does not work. They don’t give a shit about your feelings, your opinions or your tweets. Get into office and get to work on policy.
Outsmart them. And out-policy them in the halls of government.
They are the minority party. We are the majority party. Let’s act like it.
Roe Is Dead. And So Is The United States.
The mess that the overturn of Roe has caused will last decades. I'm reading opinions that states that ban abortion might sue New York and California for luring thier women to commit "criminal acts" (which we good people call accessing medicine). How can a nation function if medicine in one state is "homicide" in another (Louisiana)?
Texas is going to assemble a challenge to Plyer v. Doe (1982) which could end the requirement for states to provide free education to all children regardless of nationality in grades 1-12, effectively closing all public schools in some states.
States will challenge Loving, Griswold and Obergefell. And soon states will pass laws banning all sex reassignment medicine and procedures.
And then there's the misoprostol pills, the next abortion front. Will states try to ban medications? Will they try to create their own DEA-like agencies? Will they sue drug makers to stop making pills they want to ban? Will they sue the US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and DHL for allowing banned medications to be sent into their state from outside states or overseas?
What other drugs will more than 20 states want to ban? Hormones? HIV treatments? How about vaccines?
This wouldn't happen, but what would stop this Roberts court from allowing a state to ban alcohol sales? It's a fair analogy because the Court just let states ban a major category of medical care. This isn't a mild difference in laws so some states allow gambling, fireworks and open alcohol containers. This is an extreme legal divide in which legitimate medicine obtained in New York is categorized as a felony by one or more states.
The civil suits will be endless. Lawyers are about to get decades of guaranteed extra cases that shouldn't exist in a functioning nation. We're a failed state. Any one of us could be entangled in a criminal or civil case involving us directly or indirectly. Plus, we're all going to fund our state's lawsuits and defenses. This nation is finished. Will 0.5% of our GDP be simply interstate civil suits clogging up our courts and our lives?
For the average American, the overturn of Roe should be a bigger story than Russia's invasion of Ukraine or even the investigation into Trump’s failed coup in late 2020 and early 2021. And given that Democrats would rather talk about fighting Russia in a proxy war than the looming loss of freedoms at home, it's quite telling how absolutely screwed we all are.
In fact, I think the overturn of Roe is the biggest development in the US since our invasion of Iraq. Easily, I think. One could even argue that the Dobbs decision is the most consequential bad Supreme Court decision since Ferguson (1896).
Red states are assembling agencies to spy on their citizens and to keep tabs on abortion providers in other states. Red states are putting together wish lists of what types of medicine they want to see banned. What's coming is horrifying. And no matter where you live, in any of our 50 states and 5 colonies, your life is going to become more difficult thanks to the overturn of Roe.
My argument is not an easy one to make, I admit. And I can't diminish other major US events in this century. We’ve had two stolen presidential elections (if we count George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration as a completion of a steal that occurred at the end of the year 2000), a ruling that corporations have rights like people, and a US president who chose a violent transfer of power over a peaceful one. But one could make the case that the overturn of Roe and the failed Trump coup are directly linked. The tyranny of GOP minority rule is evident in both. The attempt to keep Trump in power failed, but the full assault of the 14th Amendment is now on. We're about to live in a nation in which legitimate medicine administered in one state is a felony homicide in another. A nation with that kind of split simply cannot stand. We're a failed state.
The GOP signaled, way back in 1994, that they were going to govern by dismantling our society and removing all liberties and protections for the poor. They were going to inflict pain and suffering for the sake of it. Reagan started it, but didn't say it out loud. Newt said it out loud. By the time we got to Ted Cruz and Trump, they weren't just saying it out loud, but they were using macho and violent marketing to motivate their voters to vote for the destruction of the US.
The GOP project to overturn Roe has been mainly a patient, focused 29 year project, starting with Bush 41’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Court in 1991, over objections that he was under-qualified and a serial abuser of power in the workplace. Then his son, Bush 43, appointed John Roberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006. It is notable that Alito’s confirmation vote was the closest and most controversial since Thomas. The late, great Robert Byrd was one of only two Democrat's to vote in favor of Alito, who went on to be the most bitter and mean spirited Justice in Supreme Court history. Then Donald Trump traded a solid right-wing justice, the late Anton Scalia, with three Justices selected by the Heritage Foundation. The Supreme Court transitioned from a 5-4 center-left majority in 1990 (White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy) to a 6-3 right wing supermajority (Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) by 2020. This took incredible effort, hundreds of millions of dollars, and some good fortune as both Bush 43 and Trump failed to win the popular vote in their first presidential elections.
When a minority party is aggressively attacking the majority, and taking their rights away, the majority needs to aggressively to fight back. And in my book, some violence is now justified.
I'm not saying that I am going to conspire to kill Republicans. But if say, an armed left-wing mob stormed the Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, or Nebraska State House and killed every Republican lawmaker they could find, that would be justified at this point, because a small number of Republicans are threatening the lives of millions.
Too violent? Okay, how about long occupations of those statehouses, so legislative business could not be conducted? How about a national strike in which every labor union walked out for 14 days? The damage to the economy would be swift. Hit the old men in charge where it hurts - the markets and the GDP.
In my view, only a violent revolution can save the USA. And since that is not coming, I am casually preparing to flee the USA later in life. I don't want to die in an authoritarian or autocratic regime.
Uncle Tim contributed to this post.
The Biden Presidency Is Over
The original title of this post was “The last political cycle is repeating itself, only worse.” I wrote that in June 2021. Below is the aborted text of that post:
If Joe Biden was hoping for a bi-partisan epiphany from Moscow Mitch and Cowardly Kevin, he's delusional. The Republicans are replaying 2009 and 2010 when a Republican president left a hot mess for Obama and decided they would obstruct everything Barack needed to do to avoid a depression and begin extracting us from two unnecessary wars. And their plan worked. The stimulus needed to begin a robust recovery was far too small, and Republicans ran in 2010 on the lie that the Democrats were taking over health care and exploding the national debt.
In the 2010 off-year elections, the Democrats were crushed, losing control of the House of Representatives for the next 8 years, getting annihilated in state legislative races, allowing the Republicans to gerrymander dozens of Congressional seats, and giving Obama an obstructionist legislature for his final six years in office. Mitch and Kev intend to do it again. And this time, if they're successful, they stand ready to elect a right wing president in 2024, regardless of the outcome of the vote. A majority of House Republicans voted to overturn the presidential election in 2020. If they control the House and Senate in 2024, they will surely do it again. The Democrats had to have seen this coming. They did nothing to stop it.
Republicans want to win elections when they don't have enough voters. So logically, they want to take rights away. They want to make their rich friends richer. They want to destroy the regulation regime (EPA, CDC, FDA, IRS, Department of Education, OSHA, FEMA). They want to dismantle state gun regulations (as the Court will do to New York this summer). And when leftists complain, they say, "you're being hysterical. You're in power. You're exaggerating. That little rally in he Capitol was overblown. You're making it all up." Or in the case of overturning Roe, they say, "the Court is just sending the issue back to the states." That's what you call taking away liberty from women. That is gaslighting.
It is really happening. And while I might come across as a crazy person now, we shall see where the nation stands in 2025 when President Noem or DeSantis steals an election, and the next one. And then stacks the court 7-2 or even 9-0 to the right. Sotomayor looks ready to walk and Breyer won't live much longer.
Republicans are evil. Anyone who joins their side is in for some fun in online forums, "owning the libs," or encouraging their children to murder their classmates, but it will destroy the nation in the process. And that is the bottom line. Republicans would rather burn the nation down than share power with brown people and women. That is what we are seeing. The bros and their white supremacist allies are having their final stand. It's one last party for the bros who marked keggers in their calendars.
Joe Biden got his single Supreme Court pick. Joe Manchin will ensure he gets nothing more accomplished. The Biden presidency is finished.
The Virus Won
Democrats gave up fighting SARS-CoV-2. It is just the flu now. We are now being told that we have to live with it. Get back to work, Jack.
The Supreme Court saw the signs. They knew we were going to give up fighting the virus. And as an added bonus, they weakened the regulatory authority of OSHA.
The Spreme Court’s mission, under it’s right wing majority, is to dismantle Federal regulatory agencies. The regulatory state was created by the Democratic Party, with overwhelming popular support. The New Deal and the Second World War made the creation of such a state an obvious necessity. If they and the GOP succeed, as I think they will, the Federal government would fit comfortably within the confines of Calvin Coolidge's policy, circa 1925. He once said that if the U.S. government were to go out of existence, the average citizen would only miss the mail. For this backward Republican majority, the repeal of the twentieth century seems to be the goal. Regulation of capitalism, and the protections of civil liberties, would once again be left to the tender mercies of the states. For the white and rich, this might mean little. For the vast majority of the country, the results will be catastrophic, just as failure to snuff-out the pandemic has been catastrophic.
Uncle Tim contributed to this post.
This Is The Final Year Of The USA As A Barely-Functioning State
2022. This is the final year of my nation as a functioning state. Once the Republicans take over the House in 2023, we’re an autocracy.
Neil H. Buchannan is one of the best scholars to make this consistent argument. He says the US is a “dead democracy walking.”
I have no idea if New York City will become a center of resistance to the GOP, or will fall in-line with the GOP as it did after 9/11. I want the former. I fear the latter. American cable news will carry on, because all it really cares about is ratings.
But while we wait for the GOP autocracy to rise, let’s enjoy this final year of freedom and relative stability. And yeah, I say “stability” knowing that we are stuck in the middle of a pandemic that is currently killing 1,700 Americans each day. That’s what I consider to be “stability” these days.
I haven’t really felt national stability since Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. While I hate the Senate, it was rational 23 years ago. Now we brace for another impeachment trial in 2023, which will be the GOPs irrational retaliation for two very legitimate impeachments of Donald J. Trump.
Be safe. Halve a plan to adapt if things become seriously unstable. Don’t stop paying attention to what’s happening locally and in DC.
And don’t stop wearing masks. We’re still living in a pandemic.
Now The Democratic Party's Failure Is Complete
All I have done since 1992 is vote for Democrats, and yet the nation is becoming unstable and liberties are being taken away.
"Roe is under attack. The DNC needs your cash before midnight to meet its fundraising goal and protect our liberties!" That’s not an exact quote, but that's the shit I have seen in my USPS inbox and email inbox for the last 30 years.
My response has always been: “I voted for you. Now shut the fuck up and deliver while there’s time.”
The last best chance the Democrats had to delivering came in 2009. And we know how that went.
For the last five years, one of the constant things i have heard from the Democrats is that they are the decent party. They are respectful. They are polite. They go high. They are grammatically correct. They are so intimidated and threatened by the violent right wing, that they stopped writing policy and protecting fundamental liberties.
The Democrats have been successfully bullied by the GOP minority. And here we are.
The Democrats have had the White House and Congress twice since Roe (also the year of my birth) and they failed to codify it into Federal law. Simply asking the Democrats to have a unified platform was just being unfair and demanding. Shame on those New York City Democrats who could see the overturn of Roe coming from 30 years away.
Simply put, as is the theme of this blog, we are fucked. We have entered the late phase of the republic in which rights are being taken away. The right wing will be coming for our birth control, same sex marriage and freedom to travel out of state next. The 14th Amendment has been broken and the liberties made possibly by that amendment are now under attack.
Thanks Bill. Thanks Barack. Thanks Joe and Joe. Thank you. For nothing.
The Fact She's Elected Is Proof We're Doomed
Majorie Taylor-Greene. Why are we writing about her? Because we’re doomed, that’s why. I hate this bitch so much I can’t post her photo on this post.
The fact that she's a congressman and not working at a big box retail chain or Amazon fulfillment center is all the proof we need that this society and republic are doomed. She writes no laws. She doesn't govern. All she does is play act, pose, troll and distract. And in DC, she is far from alone. You wonder how empires crumble? Review US history since 1980.
For Dianne Feinstein, The Senate Is Just A Club
Marie Solis over at Jezebel said it best: Thanks for nothing, Dianne Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein has spent a long Senate career accomplishing astonishingly little for the people of California and the United States. Her conception of the job seems to be that a Senator's prime responsibility is to be collegial with her colleagues, and reassure them that disagreements needn't be handled disagreeably, and the feelings of Republicans mustn't be hurt. In that sense of the job, she's been a smashing success.
So she agreeably went along with George Bush's greatest brain fart, the war against the people of Iraq. And she helped guarantee that none of our brave, CIA heroes were called to account for the kidnappings and torture that characterized our "War on Terror ". Spying on the citizens of the United States? Wire taps, surveillance, arbitrary arrests of Muslims, the atrocities of Abu Graib, the stain of Guantanamo? None of these things ever interfered with Feinstein's goal of a happy and friendly Senate.
I hope this means that California's senior senator is not running for re-election in 2022. Dear Diane has done more than enough. It's past time she returns to the Golden State.
It Will Get Worse Again Soon
Joe Biden didn't beat Donald Trump. No, Donald Trump beat himself. His big mouth lost him Pennsylvania and Arizona. His refusal to be decent and kind set up his defeat years ago. I'm thrilled he sunk himself. But we have to acknowledge that his loss is all on him. He had this election almost in the bag. Turns out Americans didn't care about the recession or COVID-19! They were ready to give him a full pass! But he insulted the ghost of John McCain and insulted Pennsylvania. Cocky bastard.
We’re getting another Trump. Sooner than we think. And he or she will be more competent, charismatic, and get even more votes.
As much as I want to see Harris become president after Biden, we have to acknowledge that Trump’s base is huge. If there’s a slip in enthusiasm on the Democratic side, the GOP takes back the White House easily. Or worse, if the vote is close enough, the GOP will steal the election.
We need to build a movement to keep the Democrats in power. Threatening and shouting to move to the center is not going to get that done. Glorifying and worshipping militarized police and sheriffs departments is not going to get that done. Cheering on fossil fuels for another decade won’t do it either. Another catastrophe is coming in the form of a destructive, abusing Republican president, and this time, I won’t care as much. I’ll be in my 50s and I will be well past the point of giving a shit. Good luck, kids.
We're Still Doomed
The Democrats won. Joe Biden won. But they also lost. That means that the majority lost. We lost.
They cannot be the progressive party going forward. We need a new party. Do we have the will and the energy to make it happen?
The American news media speculated that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she was a woman. Well, she did much better than Joe Biden in Florida. Let’s give her credit. She might be the last Democratic presidential candidate to ever compete well in the Sunshine State.
I said this in 2017: I am done with American news media and the Democratic Party. This time I mean it. MSNBC is poison Kool Aid. If all you did was watch MSNBC since 2017, you’d be led to believe that Biden would win easily. Biden will win. But this win feels like a loss. The Democratic party is not a good opposition party, nor a good majority party. It’s weak. And the results show that.
The Democrats are terrible. US television news is awful (except for Vice News). This republic is finished.
And we’re drowning in plastic.
How Obama And The Democrats Failed Our Nation
The post will be a mess. I started writing this post in 2014. And then it sat.
Over six years later, it became clear that I had chosen a huge topic. I decided I need to finish it any way I can in the fall of 2020. The topic I’m trying to cover here can be spread out in a couple of books if it hasn’t been already. But here’s my pitch if I was writing a book: The election of Barack Obama was historic. It showed how voters prefer a candidate with charisma and positive energy. It showed how Hillary Clinton, a good policy writer and party leader, wasn’t comfortable and charismatic enough to easily win the 2008 Democratic nomination. But in the aftermath of Obama’s election, old “third way” and corporation-friendly habits continued to steer Democratic leaders, and that, unintentionally, weakened them as a party and set the stage for a Donald Trump victory in 2016. We saw clear signs around the time Hillary Clinton chose Tim Kaine as her running mate in the summer of 2016.
The Democrats tried to play nice with a Republican party that was becoming much angrier, more radical, more anti-science, and simply more irrational. While trying to stay in power by being nice, they failed to build a lasting movement around Obama. Had they convinced a new generation -particularly young black men- to vote Democratic and stick to the party, they might have had a coalition strong enough to win in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016, and thus block Donald Trump from becoming president. The way to build that coalition would have been to embrace a new generation of progressive policies like criminal justice reform, marijuana legalization, a federal $15 minimum wage, and the expansion of Medicare. But those ideas were seen as too left wing by Democratic leadership at the time. The Democrats declared good ideas coming from its younger and more academic members as too divisive and controversial before the voters had a chance to weigh-in on them.
I should end the post here! That’s my pitch! What follows are tangents and notes that would have gone into a book.
To start with one small example: the rise and fall of the conservative Democrats in New York state, known as the Independent Democratic Caucus (IDC) was a disaster. It is one of many examples how Democrats think they can stay in power by being moderate and allowing the GOP to dominate them, even when they are the majority. I’m not advocating that Democrats be a hard left party of no cooperation with the GOP, ever. If the GOP ever becomes a rational party, then some agreements can be made on repealing redundant or outdated regulations, reducing coin production, new treaties, and even some level of immigration and refugee policy reform.
But make no mistake, the GOP has been drifting more and more into madness since Watergate. With each new era, from Reagan, to Newt, to Obama, to Trump, the GOP has become more and more insane. So the window for bipartisanship might already be closed. And if that window is closed, then Democrats need to defend their platform and positions with more effort and focus. The voters have not rejected standing-up for progressive ideals. In fact they have welcomed it.
One of Obama’s biggest failures was not leaving the negotiating table when he was insulted and disrespected by Congressional Republicans. Obama made sure that he acted in a presidential manner. He also thought that he had to take the severe racist backlash, much like Jackie Robinson. It was impressive how Obama was aware of the racist insults hurled his way from every corner of our society, but he kept his discipline and didn’t acknowledge it. Even after he left office, he just didn’t talk about it. He slept well and enjoyed his massive wealth while the republic burned.
When will Democrats understand that we sometimes need to have national discussions about uncomfortable topics? Obama didn’t have to make it about himself. He could have sent Joe Biden to talk about racism. Send a surrogate. Delegate. Even when trump committed crimes against humanity in turning refugee children into orphans, Obama couldn’t manage to write a strong condemnation. He could only muster a passive criticism.
Now we have a president who only talks about himself, how he thinks he’s been treated, and vents his complaints and grievances about everything and everyone to anyone willing to listen to him. You could argue that Obama tried too hard to be presidential. You can’t really blame him. All his life, he had to be held to a higher standard because he’s black. But no one -not even him- could talk about that.
As president, what did Obama frequently do when he was at at the negotiating table? He offered the Republicans too much in his first move. Obama famously offered to sharply cut Social Security and Medicare in his 2013 budget before the Republicans brought it up. Thankfully, those cuts were not necessary, and even Republican senators opposed it. So why did he offer them? Obama was never challenged by the press nor his supporters on that odd and very damaging move. Obama must have really wanted to cut the programs, because he tried again the following year. He again put Social Security and Medicare on the table. And again, nearly all senators blocked that move, led by Bernie Sanders, in fact.
Americans wanted -and still want- an expansion of Medicare, even if they have to pay for it. But Obama took that off the table when the Democrats drafted the bloated 2010 Affordable Care Act.
The 2009 stimulus package, which did save this nation from going over a cliff, contained more tax cuts and temporary tax breaks than actual spending. It also didn’t include any criminal consequences for the Wall Street executives who blew up our economy with their complex and volatile sub-prime mortgage investment products. This was the greatest economic collapse in the United States in nearly 100 years. Not one banker was sent to prison.
But let’s end this post with the heart of the matter. Barack Obama’s two terms were not just a missed opportunity to build a solid Democratic majority. His two terms were a failure because he made terrible mistakes and wasn’t held to account by people who voted for him (unless you count the millions who defected in 2016 and voted for Trump, but that would mean that millions thought that Obama wasn’t terrible enough).
On one hand, Obama avoided confrontation too much. The man had too much class, but that hurt us. When Senate republicans blocked him from nominating a third Supreme Court justice, did Obama complain about it more than twice? A massive polarization was coming, and insiders saw it, but Obama chose not to start battles.
Before I dump what I have left of my notes for this point, I’ll some small examples of the many ways Obama failed. All of my next examples sat in one place - his cabinet. His Treasury Secretary was Tim Geitner. On paper, he had the qualifications. But as an apprentice and colleague of his predecessor, Hank Paulson, he was never going to be on the side of “Main Street.” Remember, Paulson and Geitner are the men who rescued Bear Sterns but chose to let Lehman Brothers die and take the whole US economy with it. Barack Obama campaigned on “change,” but the economic and banking management would mainly stay unchanged.
Obama’s cabinet also included Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, an aggressive party elitist who used scorched earth tactics to protect Obama and elevate himself and his friends while doing the bidding of corporations. He managed to alienate every single faction of Chicago's Democratic coalition when he swooped in to take City Hall. He won no friends by becoming mayor of Chicago, and he left the local Democratic party shattered and I suspect, demoralized, as a new, disappointing mayor took over. Emmanuel also knowingly or unknowingly oversw a new era of torture conducted by the Chicago Police Department.
Leon Panetta is another terrible Cabinet choice. Beyond awful, whose memoir is an embarrassment for both himself and Obama. But I really want to shine a light on Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
We might have the worst Secretary of Education now, but Duncan was easily the second worst. This is a supposed education expert who applauded the firing of the entire teaching faculty of a Rhode Island high school because the student grades on high stakes, standardized tests were low; the same man who dismissed childhood poverty as the primary reason for children's academic deficiencies in urban public schools, and whose entire tenure as Obama's education secretary was, in my opinion, a waste of a unique opportunity to actually improve public education. Basically, he’s the opposite of Jonathan Kozol, who addressed our education failings and their relationship to poverty head-on.
Obama’s cabinet sucked. It wasn’t a team of rivals. It killed any chance at progress.
And here, I reach the lightning round, since if I continued to write, Id’ write a book that’s probably already out there in the wild.
Obama’s failures also included:
The expansion of NSA spying programs (such as the massive XKEYSCORE)
The expansion of the drone and assassination squad war in countries that are not at war with the US (especially Yemen and Pakistan)
The most aggressive war against whistleblowers in our nation's history
The continuation of CIA and military torture programs (yes, we still outsource torture)
A failure to hold the Bush-Caney administration to account for human rights violations and overseas torture programs
The continued war against any and all reporting on that off-shore torture program
A failure to hold the previous administration accountable for its violations of the constitution, while committing gross violations of its own
This failure to investigate the Bush administration allowed Brett Kavinaugh to avoid what could have been a career-changing period, and might have prevented him from being nominated to the US Supreme Court 10 years later
A failure to fully investigate the politicization of the Department of Justice under AG Alberto Gonzales (this is also the Democrats' failure in the House)
A failure to get the US out of Afghanistan within two full terms
A failure to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay within two full terms
A failure to curb defense (war) spending
The failure to push for an expanded Medicare program for Americans, including a very fair, deficit-neutral idea to let Americans buy into Medicare and cover the costs themselves.
A 2009 stimulus program that contained far more tax cuts than infrastructure spending
A failure to acknowledge that the most important thing our country can do to slightly curb the environmental catastrophe is to stop burning coal.
But we voters are not off the hook, either. This failure of one party, and the last four years under Trump is also our failure.
Because we’re stupid.
The great, American electorate is both ignorant and foolish. I know full well that politicians can never blame the voters. Conventional wisdom mandates a worshipful attitude toward the people who hold the future of our politicians in their hands. But let's be honest. Millions of Americans could not pass the simplest test oh the history or the government of this country. And they don't want to hear the truth about what needs to be done to solve the nation's problems. They want a full panoply of services, delivered perfectly, and AT NO COST TO THEMSELVES. Oh, and they want it now. Trump promised our voters precisely that absurd bag full of goodies, and far too many of our fellow citizens convinced themselves that the fat orange man with the funny golden comb over was going to deliver. Was Hillary a lousy candidate? You know she was. Is the Democratic Party led by a bunch of incompetent hacks? Is Santa Claus a jolly old elf in a red suit? Are Americans, by the millions, inexcusably ignorant, racist, selfish know nothings? Can you recognize rhetorical questions when you read them? The country's in deep trouble, and Americans are to blame.
Uncle Tim contributed to this post.
Democracy's Fatal Flaw
“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.” - Hunter S. Thompson
There’s no need to any anything else.
But I want to add that since 2000, we have had the GOP controlling local and national politics as a ruling minority. The GOP has mastered leveraging inherent power in rural states (thus having a constant advantage in the US Senate), packing the Federal courts when they have control of the US Senate, leveraging the Electoral College so that it has won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote, and using gerrymandering and voter suppression to create advantages at both the US House and state levels. We don’t dare call any of this cheating, mind you.
So if I wanted to pollute Thompson’s perfect sentence with one of my own, I would add that the second problem with any democracy is that it’s deceptively fragile. The ruling party can completely ruin it if the opposition party doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, or assumes they can fix what is broken if and when they return to power. This is particularly the case if the ruling party has no moral compass, no shame, and even accepts foreign assistance to stay in power.
That’s a threshold for a failed state. No form of government is self-correcting. Every form of government needs strenuous maintenance and reform, or it will eventually collapse. Things fall apart.
And I will also add, given recent events -
We should not be upset at Justice Ginsburg for refusing to retire in 2010. She worked tirelessly, days and nights, doing a fine job of being an impartial judge committed to the ideal of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the future of our republic really did hinge on her staying alive, then this republic was already doomed. I think it is. Since 2000 it has been absolute hell.
Is The Coming Doomsday Real, Or In Our Heads?
I really hope the coming election week crisis is just in our heads and not real.
Like Y2K, I only hope our preparation and experience has already saved us. In the way 2018 prepared us for a high-volume election, Y2K made us check and test everything. It was an exercise in finding out how well we knew our software and our systems. 2020 will be a test of how well we can administer an election while an incumbent president does his best to undermine our political and civil systems.
All we have to do, is keep the polls open, peaceful and orderly during the voting hours. And when the polls close, we must do the business of counting the votes and reporting the results within 6 hours, as usual (aside from counties where the margins are tiny, of course).
There would have to be a 9/11 level of breakdowns if election day turns into doomsday. The Secret Service would have to side with Trump over the people. So would the military. So would local police. The news media and corporations wouldn’t. So how much blood is spilled on the streets of our nation might depend on how the Fortune 500 handles a Trump loss. They handled the legalization of same sex marriage pretty well. Let’s see how they handle Trump declaring victory on Election Day and telling his supporters to commit mass murder.
If that happens. If Trump and his cult resort to killing hundreds or even thousands of citizens in our streets, then we fucking deserve it. It means all of our systems failed.
Top That, GOP
No major technical gaffes. Eight hours of content. Capped by the best speech of Joe Biden’s life. Chris Christie and Diamond and Silk have their work cut out for them.
I was disappointed by the DNC choosing Joe Biden when any number of younger men or women could carry the torch. Biden could have run in 2016 and Hillary might have stepped-aside. But here we are, four years late, and Joe Biden delivered the best speech of his life. I have been watching Biden since his plagiarism scandal in 1987. This is far and away the best speech he's ever delivered.
Now win it, Joe. As Dwight Evans told the Red Sox in 2004: “Win it.”
Who do we think the highest-profile speaker will be at the RNC? For the second year in a row, there won't be a former president at the RNC. For a Gen-Xer like me, that's unprecedented. So could it be Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsay Graham, Mike Pence, and the Don himself? James Woods? Diamond & Silk? Ted Nugent (wait, is he dead)? Jon Voight? Rosanne Barr? Herman Cain would have been a speaker, and because it's 2020, we already forgot what happened to him.
For comparison, look at the RNC roster from 2016. Look at how many people on this list are either convicted, disgraced (Fallwell!), missing, out of politics, avoiding this year's convention (Mitch!), or on Trumps shit list.
Also, what are the odds that the RNC won't have any major technical gaffes or issues? Who is their IT guy?
No One Challenges Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo’s new reputation as a calming, rational leader is not earned. He’s still a conservative Democrat. He is still a bully. He is still corrupt. He is still cruel, with his cuts to state Medicaid being a good example. And he is still ruthless in his management style. He holds grudges. He’s like Michael Jordan, only more destructive, since he wields state-wide policy.
Trump knows that he has escaped scrutiny by the New York Attorney General's office for decades. There have been eight Attorney Generals in Albany since Trump took over his father's business, and all of them had opportunities to put an end to his business and political career, including Andrew Cuomo (2007-2010). Now New York is playing catch-up, ready to charge Trump and at least two of his adult children with crimes once he is out of public office.
New York needs a new Democratic party. The current party machine gave us such greats as Andrew Cuomo, Joe Crowley, Rubén Díaz Senior and Junior, and Eliot Engel, just to name a few. This state’s Democrats are particularly awful given how educated and how far north it is. It’s embarrassing. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is the role model for the future. We need many more like her elected into office.
No More Civility
No mas. We will not allow Republicans and Right Wingers to clutch pearls and call for civility. Not when the sitting president insults people using very harsh terms. A former president threw a soft, almost diplomatic criticism at the current White House, and that’s outrageous? Think about that. Would *you* respond to 100,000 dead with a soft, “the people in charge here aren’t even pretending to be in charge”? Not even raising your voice. You would, I hope, be furious, ready to set fire to every state house that didn’t take the pandemic seriously. I mean, this is the Obama Anger Translator sketch, right? He is so calm and so chill. He can sleep well at night. He’s not quite as chill as “Stoner Mom” Alicia Keys, but he’s close. And he took the courageous step of making a compliant about the current White House losing tens of thousands of citizens seem calmer and friendlier than a typical compliant launched inside a crowded DMV office.
I get it. US Presidents are not human. They are aliens. And once they are in the club, they act like no other human beings, and they protect each other. But Obama could have been a little more pointed in his remarks. He could have said that those in change are responsible for the US death tool being more than double what it could have been. He could have expressed sadness over the number of our dead. He could have assured us that incompetence will not prevail. Instead, he gave us nothing, as he almost always did. His reaction to the Sandy Hook massacre is still the most human he has ever been as president or in the years since.
15 Months Later, She IS The Thing
Claire McCaskill’s comment last year questioning why Ocasio-Cortez is “the thing” was and remains stupid. I think establishment democrats are nervous because maybe (fingers crossed) young liberals are not satisfied when all democratic politicians seem to offer voters is "at least we're not Trump.”
Chuck Todd made several errors in his criticism of Ocasio-Cortez. The largest is his conflation of concentration camps with death camps. People die in concentration camps of course, but usually as a result of disease, or malnutrition, or neglect. During the insurrection in Cuba in the 1890's, the Spanish put thousands of civilians in what they called re-concentration camps, so that the army could then sweep through a rebel province in pursuit of guerrillas who were operating among the peasants, and using them for cover. What the Spanish forgot, or didn't realize, was that by putting thousands of men, women and children in overcrowded detention camps, in a tropical climate, they were guaranteeing an epidemic of preventable diseases, which cost hundreds of lives, and brought the McKinley administration closer to confrontation with Spain. The "yellow press", led by publishers like William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer, published story after story highlighting Spanish atrocities, and demanding a U.S. response. The result, eventually, was the Spanish- American War. The US, as we speak, is currently holding more than 53,000 peaceful refugees in concentration camps.
In another episode, Fox News found Ocasio-Cortez’ low net worth to be very funny. Remember, the Republican Party and it's obsequious acolytes at Faux News, can't imagine a struggling working class politician. After all, the Republican base, so called, consists of aggrieved middle and upper middle class whites, who view the poor and the near- poor as both dangerous and unworthy. The notion of such a declasse person actually winning a place at the table of power strikes them as radical and alarming. How dare she presume to occupy a position of authority! As for not having enough to afford an apartment in Washington DC, of course that's hilarious. Such a thing is contrary to natural law good manners.
The Right Wing is downright obsessed with Ocascio-Cortez (and they will never show her respect and call her by her full last name). Anything she does, from going to a hair salon to making margaritas at home, they pay attention and spend their time attacking and obsessing.
Ocascio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialist. The DSA is the fastest-growing political party in the US. Nearly every candidate she has endorsed has won. So yes, she IS the thing. The old machine that runs the Democratic Party will one day be replaced by young progressives. It might come too late for the nation, but the Democratic party is due for an upgrade. If we Democratic Socialists stay focused and committed, we will change this party.