Robert Reich – United States of Joe

How About a Constitutional Convention? How About No

con_con — We’ve never held a convention of the states to propose a constitutional amendment, and maybe it should stay that way for the foreseeable future. (Image Credit: Howard Chandler Christy)

When it comes to the idea of a constitutional convention, it’s important to know who is doing the asking, why they are asking, and what the risks are should such a proposal come to pass.

As economist/political activist Robert Reich would have it, a “rogue” constitutional convention is “the biggest threat to our democracy that you haven’t heard of.” Full stop. First, as a primer, Reich explains that there are two ways to amend the Constitution:

There are 2 ways to amend the United States Constitution: One way – the way we’ve passed every amendment since the Bill of Rights – is for two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to vote for a proposed amendment, and then have it ratified by at least three quarters of the states – now 38 in number.

But there’s a second way to amend the Constitution. Two thirds of the states may demand that Congress form a constitutional convention to propose amendments.

Why is Reich so disturbed by a convention that ostensibly is formed democratically by means of a two-thirds majority? The problem, as he tells it, is that once such a convention is convened, “there are no rules to limit or constrain what comes next.” In theory, delegates could change the ratification process at the convention, lowering the 38-state bar for approval of new amendments. From there, Reich warns, an Article V convention could “allow delegates to write their own agenda into our Constitution.”

And what might such an agenda look like? Like Reich, Charles P. Pierce, writing for Esquire, invokes the Koch Brothers as a point of immediate concern to discerning Americans on the left of, at, or near the center of the political spectrum.

The Koch Brothers have been bankrolling a pro-convention movement called the Convention of the States Project based on imposing fiscal restraints on the federal government as well as term limits on officials and members of Congress, not to mention limiting the very power and jurisdiction of the federal government. Disguised as convening for the purpose of proposing a balanced budget amendment, as Pierce explains, the convention would be a means of leveraging the language of the Tenth Amendment to significantly weaken the power of the government to regulate private enterprise. He paints a doom-and-gloom picture of what’s stake here:

Disunion would be triumphant. The final victory of movement conservatism would be a return to Gilded Age economics tied to a rebooted Confederate States of America.

Mr. Madison saw it coming. All of it. The mercantile power arrayed against political democracy. Politicians who become servants of the money power and not the people who elected them, and opportunists who would take advantage of these conflicts for their own benefits.

As Pierce, channeling James Madison, espouses, this intentional division is like an illness that could prove fatal if there is no intervention to treat it. Consider the cockles of my heart duly unwarmed.

Going back to Robert Reich’s sense of dread, what starts with an “innocent” balanced budget amendment—which he describes as “crazy” and Pierce describes as “The Worst Idea in American Politics”—could open the floodgates to a wave of additional regressive reforms, including restricting abortion rights, eliminating First Amendment protections for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, standing in the way of marriage equality for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and eating away at the very checks and balances designed in our nation’s formative years. It wouldn’t only set us back, but noting the big money of the Kochs et al. behind this particular movement, it’s patently undemocratic.

It should be pointed out that conservatives aren’t the only ones calling for a constitutional convention; one group, Wolf PAC, supports an Article V convention as a means of aiming to institute campaign finance reform. Critics of circumventing the “standard” approach to effecting constitutional change, from whichever direction you approach a constitutional convention, though, see this process as an exercise in recklessness.

One such critic, David A. Super, professor of law at Georgetown Law, pans not only calls for an Article V convention, but theoretical constraints offered by the Convention of the States Project for states to undertake in the event their delegates go rogue. In a piece for The Hill published back in March, Super spelled out three big reasons why calls for these laws amount to little more than a “sham.”

For one, the Constitution says nothing that would give the states power to control its delegates “any more than state legislatures can control their states’ Members of Congress.” These delegates would, in effect, become federal officials who get their authority from Article V. Second, state courts would have no jurisdiction to meddle in a constitutional convention, and Congress would possess no ability to oust delegates either. Additionally, the timetable for ratification of laws to restrict delegates would likely be too short to have meaning given that delegates to the convention could finish their business and vote before anything is passed.

The prevailing sentiment of Pierce, Reich, Super, and others thus appears to be that the United States, divided enough as it is given the current political climate, doesn’t need to encourage any additional disunion. Especially not when, as some tallies have suggested, there are 28 states of the necessary 34 willing to convene an Article V convention.

Noting our closeness to the two-thirds target majority—however accurate it may be—their tone is one of urgency, and one that has the mindset of statehouses at heart. Super warns state legislatures not to “delude themselves that the dangers of an Article V convention can somehow be contained.” Reich appeals to his readers’ sense of activism and justice in instructing them to “tell their state lawmakers to reject calls for an Article V convention.” Pierce speaks only in ominous terms, but we get his drift. These professionals/experts caution strongly against plunging America into uncharted waters when the ship already may be leaking as it is.

As expressed in the opening paragraph of this piece and to be underscored once more, when it comes to a proposal like a constitutional convention, it’s important to know who is doing the asking and why they are asking. If you follow The Hill, you may have more recently seen this piece by Lindsey Stroud espousing the belief that this Constitution Day (which was Sept. 17), states should “finally unwrap the gift of Article V.” In the piece, Stroud points to our “mind-boggling” national debt, “unfounded” fears of a runaway convention, and holding a “tyrannical” federal government accountable.

What you don’t know unless you read the fine print is that Stroud is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, characterized on the namesake Wikipedia page as “an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank.” This same Heartland Institute, in its advocacy for free-market policies, argues against the very existence climate change, questions the links between smoking and cancer, pushes for the privatization of public resources including those of public schools, and opposes an expanded federal role in health care. I’m not saying the views Stroud puts forth are necessarily wrong because of this agenda. Still, you’ve heard what other “experts” have to say and if the stance of a pro-tobacco, anti-environmental think tank doesn’t give you pause, you might need to question your own judgment.

What makes the prospects of an Article V constitutional convention so alluring is disillusionment on both sides of the political aisle with respect to various institutions. Especially if you’re a leftist, you’re probably thinking the current President sucks, Congress is feckless, and the Supreme Court has been compromised with the addition of not one but two illegitimate picks in Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Particularly Kavanaugh. On top of this, there’s all this money—so-called “dark money” or otherwise—being regularly infused into political campaigns and lobbying. Cue the (deserved) mentions about Citizens United. These elements of the American political system not only seem broken but far from being fixed and maybe even on the path to ruin. Why not try an end-around to institute meaningful reform?

Then again, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the Devil is in the detail. I’m mixing my metaphors a bit, but the point (other than that there are a lot of sayings involving Hell and the Devil) is that yes, action is needed beyond merely talking about our broken system, but that it’s also critically important to go about it the right way.

I would argue that rather than focusing on trying to get a two-thirds majority of states to agree to convene to change the Constitution, we should continue to make efforts to improve voter turnout and eliminate barriers to voting predicated on partisan attempts at voter disenfranchisement. We should also continue to exert pressure on our current lawmakers, encourage political parties to produce better candidates, and run for office if we’re not satisfied with what party leaders come up with. Sure, we can consider incorporating the language of some of these constitutional convention resolutions in state law proposals. But encouraging an unfamiliar process as anything more than a last-ditch effort seems imprudent. Despite our frustration and the notion it’s going to be a long process, people-powered reform is the way to go.

At the risk of beating a proverbial dead horse (there are also a lot of horse-related sayings), appropriate weight should be afforded questions about who proposes an Article V constitutional convention, why, and what the consequences stand to be. As bad as things are now, they could get worse.

Note to Media: Stop Enabling Apologists, Liars, and Racists

untitled (4) — What self-respecting New Jerseyan has a New Jersey pillow on his or her couch? I mean, really! (Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Caruso/NorthJersey.com)

By virtue of living in Bergen County, New Jersey, my family and I read The Record, known colloquially as The Bergen Record. I don’t follow the local news as much as I should, instead amusing myself with diversions like the crosswords and negative op-eds about Chris Christie. It was to my mild astonishment when I saw that The Record and columnist Mike Kelly, who has been with the newspaper since 1981 and who has appeared on various radio shows in the area, as well as NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CBS Evening News, had recently made national news on the count of their interviewee. That would be an unfortunately public figure and member of the Trump administration in the person of Kellyanne Conway. Kelly’s interview touched on a number of different topics, but on the heels of Donald Trump’s baseless allegations that Barack Obama and his administration had him wiretapped (remember, pieces on Breitbart do not count as actual news), and WikiLeaks’ subsequent revelations through the release of Agency documents that the CIA has outlined the use of instructions and tools to spy on individuals through vulnerabilities in Apple and Android smartphones, various messaging apps, and even Samsung smart TVs, one line of discussion that dominated headlines was the notion other devices could be used in surveillance of everyday Americans. Particularly microwaves. No, really—microwaves. According to Conway, monitoring could be done through “microwaves that turn into cameras,” and that “we know this is a fact of modern life.”

The Twitterverse and blogosphere alike were abuzz following these assertions by the Counselor to the President, heaping ridicule and microwave-oriented Photoshopped pictures upon her comments. To be fair, maybe Kellyanne Conway really does know something about the hidden capacity for state espionage buried deep within our General Electric appliances, and we’ll all have egg on our faces when it turns out she was right all along. Given her past loose association with the truth, however, and President Trump and his administration’s apparent war on facts, it is—how should I put this—not bloody likely. Recall that Conway herself is already synonymous with “alternative facts,” an abstract concept that is as ludicrous as it is dangerous with respect to how readily she and others within the President’s circle of trust are apt to deflect away from serious lines of inquiry by the press. These new claims are all the more troubling given how apparently flippant she is in this instance about matters of verifiability. “We know this is a fact of modern life.” Who is “we”? What evidence do you have that microwaves are being used in this way? As far as Kellyanne Conway seems to be concerned, the truth of what she said seems to be self-evident in the notion that this is the modern age and that it could happen, or that she’s banking on you having insufficient knowledge of the subject to disprove her. Either way, by the time you’re ready to challenge the veracity of what she says, Conway is already prepared to pivot to the next point.

Will Saletan, in a piece for Slate, explains the nature of her elusiveness when being interviewed, and why it’s effectively useless for members of the media to try to engage her on matters of fact or to get her to admit to an outright lie. From his article:

An interview with Conway is like a game of Crazy Eights with one rule change: Every card is crazy. No matter what you say, she’ll pick a word from your question and use it to change suits. Use the word “fact,” and she’ll ask, “Chuck, do you think it’s a fact or not that millions of people have lost their plans or health insurance?”

Ask her about Russian interference in the election and she’ll reply, as in [an] interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC: “A lot of people in the mainstream media interfered with our election by trying to help Hillary Clinton win.” Ask her about the intelligence on the Russian hack—“You don’t believe the intercepts?” asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo—and she’ll say, “Here’s what I don’t believe … that [this issue is] so darn important to you now.”

Tell her there’s “no evidence that there were millions of illegal votes,” (Stephanopoulos again) and she’ll fire back, “There’s also no evidence that a recount is going to change the results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.” You’ll never win this game because you’ll have to use words. She’ll pick the one she likes and throw out the rest.

Saletan’s advice, therefore, for members of the press is not to ask Kellyanne Conway about right and wrong, but to stick to “simple factual queries,” and to move on immediately when she begins to veer away from a yes-or-no answer. As he reasons, “There’s no point in getting apoplectic at Conway. She’s never going to break. If you think the only way to beat these people is to make them admit their lies, you’re the one who will lose.”

Let’s take this a step further, though. Will Saletan’s advice assumes a desire to or even a need to talk Ms. Conway. From The Record‘s perspective, Kellyanne Conway is more relevant than she would otherwise be because she lives in Alpine, NJ, probably the most affluent town in an already-well-to-do county in Bergen County, generally speaking. Here’s the thing, though: what did we learn as a result of this interview? Sure, the bit about microwaves generates clicks, and certainly, as much of a train-wreck in the making Donald Trump as POTUS seems to be, his tenure has been entertaining. All the same, the failure of the media to hold Trump and his lot accountable—because the latter have done their part to avoid the press, restrict its access, and undermine its credibility so as to make the job of the former near impossible—means more extreme measures must be taken so as not to further lose ground in the public eye in terms of respectability, at least not with respect to the viewers who still value the mainstream media as a viable source of information. With Conway in particular, if she is not going to provide useful material to viewers, it begs the follow-up question: why bother talking to her at all?

This isn’t a new line of thinking either, with more qualified people than likely you and definitely I expressing similar viewpoints. As part of a recent CNN panel moderated by Don Lemon discussing these comments made by Kellyanne Conway on wiretapping and other possible methods of domestic surveillance, Carl Bernstein, well-known for his work as an investigative journalist during the Watergate scandal, noticeably grimaced before delivering these remarks:

You know, I suggest that it’s time we all stop taking Kellyanne Conway seriously—she’s not a serious person. It’s time for us to drop her from our news agenda, unless she very specifically has something to say that we know has been put out there by the President of the United States.

Lemon agreed, referring to these continued claims of wiretapping by the White House despite a complete lack of evidence and/or the refusal to definitively refute them as “nonsense” and “silly.” (Side note: if Don Lemon is referring to you as “silly,” you know you’ve got to be doing a pretty bad job.) But Bernstein wasn’t content to write off this matter completely, adopting a more serious tone. His response was as follows:

It’s not silly—it’s dangerous—the extent to which we take it seriously. We need to keep doing our reporting on the real stories, including what’s going on with the Russians, with Trump and the people around him. We continue to be destabilized by the Russians and what is going on. Putin has got our number here, and we need to be looking at all aspects of this including whether or not we have a President of the United States who is capable and responsible enough to deal with what is going on.

As noted, Conway’s comments make for good theatre, but Carl Bernstein is correct: they are a distraction. Russian interference in our affairs, including our elections, has been a hot topic of conversation ever since the DNC leaks, and WikiLeaks has long been suspected of having a benefactor in the Russian government of the kind of information that Julian Assange and Company have been able to disseminate across Internet channels. Even the timing of WikiLeaks’ latest release is fairly suspect, as valid or valuable as the information within may be. Max Boot, in an article appearing in Foreign Policy, speaks in rather damning terms to this effect, indicating from the very title that “WikiLeaks Has Joined the Trump Administration.”

Boot notes within the article that WikiLeaks has timed past releases for maximum effect, as with the DNC leaks, when revelations about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others within the Committee acting to effectively sandbag Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid despite their professed neutrality were intended to cast doubt about Hillary Clinton after having sewn up the Democratic Party nomination—and likely to deter fervent Sanders supporters from switching their support to the first female presidential nominee of a major party in U.S. history. The contents of WikiLeaks’ latest data dump puts the American intelligence community on the defensive, at a time when Donald Trump’s claims of wiretapping and his contentious relationship with the CIA and other federal agencies critical to our nation’s security are worthy of our scrutiny, if only for how unreasonable they are. The shell game that is Trump’s relationship to Russia and that of others around him just grows faster and faster as we go. Where it stops—no one knows.

cnn_lord_160614a-800x430 — Jeffrey Lord has what the kids call a “very punch-able face.” (Image retrieved from rawstory.com).

Kellyanne Conway is a glaring example of someone given a platform when it can be argued that all of her exposure primarily benefits the administration she serves and does little for the populace she is supposed to serve. She is not the only one, however, and not the only glaring example, at that. Much as Conway will lie and obscure her way to defending the man who appointed her, others within the media sphere will continually apologize for President Trump—and it is members of the media who enable such behavior, if only to appear fair and balanced. Let’s go back to CNN for a moment, and discuss why in the hell, if a professed leader in cable news such as they is to deem itself a respectable news network, they would have someone like Jeffrey Lord among their ranks. Jeff Lord got a degree in Government from Franklin & Marshall College in 1973. Where? Exactly—I didn’t know this place exists either, much less know it is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Also, their mascot is the Diplomat, and Roy Scheider is a notable fellow alumnus. How do you like them apples? He also was apparently in the Ronald Reagan presidential administration from 1987 to 1988 as an associate political director—whatever that means.

Today, however, Jeffrey Lord is chiefly a political commentator and general annoyance on CNN and in various print and online publications. He also, more recently, has become a shameless defender of Donald Trump, and even wrote a book about the man entitled What America Needs: The Case for Trump. If that alone does not cast aspersions as to the soundness of his judgment, other controversial stances over the past few years have helped cement his reputation as being among the Piers Morgan ilk of ill-informed political douchebags (apparently, CNN has a penchant for hiring such wannabe click-bait). Jeff Lord once attacked the credibility of Shirley Sherrod, a former Department of Agriculture official, effectively over an issue of semantics about whether a relative of hers was “lynched” as opposed to beaten to death at the hands of a police officer. Lord also has compared Barack Obama when he was president to Mao Zedong and the Hitler Youth, has called on the Democratic Party and prominent figures within it to apologize for the party’s one-time support for slavery, and has defended his criticism of the Democratic Party on the basis that the KKK once supported them—hence, left-wingers today are apparently a bunch of bigots who “divide citizens by race.” The Democratic Party is not above criticism, and certainly, establishment bigwigs like Hillary Clinton are known for some egregious examples of pandering, but trying to vilify the Democrats of today for ties to the KKK and slavery is disingenuous, to say the least.

Not only is Lord feeding these “absurd” viewpoints, as fellow CNN commentator Van Jones referred to the last one in particular, and thereby giving credence to them due to his position of relative influence among cable news viewers, but other network personalities and guests must waste time pointing out the ridiculousness of his comments — time that could be better spent along the lines of what Carl Bernstein argues we should be discussing instead. This year alone, other political commentators have had to do all they could not to pull out their own hair trying to argue with Jeffrey Lord on points that really should be beyond debate by now. Robert Reich had, as Sarah K. Burris termed it, a “WTF moment” in reaction to Lord’s assertion that the intelligence community, specifically the CIA and NSA, were conspiring to try to bring down Donald Trump. A few weeks back, Bill Maher had Jeff Lord on his show, and had to shout “Don’t bullshit me!” to stop Lord from insisting that the Russians didn’t interfere in our election. Just the other day, meanwhile, Anderson Cooper was forced to “debate” with Lord on the subject of the Congressional Budget Office finding that some 24 million people stand to lose coverage with the passage of the American Health Care Act, the Republicans’ intended replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Jeff Lord pointed out that the CBO was off significantly in its initial estimate back in 2010 of how many people would be enrolled in a health insurance plan through the ACA by 2017, to which Cooper added context by highlighting the idea that the Office didn’t account for states opting out of the Medicare expansion. You know, because it was dumb of them to do so since it deprived their constituents of valuable federal funding, but these are politicians we’re talking about here, especially on the GOP side. To this Lord replied—and I wish I were making this up:

Right, but that’s my point, Anderson. We don’t know what the weather is going to be. It’s going to snow, but how much? I mean, we don’t know. We don’t trust weathermen, so why should we trust the CBO? Not that they’re not good people, but this is the problem perpetually in Washington.

Either Jeffrey Lord thinks weather is supremely easy to predict, forecasts of all makes and models are bullshit, or both, or possibly none of it all, but once again, Lord, like his idol Donald Trump, is seeking to undermine public confidence in government departments that contradict the President’s and the GOP’s regressive agenda, and in doing so, is using the inexact nature of statistical models as a means of diminishing math, science, and other subjects requiring sound professional judgment and a substantial degree of education. In other words, Jeff Lord is chumming the waters for the sharks watching at home and following on social media smelling blood in the water with the perception of Donald Trump’s win as a turning of the tide against the liberal elites who so long have been thumbing their noses at working-class America—or at least as they would have it. Not only is this dangerous for the mainstream media’s long-term survival, but as a subset of the cable news circuit, CNN itself is playing with fire by encouraging the “CNN is fake news” crowd and narrative. Down with the MSM! Down with Washington fat cats! Drain the swamp! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Doesn’t anyone else here see a problem for CNN with trotting out Jeffrey Lord—at the very least, a credibility problem?

Steve-King-Iowa — Steve! I loved you in *Westworld!* (Photo Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Kellyanne Conway plays a game of Keep-Away that presents a danger in distracting us from what the rest of the Trump administration and the Republican Party are doing to destroy our country, not to mention making the media look very foolish in trying to make sense of her brand of crazy. Jeffrey Lord is an unflinching sycophant whose knee-jerk defenses of Donald Trump undoubtedly bolster the confidence of other Trump fanatics at home. Perhaps the most dangerous of these kinds of people we haven’t even discussed yet, however, and that they are as brazen as they are is likely a sign of the times and the political-social environment Trump has helped create here in the United States and abroad. I’m talking about unabashed white nationalists and racists, a group of which Representative Steve King, a political figure at the freaking federal level, is a part.

King, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 4th Congressional District in Iowa, recently made headlines when he re-Tweeted Geert Wilders, far-right Dutch politician and founder-leader of the Party for Freedom, which has essentially made exclusionary politics its raison d’être. The Iowa lawmaker added his own commentary—as if Wilders’ original content wasn’t bad enough—declaring that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” The media and Democrats alike were quick to pounce on this apparent flagrant violation of American ideals of fraternity and diversity among people of different creeds, races, and walks of life, and even prominent Republicans such as Paul Ryan and Donald Trump via Sean Spicer made apparent attempts to distance themselves from King’s inflammatory remark.

This is just one of Steve King’s boldly prejudicial claims of the last year or so, if not the last week. According to King’s prediction, as expressed to Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson and responding to Jorge Ramos’s suggestion that by 2044, whites, despite likely still being a majority in terms of political power and influence but, in terms of overall population numbers, would be a minority given current trends, “Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens.” Let this sink in for a moment—as mind-numbing as that may prove. There is so much wrong with this idea it’s hard to know where to begin. First, Rep. King seems literally unable to comprehend that this might happen—that whites are poised to become a “minority-majority” in the United States in a few decades’ time—and so he dismisses the very notion despite the proverbial writing on the wall. Second, he refers to them as “the blacks.” That’s like an older adult referring to the world’s preeminent search engine as “the Google.” It smacks of Jim Crow-era antiquated language. Lastly, the idea that African-Americans and Hispanics would fight because, you know, they’re predisposed to fighting and inciting violence, is wildly racist, not to mention wholly cynical. It has no basis in fact, and even if it did, you would think a politician would be loath to admit as much. And let’s not forget King’s questioning what other “subgroups” have done for Western civilization next to whites, which caused an immediate uproar from the MSNBC panel convened during the Republican National Convention and made it appear as if April Ryan was ready to slap some sense into him—something of which she would have been consummately justified in doing, by the by.

That these kinds of thoughts are coming from an elected official are somewhat astonishing, though not if we chart King’s past remarks and even relevant votes (King evidently was among those opposed to putting Harriet Tubman on the 20-dollar bill). Given his penchant for white nationalist xenophobia and concern for the preservation of white ethnic and cultural elements at the apparent expense of all others, it also is vaguely surprising Steve King—or, as I like to call him, Evil Ed Harris Look-Alike—manages to keep getting elected. Then again, he is from the state of Iowa, a state that is—shall we say—not as diverse as others. As Corky Siemaszko details for NBC News, Rep. King remains immensely popular among voters in his district, and has consistently fended off challenges to his post since first being elected to it way back in 2002. Much of this appeal is owed to his district being over 90% white, but if we’re going to give him credit for something, it’s that he’s also an effective public speaker and can connect with people on a personal level. Of course, he can also pander to the pro-gun, anti-abortion crowd, and play on the fears of a conservative, Republican-heavy electorate concerned about a shrinking working class, changes in the American landscape, and attacks from abroad, but many Iowans see him as a personable, relatable kind of guy. We see another Donald Trump, but his neighbors see, well, a neighbor.

His popularity at home notwithstanding, why EEHLA is allowed to spew his white supremacist garbage on national television is beyond me, as I fail to understand why The Record would opt to interview Kellyanne Conway and her nonsense, or CNN would dare keep Jeffrey “Andrew Jackson’s Secret Descendant” Lord on their payroll. OK—I get that media outlets feel the need to report on Steve King’s outrageous statements. He can and should be called out for his divisive rhetoric, despite his insistence that he is interested in bringing people together. Beyond that initial reporting, though, the story can end there, or if nothing else, can do without further inquiry of King. And yet, who was interviewing him in the aftermath of his babies comment but—you guessed it—CNN. On-air personality Chris Cuomo asked Rep. King to clarify his remarks, as if to intimate that he might want to apologize for seeming like a racist asshole, but King was unfazed.

“I meant exactly what I said.”

Here’s the thing: I feel as if CNN should’ve known Steve King wasn’t going to walk back his comments, that they couldn’t in this instance try to claim moral superiority and make him squirm. On some level, I feel King believes he’s right, and by now, he’s obviously not worried about alienating his constituents back in Iowa, many of whom likely agree with him. The only way to “win,” so to speak, is not to play. Don’t have him on at all. Bringing this discussion back to its central point, this is a lesson I feel the network should have learned with Kellyanne Conway, and why Jeffrey Lord stands to be such a losing proposition for them. You want to be purveyors of truth and go after obvious bigots and liars like Steve King and Trump’s cronies. For those who see Conway and King and Lord and don’t dismiss what they say, though, you’re merely feeding the narratives these people want to believe.

Throughout the presidential campaign, there was no shortage of critics pointing out Donald Trump’s follies and factual inaccuracies. And look where it got him: the White House. The lack of appeal to reason or even morality, in the minds of many, should be enough to disqualify Trump and the other aforementioned individuals. But it obviously doesn’t for enough Americans, and organizations from CNN to the Democratic Party need to start understanding this evident sea change in American politics and tap into what Trump voters/Republican voters care about. Sure, they may not see eye-to-eye on a whole lot with this new audience, but these bastions of “fake news” and “liberal elitism” can at least facilitate a conversation with everyday people rather than putting a bunch of clowns on camera who play up the crazy just to satisfy vague ideas of “fairness” or to garner a greater share of ratings, or attacking these public figures without clearly communicating an identity for themselves and thereby undermining their own credibility.

For the media in particular, though, and to put it succinctly: stop enabling apologists, liars, and racists. You’re still losing by the mere fact of giving them a platform, and may only succeed in hastening your own demise as a result.

Gerrymandering Is Some Bullshit

gerrymandering_cubbs_25 — Hey, look—they’re re-drawing districts! Get it? (Image retrieved from thepoliticalspectator.com).

Back in January, I wrote a piece about the Resistance to President Donald Trump and an agenda for his first 100 days in office outlined by Robert Reich and the organization he helped create, Inequality Media. I invoke it not merely to toot my own proverbial horn (though if I were to toot it, I would say it is a phenomenal post), but rather to, a month into Trump’s tenure as President, evaluate where we are regarding the various points set forth by Reich et al:

1. Contact your senators and representatives.

Oh, yeah—people are all over this one. It’s not just members of the Resistance either who are asking their elected officials to affirm their commitment to an agenda which authentically represents their constituents’ needs. Particularly for Republican lawmakers who have been ducking the people they nominally represent, those people have been holding their own town halls and inviting the targets of their events, or simply showing up at their offices and demanding an in-person forum. Especially during the congressional recess, the refusal to see and hear the complaints of the people they serve—and not the other way around—is telling of their cowardice. In short, voters on both sides of the political aisle are mad as hell a mere 30 days into the Trump presidency, and who knows what the mood will be like just after the first 100 days.

2. March and demonstrate.

Ditto. Across the United States, people were demonstrating as part of rallies for “Not My President’s Day,” as it was called, and recently, immigrant workers and, in some cases, the businesses that employ them, protested Pres. Trump’s anti-immigrant policies with A Day Without Immigrants. What’s more, additional rallies are planned, notably those at the behest of concerned citizens about the fate of the Affordable Care Act and their personal health coverage. Trump’s hate and the GOP’s rhetoric have really brought people together. Now let’s just hope we can preserve this momentum when it comes time to vote in 2018 and 2020.

3. Uphold sanctuary cities and states.

For the most part, despite an executive order which specifically targets sanctuary cities and other zones that refuse to aid federal agents in enforcing immigration law, most offices have seemed to confirm their commitment to non-compliance. And then there’s Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami-Dade County in Florida, who rolled over for Trump faster than a trained dog trying to earn a treat. I know I don’t speak for all of the residents within his jurisdiction, and perhaps not even the majority of them, but with all due respect, go f**k yourself, Carlos Gimenez.

4. Boycott Trump real estate, hotels, and brands.

If recent decisions by certain retailers are any indication, the #GrabYourWallet campaign may be having a demonstrable effect. Kmart, Nordstrom and Sears have all indicated their intention to phase out their Ivanka Trump and Trump Home product lines. Obviously, this comes with a risk to these companies, as discontinuing these lines means the reduction of revenue without something immediately to replace them, as well as the danger of alienating certain customers, not to mention pissing off Donald Trump because big, bad Nordstrom was mean to his little girl. Still, one believes the powers-that-be at these organizations made these decisions in a calculated way. Either way, your concern is hitting the Trump Family where it presumably hurts the most—in their bank accounts.

5. Write letters & op-eds to the editor of your local newspaper.
6. Contribute daily to social media with truthful, up-to-date facts and actions relevant to the movement to resisting Trump.
7. Contribute to opposition groups.
8. Make #ResistTrump visible.
12. [YOUR IDEA GOES HERE]

These are all actions that are of an individual and even personal nature (particularly for #12 and at least with respect to financial contributions in #7), so this is on you, though you are highly encouraged to be active about speaking out against President Trump and the GOP, especially for their most egregious actions, comments and policy stances. Speaking specifically to #ResistTrump and other means of self-identification, Indivisible Guide has information in the form of a guide on how to resist, and a locator on its site for local chapters and other related group meetings/actions around the country committed to fighting the Republicans’ regressive agenda.

9. Get involved with and promote progressive politics at the local and state levels.

Beyond simply participating in demonstrations and marches and volunteering for political campaigns, people of all walks of life are being encouraged to run for office themselves, notably progressives, and just from reading stories online, more and more individuals who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten involved with politics are looking into how to raise funds within their communities and organize at the grass-roots level.

10. Abolish the Electoral College.

We’ve unfortunately done more talking about Donald Trump, his electoral win, and Donald Trump talking about his electoral win than we have actually making progress on abolition of what I would argue is an outmoded and pointless institution insofar as the electors fail to use their discretion to prevent a demagogue like Trump from being the ostensible leader of the free world. To her credit, Sen. Barbara Boxer did introduce legislation shortly after the election in November to put an end to the Electoral College. But such a change would require two-thirds approval from both the House and the Senate—unlikely with Republicans in charge of both—and even with Trump discouraging public awareness about the Electoral College’s shittiness and extolling its virtues. You know, after initially saying it was terrible. Welcome to the world of Donald Trump—actual positions may vary from time to time, or from moment to moment, at that. Still, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to raise a stink about it—if for no other reason than to stick it to the likes of South Dakota and Wyoming.

11. Reach out to independents and Trump supporters.

Um, easier said than done. While I’m already tooting my horn, here’s another recent piece encapsulating my thoughts on difficulties the Democratic Party, in particular, faces in trying to reach out to independents and Trump supporters and bring them into the fold, chief among them resistance within its “establishment” ranks to going too far away from center, and the notion some Trump supporters—not all, mind you, but some—may be too far gone if they choose to believe his every word. As with #10, though, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make a concerted effort.

So, after the first 30 days, the above gives you an idea of where the Resistance is at: still with a lot of work in front of it, but showing signs of promise and, in several respects, having a real impact. One specific issue, however, which has seen very little activist attention—and up to now, I admittedly haven’t said much, if anything, about it—is contained within Robert Reich’s enumeration of progressive causes with which to get involved as part of #9 on the First 100 Days Resistance agenda. Like combating climate change, fighting for a $15 minimum wage, pushing for tax reform, and putting a stop to the system of mass incarceration in the United States, this topic addresses a problem that is pernicious in its own right, and especially so for our sense of democracy in America. That topic is gerrymandering, and despite sounding like a link in Charmander’s evolutionary chain from the world of Pokémon, it is way more sinister—and nowhere near as cool as Charizard. Brian Klaas, a fellow in comparative politics (don’t ask me—I don’t know what it is either) at the London School of Economics, recently penned an essay about how gerrymandering is the “biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the U.S.,” and thus merits more of our attention and protests than it currently is receiving. Klaas, in outlining the nature of the problem, gives a quick history lesson as to the origin of the term and the underlying practice:

The word “gerrymander” comes from an 1812 political cartoon drawn to parody Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry’s re-drawn senate districts. The cartoon depicts one of the bizarrely shaped districts in the contorted form of a fork-tongued salamander. Since 1812, gerrymandering has been increasingly used as a tool to divide and distort the electorate. More often than not, state legislatures are tasked with drawing district maps, allowing the electoral foxes to draw and defend their henhouse districts.

As Klaas notes, both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, which he defines “as drawing electoral districts in a distorted way for partisan gain.” This notwithstanding, he also mentions how, according to a 2014 analysis by The Washington Post, eight out of 10 of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States were made as such at the behest of Republicans. Regardless of party affiliation, it’s a pervasive problem in our country, as Brian Klaas details:

In the 2016 elections for the House of Representatives, the average electoral margin of victory was 37.1 percent. That’s a figure you’d expect from North Korea, Russia or Zimbabwe, not the United States. But the shocking reality is that the typical race ended with a Democrat or a Republican winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, while the challenger won just 30 percent.

Last year, only 17 seats out of 435 races were decided by a margin of 5 percent or less. Just 33 seats in total were decided by a margin of 10 percent or less. In other words, more than 9 out of 10 House races were landslides where the campaign was a foregone conclusion before ballots were even cast. In 2016, there were no truly competitive Congressional races in 42 of the 50 states. That is not healthy for a system of government that, at its core, is defined by political competition.

Gerrymandering, in a word, is why American democracy is broken.

This explanation of the severity of America’s gerrymandering problem is notable because it evokes sentiments expressed repeatedly throughout the campaign season, and often to a fault. Specifically, it speaks to the conception (or in some cases, misconception) that the “system”—broadly defined as that is—is “rigged.” Of course, people have long been saying that “it doesn’t matter” who they vote for, albeit without the requisite evidence or justification as to why. With the specter of gerrymandering hanging over the heads of the American electorate, however, claims of a rigged political system carry decidedly more weight. For the two major parties, ever desperate to expand their ranks and gain the upper hand on the other party, knowledge of the existence of this phenomenon is liable to suppress desire among younger voters of affiliating with either party or, more significantly, coming out for elections at various political levels. Why feed the perception that voting is not worth the time and effort, and risk legitimate supporters of yours failing to come out on your behalf?

Unless, that is, they really don’t give a shit. See, that’s the thing about gerrymandering—evidence suggests that they don’t have to give a shit to get re-elected again and again. Klaas elaborates further:

If you’re elected to represent a district that is 80 percent Republican or 80 percent Democratic, there is absolutely no incentive to compromise. Ever. In fact, there is a strong disincentive to collaboration, because working across the aisle almost certainly means the risk of a primary challenge from the far right or far left of the party. For the overwhelming majority of Congressional representatives, there is no real risk to losing a general election, but there is a very real threat of losing a fiercely contested primary election. Over time, this causes sane people to pursue insane pandering and extreme positions. It is a key, but often overlooked, source of contemporary gridlock and endless bickering.

Moreover, gerrymandering also disempowers and distorts citizen votes, which leads to decreased turnout and a sense of powerlessness. In 2010, droves of tea party activists eager to have their voices heard quickly realized that their own representative was either a solidly liberal Democrat in an overwhelmingly blue district or a solidly conservative Republican in an overwhelmingly red district. Those representatives would not listen because the electoral map meant that they didn’t need to.

Not that it necessarily excuses the representatives who behave in this way, but they are somewhat between a rock and a hard place, politically speaking. On one hand, those elected officials who serve in a certain capacity are almost guaranteed to stay in their current roles, but must likely endure the criticism from angry constituents as they do so, something made infinitely more possible in the digital age. Besides, they actually might have somewhat of a conscience and therefore stand to feel guilty on some level for betraying their beliefs and capitulating to certain factions within the party. On the other hand, these politicians may preserve their ideals, but potentially at the risk of alienating themselves from their parties and their core supporters; in this day and age of black-and-white political thinking where breaking rank with the party establishment is akin to treason, and criticism of public figures is seen as a personal attack to be nullified by more active and fervent defenders, this may be patently suicidal. It is no wonder so many of those who serve in Congress continue to play not to lose rather than to adopt more courageous positions.

Does this mean that all hope is lost, then? Thankfully, no, although it comes with a caveat or two. Brian Klaas cites two big reasons that we should have hope that the tide is turning against gerrymandering nationally. The first is that our courts, much in the way they admirably have stood in the way of President Trump and his blatantly discriminatory Muslim ban, have ruled against gerrymandering purely along racial or partisan lines in a number of state and federal courts. What’s more, the Supreme Court is set to rule on this very subject at a point in 2017. The second is that fixing gerrymandering is getting easier. Computer models can be used to approximate more diverse and, therefore, competitively-drawn districts, not to mention legislators can be stripped of their district-drawing powers in favor of letting bipartisan, citizen-led commissions run the show.

Great! So, what’s the catch? Well, let me preface its reveal by saying it is a big one, and fundamental to the thrust of this piece. To phrase it very simply, people are people. They tend not to give a shit about gerrymandering, and they also tend not to care about living in districts that are more homogeneous in nature. Klaas offers these related sentiments:

Partisan politics is to be exercised within the districts, not during their formation. But gerrymandering intensifies every decade regardless, because it’s not a politically sexy issue. When’s the last time you saw a march against skewed districting? Even if the marches do come someday, the last stubborn barrier to getting reform right is human nature. Many people prefer to be surrounded by like-minded citizens, rather than feeling like a lonely red oasis in a sea of blue or vice versa. Rooting out gerrymandering won’t make San Francisco or rural Texas districts more competitive no matter the computer model used. And, as the urban/rural divide in American politics intensifies, competitive districts will be harder and harder to draw. The more we cluster, the less we find common ground and compromise.

As Klaas suggests, this is not to assign blame to the average voter. We are socially/psychologically primed to coalesce with those like us and to reject those who do not conform. Still, if meaningful change is going to occur, John and Jane Q. Public are the intended audience for this line of thinking. Despite the notion these tactics can, will, and are being used against them, Democratic and Republican lawmakers, by and large, seem content not to try to mess with gerrymandering, especially those who rely on heavily-gerrymandered districts to carry each successive election. At any rate, if you believe the refrain from Bernie Sanders—and let me stress that I, personally, do—such change happens from the bottom-up and not the top-down. Accordingly, while gerrymandering may not be a sexy subject, and while we may enjoy our clustered districts, if we are to move beyond the paradigm of a “rigged” voting process and to authentically encourage citizens to come out to vote not just for the big elections, but for vitally important local, county and state elections as well, we must work to wrest control of district-making away from partisan hacks. Brian Klaas leaves us with these parting words:

We must remember that what truly differentiates democracy from despotism is political competition. The longer we allow our districts to be hijacked by partisans, blue or red, the further we gravitate away from the founding ideals of our republic and the closer we inch toward the death of American democracy.

In summary, gerrymandering is some bullshit, and is a major problem in American politics today. It is also a highly partisan issue, as evidenced by both major parties’ employ of this tactic, but correcting it really shouldn’t be, in the interest of fairness. Ultimately, as much as we might ask our elected representatives to “do their jobs” and to “give us back” our democracy, the reality is we have to come together and take it back. To put it bluntly, we can do better, people. Now is the time.

The Resistance Starts Now

5840f82bb419f816393f743820141272-cf — Resistance is not futile. At this hour, it is essential. (Photo Illustration: Yahoo News; Photo Credits: Getty Images, AP).

If you’ve read or perused this blog, chances are I’ve already telegraphed, to a large extent, my nerdy tendencies, but in case you needed any more evidence in this regard, here’s a reference that will buttress any suppositions you may have had. In the Star Trek universe, there exists a race of cybernetic beings rather uncreatively named the Borg. They seek not to advance politically or amass wealth, but to consume technology, as well as to, in the words of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard as the Borg alter-ego Locutus, assimilate other peoples into their collective so as to “raise” their “quality of life.” They hurtle through space in craft that resemble giant metal cubes. They are not aware of themselves as separate individuals, only as units within the collective. Perhaps most strikingly, the Borg do not like taking no for an answer. When not informing you of your imminent assimilation and subsequent loss of personhood, they are kindly explaining to you that “resistance is futile.”

While I, at the time, found the writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation to be some of the best on television, I still feel a lot of it holds up today. I say this perhaps in spite of the allegorical nature of the Borg, which is so readily apparent the full-sized U.S.S. Enterprise would be harder to miss. The Borg, in their monomaniacal pursuit of technological advancement and “cultural” assimilation, are a warning about the perils of collectivism and the pervasiveness of technology, carried to the extreme. The latter count, for one, is duly noted; take a look at any group of people waiting on line, for example, and note how many of them immediately take to their smartphones. On the former count, too, blindly following leadership in its various forms or adhering to cultural or societal norms risks agreement simply to avoid conflict or independent thought, not to mention the ascension of individuals to power who rely on authoritarianism and the conditions which lend themselves to their success. You probably know where I’m going with this. The Borg have a Borg queen. In the United States’ current political climate, we have Donald Trump, incoming President and would-be emperor.

As noted, the Borg collective confronts each species—and effective assimilation target—it meets with the idea “resistance is futile,” and once more making the comparison to today’s American politics, many people not entirely thrilled about a Trump presidency have taken to familiar standbys like “it is what it is” (death to that phrase, if you ask me) and “what can you do?” buying fully into the concept of top-down leadership. As others might argue, however, resistance is not only not futile, but mandatory at a time like this. Such explains the movements of Robert Reich and others which makes resisting Donald Trump their raison d’être. Reich, who founded Inequality Media, a non-profit organization designed to help educate the American public about how income and wealth inequality in this country has manifested and grown over time and what can be done to reverse this trend going forward, recently authored a video piece outlining an agenda for members of the resistance to combat the types of regressive reforms Trump is expected to enact during the first 100 days of his presidency. The following is my summation of the 12 points to this agenda—I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere for a while—with some additional commentary regarding potential difficulties in successfully meeting the goals therein:

1. Contact your senators and representatives.

I know, I know—we’re always told this, but seriously, though—get in the habit of reaching out to your elected officials. As far as I am concerned, I feel fortunate as a New Jerseyan to have two U.S. Senators in Cory Booker and Bob Menendez who I believe share a number of the same positions on the issues as I do, and feel similarly about Representative Bill Pascrell in exemplifying some of the best values the Democrats have to offer. Others might not be as lucky to be so well represented, but this doesn’t mean we should take the good ones for granted, nor does it mean we should necessarily forsake those legislators who don’t seem as keen to oppose Donald Trump’s and the Republicans’ conservative agenda. Tell them to oppose it, though, and to oppose Trump’s awful appointees. These candidates for top positions in his Cabinet should be vetted and confirmed, not rubber-stamped.

2. March and demonstrate.

You’ve probably already heard about the Women’s March on Washington which is slated to occur the day after the Inauguration (January 21). Reich calls for additional marches in the following months, though, to reinforce the solidarity felt among those afraid for their families, their health, their rights and their safety, as well as that of people who were demonized and bullied throughout the election cycle. Blacks, immigrants, Latinos, the LGBTQIA community, Muslims, Native American Indians, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault, women—the list goes on. Some may decry these as the actions of a bunch of sore losers, or too little too late, or that they play identity politics to make groups feel better about themselves without effecting real change, or that they will do nothing to bridge the divide experienced between those who brand themselves as everyday Americans and the supposed liberal elites. There might be a kernel of truth in any number of these charges, but this doesn’t mean you can’t go to one of these marches and demonstrations as a casual observer and see what you can learn. It may not be for the exact right reasons, but from where I’m sitting or standing, anything organized in opposition to Donald Trump as President is for a good cause.

3. Uphold sanctuary cities and states.

The applicability of this item may vary depending on your proximity to an international border, but the sentiment behind it may well hold true no matter where you hang your proverbial hat. In my home state, the mayors of Newark, Jersey City, Union City and other municipalities have affirmed their city’s commitment to not detaining undocumented immigrants per ICE’s request unless accompanied by a judge’s order. Republicans have made the horror stories particularly salient in recent years, but allowing people to be held for the mere purpose of possible deportation, especially those who have been in this country for some time and have contributed to their communities and economies, seems like a waste of municipal, county and state law enforcement when immigration is under the jurisdiction of the federal government, if not an example of overreach on the part of the U.S. government officials. Reich urges non-cooperation on the part of we the people, and without probable cause, this would appear to be a just cause.

4. Boycott Trump real estate, hotels and brands.

Done. Of course, this is easy for me, as I don’t make it a habit to support Donald Trump financially if I can. Also helping matters: as a discerning shopper, I try to avoid products and services that are effectively likened to hot garbage, which is apparently the level of quality of Trump’s new hotel in Washington, D.C. What Robert Reich proposes, meanwhile, is a bit more difficult: boycott those retailers that carry Trump products, even if you don’t plan to purchase those individual items. Especially when Ivanka Trump’s fashion line is considered, the list of stores and retailers to potentially stop frequenting contains some significant names, and it includes the likes of Amazon, Bloomingdale’s, Kmart, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Overstock.com, Sears, TJ Maxx and Walmart. These are some big-deal companies, no doubt, so it would take some effort to avoid some or all of them (a yet more expansive list can be found at grabyourwallet.org). Still, it can be done, and what’s more, the official site for #GrabYourWallet offers a script/template you can follow when contacting these companies’ customer service departments and representatives. Sorry, Ivanka. I’ll pass on your various handbags.

5. Write letters & op-eds to the editor of your local newspaper.

Reich encourages you to pen these types of pieces to help communicate the dangers and fallacies of a Donald Trump presidency, including that agenda of his for the first 100 days, and to maintain a steady flow of these arguments. That’s right—keep ’em coming! Like Krabby Patties off of Spongebob’s grill! Yes, I’m an adult!

6. Contribute daily to social media with truthful, up-to-date facts and actions relevant to the movement to resisting Trump.

You know—keep reminding people of how shitty Donald Trump’s behavior and intended policies are.

7. Contribute to opposition groups.

Robert Reich offers a few suggestions, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Common Cause, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Economic Policy Institute, and, of course, Inequality Media, but you’re free to donate to the organization of your choice which you believe stands for the kinds of values Trump, his cronies, and other conservative Republicans won’t defend. You know, like, maybe Planned Parenthood, which the GOP aims to de-fund at the federal level, because they apparently think they should be able to tell women what to do with their own bodies. These kinds of organizations.

8. Make #ResistTrump visible.

Arm bands, bumper stickers, lapel pins—if it’s got #ResistTrump on it so people can see, you’re good to go. I’m not exactly the most craftsy person myself, so I sympathize with you on this point, but as of yet, online merchandise for “the Resistance” seems fairly sparse, and not for nothing, ugly. So, for now, you might just have to bite the bullet and start a DIY project or make friends with someone who’s good at creating things like the aforementioned items. Maybe bake them some cupcakes to sweeten the deal (or, yes, buy those, too).

9. Get involved with and promote progressive politics at the local and state levels.

Reich has a few major suggestions regarding topics to address, such as environmental reform, progressive tax reform, higher minimum wages, stopping gerrymandering, and helping to put an end to mass incarceration, but again, pick a cause and run wild with it. Certainly, the ability of workers to form and promote unions is something worthy of defense, despite Republicans’ and corporations’ attempts to weaken the bargaining power of these trade associations. Wherever rights are being abrogated, resources are being misused, or justice is proving not-so-blind, there’s an issue to get behind and a reason to get involved.

10. Abolish the Electoral College.

That’s right—you abolish it, all by yourself! OK, so one person by his or her lonesome isn’t going to dismantle the Electoral College, but lending your support and voice to the movement to supplant our wacky present electoral system in favor of the popular vote can only help. I’ve written at length about my feelings about the Electoral College, and if the electors won’t stand in the way of a tyrant in the making like Donald Trump, we may as well just do away with the damn thing. The likes of South Dakota and Wyoming be damned!

11. Reach out to independents and Trump supporters.

I know—this may seem like the last thing you want to do right now on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, but hear me out. And hear them out, assuming you can stand it. Especially for those voters who went for Barack Obama in 2012 only to turn around and cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2016, ask them what about Trump’s agenda they find so appealing. If Democrats are to make any headway in taking back the House and the Senate, as well as governorships and seats in local legislatures, they’re going to have to win back the support of independents, working-class Americans and others who have lost faith in the Democratic Party. The Dems may not have burned these bridges, but they need to act fast to repair them in time for the midterms in 2018 and the presidential election in 2020.

12. [YOUR IDEA GOES HERE]

No, seriously. Here’s where you can choose your own political adventure. Reich doesn’t offer much in this regard by design, but does suggest you meet with family and friends to discuss what you can do to put your own spin on the Resistance. I don’t know—maybe wear a silly hat when you do it? Hey, give me a break—I’m still working on my own #12!

Before the election, some prospective voters were wondering whether or not we should just vote for Donald Trump , blow up the political system as we know it, and rebuild our democracy in a more progressive way. I was not among this lot, and while I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, I didn’t choose Trump either, my reasoning being that I didn’t trust him with the fate of our country any more than I would trust a pack of hungry coyotes to watch over a small kitten. As you well know and are coming to grips with, the American people chose the orange-skinned one to lead our nation for the next four years. I believe they chose poorly. Regardless of whether or not Donald Trump’s election would theoretically be better for the country because it would hasten some sort of revolution, the reality is that Trump is set to lead our nation until 2020 or his impeachment—whichever comes first. Thus, out of necessity, a resistance must be formed, grown and maintained. Resistance, in this case, is not futile. It is essential. Resistance against hate. Resistance against tyranny and scaremongering. Resistance against bullying and ganging up on people online and offline. Resistance against the dissolution of fact and the erosion of ethics. Resistance against a political party and a system which puts the corporation and wealth above empathy and other hallmarks of humanity. Resistance against a world that allows a man to lie, cheat, deceive and steal his way to personal success. Resistance against that which we know is clearly wrong.

The Resistance starts now. Are you in?

Israel, Obama, Russia, Trump—Can’t We All Just Get Along? (Easy Answer: No)

280x280-04ca7159daeb26e608a3776984faf60d — In his address condemning Israel’s continual expansion of West Bank settlements as an obstacle to the two-state solution, and in turn, peace, Secretary of State John Kerry gave the best speech of anyone who looks like Andrew Jackson in recent memory. (Photo Credit: Yin Bogu/Xinhua News Agency/Newscom)

We get it—Barack Obama is a lame-duck president. In less than a month, Donald J. Trump is set to take the reins of the presidency. On a related note, animals may spontaneously begin to howl to themselves, instinctively aware something is amiss. Human animals, too, some of whom already have shed some tears, may yet have more crying to do, or at least some hand-wringing and head-shaking. Then again, some people may be just as ready to protest and raise hell. If nothing else, this should help communicate to the incoming President that roughly half of the country hates his guts. To what this extent this might faze him, if at all, I’m not sure, but if it at all causes to Trump to put that imbecilic sourpuss look on his face and want to Tweet up a storm out of vexation, I’d deem it worth the effort.

For once, though, it is not the President-Elect who is ruffling feathers, but the lame duck himself. Evidently not about to leave the White House without some parting shots, Obama and his administration have flexed their diplomatic muscle in the waning hours of his presidency with respect to two particular (and particularly contentious) situations. The first is that of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the likes of which I don’t really have to tell you are contentious. In this specific iteration of the seemingly endless conflict, Israel has drawn criticism for its establishment of settlements on the West Bank. Greg Myre, international editor for NPR, and Larry Kaplow, NPR’s Middle East editor, together have put together a fairly good primer on the situation and why the settlement situation is such a big deal, addressing seven key points worth considering in understanding the forces behind the discord.

1. Settlements are growing rapidly.

A key distinction made by Myre and Kaplow is that these “settlements,” while the term evokes something more rudimentary, are often large subdivisions or sizable cities. Since peace talks began in 1993 between the Israelis and Palestinians, the number of Israelis living in these settlements has quadrupled, and has continued to expand during Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister. Even the more moderate and liberal within Israel have pushed for more settlements. Indeed, most of the censure regarding the proliferation of settlements within the West Bank has come from the international community, and not from within Israel’s ranks. In fact, to argue against this trend of increase would seem to be tantamount to political poison for someone like Netanyahu or anyone else of stature within Israel.

2. Settlements complicate efforts for a two-state solution.

I’ll say they do. With settlements all over the West Bank, and the Israeli military on hand to patrol these areas, the prospect of a Palestinian state, already somewhat dim, is made all but impossible. Never say never, yes, but um, don’t hold your breath either.

3. There is a distinction to be made between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

According to Israel, East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, is the nation’s “eternal and indivisible capital.” Funny story—no one else recognizes this, including the United States, which is why, at least until Donald Trump has his way, the country maintains a diplomatic presence in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. As for Palestinians, meanwhile, they consider East Jerusalem the site of their own future capital given statehood, and together with the West Bank, deem it all occupied land. Evidently, land rights, as beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder.

4. What does Israel say about settlements?

Um, that it’s complicated? On one hand, supporters of settlements cite the rich tradition of Jewish history, the good old Bible, and things such as the need for “strategic depth.” On the other hand, while Israel claims to have annexed East Jerusalem, it makes no such claim of sovereign control over the West Bank, despite the wishes of many of those who have settled there. It therefore remains but “disputed” territory currently being occupied. In other words, the West Bank is not quite “no man’s land” with hundreds of thousands residing within its bounds, but it’s no country’s territory all the same.

5. How about the Palestinians?

Yeah—how about the Palestinians? This section is short on Kaplow’s and Myre’s part, and this would seem appropriate given the simplicity of their argument. Here is their explanation, in its totality:

From some Palestinian cities, there are clear views of Israeli settlements — and new construction — on nearby hillsides. And in most settlement neighborhoods, there are wide areas of empty hillside closed to Palestinians, which Israel says are necessary buffers for security.

Palestinians see them as visual proof that their sought-after independent state is being taken from them. Palestinian leaders have opposed peace talks in recent years while, as they see it, Israel is building on land that is part of those talks.

From this standpoint, I feel those who don’t have a specific vested interest in this conflict would probably tend to agree this makes a lot of sense. How could I feel welcome as a Palestinian when Israeli settlements are continuously expanding and whole swaths of land are closed to me seemingly on principle? Though this may hew close to Israel’s actual intent, for the Palestinians, this doesn’t make a two-state solution seem wholly viable when everything around you tells you you’re not wanted.

6. Has Israel ever dismantled settlements?

Yeah, but, like, once—ever. According to the NPR article, back in 2005, some 8,000 Israeli settlers were forcibly removed from the Gaza Strip on the premise that these settlements were too hard to defend. And when I say, “forcibly removed,” I mean dragging, kicking and screaming. As the authors sum this up succinctly: “The episode demonstrated that Israel could remove settlers, but it also showed how much friction it creates inside Israel.” I’ll say it does.

7. What are the proposed solutions?

Here’s where the discussion gets down to brass tacks—how Israelis and Palestinians move forward. At least from the United States’ perspective, the key proposition is an exchange of land rights. The largest Israeli settlements, which are close to the border with Israel as an established state, would formally become part of Israel. The Israeli settlements deep within the West Bank more removed from Israel, meanwhile, would be ceded for the purpose of a Palestinian state. As Myre and Kaplow indicate, however, and as should be no great surprise, this is complicated, outside of the immediate logistics 0f such a swap. Palestinian leadership is unlikely to accept any deal that does not involve removal of settlements, and yet to suggest the removal of settlements within Israel is politically disadvantageous given the current climate. As with any story, there are two sides to such a two-state solution, and as far as Israel and Palestine are concerned, a spirit of reconciliation does not seem to be felt or sought in abundance.

This already fractious situation was made more disagreeable by a recent resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council that calls for an end to the building of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Egypt originally proposed the resolution, though they were forced to delay a vote on the resolution based on pressure from Israel, but what really got Israel’s proverbial goat was the United States’ decision not to vote and not to veto the resolution. As far as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel were concerned, they thought they, President Obama and the U.S. were cool. In a move construed as better late than never, however, Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking for the administration at large, condemned Israel’s continuously expanding settlements as undermining the viability of a two-state solution and thereby standing in the way of peace. Acting in this way, Kerry, again speaking on behalf of Barack Obama, his administration and his legacy, argued that Israel is positioning itself on a path toward isolation from the international community and perpetual warfare with the Palestinians.

Certainly, Netanyahu and Company disagreed with this speech and the accompanying no-vote on the Security Council resolution, calling Secretary Kerry’s address a “disappointment.” There was also disapproval on the domestic front, though, including censure from the likes of prominent lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, including John McCain and Chuck Schumer. But two other interested parties had their own reactions to this apparent reversal of stances, one that moved the U.S.’s position away from their evident unwillingness to challenge Israel on the proliferation of settlements within the West Bank. Within the Arab world, which has a dog in this fight given its solidarity with the Palestinians, the response was generally favorable, although not without a fair bit of indifference among those individuals who feel this about-face is too little, too late. In line with the more apathetic attitudes of some, Arab critics of the speech are quick to point out that change in favor of a two-state solution seems unlikely in light of the ascension of a second relevant interested party.

That would be—you guessed it—Donald Trump. Trump, who has, ahem, not been shy about expressing his opinions with respect to international politics and U.S. foreign policy, condemned the no-vote by the Obama administration, taking to—you guessed it again—Twitter to voice his displeasure, offering the following:

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S.—but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong, Israel—January 20th is fast approaching!

Ugh. The very notion that is man is going to be our President is enough to make one’s head hurt and eye twitch. I was unaware Israel was continually so disrespected by the United States, but that’s our Donald—trumping up any perceived slight against him or the people he favors from Molehill status up to Mountain proportions. The Iran nuclear deal, which in reality is a separate issue, is invoked here by Trump as a means of ginning up his base and gaining support for his positions among those distrustful of Iran’s intentions, if for no other reason than Iran is a Muslim-led nation. As for the discussion of Israeli settlement expansion on its merits alone, President-Elect Trump seems content to simply kowtow to the wishes of Netanyahu’s Israel and a majority of its constituents. Adopting a position that has been characterized by some as more Zionist than that of the Zionists, he appears set to discard any ideas of a two-state solution. For one, his choice of American ambassador to Israel, one David Friedman, has not only has dismissed the idea of such a policy but has actively funded some of the settlements John Kerry criticized. In addition, Donald Trump has announced his intention to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the much-disputed city of Jerusalem. So, for all intents and purposes, Trump and his cronies have made it clear that they could give a f**k about a Palestinian state and Arabs as a whole. But you probably already guessed that, too.

The exact nature of Donald Trump’s appeal to the Orthodox neo-Zionist crowd is admittedly somewhat perplexing. As Bernard Avishai, author, visiting professor of government at Dartmouth University, and adjunct professor at Hebrew University wrote about in a December 31, 2016 piece for The New York Times, Trump may feel he is indebted to this group who has voted Republican where the majority of American Jews has not, and will thus advance the extremist Zionist cause, but potentially at the expense of the already-waning confidence the latter group has in him and in U.S. foreign policy in general. Furthermore, the purported move of the United States embassy to Jerusalem—assuming it would actually come to pass, and many imagine the move of dubious likelihood—would threaten stability in Jordan, an important American ally in the Middle East but one with significant Palestinian and Syrian refugee populations. Trump wouldn’t risk the destabilization of a crucial friend in the region just to satisfy Israel’s monomaniacal pursuits, would he? Even if the answer is “I don’t know,” this much is vaguely frightening.

With the latest involving Russia and allegations of hacking, meanwhile, the likes of which is believed to have been designed to interfere with the election and get Donald Trump into the White House, as well as intended to undermine public confidence in the electoral process, Trump’s motivations seem more transparently self-serving. Shortly before 2016 ended, President Barack Obama ejected 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, imposed sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence organizations, and penalizing four top officers of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency. The State Department also acted to close two estates that were suspected of housing Russian intelligence activities, and levied sanctions on three companies/organizations believed to have been involved in the hacking. Not bad for a lame duck, eh?

These actions come backed by our own intelligence, from organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, which purport to have identified malware and other indicators of Russian cyber-attacks. Reservations about the FBI’s credibility in the wake of the Clinton E-mail investigation debacle notwithstanding, there would appear to be every reason to believe that these attacks were coordinated, and while the published findings (i.e. those which won’t remain classified) came short of suggesting any senior Russian officials of the two sanctioned intelligence agencies tried to influence the election, or that these attempts had any material impact on the election’s outcome, as Obama himself insisted, this kind of espionage and meddling in our affairs should concern any reasonable American.

Except now we’re about to address Donald Trump and people talking smack about his man-crush, Vladimir Putin. Already, unless you are a rabid Trump supporter, you might be predisposed to thinking the man, a pathological liar with the temperament and attention span of a young child, is the antithesis of reasonable. Throw in the effective throwing of shade at Putin, an individual for whom President-Elect Trump has expressed his admiration on numerous occasions in the past, and every semblance of reason would seem to go out the window. Trump, while reportedly agreeing to hear U.S. intelligence experts out, reacted to the news of sanctions by insisting that everyone has to “move on” from this whole hacking thing. Moreover, at the news Putin would, heeding the recommendations of his advisers, refrain from retaliating by jettisoning American diplomats from Russia, Trump tweeted, “I always knew he was very smart!” Um, Mr. Trump, you do realize it looks very bad when you’re heaping praise on the leader of a country that just has been publicly reproached for deliberately working against U.S. interests, right? When even your own party is praising Barack Obama for taking action against Russia—albeit in the same breath criticizing this move, as Arab critics of his administration’s condemnation of Israel’s settlements did, deriding this stand as too little, too late—you may want to reassess your position.

As with Donald Trump’s extremist position on Israel which breaks with decades of U.S. policy, not to mention would make the United States an outlier within the international community for its complicity with the Greater Israel ideal, his laudatory sentiments geared toward Vladimir Putin in the face of Russian hacking revelations that put him at odds with fellow Republicans is frustrating, yet not all that surprising. Critics of Trump and his love affair with the Putin regime have largely been left to their own devices regarding suppositions of why a seeming “bromance” exists. Some might suggest Trump, in his naïveté, thinks he can be the best of buddies with Putin, and to some extent, that may be true. Otherwise, his deflecting from allegations of hacking and interference with the election may be seen as defensiveness about his win, as if even the mere allusion to his victory by illegitimate means is an insult to his manhood. Even though, you know, he’s been the foremost accuser of electoral fraud and rigging of the results since the election happened—and, in fact, he was casually throwing out these kinds of charges before the whole shebang started.

As has been inferred from analysis of his business dealings, however, these explanations are merely red herrings for the true reason Donald Trump is all but writing down Vladimir Putin’s name and drawing hearts around it: that he has a vested financial interest in a pro-Russian agenda. Economist Robert Reich—of whom, if you’ve read this blog over the past few months, you’ve heard mention numerous times—penned an op-ed about a week or so again regarding a “dark cloud of illegitimacy” which stands to hang over a Trump presidency, one related to his financial ties to Russia as well as those of his associates. As Reich notes, Trump has close business ties to Russian oligarchs who have financed projects of his and likely have loaned him billions of dollars, and his son, Donald Trump, Jr., remarked at a real estate conference in 2008 that he saw “a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort also has consulting ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president who was propped up by Russia, and two of Trump’s appointees, foreign policy advisor, Michael Flynn, and Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil CEO, have been honored guests at Russian public ceremonies with Vladimir Putin in attendance.

Reich sums up the larger meaning behind these connections and Donald Trump’s refusal to give credence to evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election nicely:

None of these points taken separately undermines the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. But taken together, they suggest a troubling pattern — of Trump deceitfulness about the election, of Mr. Putin’s role in helping Mr. Trump get elected, and the possible motives of both men for colluding in the election. The dark cloud of illegitimacy continues to grow darker.

Of course, we would be better assured that Donald Trump has no ulterior motive in cozying up to Vladimir Putin and the Russians if, say, he would disclose these ties, agree to fully divest himself of his business dealings, and put his holdings in a blind trust. Like the prospect of him agreeing to hold regular press conferences whereby he might be subject to questions by unbiased members of the media, or even that of him apologizing to Rosie O’Donnell for calling her a fat pig, though, this all doesn’t seem bloody likely. And this cuts to the heart of the issue with Trump—you know, besides him being a hateful, know-nothing man-baby. If Trump really had nothing to hide, then he would’ve released his tax returns without all the nonsense about his being audited preventing that, and would be more forthright with the American people and with the press. But he’s not, and so you are left to doubt whether he became President for any reason other than to boost his ego and his personal wealth. I mean, sure, there is the alternative theory that he’s actually a Russian agent (Keith Olbermann advances this idea, if only in partial jest). More likely, however, is the simple idea he is looking to capitalize for his own sake. “Make America Great Again”? More like, “Make Me More Money.”

Barack Obama may be the lame duck president, yes. But incoming president Donald Trump, in his stubborn support of Israel’s one-state monomania at the likely expense of stability in and around the West Bank, as well as his borderline treasonous fidelity to Vladimir Putin and Russia even in the face of disturbing reports of repeated Russian intrusions in American affairs, seems like quite the turkey. Here’s hoping against reason we all don’t wind up with egg on our face because of it.

American Horror Story: Presidential Election Edition

US-VOTE-REPUBLICANS-DEBATE — Oh, no, America—what the f**k did you do? (Photo Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP Getty Images)

“President-Elect Trump.” Sweet Baby Jesus, I hate the sound of that.

In case you were living under a rock or had recently slipped into a coma and just emerged from your unresponsive state, I potentially have some very bad news for you. Defying the pre-vote polling and forecasting models, Donald J. Trump has won the 2016 presidential election. In one of those lovably quirky outcomes of a system based on the electoral college (read: many people are not loving it right now), Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote, but Trump garnered the necessary 270 electoral votes to carry the day. As of this writing, according to The New York Times‘ election tracker, 279 electoral votes are officially Trump’s, 228 are Clinton’s, and Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire are still being contested, though CNN is calling Arizona for Donald Trump, and I tend to think no amount of recounting is going to allay that result.

As far as Democrats are concerned, the night was especially bad when factoring in the results of House and Senate races. Prior to the polls closing, Dems had hopes of either the House, the Senate or both turning blue in terms of a majority, but those hopes were quickly dashed when the actual results came in. Republicans will maintain a narrow majority in the Senate, despite losing two seats, and have retained control of the House of Representatives as well. Talk about a whitewash, or “red-wash,” as it were.

Not that I really wish to belabor the the mechanics of how exactly Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton and supporters of human compassion and understanding lost, but it may be instructive to go into detail for future reference, i.e. preventing any unqualified buffoon like Trump from winning again. Some considerations on how the 2016 presidential race shook out the way it did in terms of the electoral map and what we’ve learned from exit polls:

Regional concerns

Looking at the electoral map at large, there’s an awful lot of red to behold. Clinton carried the bulk of the Northeast and has a nice strip of blue to show for her efforts along the Pacific Coast and Hawaii. The Democratic Party nominee also recorded victories in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New Mexico. But that’s it. When the smoke clears, Trump will likely have won 30 states to Clinton’s 20, owing to his greater share of the popular vote among Midwest and Southern states, as well as those less populous states in the Northwest like Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.

Perhaps most significantly, Donald Trump emerged victorious in a number of key battleground states, including Florida (29 electoral votes), Iowa (6 electoral votes), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10). That’s 83 electoral votes right there, and if you count Arizona and Michigan as GOP wins, then you’re over the century mark. This is to say that those close contests really did make a difference in this election. Also, Florida and Ohio were instrumental in screwing over Democrats yet again. They can shove oranges and buckeyes up their respective asses right now, for all I care.

Gender

OK, so this one is perhaps no big shock. According to exit polls conducted by CNN (to which I will refer for the rest of the demographic information referenced herein), men, by more than 10%, chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. A similar margin informed women’s votes in favor of Hillary. Is this election, then, a referendum on a woman’s ability to be President/a leader in the United States? Perhaps partially, but that alone does not explain how Trump won so decisively. So, while gender is a factor, let’s not make it out to be some end-all-and-be-all.

Age

Here, too, the splits were pretty stark. Voters 18 – 29 overwhelmingly chose Clinton over Trump, and within the group from the ages of 30 – 44, 50% to 42% were “with her.” Once you get above the age of 45, however, the script flips, as the baby boomers and old codgers among us opted to ride the “Trump Train.” This is not unlike the divide experienced with Brexit, in which millennials and other youths voted overwhelmingly to Remain. In both cases, though, it was the younger voters, arguably, who behaved more like adults.

Race

Gender and age were significant factors in the 2016 presidential race, but the issue of race looms largest. Just look at these tallies. Whites, 58% – 37%, sided with Donald Trump. Non-whites (Asians, blacks, Latinos, et al.), by a whopping 74% to 21%, were in Hillary Clinton’s camp. These disparities are too big to ignore, and prompted CNN contributor Van Jones to refer to the results as a “white-lash,” a portmanteau of “white” and “backlash” which explains the public’s reaction against a changing electorate and a black president.

Looking at the race through the lens of race, it’s kind of hard to argue otherwise. Trump supporters may aver that it’s the Obama administration’s policies which have them so incensed. But when their candidate of choice has been so deficient in the area of policy—be it domestic or foreign—how can they claim to be so principled in their vote? The majority of people who voted for Trump voted based on emotion, not on conscience or principle, and in all likelihood based one or more of the uglier emotions in the human expression at that.

Education

Broadly speaking, voters who have not gone as far in their education (high school or less; some college) tended to go for Donald Trump, while college graduates trended toward Hillary Clinton, and even more so for those with a postgraduate degree. It should be noted, though, that at the intersection of education and race, non-white voters without a college degree voted 75% – 20% for Hillary. In other words, they didn’t need fancy book learnin’ to be able to see through Trump’s bullshit.

Income

Though slight preferences, voters who make $50,000 a year or more tended to cast their ballots for Donald Trump, while voters under that threshold chose Hillary Clinton more often. Hmm, I guess they really don’t want to pay their fair share.

Marital status

For what it’s worth, married voters sided more heavily with Trump, while unmarried voters aligned more frequently with Clinton. It should be noted that even with the subset of married voters, though, it was married men who really brought the overall rates of Trump’s supporters up above the 50% mark; married women showed a minuscule 2% preference for Hillary Clinton. A similar effect was observed for unmarried women pushing up support for Clinton, as unmarried men exhibited a slim bias toward Hillary.

Religion

Christians, by and large, supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Per the CNN exit polls, a majority of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons and other Christians allied with the GOP on Election Day, with white born-again Christians/evangelicals in particular throwing their support for the Republican Party nominee (81% of respondents!). By contrast, Jews, atheists, and those under the broad designation of “other religions” favored Hillary Clinton. To a certain extent, this appears to be another manifestation of the liberal-conservative divide, though noting “Two Corinthians” Trump is not exactly known for his adherence to “the good book,” it’s yet a little surprising.

On the most important issue facing America

As with the earlier discussion of race, results along this dimension are pretty telling. For those voters most concerned with matters of foreign policy or the economy, double-digit majorities voted for Hillary Clinton. For those voters most troubled by immigration trends and terrorism, meanwhile, Donald Trump was their strongman, er, man. The exit poll did not indicate what either side, meanwhile, thought of climate change, keeping with the election’s theme of not giving a shit about the Earth, escalating global temperatures, and declining species. But that’s OK—let’s keep worrying about Mexicans crossing the border.

On which candidate quality matters most

Also speaks volumes about the state of American politics. On whether they thought a particular candidate cares about them, has the right experience, or exhibits good judgment, a majority of respondents indicated this was true of Clinton, but not of Trump. However, on the notion of which candidate is more likely to bring about change, voters who sided with Donald Trump overwhelmingly agreed with this statement. Apparently, experience, good judgment and giving a shit about people are not requirements for the top political office in the United States. The vague concept of change is enough to get you a seat in the Oval Office—even if it turns out that change is distinctly negative.

reid_between_the_lines — Yes, Democrats, you bear some responsibility for Donald Trump’s rise, too. (Image retrieved from latimes.com).

For someone like myself, a progressive-minded white guy residing in a state, New Jersey, in which a majority of voters did not choose Donald Trump, the results of the election were pretty damn disappointing. I feel powerless. I feel scared. I feel as if I should be apologizing on behalf of white people everywhere for ushering in a candidate who has made appeals to our baser tendencies his way of interacting with the world and who has inspired a culture of bullying that parents have passed on to their children, leading to harassment and taunts on school playgrounds. And as bad as I feel, I feel worse for those segments of the population who stand to be most adversely affected by a Donald Trump presidency, especially immigrants and Muslims. We all stand to suffer under President Trump, but realistically, I have had and will have it easier than most.

Regardless of any tiered system of potential personal misfortune, so many people are reacting to the news of a Trump presidency with a mix of raw emotions, and in their anger, disappointment and shock, they likely are looking for someone to blame. Based on the narrative one seeks, there are any number of options for scapegoats. Certainly, in a few of those aforementioned battleground states, having names like Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and even Harambe stealing votes was not inconsequential. I’ve talked about this subject at length, and to this charge of “spoiling” the election for Hillary Clinton, I say phooey. Ralph Nader, accused of the same “crime” in 2000, talks about this phenomenon as political bigotry perpetrated and perpetuated as a result of the two-party oligarchy represented by the Democratic and Republican Parties. Not only does this attitude demean the individual’s right to choose, but by meekly giving in to choosing the so-called lesser of two evils, we lose our bargaining power as voters to entice the major parties to put forth policies that authentically reflect the needs of the electorate. The onus is—or at least should be—on the major party and the major-party candidate to convince the voters he or she is the best choice to lead the country. Gary Johnson was never going to win the presidency, but to intimate that he or any other candidate cost Hillary the election is a falsehood.

OK, so if blaming the Libertarian Party or Green Party candidate is disingenuous, who instead might be deserving of our scorn? Some disenchanted Democrats point to James Comey’s 11th-hour revelation that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s E-mails, as well as apparent attempts by Vladimir Putin and Russia to meddle in the U.S. election by hacking the private E-mails of prominent Democratic Party officials. On the latter count, while few would relish the idea of foreign governments influencing our domestic political affairs, the counterargument can be made that the hacks are merely exposing the kinds of attitudes and secrets the American people deserve to know. On the former count, meanwhile? While, again, the truth should be known regarding possible wrongdoing, what good does the announcement of the reopening of the E-mail investigation so close to the day of the election do? James Comey’s reputation had already taken a hit in the decision not to press charges in the first place. This just further undermines his and the Bureau’s credibility. With confidence in public institutions eroding year after year, these shenanigans just grease the wheels of a flaming car careening down a winding mountain path.

Ultimately, though, it’s Hillary Clinton’s use of one or more private E-mail servers and unencrypted mobile devices which prompted the FBI and Comey to intervene. Besides, the Bureau director himself can’t be held responsible for the rise of Donald Trump in the first place. Might we, therefore, look to groups of people/organizations and trends in politics rather than individual people and dead zoo-bound gorillas? You know, beyond the obvious in those who voted for Trump, because they evidently don’t know any better? Robert Reich, in a recent piece on his blog, weighed in on the three biggest enablers to Donald Trump’s path to the presidency. You probably can guess them offhand, but here they are in writing, just to make sure we are on the same page:

1. The Republican Party

When you allow an asshat like Donald Trump to become your party’s nominee, um, yeah, you’re culpable in this regard. As Reich explains, Trump’s racism and xenophobia, while extreme, are not out of character for more recent iterations of the GOP, nor is his “disdain of facts” and the due processes of law and lawmaking. In other words, Donald Trump may be among the Republican Party’s worst examples, but he’s not the only one.

2. The media

Conservatives and right-wing extremists already had a bone to pick with the mainstream media due to perceived liberal bias. Now, liberals have a legitimate gripe against this same institution with respect to all the free advertising they gave Donald Trump, and if public confidence in networks like CNN suffers catastrophically in the coming years, we might look back on this moment and know why. In no uncertain terms, major news outlets gave Trump a megaphone in exchange for a ratings grab, all the while failing to truly vet him as the unqualified candidate, shady businessman, and reprehensible person he is—at least not until it was too late, and even then, they underestimated the depth of Trump’s appeal. And Fox News can eat a dick. Just for general principles.

3. The Democratic Party

Wait, but the Democrats ran extensively against Donald Trump. How can they be blamed for his ascendancy? This is perhaps Robert Reich’s most damning round of criticism and seemingly so in light of what would appear to be higher expectations for the Democrats, evidently unfounded after this electoral debacle. Within the larger fault-finding of the Dems as enablers, Reich points to specific failures of the party in representing the needs of working-class Americans, including:

Forsaking the working class in favor of Wall Street money and other big-ticket donations, as well as seeking votes primarily from upper-middle-class suburban households in areas designated as important voting blocs (i.e. “swing” states).
Failing to protect jobs and wages while in control of one or more congressional houses.
Pushing job-killing free trade agreements under the Clinton and Obama administrations.
Allowing corporations to chip away at the bargaining power of unions or to violate labor laws without meaningful consequences.
Permitting antitrust laws to stagnate or otherwise become less effective, paving the way for larger corporations and consolidation of power within industries into the hands of the few.

You can feel free to argue the relative merit of Robert Reich’s assertions, but for the Democratic Party, as well as the other two enablers, it would seem that each needs to some soul-searching, because it’s a sure bet each of these parties dislikes one or more aspects of a Donald Trump presidency, including the press, who may find themselves at a disadvantage if Trump’s intention to weaken First Amendment protections of publications against claims of libel/slander actually comes to pass. The pertinent question, though, as Reich frames it, is whether or not these enablers have learned anything from the results of this election, and I would tend to doubt they have—at least not yet. They don’t call them the stages of grief for nothing, and if the hashtag #NotMyPresident trending the day after the election is any indication, those not thrilled with Trump’s victory are still a way’s away from acceptance. This includes, of course, those responsible in part for Donald Trump’s rise accepting their responsibility.

Not only do I personally agree with Robert Reich’s assignment of culpability in these three instances, but I embrace his call for a reformation of the Democratic Party, if not the need for a new political party or more enthusiastic recognition of third parties. In a follow-up to his piece on the role of the GOP, the media, and the Democrats as Trump enablers, Reich builds on many of the same themes, but in a more provincial context that directly confronts the necessity for change within the Democratic Party. From the opening of his essay:

As a first step, I believe it necessary for the members and leadership of the Democratic National Committee to step down and be replaced by people who are determined to create a party that represents America – including all those who feel powerless and disenfranchised, and who have been left out of our politics and left behind in our economy.

The Democratic Party as it is now constituted has become a giant fundraising machine, too often reflecting the goals and values of the moneyed interests. This must change. The election of 2016 has repudiated it. We need a people’s party – a party capable of organizing and mobilizing Americans in opposition to Donald Trump’s Republican party, which is about to take over all three branches of the U.S. government. We need a New Democratic Party that will fight against intolerance and widening inequality.

What happened in America Tuesday should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.

“Widening equality”—that sounds familiar. Strange. It’s not like anyone talked about this on the campaign trail. Oh, wait—that was Bernie Sanders, and he talked about it LITERALLY AT EVERY F**KING RALLY AT WHICH HE SPOKE. Noting Sanders’ consistent domination of Donald Trump in theoretical presidential election polls pitting the two men from New York against one another, a number of people have played “Wednesday morning quarterback,” if you will, wondering whether or not Bernie could have saved us from “the Trumpocalypse.” Reich, for his part, was a fervent Sanders supporter until the Vermont senator suspended his campaign, at which point both men honorably got behind Hillary Clinton and tried to sell her as an alternative to Trump.

Prior to that, however, Robert Reich consistently made his distinction between Hillary and Bernie. Clinton, Reich insisted, is an accomplished, experienced politician, and indeed was the better candidate to work within the system we have in place now. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, was the better candidate to get us to the kind of political system we desperately need, one not dominated by lavish donations from business executives and Hollywood stars, or too cozy with special interests to insist on practical, substantive reform. A democracy of the people, for the people, and by the people. At the time, Reich’s focus on this progressive agenda seemed a bit remote, even for those like myself who believe in Bernie’s vision, in light of Hillary Clinton’s near-certainty of capturing the Democratic Party nomination.

With Donald Trump pulling off the upset to win the 2016 election, however, and with Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House and into the history books halted perhaps permanently, unexpectedly, Democrats must take a cue from Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich sooner than later and more aggressively pursue policy that would benefit the American people and the planet as a whole. Whereas leading up to the election, the media elites suggested the Republican Party was in shambles, thus enhancing the likelihood that Clinton would win, now, in the overreaction to Trump’s victory, people are saying the Last Rites for the Democratic Party. Perhaps this is mere wishful thinking, but I believe, relative to the GOP, the Democrats, by preaching the virtues of inclusion and equality, are still in a better place than the Republicans in the long term, in spite of their poor showing on Election Day. Sure, right now, Trump supporters are popping off, getting in the faces of those who don’t fit their mold and convinced they personally have won something as a result of their candidate’s electoral college win. And while outward shows of discrimination in its various forms shouldn’t be tolerated, to the extent conservatives and the alt-right might now underestimate liberals and progressives, this could be the silver lining of this debacle. Up until the votes came in, much of the world didn’t see President-Elect Donald Trump coming. Come 2018 into 2020, though, the shoe may just be on the other foot. For the sake of our country and perhaps even the world, I can only hope that’s the case.

Why I’m Voting for Jill Stein, Or, If Not Now—When?

Not only is Dr. Jill Stein a strong and qualified candidate for President, but she speaks with authenticity about a plan for the issues facing the country. Can you say that about your candidate of choice? (Photo Credit: Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA)

Though it likely means very little in the grand scheme of things—including to her campaign—I am endorsing Jill Stein for President of the United States. If you know me personally, this may not surprise you, though you’re probably thinking you didn’t imagine me to be so impractical, nor did you consider me to be that interested in politics. Up until recently, though, I wasn’t really that interested in U.S. politics. (On the “impractical” front, meanwhile, I’ve always kind of been that way. Oh, well.) Like so many Americans, I was disgusted with the doings of lawmakers and other politicians. I still am, mind you, and this current slog of a presidential race has perhaps only increased that sickened feeling, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to know where this country is headed, and who’s leading it. Especially if it’s headed to “the shitter,” as some might term it, and it’s being led by a bunch of idiots and children professing to call themselves “adults.”

I may be in my 30’s, and thus have a limited frame of reference for matters of domestic and foreign policy, but seeing a bunch of jokers twice my age do what I would judge to be a poor job of steering our country in the right direction, I figure I might as well do what I can to equip myself and others with knowledge, or at least a different viewpoint in relation to today’s events. People have even made offhand references to me running for President someday, or if I were to run, that they would vote for me. At present, this is merely very flattering to me, but who knows—the ol’ US of A might need someone like me in the future.

But I digress. I imagine a number of you reading and others if they knew are/would be upset at my announcement of my intention to vote for Jill Stein. Accordingly, I have prepared responses as part of an imaginary Q&A. It’s like participating in a debate, only with myself, and thus, if anyone interrupts me, I literally only have myself to blame. So, here goes nothing:

Good evening, Mr. Mangano. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions.

Well, thank you for having me, and a special thanks to everyone reading.

Sure thing. They’ve already probably started skimming, so let’s not waste too much time, shall we? About your decision to support and vote for Dr. Jill Stein in the upcoming presidential election—

Yes.

Um, don’t mean to be a dick and all, but you know she can’t win, right?

Well, yeah, I understand that.

So, you’re OK with wasting your vote?

I mean, if you consider it a waste of my vote, then yes. Though I might submit that if Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump by, say, a million votes in the general election, then barring a situation in which Trump wins the presidency based on electoral math despite having lost the popular vote, 999,999 people casting their vote for the GOP might be considered to be wasting their votes as well.

Listen, don’t get cute. If you want to go ahead and make a “protest vote,” why not just go whole hog and vote for Donald Trump?

Um, are you serious?

Indulge me.

What exactly am I “protesting” by voting for Donald J. Trump? Equal treatment of women and people with brown skin? Decency? Having a functioning brain in one’s head? There are so many reasons why voting for Trump is a bad idea, including but not limited to his childishness, his hard-on for Vladimir Putin, his lack of concrete policy ideas, his litigiousness, his racism, his sexism, his vendetta against the mainstream media, his xenophobia, and that he’s a cheat, a fraud, a liar, poor businessman, and potential rapist. And the notion of voting for him because the DNC “screwed” Bernie or that Hillary is part of the “establishment” and he’s an “outsider” is just plain dumb. He’s not “one of us.” He’s a spoiled rich brat who has enjoyed tax breaks and other privileges that were only available to him because of the name his daddy created. I would rather trust a pack of wolves with watching my steak dinner than give Donald Trump the keys to the country.

What I’m hearing is a lot of reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, well, that seems to be many people’s stance, but I don’t feel the same way.

Oh, great. You’re one of those folks who’s going to help independents “Nader” this election.

Ugh. I assume you’re referring to the assertion Ralph Nader “lost” Al Gore the 2000 election, that he played “spoiler” to his hopes. This is a narrative the media has spun about the results of that presidential election which I find wholly disingenuous. First of all, let me point out the fact Gore did not even win his home state of Tennessee in that election. So right then and there, this says something about the enthusiasm (or lack thereof) behind his candidacy. This notwithstanding, there were an awful lot of shenanigans surrounding hanging chads and recounts in the state of Florida, besides the idea thousands of Democrats in the Sunshine State voted for George W. Bush. With all this in mind, suggesting Gary Johnson and Jill Stein could collectively “Nader” this election is a whole lot of misdirection. If Hillary Clinton doesn’t become the first female President of the United States following the results of the vote in November, it won’t be because Bernie Sanders or Johnson or Stein ruined it for her, it’ll be because she lost and she didn’t make a compelling enough case to voters, especially Democrats.

I’m invoking Ralph Nader himself here, but to even refer to someone as a “spoiler” in this context is to be politically bigoted. After all, what are the scores of people who are voting for Hillary Clinton because she’s not Donald Trump and vice-versa doing but playing spoiler to someone else’s vote? In a sense, we’re all playing spoiler by voting, and even those who can vote and don’t plan to come out—who deserve to be admonished, by the way—are making a choice by “not making a choice.” If we’re blaming anyone after Election Day, let it be those who, without irony, cast their ballots for the Republican Party nominee. They’d be the ones “Brexit-ing” this election.

Fine. No excuses for Hillary Clinton if she doesn’t win. Even though she’s trying to single-handedly break through the glass ceiling and deal with centuries of patriarchal oppression.

Right, yes, if she’s playing the “woman card,” then “deal her in.” She’s used that line quite a few times. Though I would like to note Jill Stein is, herself, a woman—

And she’s immensely qualified for the office of President, perhaps more so than any other candidate in American history.

Yes. We know. First Lady and U.S. Senator and Secretary of State. Lots of qualifications—

She’s fighting for us!

OK, but—

We’re stronger together!

Yes, but—

Love trumps hate!

Would you quit it with all the campaign slogans?

Sorry. It’s just she inspires so many people. I mean, all these Hollywood endorsements can’t be wrong, can they? Why aren’t you “with her?” Why aren’t you on the side of a progressive who gets things done?

Whoa. Let me stop you right there. Don’t get me wrong—I want Hillary Clinton to win this election. As with the number of voters out there who are behind HRC to foil Donald Trump, I pray Gropey McOrange-Face never holds any public office, let alone President of these United States. Moreover, I don’t wish to rain on the parade the Clinton campaign and women of all ages are envisioning should Hillary win. There’s something to be said for giving young girls, in particular, hope that one day they can rise to the same heights, afforded opportunities the women who came before them never dreamed of. Pardon the expression, but it’s a yuuuuuuge deal.

Going back to Trump, meanwhile, there is a real danger in the prospect of seeing him potentially filling the upcoming vacancy in the Oval Office, and I’m not even talking about the damage he could do with the stroke of a pen or at the behest of a Republican-led Congress, as well as the injury he could inflict on America’s credibility among the nations of the world, which already has taken a hit as a result of him merely becoming a major-party nominee. I’m talking about the sense of empowerment a Donald Trump presidency stands to give stupid racist assholes like himself—that they are justified in their hate and wanting to somehow “take their country back.” No, f**k-wads. You’re taking our country backwards. Our country. Not yours. As Jon Stewart so correctly put it, you don’t own the United States, and you don’t own patriotism. Trump can’t fix America. Trump can’t give you back the nation you think you remember. And Trump can’t “make America great again.” It could be better, sure, but it already is great—and far better than the third-world country he makes it out to be to gin up your anger and fear in trying to get your vote.

But Hillary Clinton, a progressive? No way, José. Before we even get to her exact position on the political spectrum, let’s first consider her track record of, ahem, getting things done. As First Lady? The Clinton health care initiative spearheaded by Hillary and designed to bring the U.S. closer to a universal health care system went down in flames, and HRC was criticized and even litigated against for her part in the apparent secrecy of developments within her Health Care Task Force. As U.S. Senator? Her legacy of bills that she sponsored passing the Senate in two terms? Three became law: one to establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site, one to rename a post office, and one to rename a highway. And let’s not forget her vote for the Iraq War. How about her role as Secretary of State? I’ll grant you her work to secure the Iran nuclear deal, and possibly even her influence in the decision to take out Osama bin Laden, but let’s ask the people of Honduras and Libya about meddling in their countries’ affairs. Or mention the deal that sent 20% of America’s uranium stores to Russia. Or perhaps casually talk about her reckless use of E-mail and mobile devices, which may or may not have coincided with hiding sensitive information about the Clinton Foundation or drone strikes. Is this the kind of experience we’re touting?

No, Hillary Clinton is far too jaded from her years in politics to embrace the truly progressive spirit America needs. Universal health care? Pie-in-the-sky fodder! Let’s just keep pushing the Affordable Care Act no one seems to like! $15 minimum wage? Not conciliatory enough! Blame the big banks for their role in the 2007 financial crisis? But the banking industry knows what’s best for it! Free trade? Why not? Climate change? We need to fight it, but what the heck, let’s have some fracking while we’re at it! More military to fight ISIS? Done! Tim Kaine? He’s vanilla as they come, but that’s what we’re after! You see, Clinton hews too close to center on so many issues, and even when she professes to support a more progressive agenda, you can’t be confident she’ll actually live up to her promises. For instance, Hillary claims she’s against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but do you really feel comfortable in the notion she’d break ranks with Barack Obama and move against the agreement should it fail to pass in the lame-duck session? I sure as hell don’t.

As Obama’s ascension to the presidency was a symbol of progress for African-Americans, so too would Hillary Clinton as POTUS signify a breakthrough for women. But is this enough? Both Obama and Clinton seem to favor incremental change rather than bold ideas, and neither has called for the requisite amount of reform of the financial sector in the wake of the credit crisis of a decade ago, which could see a reprise with Wells Fargo and other “too big to fail” institutions playing fast and loose with ethics and our money. Hillary may be a better candidate than Donald Trump, but this doesn’t necessarily make her a good one. She’s a moderate in progressive’s clothing, a warmonger, and not for nothing, pretty damn arrogant. Not as much as Trump, again, but still. She and the rest of the Democratic Party appear content to ride out the “we’re not Trump” strategy up until the election, convinced he’ll self-destruct or that we’ll vote for them anyway. By choosing the “lesser of two evils,” that’s exactly what we’re doing—and giving them every reason to think they can pander to us and put us into boxes. See? There’s danger in electing Hillary Clinton too.

Wow, you really don’t like Hillary, do you?

Not too much. I think there was a time when Hillary Clinton was perhaps more idealistic, and I do feel she genuinely cares about certain issues, namely children’s and women’s rights. Somewhere along the way, though, I believe she decided that politics is a dirty game which should be played to win, and that the acquisition of funds by whatever means necessary is justifiable. In this respect, I suppose HRC is, in part, a byproduct of the money machines known as the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and the conflation of politics and business. But this does not completely exonerate her.

OK. Let’s recap real quick. Donald Trump is a scumbag, so you’re not voting for him.

Yup. I mean, you heard about the Trump Tapes, right?

Shit, those were awful. I feel dirty just thinking about them. And Hillary Clinton is a phony in expensive designer clothing, so you’re not voting for her either.

Uh-huh. And it sounds like she’ll be pretty cozy with Wall Street if elected based on the latest leak from Wikileaks.

Yes, yes, Bernie supporter. We know. Wall Street is bad. Money is the root of all evil.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT! THAT’S NOT EVEN THE REAL QUOTE! IT’S “THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL!” MONEY IS A USEFUL MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE!

Hey, hey! Stop yelling at me! I’m just a figment of your imagination!

Sorry. I just get upset when people take things out of context.

Yeah, I noticed. All right. Where were we? Ah, yes—your third-party vote. Or fourth-party vote. What is the technical term for your choice?

How about the Green Party vote?

Fine. Whatever. Don’t you think you’re suffering from a serious case of white privilege in refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump? After all, dude wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans out and ban Muslims from entering the U.S. You’re in a better position to suffer through a Trump presidency than minority groups are.

I don’t deny I am white and privileged. Let me stress—I don’t want Donald Trump to win. Again, though, I feel like it’s unfair to say to people, “Hey, you need to get out there and vote. Don’t f**k this up for the rest of us.” Already, the Hillary apologists and other people fearing a Trump presidency are creating a scapegoat, when it should be incumbent upon the candidate to convince the people to vote for him or her, and not just vote against the alternative. Besides, what message does this send to new voters exercising their rights as citizens? Vote your conscience, but not this time. We know you don’t like either choice, but fall in line. Don’t think about the issues so much—there’s too much at stake to vote independent.

The rationale against Donald Trump is that he more or less is, you know, Hitler, but if both major-party candidates are as unlikable and untrustworthy as Donald and Hillary, and we’ve been voting for the lesser of two evils within the two-party system for this long, gosh darn it, maybe we’re doing it wrong. Maybe the Democrats and Republicans need a signal they’re not meeting the needs of the electorate, and of the planet at that. If we don’t tell them by voting outside the box, if you will, how are we going to ensure that they absorb this notion and produce better candidates for 2020? If not now, when?

Hmm, not even your boys Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich can sway your mind, can they?

I respect these guys immensely, especially Sanders for backing a candidate he campaigned against during the primary season. I also understand where they’re coming from, at least from an outsider’s perspective. Donald Trump. Adolf Hitler. If all people can say in the former’s defense is that he hasn’t called for ethnic cleansing or that he doesn’t have a mustache like the latter, that pretty much tells you all you need to know. Still, while I don’t wish for a Trump presidency, the damage his antics and rhetoric might do to down-ticket Republicans hoping for congressional bids might be quite a boon for the country. Regardless, I think we need to move beyond a mere red-or-blue paradigm, and I feel I need to be true to myself. So come November, I’m voting my conscience—and watching the election results with bated breath.

Wow. You’ve certainly given us a lot to bite off and chew.

Yeah, it’s what I do.

Maybe you should get out more.

Probably.

Before you go, you talk about voting for a candidate as opposed to voting against another? So, what’s so great about this Jen Stein anyway?

It’s Jill Stein.

Sure, sure. Jill Stein.

She’s a doctor.

What, like, a real one?

No, she just plays one on TV. OF COURSE SHE’S A REAL DOCTOR!

Hey! What did I say about yelling?

OK, I’m sorry!

Ben Carson is a doctor. Why didn’t you support him?

Very funny. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, not only is eminently qualified like Hillary, but also has a forthright plan to address the major issues facing the United States and the world today. As with Bernie Sanders, Stein believes in a people-powered solution to high poverty and unemployment rates, not to mention a sustainable economy for a sustainable world, and one that functions within a society built on respect for the rights and dignity of all people.

Among the key components of her agenda as the Green Party’s representative are cutting military spending, eliminating student debt, enacting a $15 minimum wage, ending police brutality and mass incarceration, ensuring the right to live and work comfortably for all people, establishing a single-payer public health care system, expanding women’s rights, moving away from corporate influence on politics, and, of course, transitioning America to renewable energy sources as a function of a commitment to protecting the Earth. Of the remaining presidential candidates, she appears to the most focused and genuine among them. And unlike certain people in this race, she knows where the heck Aleppo is.

I knew that was coming sooner or later.

Couldn’t help myself. Sorry.

Phew. That was a long one.

That’s what she said.

God, what are you: twelve?

I know you are, but what am I?

Sigh, I think we’re nearing the end of the road here. Any last words to you want to impart to the audience?

Sure. Thanks again to all for reading, and for more information on Jill Stein and her campaign, visit www.jill2016.com.

Great. Joseph Mangano, ladies and gentlemen! You realize they’re clapping for me, not you, right?

Oh, shut up.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: If They Don’t Know Them (Apart) by Now…

untitled-2 — This photo mash-up of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (Dillary Clump?) is the kind of thing that gives small children nightmares. (Image Source: TheChive)

Economist Robert Reich, a man whose insights on matters of economics and public policy I respect dearly, and whom I’ve referenced numerous times on this blog, took to his own website to weigh on the refrain he’s heard from numerous Bernie Sanders supporters who see little difference between the two major-party candidates for President of the United States this election cycle. In a piece entitled “Why You Must Get Behind Hillary, Now,” Reich makes an impassioned plea to those voters contemplating a protest vote, whether based on the notion Hillary Clinton is no better than Donald Trump, that if she is better she’s still corrupt, or that the Democratic Party doesn’t deserve our vote owing to their shenanigans. His response to these justifications for choosing anyone but Hillary is threefold:

1. Trump is a crazy asshole.

Robert Reich here is not so much making a defense of Hillary Clinton, who he acknowledges is not perfect, as much as he is pointing out Donald Trump’s flaws. Namely that he’s dangerously unqualified, full of himself, and racist as all hell. Clinton, at the very least, is very qualified. As we’ve heard 10,000 times this campaign, HRC is supremely qualified.

2. Trump is an evil, crazy asshole.

Forget the “lesser of two evils,” says Reich. Trump may actually be pure evil. I’ve talked about how voting him into office is making a deal with the Devil, but this literally may be the case. In all seriousness, Robert Reich here is urging Bernie supporters to be “realistic and practical” in making their choice, insisting they are not abandoning their progressive principles or “selling out” by voting for Clinton. Even though that’s totally what it feels like.

3. I know you don’t want to reward the stupid Democratic Party for being stupid, but don’t potentially punish future generations because of it.

Here, Reich stresses again the need to advance progressive values in accordance with the formation of an economic and political system that adequately represents working Americans. The first priority, however, is beating Donald Trump. Without that, argues Robert Reich, the revolution can’t get started, and will only get set back further because of it.

Of course, I am paraphrasing Reich’s more tactful verbiage for (debatable) entertainment value. Creative license aside, I agree, broadly speaking, with the above points. Certainly, I submit to the assertion Trump does not deserve your vote, and assuming the lesser of two evils paradigm, Hillary wins on that count as well. As for voting for Donald Trump to stick it to Clinton and the other establishment Democrats, by punishing the DNC, you are by proxy rewarding a self-destructive Republican Party that should have never allowed Trump to rise so high in the first place. While voting for Hillary Clinton does not equal a vote for a true progressive, electing Donald Trump is moving even further from these ideals. To borrow an analogy I witnessed on Twitter, voting for Trump instead of Clinton after supporting Bernie Sanders is like ordering, because you can’t have the hot dogs you really want, a bowl of scorpions instead. Robert Reich closes his entry with this stark reminder:

There are just over seven weeks until Election Day. My request to those of you who still don’t want to vote for Hillary Clinton: please reconsider. It is no exaggeration to say the fate of the nation and the world are at stake.

Rather doom-and-gloom, no? Still, I believe Reich is only speaking in such a sobering way because of the gravity of the situation. Donald Trump should not be President of the United States, and if he does win the race, he will probably be a disaster in this role. There’s no need to mince words in this regard—not at this late hour.

Robert Reich is completely right to make this appeal to voters’ better judgment. That we’re less than two months away from the election in November, however, and he’s still having to try to convince Bernie supporters and other would-be protest voters there is a difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, does not bode well for his ability or anyone else’s, for that matter, to sway their opinions. Having far fewer Facebook subscribers to my name, I am in a yet worse position to change the minds of those in dissent. This notwithstanding, let’s review their charges as enumerated by Mr. Reich which may be key to understanding the depths of the #HillNo resistance:

1. Hillary Clinton is no better than Donald Trump.

As Matthew Berry of ESPN fantasy sports might say, “This is factually incorrect.” Hillary Clinton is certainly better than Donald Trump. Trump has not only built a campaign on a Mexican wall that is absurdly ill-advised and would be incredibly wasteful, but he has run on a platform of jingoistic hate speech. Clinton, for her part, has tried to capitalize on her primary competitor’s most offensive remarks, even busting out the slogan “love trumps hate” with obvious allusion to her Republican rival as part of this attempt to distinguish herself to independent and undecided voters. Of course, the concern with Hillary is that she has repressed genuine emotion for so long she can’t actually feel love anymore, much as an android might claim to express love for a pet cat, so that is its own issue. Regardless of her robo-feelings, Hillary Clinton is a better choice than Donald Trump. This does not necessarily mean she is good, mind you, just better than the major-party alternative.

2. Clinton is corrupt.

Um, yeah, but so is Trump. For all that has been said about Hillary Clinton, her E-mails and potential ethical and legal violations occurring with respect to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Victory Fund, Donald Trump still hasn’t released his tax returns, and has a history of cheating people out of money. In fact, it often seems, when they are not intentionally trying to lose the race by saying something stupid (especially Trump), some unsavory detail about their present situation or past misdeeds surfaces to make us wonder whether or not they have been purposely aiming to out-corrupt one another. In my mind, calling Hillary Clinton corrupt without indicting Donald Trump of the same is allowing a professional con man to fool you by deflecting or by using legal smoke and mirrors to hide his wrongdoing. Clinton’s no saint, but Trump very well may be going to Hell at the end of his story. You know, assuming he’s not Beelzebub to begin with.

3. The Democratic Party doesn’t deserve our vote.

This is probably true. Concordant with Robert Reich’s aforementioned arguments, however, neither does the backwards Republican Party, whose convention was eschewed by both Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow, and which Third Eye Blind—yes, “Semi-Charmed Life” playing Third Eye f**king Blind—performed at just to troll the attendees. The GOP has allowed itself to essentially become an enemy of homosexuals, minorities, sensible gun laws, science, women’s rights and the working class, among other groups. The Democratic establishment may not have done much to earn our vote, but much of the Republican establishment is an embarrassment to the American freedoms it claims to protect.

1024-txtshilary-mh-061912 — The photo that launched a thousand memes. Maybe Bill Maher is right. Maybe Hillary Clinton could benefit by becoming “the Notorious HRC.” (Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

While perhaps unlikely, this thinking could become moot once the presidential debates begin and a yet larger segment of the population gets to witness how completely deficient Donald Trump is in the areas of domestic and foreign policy. Which is pretty much all the policy there is to discuss, so here’s hoping Trump can really put his proverbial foot in his mouth—and often. Still, less than 50 days away from the general election, if we’re still having to wax theoretical about whether the American public might comprehend how deeply unfit Donald Trump is for the highest office in the United States, perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree. That is, even putting aside his incredible insensitivity toward blacks, the disabled, Jews, members of the media, Mexicans, Muslims, spouses of political rivals, veterans, victims of gun violence, women, and probably scores more groups I can’t immediately bring to mind—admittedly a tough ask, by the way—that the man has nothing developed to his political credit beyond a very costly plan for immigration reform which will only alienate the international community, and that voters don’t see through this fatal flaw, gives many among us pause and makes us wonder why they don’t get this. Unless they do grasp this much, and support him anyway, which, I submit, is ten times worse. If they can’t appreciate this simple truth, then appeals to logic along the lines of Robert Reich’s probably won’t make much of an impact either. For his avid supporters, Trump and his “truthiness” tends to win over more objective measures.

Knowing this, from a campaign strategy perspective, how do we pursue the necessary votes to keep Donald Trump from the White House? As per the usual, the results of polls may vary, but despite her best efforts, Hillary Clinton is still ahead nationally by a slim margin of about 5%. Of course, if we’re familiar with our old friend the electoral college, we know that presidential races are not won based on overall votes, but owing to performance in individual states, necessitating the elaboration of convoluted what-if scenarios and giving John King another chance to satisfy his apparent touch-screen map fetish. With this in mind, on the state-by-state front, other polls would indicate that the race is more or less neck-and-neck in key battleground/swing states, and with Hillary possibly galvanizing the cause for Trump among his potential supporters with her “basket of deplorables” comment, the presidential race may be even closer than most of us think. Taking this all into account, let’s finally talk turkey on how to address the looming specter of a Donald Trump presidency:

1. Look to recent history to demonstrate that Donald Trump could totally f**king win.

For all the doomsday bluster about Donald Trump possibly winning the presidency that I’ve seen contained in the litany of E-mails I currently receive because of my affiliation as a registered Democrat (which only came about because I wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders in my state primary), as well as my contributions to charitable causes and political campaigns, Democrats, on the whole, don’t seem to be taking this whole voting thing as seriously as the Republican base is, or at least not seriously enough to inspire any real sense of confidence heading into November.

By now, we should understand that if there’s one thing cranky old whites—or COWs, as I call them—like to do: it’s vote. (Presumably, this is second among their favorite things next to telling kids to get off their lawn.) In recent American history, the 2010 mid-term elections were a shellacking of Democratic Party candidates, likely at the hands of voters who were either already disenfranchised with President Obama’s policies, or never wanted a black president in the first place. This occurred, in part, to an overall low voter turnout rate. In international history, but even more recently, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. It still feels weird to say. Turnout was higher in this referendum vote, and the victory for Team Leave was much less decisive than in the 2010 U.S. mid-terms, but on the strength of—you guessed it, herd-mentality COWs scared about Muslims and convinced by unrealistic economic processes—pro-Brexit forces were able to win the day, and as many submit, endanger Britain’s economic future. (Good job, lords and ladies!) The parallels to this presidential election are, by now, obvious. If nothing else, Democrats who avidly support Hillary Clinton need to vote to cancel out the likely-more-committed GOP voters. You wanted her—now you have to elect her.

2. Stop treating Hillary as more than the alternative to Trump.

This is perhaps a microcosm of the race as a whole, and if nothing else, is telling as to where we are in the seemingly never-ending 2016 presidential campaign. In explaining why he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election at a public debate against Rep. David Jolly (R), former governor of Florida and Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist said this of the potential Madam President: “The thing I like most about her is steady. I believe she is strong. I believe she is honest.” After that last bit, though, the crowd didn’t cheer or applaud. They laughed—and since there was no one to laugh with, they must have been laughing at her. See, here’s the thing: for all the people who think Hillary Clinton has been unfairly targeted by Republicans and has come out of all her trials by fire unburnt, there are as many people or more who just aren’t buying what the Clinton campaign and an army of Democratic supporters are selling. They don’t see her as a sound decision-maker, especially when considering her tenure as Secretary of State and her penchant for promoting regime change. They don’t view her as likely to keep her progressive promises if she makes it to the White House. They don’t reckon she is particularly strong, though this likely has something to do with presumed doubts about her physical health, something I feel should be off-limits, but tell that to her detractors. And most importantly, they don’t believe she is honest. Not in the slightest.

So, let’s dispense with the rhetoric for all but the bottiest of the Hillbots and the staunchest of the Democratic Party loyalists. If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, there’s a strong likelihood you’re not voting for Hillary Clinton. You’re voting for cold neoliberal pragmatism. You’re voting for incremental progress. Perhaps you’re voting strictly to usher in the first female president, or to continue the legacy/precedent set by Barack Obama—whatever you think that entails. But you’re voting first and foremost to block Donald Trump. We don’t need any more than that.

3. Specifically for the woman herself, don’t try to be likable. (After all, it hasn’t really worked all that well anyway.)

This is akin to what Bill Maher was asking of Hillary Clinton a short while back when he told her to embrace her dark side and become the “Notorious HRC,” the “super-villain” Republicans and Bernie-or-Busters conceive of her to be. Hillary apologized after her “basket of deplorables” remark, but only on the aspect of calling “half” of Trump’s supporters by this term, and without a hint of irony, at that. While it was indeed an ill-advised comment by Clinton, for once, it would be refreshing if she would simply double-down on what many see as a gaffe by her, refuse to apologize—even though she didn’t really give a full apology to begin with—and do something to inspire her base of support. “You want me to say sorry for calling half of you ‘deplorables.” Well, I am sorry—sorry I didn’t call all of you that! My opponent is an asshole. If you like him, you’re probably one too! Don’t care for what I’m telling you? Want to call me a ‘bitch’ about it? Good. I’m the baddest bitch in these United States! Sorry—I ain’t sorry.”

In this way, Hillary Clinton could take a cue from Beyoncé, or perhaps even channel her inner Kelis. In the lead-in to her 2006 single “Bossy,” Kelis speaks, “You don’t have to love me/You don’t even have to like me/But you will respect me.” Why? Because she’s a motherf**king boss! That’s the kind of attitude that galvanizes your own base as much as it does the other side. That’s the Democratic Party representative we need! Show them who wears the pantsuits in this race, Hillary!

Suggestion #3 is obviously unlikely to be put into practice, even though, like Tyrion Lannister telling the witnesses to his trial he wishes he could be the monster they’ve made him out to be—and that he had enough poison to wipe out the lot of them—I’m sure a lot of people would love the chutzpah Hillary Clinton would demonstrate to tell millions of prospective voters she doesn’t care what they think about her and that she can run the country a hell of a lot better than stupid Donald Trump. Then, presumably, there would be a trial by combat or something. Maybe a head smashed in or two. Now that would be some sort of political process!

Unfortunately, we aren’t apt to see HRC throw shade on a sizable portion of the electorate, drop the mic, and walk away, nor is it conceivable we would observe Donald Trump being mutilated by a gargantuan man likened to a geological formation. Instead, though, arguably the best approach for the Clinton campaign would be to encourage the most fervent supporters to cast their vote, cut their losses with potential voters who can’t see past Trump’s more glaring flaws, and in general, give less of a shit about what people think outside of actual polling numbers. Hillary, you’ve been dancing with Trump and around the truth for months now. It’s time to punch him in the mouth and see if he has the glass jaw we imagine he does.

The Death Dance of the Mainstream Media

soledad — Soledad O’Brien had to come back to CNN recently to verbally bitch-slap her former employer over their “shoddy” coverage of Donald Trump. Sadly, this seems to be a microcosm of mainstream news media’s woeful coverage of the 2016 election. (Image Credit: CNN)

A few days ago, NBC News aired a Commander-in-Chief Forum with presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump prominently featured, and to say it was not well received would be a bit of an understatement. To be fair, NBC News and MSNBC chairman Andy Lack—not to be confused with Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck—singularly praised moderator Matt Lauer’s performance during this television special, and the presentation did garner some 15 million viewers. To be less fair, however, Lack’s lauding of Lauer’s handling of the forum may be singular in that he seems to be the only person who thought the whole shebang was capably handled. Members of the press, officials from past presidential administrations, pundits, and social media critics alike blasted Matt Lauer’s handling of the admittedly-limited thirty minutes devoted to interviewing both Clinton and Trump. Among the points of contention from the dissatisfied peanut gallery:

Lauer spent about a third of his time with Hillary Clinton talking about her ongoing E-mail scandal, while glossing over a number of arguably more important topics, such as national security.
Lauer did not fact-check Donald Trump when he made the claim that he never supported the Iraq War, even when most of the audience seemed to be aware he totally f**king did.
Lauer appeared to let Trump be, you know, himself and talk over the person asking him the questions, while frequently interrupting Clinton, inspiring allegations of sexism.
Lauer did not press Trump more strongly on stupid shit he said or has said in the past, such as the Republican Party nominee’s Tweet which evidently suggested it’s women’s fault by enlisting in the first place for getting sexually assaulted in the U.S. military, or his assertion that he knows more about ISIS than the actual American generals in charge of combat operations in the Middle East, or even his continued support for Vladimir Putin, a man who was instrumental in the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and who may or may not be behind hacks of the Democratic National Committee.
In other words, Lauer more critically interviewed Olympic swimmer and professional moron Ryan Lochte than he did a man who might actually become President of the United f**king States.

Perhaps it is no great wonder with public relations disasters such as the Commander-in-Chief Forum in mind to hear news such as this report back from June from Gallup that Americans’ confidence in newspapers has gone down 10% in the past decade from 30% to 20%, and that their faith in television news has likewise declined by 10% from 31% to 21%. It should be noted that other institutions asked about in this same survey have their own confidence problems, including churches/organized religion (down 11% to 41%), banks (down 22% to 27%), and Congress (down 10% to a mere 9%). Still, Americans’ distaste for and mistrust of the news media is real, something that neither bodes well for the success and continued survival of various news outlets, nor augurs particularly auspiciously for an informed public, at that. Seeing these statistics in a vacuum, it’s hard to tell, in chicken-egg fashion, whether flagging confidence in the mainstream media has fueled the downturn of newspapers and cable TV, whether public interest has waned in response to an inferior product already on the decline, or, like the ouroboros—the snake eating its own tail—these two trends exist not within a linear cause-effect relationship, but rather as part of a circular duality that feeds on itself. If the last case is indeed true to reality, this is doubly bad, for not only does this set of circumstances likely accelerate the process of disintegration, but if we are still thinking of serpents after the last metaphor, we are likely profoundly scared in an Indiana Jones-like way. DAMMIT! I HATE SNAKES, AND I HATE MSNBC!

On the subject of the decline of newspapers as a source of information, undoubtedly, the rise of television and later the Internet meant there was only so much consumer attention to go around, and online content and news providers have an added leg up on newspapers in being able to tailor advertising to individual users, which hurts print media’s ability to generate valuable ad revenue. From a cost perspective, too, newspapers fight a losing battle in trying to limit expenses in light of the burden of overhead, with clear disadvantages in the price of physical circulation, printing each edition, or even rewarding writers and other employees for their services. There are additional challenges faced by newspapers and all media for that matter, such as the fragmentation of the market to reflect niche interests, the social media requirement faced by businesses irrespective of industry, and the lingering economic effects of the Great Recession, to consider. All in all, it’s a potent brew of negative influences on newspapers’ ability to thrive today, and a number of publications serving major metropolitan areas have been forced to limit print circulation or fold altogether over the years.

Meanwhile, on the matter of television news networks, while recently the networks have enjoyed ratings coups owing to people tuning in to witness the shit-show that is the 2016 presidential election, on the long-term whole, as of May 2015, cable news has seen its overall median daily audience shrink 11% since 2008, according to Pew Research. Potentially outmoded statistics aside, many reason what happened to newspapers vis-à-vis cable news will repeat itself with the likes of CNN, FOX News and MSNBC relative to blogs and other online media. As Paul Farhi, writing for The Washington Post, outlines, prime-time cable news shows are heavily reliant on an aging audience, and face obvious competition from online news sources better served to meet the needs and desires of younger generations. Meaning that while the network that professes to offer “news” but really just utilizes fear-mongering, prejudices and unsubstantiated claims to gin up its viewers is enjoying a long-standing run atop the charts, even it might have trouble sooner than later. And not just because the GOP is a shell of its former self and has been co-opted by idiots and white supremacists.

Indeed, going forward, the traditional news media has its work cut out for it if it wants to stay afloat in a sea of competing interests. To this end, various media outlets need to generate clicks, ratings and subscriptions, and to do this, they have to find some hook with the consumer-user. How these news services achieve this end, and whether or not this will only guarantee them a worse fate in light of the public’s fragile confidence in them, is the multi-billion dollar question. Right now, as noted, the corporate media is riding high. After all, almost 15 million viewers tuned into NBC News’s Commander-in-Chief debacle—and that wasn’t even a debate! Whether or not the American people will actually turn out to vote in November is another story, but in the lead-up to the election, there certainly seems to be a great deal of interest in who stands to become our next President and what sort of damage he or she might inflict on the country should he or she win. At the end of the campaign season, though, and following the election and even inauguration, it almost seems inevitable there will be a drop-off in interest, and in the post-election hangover in which America will find itself after months of a tiresome primary/debate schedule, the traditional media may discover it has less clout and more competition than it might otherwise have considered.

From the swivel chair on which I’m sitting, news media has not done a good job of covering the 2016 presidential election cycle. Nor has it done a fair job, or even a “Needs Work” kind of job, as a child might see on his or her grade-school assignment. No, the mainstream media has done a piss-poor job of serving the public interest when it comes to the campaign season. (I perhaps would’ve referred to it as a “deplorable” job, but Hillary has ruined that word for the foreseeable future—and may have even done damage to her election bid with her “basket of deplorables” turn of phrase.) The powers-that-be behind today’s remaining major newspapers and big-name news networks would be apt to protest this characterization, and furthermore, would insist they are providing fair and balanced coverage that considers all viewpoints. While under most circumstances, objectivity in reporting is highly advisable, when the situation warrants a firmer hand in steering the discussion, particularly when representing all angles means to give a voice to elements whose arguments are little more than bigotry and deliberate misrepresentation of reality, the refusal of the news to intervene is a failure, and a seemingly cowardly one at that, or else it values ad revenue over integrity.

Former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien recently took her old employer to task over its lack of discretion in reporting on the U.S. presidential election. O’Brien’s takedown of CNN’s coverage, particularly in the network’s kowtowing to the more reprehensible voices on Donald Trump’s side of the fence, is to be commended for its directness as well as its consideration of the implications not only for the outcome election, but for the fate of CNN and television journalism itself. What most agree are the critical points of Soledad’s impassioned remarks:

On giving white supremacists a platform because they are Trump supporters/delegates…

“I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates. And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. And then Donald Trump will say, ‘Hillary Clinton, she’s a bigot.’ And it’s covered, the journalist part comes in, ‘They trade barbs. He said she’s a bigot and she points out that he might be appealing to racists.’ It only becomes ‘he said, she said.’ When in actuality, the fact that Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence, which if you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal. That’s where journalists are failing: the contortions to try to make it seem fair.”

And on CNN and others building up Donald Trump for ratings…

“Hateful speech brings a really interested, angry audience. ‘This is genius! We should do this more often. What shall we do when this election is over? We’re going to have to think about ways to really rile people up, make them angry and divide them.’ Because that is something that cable news, frankly, and everybody can cover really well. So, I find it very frustrating. I believe he was over-covered at the beginning. Now, it is ‘he said, she said’ all the time. We have lost context. We actually don’t even cover the details of something. We just cover the back and forth of it. It’s funny to watch if it weren’t our own country and our own government actually operating.”

What supposed “bigot” Hillary Clinton believes at heart about the key voting demographics to which she panders, one can’t be sure, but Soledad O’Brien is right: at least she has not made attacks on minorities the cornerstone of her campaign the way Donald Trump has his. Furthermore, I’d argue she’s deadly accurate on what the media has done, by and large, to frame the ultimate showdown between Clinton and Trump. Make no mistake—a winner-take-all electoral competition between Hill and Don is exactly what print media and the major news networks wanted. The aggregate favorability rating of the Democratic Party and Republican Party nominee is an almost-historically low one, if not the lowest altogether, such that viewers and even the supporting casts related to each campaign themselves have strong feelings one way or another. Throw in the apparent belief of media outlets that their audiences are stupid, don’t care about “the issues,” and would rather see these party heads squabble than speak substantively on important subjects, and you’ve hit on, to a large extent, the news media’s approach to covering this election.

Indeed, the mainstream media is trying to dance precariously between two functions, and the discussion of whether or not their routine is a winning one is accordingly worthwhile. On the one hand, America’s major news outlets, like many concerned citizens, don’t have a death wish. Donald Trump, who hasn’t been good at very much in his 70 years—let’s be honest—would make an even worse President of the United States than the shady businessman the more informed among us know him to be. Hillary Clinton, by proxy, is made to look through headlines and clickable, shareable content that much stronger as a candidate on matters of policy, aside from her obviously superior experience after years in politics. On the other hand, however, said outlets really, really like the ratings and traffic the mere mention of Trump’s name generates, including that which derives from the man’s more, shall we say, outspoken supporters, and so, despite their better judgment, they all but waive their editorial discretion in the name of “fairness.” The result is that both candidates have not been pressed by the press as strongly as they could or perhaps should be questioned, and as a result, the detractors of both Clinton and Trump can claim the media is letting them off the hook. To a certain extent, they’re all right.

untitled — Mr. Trump, where in the holy hell are your tax returns? (Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

If I were in Matt Lauer’s shoes, granted, I would be likely be a bit apprehensive about confronting the two biggest figures in American politics right now, and I would also have to balance the probing nature of journalistic intent with the direction of the NBC brass—you know, provided I wanted to remain employed. All this aside, if I were to have the opportunity to interview Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I would want to pose these types of questions:

HILLARY CLINTON

1) OK, we get it—you regret voting for the Iraq War. Now that you’ve adequately expressed your remorse for political purposes, what do we do about our continued entanglements in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere abroad? What is our timetable for a meaningful reduction in military spending, or for that matter, a reduction in the number of American troops deployed in combat areas, if at all?

Dating back to the party primary season and even during the Democratic National Convention, Hillary caught a lot of flak from Bernie Sanders supporters and surrogates from her stances on the Iraq War and her perceived hawkishness. Indeed, Mrs. Clinton seems to be a bit right of center on the subject of the use of the military and spending to accomplish its goals, so these are worthwhile questions, especially for those who got behind the Sanders campaign and support more progressive aims of the Democratic Party. With the 15th anniversary of 9/11 just behind us and talk of “we will never forget,” it seems ironic to employ such verbiage when the U.S. still is invested heavily in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thus can’t forget a War on Terror still ongoing. More like “we will never get out,” if you ask me.

2) Unless you’re hard up for donations—and judging by your big-ticket fundraisers and speaking fees, you have plenty of cash at your disposal—why should the Clinton Foundation wait until after winning the election to stop accepting monies from corporations and foreign interests?

Hillary Clinton already has a bit of an optics problem regarding trustworthiness in light of her ongoing E-mail imbroglio, concerns about where monies are going after they reach the Hillary Victory Fund, and other scandals which may be somewhat trumped up by Republicans but otherwise do reflect legitimate character concerns. The Clinton Foundation, which has come under fire recently for insinuations it is emblematic of a pay-to-play paradigm which coincided with her affairs as head of the State Department and thus may have crossed ethical lines, and has been characterized by some vocal dissenters as more or less a money laundering operation, by these tokens, is not helping matters.

Among others, Robert Reich, who avidly supported Bernie Sanders until Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination, and now has put his influence behind Hillary because of his recognition of the danger of a Donald Trump presidency, recommends the Clinton Family divest itself of operational ties to its namesake charitable organization, in the interest of propriety and transparency. If Hillary Clinton and her campaign were smart, they wouldn’t wait to effect these changes, and certainly wouldn’t make them contingent on an election victory, but this a major-party presidential campaign we’re talking about here—sound judgment often falls by the wayside.

3) Don’t you think it a bit douche-y to wear a $12,000 Giorgio Armani jacket and talk about income inequality?

I’ve brought this up before, but I would have to ask HRC directly just to gauge her reaction. Follow-up question: why did you or anyone pay so much for something that looks so hideous?

4) Why exactly were aides of yours smashing devices with hammers? What reasonable explanation is there for this that does not involve wanting to hide or obscure information?

Like Tom Brady smashing his phone in the midst of the Deflategate controversy, this is pretty much a rhetorical question, but I’d like to see and hear her explain why so many Blackberries and iPads had to be obliterated. Though I will admit it was probably oddly pleasurable for the person or persons tasked with doing the destroying. But still.

5) At this point, what does it matter whether the DNC and your campaign were hacked by Russia, or by Guccifer 2.0 acting independently, or by aliens, as Susan Sarandon jokingly suggested? What does it matter, Mrs. Clinton?

OK, so getting hacked is obviously a concern for any organization, and thus society as a whole, as is the theoretical publication of private information of individuals pursuant to matters of privacy in various data leaks. Still, the Democrats seem a little eager to point to Russia and shout, “Look what they did!” when the content itself of the leaked messages is objectionable. Whether it’s intentional bias against the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign or the influence of money on leadership within the party or even in government as a whole, these connections give the public a clearer picture of the kinds of people and institutions with whom/which they are dealing, and how democracy continues to be constrained by party politics and corporate/individual wealth. To this end, the DNC Leaks et al. are a public service, even if the manner in which they were obtained is suspect. Confessedly, though, as much as I feel I’m making a valid point, I kind of just wanted to take a swipe at Hillary Clinton’s semi-infamous “What does it matter?” moment from the hearings of Benghazi. When Americans die, in a potentially avoidable way, and the public is misinformed as to whether or not the attack was terroristic in nature, it does matter. Perhaps not as much as to warrant the extent of the costly investigation into the events surrounding Benghazi to date, but it does.

DONALD TRUMP

1) Why won’t you release your tax returns?

I’ve also discussed this before, musing as to why Donald Trump so obstinately has refused to acquiesce on this count. Some suspect it is because of his supposed ties to Russian businesses (though the Clintons have profited in their own right from Russia, including through the sale of uranium), but I suspect, perhaps more benignly, that Trump wants either to conceal the likely situation that he pays little to no taxes through loopholes, or—even worse in his eyes—that he doesn’t have nearly as much money as he says he does. This may not sound terrible to you or I, but when your entire brand is built on the image of you as a successful entrepreneur able to afford a lavish lifestyle, losing this appearance of obscene wealth could be devastating to this myth. It would be like the storied emperor with no clothes—and I’m immediately sorry for any mental images you now own because of this comparison.

2) How do you explain the immense rent increase for the Trump campaign headquarters in Trump Tower in July after you started receiving considerable funding from donors and weren’t just “financing your own campaign?”

The Trump campaign has explained the nearly four-times spike in its rent expense at Trump Tower resulting from adding “two more levels to its existing space,” whatever that means. While there’s no proof of anything shady, that purchases leading to greater expenses are synchronous with the addition of benefactors, and that Trump stands to indirectly benefit from this arrangement, is enough to raise one or more eyebrows. The deflection that the Clinton camp pays more on rent doesn’t assuage potential culpability either. Saying you spent less than Hillary Clinton on rent is like saying you smoke less weed than Tommy Chong. It’s not exactly something to hang your hat on.

3) Do you care to comment on reports that a number of key staffers in your campaign left after not getting paid, or that you have a history of doing to this people in your personal and professional lives?

One thing the press has not discussed nearly enough regarding Donald Trump’s business dealings is that he has repeatedly screwed people out of money, and then has shielded himself behind the cloak of litigation or has relied upon the auspices of bankruptcy law to avoid having to pay all his bills. If Trump can’t pay his staffers as he should, why should we expect him to do what’s right for America’s finances, or for that matter, give him the keys to the country?

4) Would you like to personally apologize to Jersey City, and in particular, its Muslim population, for making claims about thousands of people cheering in the streets when the Towers fell, even though this has been thoroughly debunked?

OK, I gotta say this one’s for me. When even Crazy Rudy Giuliani disagreed with Trump’s steadfast assertion that thousands of Muslims in Jersey City were celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center, you knew the man was full of shit, and anyone else who sides with Trump on this issue is either full of shit too, or has spent too much time watching Fox News and has had the parts of their brain devoted to higher-order thinking and encoding of memory eaten away by the stupidity. I don’t care if you’re talking about Muslims, undocumented Mexican immigrants, or members of the Borg collective—if they’re from New Jersey, step the f**k off.

5) Seriously, though, release your f**king tax returns.

Not really a question anymore, but then again, it shouldn’t be. If you have nothing to hide, you should have no problem complying. Shit, even Crooked Hillary obliged on this front. You don’t want to be worse than Hillary at something, do you, Donald?

Returning to the theme of journalistic accountability in the mainstream media and perceptions of bias, even before the events of this election cycle and the rise of online content/social media, a core group of outspoken Americans took to distrusting the “liberal media” and its leftist agenda. How dare they believe in concepts like gender and race equality? How come their “facts” don’t match what I know deep down in my gut? Why do they insist on telling me I’m wrong for hating gays and transgender people and telling them they can’t buy wedding cakes in our shops or pee in our bathrooms? TOO MUCH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS! TOO MANY BIG WORDS! AAAAAHHHH! This kind of mentality, I believe, has helped fuel the rise of the alt-right and eschewing of more reputable news sources for airheads such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and even conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Alex Jones. Which, though it may chagrin network executives and digital content managers, might not be a huge loss for the rest of the viewing population. Not for nothing, but the fewer trolls we have on Comments sections of major news providers’ sites criticizing “libtards” and demeaning them as a bunch of whiny, sissy babies, I feel, is a good thing.

However, in news media’s indiscriminate push for ratings and revenue, that liberals and conservatives alike can be alienated by CNN, or The New York Times, or even Huffington Post, suggests that corporate-owned media outlets, buoyed by short-term successes, may only be riding a road to ruin in the long term. For libertarians, progressives, skinny people, fat people, people who try to ford the river or caulk it and float it, there are umpteen options, and while not all of them are winners (many, indeed, are not), by appealing to a more provincial audience, they stand to draw away attention from the big players in the mass media market. Again, when survival is anything but assured, prominent networks and newspapers are justifiably desperate for the public’s consumption. Catering to a lower common denominator, however, or failing to curb those who pander to a more deleterious element, seriously risks undermining the public’s trust and guaranteeing that they won’t come back. After all, when trust is gone, what else is left worth keeping?

Do We Deserve Better Than Clinton and Trump? Maybe, Maybe Not

03-ralph-nader.w529.h352.2x — Ralph Nader would urge you to vote based on your conscience this November. The two questions you need to ask yourself: 1) Can you do with that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? 2) Does it matter? (Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

I’m reasonably sure you’re familiar with Ralph Nader. If you were eligible to vote in the 2000 election, then you’re definitely familiar with the man. Nader, who has made a career out of activism on behalf of consumer protection (his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, is considered influential on safety standards for motor vehicles, not to mention consumer advocacy as a whole), environmentalism, humanitarianism and principles of democratic government, has run for president several times—either as a write-in candidate on individual state ballots, or as an official nominee of the Green Party or Independent Party.

It was the 2000 presidential election, however, where Ralph Nader’s third-party bid became perhaps the most relevant, at least in terms of perceived influence on the outcome. As you may recall, in the swing state of Florida, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by a margin of less than 1,000 votes, an amount Nader garnered more than 97 times over. The easy reading was that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election and left us with a man-child as the President of the United States. As Nader and others pointed out, however, and quite rightly, I might add, there were other factors at play. For one, there was a whole recount fiasco—hanging chads and all—that necessitated a controversial Supreme Court ruling and prompted critics to insist the Republicans stole the 2000 election. Also, it’s not as if there weren’t Democrats who voted for Dubya, aside from the notion that it’s not as if Ralph Nader intentionally set out to sabotage Gore. Moreover, Al Gore didn’t even win his home state of Tennessee in 2000. On those three counts, or three strikes as it may be, the “Nader as spoiler” theory swings and misses.

In this election in 2016, Ralph Nader will not have a bearing on the outcome—real, imagined or otherwise. With respect to third-party options, the names most likely to serve as flies in the proverbial ointment are Gary Johnson, representative for the Libertarian Party, and Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party nominee. Nonetheless, as a political commentator in an election cycle in which both major-party candidates are disliked by a significant portion of the potential pool of voters—and thus, choices outside the Republican-Democrat red-blue binary stand to have a real impact—Nader’s voice carries a certain amount of weight. When asked by Jorge Ramos for his thoughts on Bernie Sanders’ recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader expressed the belief that the move, in its enumeration of meritorious policy positions on Clinton’s part, was more politically calculated in his (Bernie’s) favor than others might read or spin it:

He set her up for political betrayal, which would allow him to enlarge his civic mobilization movement after the election and after she takes office. So I think it’s a very astute endorsement.

“Betrayal.” Not mincing words, are we, Mr. Nader? I’m not sure Bernie Sanders is being quite as scheming as Ralph Nader would give him credit for, as I believe Sanders’ top priorities are 1) beating Donald Trump, 2) promoting a truly progressive agenda for the Democratic Party, and 3) mobilizing support within the Democratic Party among workers and younger voters—as well as encouraging the Democrats to do their part for less wealthy Americans and the middle class. Then again, as a Sanders supporter throughout the primary, I might be naturally more inclined to believe Bernie threw his influence behind Hillary for the best reasons.

What intrigued me most, though, concerning Ralph Nader’s opinions put forth in the Ramos interview, was not his musings on Bernie Sanders’ political machinations, but rather what he thought about voting for someone other than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. As is no huge surprise, Nader said he would most likely be voting for the Green Party or Libertarian Party candidate, but as regards what you should do with your vote, Nader is one of those dreadful sorts who believes in voting based on your conscience—for crying out loud! In Darth Nader’s own words:

I always believe, Jorge, in voting your conscience. Not tactical votes, not least-worst votes. If you do tactical, least-worst votes, you’ve lost your bargaining power over the candidates. They never look back when you basically say to them, “Well, I don’t like either candidate but you’re not as bad as the other one.”

This man can’t be serious, can he? After all, this is America! It’s Democrat or Republican! Blue or red, red or blue! We don’t need another party confusing things! Unless, God willing, that party is the Bull Moose Party! Loves me some Bull Moose. But, yes, Ralph Nader, we can’t afford to play games with this election! The stakes are too high! When will I stop yelling?!?

Before we so quickly dismiss Ralph Nader’s assertions as the ramblings of a crazy person, might there be some validity to what this madman is saying? Have we, by implicitly giving our consent to party politics and feeding the “lesser of two evils” trope over the years, paved the way to our own dissatisfaction now manifested in a likely two-horse race between Hillary “Never Met a War I Didn’t Like” Clinton and Donald “No Mexican Wall Is Too High” Trump? Isn’t now the perfect time as a people to vote third-party and give the Democratic and Republican Parties their due comeuppance?

BN-PB110_TRUMPW_M_20160722154446 — Donald Trump, as President, would restore law and order to our once-proud country. By himself. With his magic powers. (Photo Credit: Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

On the heels of the Republican National Convention, let’s first address the elephant in the room—the state of the Grand Old Party. Given the four-day scope of the event this past week in Cleveland, I initially thought about doing a whole post recapping it—though you’ll soon see why I’m covering it in (somewhat) abbreviated fashion. Donald Trump and the way he’s conducted his campaign have put him at odds with a number of Republican leaders and figureheads—as well as non-politicians with half a brain in their head. In fact, the public figures who made it known they would be skipping the Convention reads like a “Who’s Who” of Republican leadership over the past 15 years or so, or more: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Governors Matthew Mead and Brian Sandoval, of Wyoming and Nevada, respectively, and others.

In their absence, though, there were apparently enough B-list celebrities, crazy people and idiots to go around. Here are some of the highlights—if you can call them that:

Monday: “Make America Safe Again”

For some reason, Scott Baio was there. Yeah, you know, Charles in Charge, of our days and our nights, as well as our wrongs and our rights? He had some fairly generic comments to be made: it’s not about getting free stuff—it’s about sacrificing; Donald Trump is not the Messiah but a man who wants to “give back..to the country that gave him everything;” Hillary Clinton sucks. You know the deal. Nothing particularly illuminating. Thanks, Scott. You can go back to being all but irrelevant as an actor now.
Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame said something about both he and Trump having wives hotter than they are. How exactly does this “make America safe,” again?
Rudy Giuliani, touting his record on crime, actually addressed keeping American safe, albeit with a heaping helping of pointing out the dangers of “Islamic extremist terrorism.” His remarks were largely straight out of the GOP playbook: Obama made a shitty nuclear deal with Iran, Hillary Clinton sucks and had a shitty response to Benghazi, Syrian refugees are all potential terrorists in the making. Are you sensing a theme with respect to Hillary yet?
The speech of the night, however, belonged to Michelle Obama. I’m sorry, Melania Trump. It’s easy to get those two confused. Before I get to the story that Melania Trump’s speech became, let me first say that I find it highly odd, even for the ever-strange Trump campaign, to have a Slovenian immigrant born Melanija Knavs as the keynote speaker on a night devoted to keeping America safe from foreign influence. Just putting that out there. Now, let’s get to the speech itself. It soon became apparent that Melania’s address bore more than a passing resemblance to the one Michelle Obama gave at the Democratic National Convention eight years ago. I’m not sure what the standards are like at the University of Ljubljana—from which Melania dropped out but insists she received an architectural design degree—but at most universities, that’s the kind of thing that could get you kicked out for plagiarism. If Melania Trump was hoping to distinguish herself as more than just a pretty face through her speech, this controversy sure didn’t help matters.

Tuesday: “Make America Work Again”

Another day, another round of Trumps. Among the headliners on Day 2 were not one but two members of the Trump Tribe. Donald Trump, Jr. took to the podium, but in as similar vein as with Melania’s speech, discussion of its actual content was lost in the ensuing conversation about parts of his speech being hand-me-downs from a previously published article in American Conservative by F.H. Buckley. Even if sanctioned by Buckley himself, for Trump Jr. to deliver an address with borrowed material only a day after allegations of plagiarism with Melania Trump’s speech raises questions about the campaign as a whole. Tiffany Trump, whom I previously believed was only a myth, also made a rare appearance in support of her father. Tiffany, a recent graduate of Penn, made a speech that seemed like something you would hear out of a university commencement, and tried to make her dad seem, you know, human. People seemed to think it was a good speech, I guess, though being able to talk coherently for an extended period of time is a fairly solid achievement for that crowd. Also, it probably helps that she’s a cute young blonde. Whatever. As with a Slovenian waxing political on a night devoted to border security as an extension of foreign policy, there would seem to be a certain degree of irony inherent in two of Trump’s spawn—privileged descendants of a likewise fortunate heir of his father’s name and legacy—being centerpieces of a night devoted to getting the average American back to work. Then again, rarely do things make much logical sense in the political world of Donald J. Trump.
Paul Ryan waved a Steelers Terrible Towel for some reason. Ryan, you f**king moron—they do that in Pittsburgh, not Cleveland!
Checking in on Dr. Ben Carson—yup, still insane. His speech, in a stunning turn of Six Degrees of Separation, somehow tried to link Hillary Clinton to famous organizational guru Saul Alinsky to…Lucifer. Yes, that Lucifer. In this respect, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee is not only connected to the Beast himself, but by a slender two degrees, at that. Dr. Carson, I’m not sure what you’re smoking, but whatever it is, I think I want some.
And then there was Chris Christie, who not only failed to win Donald Trump’s pick to be his running mate, but apparently failed to secure a spot among the Tuesday headliners. As he exhibited in the primaries, Christie committed to talking about the one political topic he can seem to discuss with conviction and regularity: just how much the Republicans in attendance hate Hillary. In particular, Chris Christie hearkened back to his experience as a prosecutor to submit evidence of Clinton’s guilt in various foreign policy dealings, as well as the unending well of criticism from which the GOP can draw attack material ad nauseum: the State Department E-mail scandal. Again, nothing to do with the economy or jobs. Just rehearsed, tired attack points against Hillary, which, even if legitimate, sound desperate coming from Christie, not to mention hypocritical noting his own history with investigations of impropriety. Chris Christie, sir, you are a heel.

Wednesday: “Make America First Again”

Also known as the Vice President and Also-Rans portion of the program. Because it wouldn’t be a day at the Republican National Convention without hearing from at least one Trump, on Wednesday, we heard from Eric Trump, who, guilty by association, has had to assert the notion he didn’t lift his speech from an existing document. Regardless of who wrote his words, Eric spared no shred of Republican rhetoric we’ve grown accustomed to absorbing: our current foreign policy is inept (*cough*, Obama, *cough*, Hillary, *cough*), the Second Amendment and Christmas are under attack, the national debt is too high because of Obama and high taxes (warning: may or may not be true), foreign countries are taking all our jobs, and so on and so forth. After that, Trump began the obligatory deification of his father, painting him as a man who has “revitalized run-down neighborhoods, shaped skylines across the country, and turned dreams into reality his entire career.” (Warning: may be seriously untrue.) Eric Trump finished by, among other things, extolling Donald Trump, Sr.’s record of giving to charities, which, as I’m sure you can guess by now, may or may not be true. Eric, I’m glad you’re so proud to be a Trump, but this does speech does nothing for me—or for the people who might actually believe it.
We also heard from Newt Gingrich, the man who almost was Trump’s VP pick, and Mike Pence, the man who, for whatever reasons, is that pick. Gingrich talked about keeping America safe, which he and the convention organizers apparently failed to realize was more appropriate for the first day of the Convention, but OK. He had a lot to say, but it basically boils down to these essentials: radical Islam wants to kill us all, Hillary Clinton is dishonest, we need a big military and a big wall, our police are great and so is Donald J. Trump. Stop me if you’ve heard this all before. As for Pence, whom Trump finally allowed to speak and who formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for Vice President, I’ll allow Katie McDonough of Fusion to put it succinctly: “Indiana Gov. Mike Pence accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night with a speech designed to communicate one thing: He is boring.” ‘Nuff said.
Last but not least, we had the also-rans. Wisconsin’s shitty governor Scott Walker said some things, and presumably, made a point, but evidently is not worth the trouble it takes to find the transcript of his commentary. Marco Rubio was there in video form, and more than one observer said his delivery resembled, more than anything, a hostage being filmed. And then there was the show-stealer himself, Ted Cruz. Cruz, despite not being well liked by, well, most people and small children, will likely run again for President in the future. This may at least partially explain why he delivered a speech, but somewhat surprisingly, ended it not by endorsing Donald Trump, but rather asking the convention-goers to vote their conscience. A regular Ralph Nader, this guy! Whatever his reasons, this was my highlight of the Republican National Convention, in that it was so straight-up gangsta of him to not endorse Trump. Ted Cruz, you may have heard boos that night and may continue to catch grief from other Republicans from bucking the trend, but I, for one, give you mad props. Respect, Felito.

Thursday: “Make America One Again”

With Big Papa himself officially accepting the Republican Party nomination, could there be a better theme for the ultimate night of the Convention than “Make American One Again?” This coming from the ultimate uniter, Donald Trump. (Please, try to hold back your eye-rolls, smirks and snickers.) Before the main event, you did have your fair share of notable “undercard” speakers. Republic National Committee chair Reince Priebus, whose name sounds like it belongs in the Game of Thrones universe, made an appeal to unity for Republicans—you know, to beat that dadgum Hillary Clinton. Prince Rhombus, sorry, Ranch Prius, dammit, Reince Priebus had this to say about what separates Republicans from Democrats: “What separates Republicans from Democrats is our belief in better. We believe in better schools. A better health care system. A better economy which rewards hard work no matter where or when you punch the clock. And most of all, we believe in a better chance at the American Dream for everyone.” Because Democrats want everything to get worse? Whatever, Ponce Rebus. Sell what you need to sell.
Peter Thiel, German-born co-founder of PayPal, entrepreneur, hedge fund manager, and venture capitalist, also took to the mic. As a foreign-born homosexual man living and working in Silicon Valley, you’d think Thiel would be a weird choice for the closing night of the Republican National Convention. And um, you’d be right. Matt Rosoff, in a piece for Business Insider, notes how Peter Thiel made numerous points that seem to be at odds with mainstream Republican thinking, particularly on the subjects of investment in science and technology, and the invasion of Iraq. Otherwise, though, he’s unfortunately on board the Trump Train. And, for whatever reason, he’s got a real bugaboo about who uses what bathroom.
Ivanka Trump, apparently the member of the Trump Tribe with highest standing outside of “the Donald” himself, served as the lead-in to the man with top billing. I’m not going to dissect Ivanka’s eloquent and impassioned speech except to say that numerous critics said she sounded more like a Democrat (probably in an effort to woo independents and women voters) than anything. In addition, and as has been argued repeatedly, with Ivanka impressing as much as she did and does, um, it looks like the wrong Trump is running for President. I mean, I know she’s only 34, but she’ll be 35 come November. That works, right? Shit, if Canadian-born Ted Cruz can run for President, why can’t Ivanka Trump?
Finally, the event we were all waiting for—sort of. Donald Trump, ever the strongman, depicted himself as the law-and-order candidate. In doing so, he delivered an address that the media roundly characterized as “dark.” In his tone of doom and gloom, Trump argued that anyone who doesn’t recognize the dangers that exist for the United States (hmm, could that be someone like Hillary Clinton?) is unfit to lead it, and that the time for political correctness is over. He also rattled off a number of “facts” about what a shitty state the country is in. And then he went in on Hillary directly, describing her legacy as one of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.” The rest was a mish-mosh of his familiar themes: putting “America first,” I am not a politician or a member of the establishment, Hillary this, Hillary that, the police are great, so is Mike Pence, say no to Obama and the Syrian refugees, sanctuary cities are bad, walls at the border are good, laws should be enforced, laws should be enforced, did I mention laws should be enforced?, we’re going to bring jobs back to America, we’re going to lower taxes, we’re going to repeal ObamaCare, we must protect freedom of religion and the Second Amendment, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! There. I just saved you more than an hour. You’re welcome.

BBuL8wu — Congratulations, Debbie. You played yourself. (Photo Credit: Patrick T. Fallon)

This is where I’m supposed to warn you not to let the crazies get the keys to the asylum. This is where I’m supposed to tell you not to let bigots like Donald Trump, Steve King and David Duke think they’re right by openly running on platforms characterized by a belief in white supremacy. This is where I’m supposed to point out that “putting America first” is a red herring when, for all our griping about terrorist attacks in Orlando and shooting of cops in Baton Rouge and Dallas, we can kill 85 Syrian civilians in an air strike, call it an accident, and sweep it under the rug. This is where I’m supposed to plead with you to consider that Trump is a bully, a fraud, and someone who still won’t release his tax returns, even though the IRS literally has no problem with it.

So, yes, in short, there is every reason not to vote for Donald J. Trump, and likely a great deal of merit in voting strategically to keep him away from the White House. At the same time, however, if we are thinking in Naderian terms and voting based on our conscience, how many of us can say we’re all in on Hillary Clinton, and not just because she’s someone other than Donald Trump? Speaking purely for myself, I know that I can’t endorse Hillary on her merits alone. Moreover, even though I’m putting forth my personal views, I know I am not alone in this sentiment.

Even before Wikileaks’ latest “gift” to the world, I have had my reservations about voting Democratic on the basis of feeling as if the Democratic Party has done little to earn my vote and yours. But let me tell you—the DNC E-mail leaks just dropped on the world don’t help matters from my perspective, nor do they inspire a sense of confidence in Hillary or desire for party unity among fervent Bernie Sanders supporters and serial Clinton haters. Sanders supporters, I will concede you, have looked and will look for evidence of a conspiracy against their candidate of choice, and for months have alleged Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been less than impartial in her dealings with Clinton and Sanders, arguing that she (Wasserman Schultz) has been influential in tipping the proverbial scales in the former’s favor.

For all their talk of a “rigged” political system and claims of the Sanders campaign that they have had to fight an uphill battle against an entrenched Democratic, if the DNC leaks show one thing, it’s that the conspiracy theorists are, well, at least somewhat right on this point. With nearly 20,000 messages recovered from a hack of the DNC’s E-mail server(s), credited to the mysterious “Guccifer 2.0” and believed to be the product of Russian intelligence, I am not about to try to parse through the entire message dump. Besides, most of these messages feature rather uninteresting and benign details within DNC operations. A prized few, however, shoot through the idea that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other key figures within the Democratic National Committee were neutral in their private handling of Bernie’s and Hillary’s campaigns. Furthermore, their communications with the press—including figures such as CNN’s Jake Tapper, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, and Polirico’s Kenneth Vogel—suggest a favoritism toward Hillary Clinton, and worse, that the DNC may have worked to influence their content and undermine Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Democratic Party nomination. In a piece for Heavy credited to Stephanie Dube Dwilson, a number of “the most damaging” E-mails are cited and highlighted. Among the revelations or potential revelations referenced in the article/slideshow:

The Democratic National Committee may have planned a joint fundraising party with The Washington Post.
Staffers, in talking about Rhode Island, a state that was reducing its primary polling locations and in which Bernie Sanders led in the polls at the time by a slight margin, derided the Sanders camp, suggesting they’d probably complain about the outcome regardless, and referred to the state’s governor, Gina Raimondo, as “one of ours.”
Mark Paustenbach, DNC staffer, suggested an anti-Bernie Sanders narrative to Luis Miranda, DNC communications director and the most-cited figure in the DNC leaks.
Miranda wrote simply, “lol,” to a report that Sanders welcomed an agreed-upon fourth debate in California in advance of the primary.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz E-mailed Chuck Todd, saying that MSNBC on-air personality Mika Brzezinski calling for her to resign was “outrageous” and that “this needs to stop.”
DWS, responding to Sanders campaign Jeff Weaver’s comments on the unrest at the Nevada Democratic Convention, called him a “liar.” (In a separate E-mail, Wasserman Schultz refers to Weaver as an “ass.”)
Kenneth Vogel allowed the DNC to review an article about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising prior to publication.
The DNC may have crafted fake Craigslist ads for employment with Donald Trump’s organization, referring to Trump’s oft-cited disparaging attitude toward women.
The DNC may have planned to attack Bernie Sanders on his faith, implying he is an atheist to hurt his support among more religious Democrats.
Wasserman Schultz, after a CNN story in which Bernie Sanders insisted he would try to remove her as committee chair should he get elected president, wrote, “This is a silly story. He isn’t going to be president.”
The Clinton campaign may have violated Federal Election Commission laws by making out donations checks to the DNC.
Donna Brazile, who had professed her neutrality on matters concerning the Democratic Party, said she would “not touch” a story on reservations held by the Sanders camp about adequate representation on the Democratic Party platform and in the Democratic National Convention, adding “because she would cuss them out.”
Luis Miranda referring to a New York Times piece by Nicholas Confessore as “good as we could hope for,” as the DNC “was able to keep him from including more on the JVF (the Joint Victory Fund).”
Paustenbach laughed when Sanders commented on state Democratic parties not having enough resources and the more undemocratic aspects of the primary process.
DNC staffers elected not to reference an MSNBC story talking about favorable unity within the Democratic Party among voters, as it was a “heavy Bernie piece.”
The DNC may have had people inside the Sanders organization as effective “plants” reporting information back to them.

Reportedly, Debbie Wasserman Schultz will resign from her post as Democratic National Committee chair following the Democratic National Convention, a move Bernie Sanders had called for following news of the DNC leak being made public, and one for which Sanders supporters had been clamoring for months. At the minimum, DWS’ removal as DNC chair needed to happen for general principles. That much was a given. The damage, meanwhile, in terms of perception, may be done, and this in turn feeds all sort of “Clinton-Lucifer” degrees of separation connections. OK, maybe that stretch is Ben Carson’s alone to make. But it does make one wonder whether or not all the Committee’s machinations made a difference in the race to the Democratic Party nomination, or if not, like Tom Brady and his deflated balls supposedly, why they needed to engage in chicanery in the first place.

Support for Hillary Clinton among Bernie Sanders supporters and progressives, theoretical or otherwise, has been an issue for the Clinton campaign and mainstream Dems for months now. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, hopes for party unity have been seriously rattled by the one-two punch of the Wikileaks E-mail dump and the nomination of Tim Kaine for vice president. On the latter count—surprise, surprise—the mainstream media thought it was a great pick. “Clinton follows her heart!” “Clinton employs sound strategy!” “Kaine is able!” Lame last-name-related puns aside, as far as the rest of the potential voting pool is concerned, however, the choice of Tim Kaine as VP is either boring, infuriating, or infuriatingly boring. As comedian W. Kamau Bell reacted to the news on Twitter, “One glass ceiling at a time everybody. 🙂 — Hillary Clinton in a group text to Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Elizabeth Warren.” Progressives, too, are not very enamored with Kaine, and a lot of it stems from his perceived support for the big banks in his signing of multiple letters aimed at regulators to loosen regulations for community banks, as well as his past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and fast-tracking it through Congress. Add to this the notion Bernie Sanders delegates have had to argue and compromise with top Democratic leadership to try to reduce the influence of superdelegates, a much-hated hallmark of the primary voting system, and you wonder whether or the Convention in Philadelphia will be even more “messy” as Sanders himself predicted months ago.

In his most recent essay on the state of the election, economist Robert Reich asks the pertinent question, “Does Hillary get it?” Likewise a critic of the choice of Tim Kaine as running mate for Hillary Clinton, he opens his post thusly:

Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?

I worry she doesn’t – at least not yet.

A Democratic operative I’ve known since the Bill Clinton administration told me “now that she’s won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle. She’s going after moderate swing voters.”

Presumably that’s why she tapped Tim Kaine to be her vice president. Kaine is as vanilla middle as you can get.

In fairness, Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 – signing legislation on welfare reform, crime, trade, and financial deregulation that enabled him to win reelection in 1996 and declare “the era of big government” over.

In those days a general election was like a competition between two hot-dog vendors on a boardwalk extending from right to left. Each had to move to the middle to maximize sales. (If one strayed too far left or right, the other would move beside him and take all sales on rest of the boardwalk.)

But this view is outdated. Nowadays, it’s the boardwalk versus the private jets on their way to the Hamptons.

The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations, Wall Street, and the super-wealthy.

If what Reich believes is correct, Clinton’s “safe” pick is not all that safe given the current state of the American electorate. And now, because I feel compelled, let’s bring Ralph Nader back into the mix, and return to our main point. If, regarding the Republicans, we are taking Nader’s and Ted Cruz’s advice, and voting our conscience, rather than simply voting against Hillary Clinton, then Donald Trump, a man who preys on voters’ fear and hate, should never appear with an X on one’s ballot. If you don’t understand this by now, brother or sister, you’re reading the wrong blog. As for the Democrats, though, if you’re voting strategically for Clinton to Trump, then there is concern that you’re implicitly sanctioning their own bad behavior, in the form of arrogance, tone-deafness, and an unwillingness to play by the rules, and thereby thinking they’re in the right, or worse, that this much simply doesn’t matter. Under this assumption, the Democrats, like the Republicans, can turn around after the election and say, “Well, you voted for us.” In this scenario, give the Nader his due—we, as voters, will have lost all leverage in convincing both parties to reform to better reflect the wishes of their constituents.

Ultimately, when it comes to my advice for your vote, I’ve already been very clear that voting for Donald Trump—are you hearing this, Ben Carson?—is really making a deal with the Devil. However, if you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, more and more I’m convinced the only reason to do so is to choose the lesser of two evils, and even that seems likes a poor justification when the Democratic Party has seemingly done everything they can to screw the pooch on this election, and again, little to earn your vote. So, if you’re planning to “throw your vote away,” as the saying goes, and come November, give Jill Stein or Gary Johnson your consideration, maybe you’re not wrong. Maybe this is your chance to tell the Democratic and Republican Parties to clean up their act or else stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, to send a message that we deserve better. Either way, you can fire back at your critics and say—however condescendingly—”Well, I didn’t vote for either Clinton or Trump.” Besides, regardless, even if, like in 2000, the presidential race is as close as could be in 2016, when it comes to brass tacks, it won’t be Johnson or Stein which costs either side the election. It will be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton who loses.

Tag: Robert Reich