THE MADNESS OF JANUARY SIXTH

It says so much about the character of Donald Trump that the only thing he has worked hard at as President is trying to steal the election.  Yes, the leader who watches hours of TV a day and who has played golf over three hundred times in the past four years, finally found something to grab his attention.  Being branded a loser.  It upset him so much that he released a video of him giving a forty six minute (absurdly inaccurate) speech about it, which he began by claiming  that it “may be the most important speech I’ve ever made.”  It shows how self obsessed he is that his public statements and tweets about how the election was "stolen" far outnumber his statements about the ongoing pandemic.

 A few days ago, it finally seemed that the madness was over: the lawsuits had all failed to overturn the election, the recounts had shown no cases of widespread voter fraud, and, on December fifteenth, even Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell (a man who would shove aside his own mother if he thought it would get him another Supreme Court Judge) congratulated President Elect Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.  The electoral count had been certified.  

But with Donald Trump, the madness never seems to end.  Yesterday, in what will go down as the one of the strangest moments in perhaps the strangest political time ever in American history, Republicans, led by House member Louie Gohmert of Texas, filed a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence.  Why?  Because on January sixth the Senate will formally count and certify (again!) the electoral college votes.  And it is the twisted belief of Gohmert and his confederates is that the Vice President, as leader of the Senate, has the right to reject the electors from states that Trump lost.  So they believe that they can sue him into overturning the election!

This is, of course, an even bigger crank lawsuit than the one that Texas recently filed attempting to overturn the election results in other states that was summarily rejected by the Supreme Court. But it not only shows the depths that some Trump supporters will go to show their loyalty to him, it puts Pence himself in a bind.  Will he do the right thing, and ignore this lawsuit and the more radical members of his party, or will he attempt to reject the duly appointed electors from some states?   The good news is, either way, congress will certify those electors even if it has to be put to a vote.  The House is majority Democrats, and McConnell has already told members of  his party in the Senate not to support  this absurd farce.  Still, what Pence does will say a lot about what his future, and the future of his party, will be. 

 Pence has always seemed like such an odd choice for Trump's running mate: why would a conservative Christian who won't eat in a restaurant alone with any woman that isn't his wife be the running mate to a thrice married man who has a long history of bragging about his sexual exploits?  It's like Ward Cleaver hanging out with Archie Bunker.  Not surprisingly, Pence's turn to Trump was made really out of desperation.  In twenty fifteen, when he was Governor of Indiana, Pence signed into law a bill entitled the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that allowed open discrimination against the the LGBT community.  Seemingly, he had forgotten the days of politicians openly demonizing gay people ended decades ago.  The bill wound up costing the state millions of dollars of investment and job growth as companies like Apple and Angie's List boycotted the state.  Things got so bad that the Indianapolis Star newspaper ran a simple, bold headline: FIX THIS NOW.  Less than a month later he did, signing a revision to the bill that essentially nullified the more radical parts of it.  This, naturally, enraged the Christian Conservatives who had cheered its initial signing.  With his  reelection approaching and his popularity plummeting, Pence latched onto Trump as both a lifeline out of the mess he had created for himself in Indiana and a chance to make a name for himself nationally with perhaps the opportunity for a presidential run in the future.   The fact that Trump won was just icing on the cake.

And as we all know, Pence has been a complete sycophant for Trump for the past four years, heaping the constant amount of fawning praise on him that Trump requires.  Which makes his decision on January sixth all the more interesting.  If he does what Trump wants and tries to reject the electors, it will show that even in defeat Trump will continue to have an influence on the party.  If, however, he does the right thing and counts the votes properly, by denying Trump's coup attempt, he could be signalling that it's time for the party to move beyond him, while positioning Pence himself as a new party leader and perhaps its future in twenty twenty four.  Either way, once again Trump's crazy behavior has turned yet another simple part of the American democratic process into  another dramatic showdown.  January sixth will be a turning point in more ways than one. 

THE CORONAVIRUS AND THE LIE OF LIBERTARIANISM

 

Just yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a recovery bill to help out Americans citizens and businesses hurt by the coronavirus.  This is only the second such bill to be passed in the months since the pandemic officially began.  For most people, the bill will bring them a one time check for six hundred dollars plus more for the unemployed.  The bill was passed at the last minute before millions of Americans faced evictions, and there are reports that the only reason it will pass the Senate is because Mitch McConnell thought that failing to pass such a bill would hurt the Republican candidates in the upcoming Senate election in the state of Georgia.

The fact that there was such a battle over the passage of a bill that will provide only a modicum of relief to most Americans shows how misguided our priorities are in this country.   While there are a number of reasons why America has done such a poor job of dealing with the pandemic as compared to other industrialized nations (President Trump's chaotic response and continued denials are a big a part), our government's fear of "big government handouts" has played a big part.  While other countries have paid citizens money to stay home (in Canada some workers got as much as two thousand dollars a month) poor and middle class workers who can't work from home  in America have basically been given the choice to go to work and risk catching and spreading the virus, or wind up homeless.  Putting it  bluntly, the same congress that a few years ago passed  a trillion and half dollar tax bill that mostly favored the rich, has fought tooth and nail to pass a similar bill to help people affected by what may be the worst health crisis in American history.  And even within a bill aimed at helping ordinary Americans and small businesses, there is a provision that  would let companies deduct one hundred percent of business meals with clients, up from the current fifty percent amount; which is essentially another hand out to the rich.

Our anemic response to the pandemic's affects beyond the infected seems to be based on the American myth of libertarianism, that notion that rugged individualism without government interference (and low tax rates, even on the rich) is the best way to run a country.  This belief really started to catch on in the nineteen eighties, when then president Ronald Reagan passed steep tax cuts for the rich under the wrongful belief that somehow they increased economic growth enough to pay for themselves (it didn't work then, and it still didn't work when both George W Bush and Donald Trump tried the same thing years later).

The truth of the matter is that the romantic notion of people taking care of themselves may have had an appeal in the early days of this country, when people tended to live in isolated communities, but today, as the pandemic shows, it's essentially ridiculous.  People are always going to need roads and bridges, law enforcement and firefighters, health departments and safety regulators, not to mention government workers risking their lives to help others in natural disasters.   And all of these things have to be paid for with tax dollars.  

This gets even more hypocritical when you look at the national trends of federal government spending; every year, blue states like New York and New Jersey pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending, while red states like Kentucky and Mississippi get more in federal spending than they pay in taxes.  Really, the economies of some red states are basically kept afloat by the money paid to the government by blue states.  So much for rugged individualism!  Oh sure, the Republican leaders of those states rail against big government, but try taking Social Security and Medicare payments to their states and see how much they hate big government then.

Really, the pandemic has laid bare the problems of the American system of capitalism: even as the coronavirus has raged through the country, and  shutdowns have caused unemployment rates to skyrocket,  the wealthiest Americans have actually seen their wealth increase in the past nine months.  And because we have a crazy, free market system of healthcare in which most people receive it through an employer, many of the millions of people that have lost their jobs have also lost their healthcare.  During a pandemic.  So, even for the millions of Americans lucky enough not to be directly affected by the virus, many of them will be poorer and less healthy.

If there is a silver lining to this, it that's America may finally get over the notion that the rich paying their fair share of taxes is "Socialism"and that when the effects of the pandemic wind up hitting the poor and middle class far more than the rich, perhaps there will be  support for a wealth tax, or some kind of increase in the upper income tax rate to somewhat even the huge gap between the rich and the poor in this country.  At the very least, the millions of Americans who will be without healthcare may finally drive this country into adapting the same kind of national healthcare programs that every other industrialized nation has.   But, given that the Republican party has not been given the kind of stinging rebuke they deserved for supporting Trump for the past five years, it may not happen soon.  

THE CULT LEADER

 

Towards the end of his life, L Ron Hubbard, the creator of the cult Church of Scientology, was seen hooking himself up to a so called e-meter, a bogus device used by followers of his church to check their mental health.  While it's obvious to anyone not in the Scientology cult that Hubbard was a charlatan who founded the religion as a money making scheme, it appears that he eventually started believing his own lies.   There is a certain perfect symmetry to this; if you're a charismatic con artist who gets a large group of people to believe in what your saying, eventually you're going to start believing it too.  Like Hubbard, if you surround yourself only with people who repeat the things you say back to you, the brainwasher can find himself joining the brainwashed.

Which brings us to the most prominent cult leader in American today, soon to be former President Donald Trump.  Despite the Electoral College vote yesterday that confirmed Joe Biden's win, not to mention the dismissal by the Supreme Court, of a Texan lead attempt to overturn the vote counts in four states, Trump  maintains that somehow he will still find a way to turn the election.  This leads to an interesting question: is Trump just using his attempt to overturn his loss as a way to fire up his followers, or does he really think that somehow millions of votes were fraudulently counted?

On the one hand, Trump has been using his legal challenges to the election as a fundraising cash cow.  Emails begging his supporters for money have raised tens of millions of dollars so far.  And, as many members of  the media have pointed out, while the top of the email says that the money will go to his legal team, in the fine print at the bottom is the announcement that most of the money is going to his new political action committee.  In other words, his legal fund is just another con from a man whose life has been filled with them.  Also, his point man on the legal charges against the election has been Rudy Giuliani, who's fee has been estimated to be around twenty thousand dollars a day.  On top of that, it's been reported that he may want a presidential pardon from Trump.  So of course Giuliani is going to push every legal case that he can, he wants to make money and impress the president.  Most people are willing to tell lies for twenty grand a day! And all the other Trump people publicly defending his attempts to overturn the election are just doing it to impress him, or perhaps land a lucrative job in right wing media.  It would appear to be a cynical cash in all around.

On the other hand, people around the president are saying that he often really seems to  believe that this election was somehow stolen, and that someday soon the truth will appear and he will remain in the White House.  In other words, he may not be a cynical con man, he may be straight up delusional.  The fact that he surrounds himself with sycophants and immerses himself in right wing media that continually (and absurdly) claims that he actually won, combined with his narcissistic nature and constant need to be seen as winner, may skew is entire sense of reality itself.  He may be a cult leader drinking his own kool aid.

This dichotomy between cynical con man and true believer is echoed in his devoted followers, who say in polls that they believe that the election was stolen, but then admit in interviews that they aren't sure.  It would appear that the rallies being held by his supporters recently are as much about anger at the outcome of the election than they are a genuine belief that it was stolen.  (Either way, they are becoming violent, and Trump is irresponsibly doing nothing to quell that violence).  

The sad thing about cults is that it's very hard to get someone out of one once they've joined.  A cult can bring a sense of order and unity to someone's life, and provides like minded friends that you can bond with.  The problem is their sincere beliefs are combined with a hostility towards outsiders.  And people who try to leave the cult are often hated the most of all.  For an example of this, just look at the death threats being aimed by Trumpists at Republican leaders who haven't supported Trump's legal efforts.  And there is no easy way for the country to get over Trumpism, which is sure to follow him even as he reluctantly leaves power.  The beliefs of his followers are just too strong to disappear even when he is no longer president.  The effects of Trump's degradation of both the office of the presidency and the Republican party will be felt for years to come, even if he himself fades away.

DEMOCRACY IS HOLDING, FOR NOW

Another day, another humiliating loss for Donald Trump and his quixotic (some might say insane) desire to hold onto the White House.  Today, Georgia just finished their third (!) recount of the presidential votes, and it once again affirms that Joe Biden won the state by about twelve thousand votes.  This comes after one loss after another in the courts (the Associate Press reports that fifty court filings so far have led to only one minor victory for the president's legal team).  In perhaps one of the more stinging rebukes against the Trump legal team, Federal  judge Stephanos Bibas ruled against them, saying "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so.  Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”   Bibas, it should be pointed out, was appointed by Trump, proving both the importance of an independent judicial system, and that partisanship does not always overrule the truth.  And it's not just the courts that are rebuking him, recently the state of Wisconsin did a recount of votes (paid for by Trump's campaign), that actually added to Biden's vote total.

This is all good news in that it shows that American democracy, despite the roughing up it has taken in the past four years, is still holding on.  But it is upsetting in that Trump has shown that the edges of our system can be frayed.  From our absurd Electoral College that gave Trump his victory in twenty sixteen despite his losing the popular vote by almost three million, to his (thankfully failed) attempt to get electors in certain states to vote against the will of the voters, Trump has shown that he very well could have stolen the election if it had been closer.  Really, his legal team's ineptitude is a perfect capper to his political career; chaotic, poorly planned, and built around the erratic, needy nature of Trump himself.  If he had been more organized, and started making legal charges against election laws before the election, he just might have gotten away with it, but then, without chaos he wouldn't be Trump.

So now we have reports of him sullenly stalking the oval office, repeating "I won I won" to anyone within earshot, acting much like Richard Nixon did in his final days.  But unfortunately, there is a crucial difference; Nixon's downfall came with plummeting approval in his own party, which eventually led to the elected leaders of his own party turning on him.  Sadly, for the most part, this hasn't happened to Trump.  So far, only a handful of Republican officials have publicly admitted that he lost.  In a Senatorial debate in Georgia yesterday, Senator Kelly Loeffler refused to say whether Trump had won or lost that state in the election.  And with good reason, a clear majority of registered Republicans (in some polls, as many as seventy percent) think that the election was somehow stolen by Biden.  

We've been down this road before; during the presidency of Barack Obama, the crazy  notion that he had actually been born in Kenya was seen as believable by a large number of Republicans.  In other words, "Stop the Steal" is just the new birtherism, and it is really a surprise that a party that has often rejected the truths of evolution and climate change would move latch on to another falsehood?  Fueled by the right wing media, for years now millions of Republicans would rather hear what they believe to be true rather than the actual truth.

Now, while there's no chance that the current conspiracy beliefs will change the election, it may prove to be a rallying cry in future elections, which is where my real concern lies.  What if another demagogic cult like leader like Trump arises in this country?  And what if that leader isn't  disorganized and distracted like him?  American has disposed of one president that is all too willing to discard democracy for his own personal gain, but what happens if another such leader rises?  If Trump has taught us anything, it's that American democracy is more fragile than we thought, and that in the door to outright fascism may be open to just the right kind of leader.  (If you think I'm just being paranoid, remember that Trump sometimes publicly mused about getting a third term, or even a lifetime appointment.) Hopefully America will never have another Trump, but it's not impossible. 

HOW TO STEAL AN ELECTION

 

As Donald Trump continues his flailing, borderline incoherent attempts to overturn an election he clearly lost, it might be a good time to remember a past election that was, in my opinion, stolen successfully. 

 In the year two thousand, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W Bush were running neck and neck in the presidential election.  Gore's years as Vice President under Bill Clinton had seen the country experience enormous peace and prosperity.  But Clinton had also been impeached by the House of Representatives and had suffered withering attacks on his character (some reasonable, some not) from the Republican Party.  George W Bush, meanwhile, was seen as an amiable dimwit who was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family with a political legacy.  And there was a viable third party candidate, Ralph Nader running on the Green Party ticket, that was siphoning votes away from Gore.  (And whom I voted for, a vote I would later deeply regret).

An election as close as that one was, was sure to come down to the wire.  In fact, it was a mess, as it all wound up in the state of Florida, which veered from one candidate to another as the election night wore on.  At one point Gore called Bush to concede, and then called back to rescind the first call!  

While there was all kinds of craziness going on in the recounts in that state, from confusing "butterfly" ballots that may have gotten voters to vote for the wrong candidate to election officials surveying ballots to try and discern the voter's intent, it was far from America's finest hour of democracy.  As we all know, the supreme court stepped in and essentially gave the presidency to Bush by halting all the recounts.  But was he really the candidate who won, or was it just close enough for him to steal it?  I certainly think that  it was stolen.

Why?  Because,  beyond the insanity, one chilling fact emerged after it was too late to do anything about it: many African American voters said that when they went to vote, they were told that their names were not on the voting list and they were turned away.  While we don't know how many voters were wrongfully turned away, considering that the final vote count for George W Bush was a miniscule five hundred and thirty seven more than Al Gore's shows how easily the election could have turned to Gore.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People eventually sued the state, and during the investigation it was discovered that, because Florida did not let felons vote, a list of felons had to be sent to election officials to remove from the voting rolls.  And the company that made that list, Database Technologies, overshot the list, putting names on that shouldn't have been for a variety of reasons.  Edward Hailes, who was then the acting general counsel of the US Civil Rights Commission, said that the number of disenfranchised African American voters was in the thousands, and added that “We did think it was outcome-determinative.” 

While these findings did lead to changes in the Florida voting process, it was, or course, too late to do anything about the outcome of the election.  Putting it simply, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it in a state in which, it should be remembered, his own brother was governor of.  And he was aided by a supreme court that had two members that had been put there by his father.   It was almost a third world dictatorship level of corruption.  

Not only would Bush prove to be a disastrous president, the legacy of the Florida debacle would live on in the Republican Party's repeated attempts to suppress the voting rights of non white voters (especially African Americans).  From wildly overblown charges of voter fraud to Gerrymandering, the GOP will use almost any means possible to disenfranchise voters unlikely to vote for them.

And the legacy of voter suppression lives on now in Trump's wild rantings; along with crazy charges of rigged voting machines and lost ballots, he and his legal team have focused on trying to get votes thrown out of cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Cities that have, naturally, high African American populations.  While there is virtually no chance that Trump and his legal team will prevail, the sad reality is that another stolen election could be on the horizon.  There is simply no reason for the Republican Party to abandon their attempts at voter suppression when they have often proven successful; really, it's just the logical extension of the Southern Strategy that the party has been using to get blue collar white voters to vote for them for decades.   Although I like to think that someday there will be a reckoning for the Republican Party's extremism that will cause them to have to be more open to compromise and move towards the center politically, given their ability to game the system for power, that day may not be for a while.

UM...FINALLY

This is the second time I've used the word "finally" in the title of a blog post regarding Donald Trump.  The first time I used it was way back in September of twenty sixteen when then candidate Trump held a press conference in which he announced that he no longer believed that President Barack Obama was lying about his birthplace.  And now, four years later, I'm using that word again to describe him admitting something that the vast majority of the world knows to be true: that he lost the election to Joe Biden.

The use of the word "finally" is crucial both times, because they both indicate just how much Trump has lowered the office of the presidency since he first decided to run back in twenty fifteen.  The first time it seemed appalling to me that someone who was spreading vile conspiracies about the president could possibly win the Republican nomination for president (boy was I naive!).  And it must be remembered that even as Trump admitted that birtherism was wrong, he also said that it was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign back in two thousand and eight (it wasn't) and that Trump himself was the one who ended it (actually, he had kept it going for years).  In other words, even when he was right about something, he was still dishonest.

Which is why, even though I'm glad that Trump has conceded, the reluctance he has shows illustrates the damage he has done to our country and the world, and it in no way makes me feel better about a man like him ever being in the White House in the first place.  Remember that his concesion comes over two weeks after the election was officially called on November the seventh, and only after his legal team flooded the courts with challenges in swing states, almost all of which were swiftly and summarily thrown out.  The fact of the matter is that this election wasn't even close, with Biden getting over six million more popular votes and winning in the Electoral College by three hundred and six votes to Trump's two hundred and thirty two.  Only the most cult like follower of Trump could possibly believe that over six million votes were stolen, which would be an electoral fraud of epic proportions. 

It would appear that the straw that finally broke Trump's back was that fact that even business leaders who supported his reelection told him to step down for the good of the country.  There was also talk of Republican donors refusing to support the party as long as he kept fighting.  Sadly, like so many other things in this country, it all came down to money.

And in typical Trumpian fashion, even his concession tweets don't really sound like a real concession:  

"I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good.....fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."

Yeah, it's hardly a statement of contrition, but I'll take it just to get rid of him.  Now I hope that once he's out of the White House the various legal charges against him will proceed, keeping him from running again in twenty twenty four. We'll see.

EVEN FOX NEWS?

Donald Trump may be having his John Birch Society moment.  Although it's now a shadow of its former self, back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, that far right political group had an enormous influence on right wing, cold war politics.  At first, William F Buckley, conservative intellectual and founder of the right wing magazine The National Review, embraced the organization. But then it was discovered that Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr. had once written a political statement accusing then President Dwight D Eisenhower of being a Communist.  The absurd notion that a Republican president and war hero could be a red was too much for Buckley, who openly denounced the extreme group.  It's hard to believe that there was ever a right wing movement to the right of Buckley, but there was.  Sadly, unlike Buckley, the Republican Party is not doing the right thing and turning on Trump, even as he distorts reality.

In the past few days, Donald Trump has been publicly turning on Fox News, the Roger Aisles founded network that somehow isn't conservative enough for him.  Although no other large news organization has more openly defended and cheered Trump, he still has lashed out against it in his tweets.  Why?  Because, despite what the right wing opinion shows on the station are saying, the more news oriented programs on the network have accepted the reality of Joe Biden defeating Trump.  To add insult to injury, during the election, Fox was the first network to call the state of Arizona for Biden.  So now Trump has started touting other even more extreme (but far less popular) right wing networks  like the  One America News Network or Newsmax, which claim that there is still a chance that Trump will win the election through his (baseless) legal actions.  

So here we have a prime example of the damage Trump has done to not only the nation but to his chosen political party as well.  It isn't enough for him that the commentary shows on Fox are still hyping his "stolen election" narrative, he still feels betrayed by Fox because their reality based news anchors won't fall in line behind him.  In his world, if he says the sky is purple, the right wing news media had better agree.

Sadly, this all just a part of how completely the Republican party has become a cult around Trump.  Just look at their party platform at the last convention, which was nothing more than a statement that Trump speaks for the party on all things. Think about how the party that once pushed Jimmy Carter into selling his peanut farm after  he was elected president because it was a conflict of interest was fine with Trump running a hotel that bore his name in Washington DC while he was president.  The party that denounced Bill Clinton for "immorality" when he was president ignored twenty six different women charging Trump with sexual assault or rape.  The party that celebrated Ronald Reagan even as he granted amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants, later supported a man who wanted to build a wall on the border and called Mexican immigrants "rapists".  And now they're so cowed by him and his popularity in the party that only a handful of elected Republican officials are willing to admit that he lost.  There's a feeling in the party that Trump just needs some time and  space to deal with his feelings about losing, as if the president were a screaming child throwing his toys around, instead of a grown man. 

So, even though Trump is destined to leave the White House on January twentieth (perhaps kicking and screaming all the way), his influence on the party will continue.  Just how will that influence will express itself?  Perhaps he will join with Newsmax or OANN to create his own right wing mediasphere in which his every tweet will be regarded as words from the lord on high.  Or he may run again in twenty twenty four, striking fear into the hearts of other Republican candidates(and any decent American for that matter).  In any event, his stamp of xenophobia, bigotry and outright corruption will brand the party for years to come, and, hopefully, someday it will pay a steep price for every supporting a man like him in the first place.

DONALD TRUMP AND THE DANGERS OF CELEBRITY WORSHIP

As Donald Trump continues to flail vainly at the outcome of the election, and his political career looks like it will soon be in the rear view mirror, it might be a good time to consider just how America elected such a man in the first place.   While there are a number of factors that led to his election, from white resentment to the Comey memo, one factor that is rarely talked about is Trump's image as a celebrity.

Before that, let's look at the reelection of Barack Obama in two thousand and twelve.  After his victory, the Republican Party went through a lot of soul searching.  When he had won the first time in two thousand and eight, they rationalized that fall out from the disastrous Iraq war and the terrible economy meant that no Republican could win that year.  But Obama's second victory was different, as it was a straight up battle between Republican and Democratic priorities, and  Obama's win seemed to show a definite shift in attitudes in the American public.  The Republican party realized that if they didn't find a way to appeal to younger, non white voters, their days in the White House coming to an end.  And yet, four years later they would embrace a candidate who seemed to have zero to say to anyone but white older voters.  And he improbably won.

It's amazing to remember now what a joke Trump's campaign looked like back in twenty fifteen.  Most of the media dismissed him as a silly sideshow, a TV star in over his head, making racist comments in his opening speech and lying and bragging constantly.  But he kept winning, despite the fact that he broke every rule of being a successful politician (not to mention every rule of common decency).  After openly criticizing the war record of Senator John McCain, many Republican politicians thought that his political career was over.  But he just kept steamrolling.

While much of his popularity in the Republican party seemed to stem from his channeling of the angers, fears and hatreds of older, white Americans, his appeal went beyond the limits of his party.  When he won the twenty sixteen election, he was able to also get enough  independent (and even Democratic!) votes to push him over the finish line.  Surely not all of his support was based on pure racism.  After all, analysis by the UVA Center for Politics after the election found that millions of voters switched from Obama to Trump.  So race was not the only deciding factor in his twenty sixteen win.

So what else was it?  What could possibly make people who voted for Obama vote for a man who repeatedly said that Obama was not a legitimate president?  Well, I think one answer can be found in an interview I heard with one of those voters, a pro choice,  woman  who supported gay marriage, and yet  switched from Obama to Trump.  When asked why, she replied that "He's a successful businessman, he knows how the economy works."  This to me maybe the key to Trump's political success: he's never been a politician, he's a celebrity, one with a strong image burned into the minds of the American public.

Remember, Trump is truly a unique figure in presidential politics; never before had someone moved so quickly from celebrity to president.  Yes, Ronald Reagan had been a movie star, but by the time he ran in nineteen eighty, he hadn't been in a movie in many years.  Trump, on the other hand, was still a television star the day he declared.  So Trump is still to this day a celebrity first and a politician second, and that has played well for him because the public holds celebrities to a different standard than politicians.  For example, way back in nineteen eighty eight, then Senator Joe Biden had to drop out of the presidential race, just because he plagiarized a speech.  Trump obviously did far worse than that in his campaign, but it didn't matter, because, as he himself put it on the infamous Access Hollywood tape:  "When you're a star they just let you do it, you can do anything."  People have always forgiven, and even encouraged, bad behavior in our celebrities.  From The Rolling Stones openly using drugs to Hugh Grant getting busted for soliciting a prostitute, famous people are almost never punished for the things they do.  This helps explain why Trump's offensive statements and lies have rarely hurt him politically.    

Also, another important thing to think about is the persona that celebrities build around themselves.  Look at John Wayne, a star who for years personified the swaggering, manly man in movie after movie.  Did it hurt his image that he chose not to serve in the military during World War Two?  (He was too old to be drafted, but was young enough to have served voluntarily if he had wanted to).  No.  He had branded his image as a tough guy in so many movies that it didn't matter.  He was still the ultimate cowboy.  And so it is with Trump, who has spent most of his life promoting himself as the ultimate successful tycoon.  Just look at the opening credits of his television show The Apprentice, which depicts him as almost godlike, as he goes from flying in a private helicopter, to riding in a limo to entering a skyscraper that bears his name.  To million of viewers, there was no question that he was a great businessman and dealer.  The fact that he inherited his father's already very profitable business, or that he declared bankruptcy five times, didn't matter.  His image of a wealthy, self made man was more powerful than the truth.  Given this, even his terrible treatment of women can be excused; that's just how powerful men are.  They take what they want because they can.

Twice now, Trump has beaten the polls, which pegged him to lose to Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen and to lose by a bigger margin to Biden than he eventually did.  But there is still some  good news for the future here.  I think that the Trump presidency will be seen as a once in a lifetime phenomenon.  Currently,  there are no other right wing media figures out there who could bring his combination of celebrityhood, extreme self confidence and image of success into the political arena the way he did.  What that means is that the Republican party got very lucky in twenty sixteen, and that they are still going to have to find a way to appeal beyond their old, white base if they want any more national success in the future.  But then again, Trump could run in twenty twenty four...

ONE LAST TANTRUM

 

Donald Trump lost.  There is no question.  The election went smoothly, without violence or strife.  The votes have been counted and at this point Joe Biden received over seventy five million votes and Trump  over seventy one million.  In the Electoral College, Biden currently holds two hundred and ninety votes to Trump's two hundred and fourteen.  With three more states yet to finish counting, it is likely the final tally will be three hundred and six votes for Biden and two hundred and thirty two votes for Trump.  Although the time it took to finalize the vote counting in some states gave a few of us Biden supporters nightmares, in the end it wasn't that close an election.  Sure, Trump outperformed the polls (again), but a Biden victory was predicted months ago, and it was delivered Saturday when Pennsylvania was called for him.

For months leading up to the election, Trump has been saying that mail in voting is open to massive fraud and that he will contest the results.  And so that has come to pass. Without a word of concession, he has started legal proceedings in several states, led by his ghoul-like lawyer Rudy Giuliani.   

The chances of any of his legal arguments actually succeeding are virtually none.  If voting fraud did take place, that would have to mean that the Democratic party manipulated millions of votes in several different states, which would be the largest election scandal ever.  And that while  they were doing this, somehow they forgot  to defeat other Republican candidates, like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell.  Devious and dumb at the same time!  While the Trump team seems to be holding onto the precedent set the last time there was a highly contested election (Bush Vs Gore in the year two thousand), it must be pointed out that that was an extremely close election (only half a million votes separated the two candidates) that all came down to a razor thin margin of around five hundred votes in one state.  Nothing in this contest compares.  For Trump to prevail he would have to somehow flip more than one state that he lost, and that's really impossible.  Not even a Supreme Court with three of his appointments can do that. 

The sad thing is that many Republican leaders, like Graham and McConnell, are either saying nothing or encouraging Trump's legal actions.  So, far, only four Republican Senators have publicly endorsed Biden's victory.  I imagine that this has more to do with elected Republicans fearing to cross Trump and his vice like hold on the Republican voters than it does any actual belief that he will prevail.  To Republican officials, supporting Trump even  as he says foolish or awful things has become reflexive in the past four years.  Siding with him yet again is nothing new for them.

 In many ways, Trump's refusal to accept the election results is laughable, as he continues to think that the world works only by his rules.  But it is important to consider just how despicable he is being here.   No president in the history of this country has attacked a perfectly legitimate election result before.  Nixon's corruption didn't even come close. His actions are an insult to the entire idea of democracy, not to mention the constitution. Trump is calling for nothing less than a coup. Even if it is a failed one. it's still simply terrible that our nation has a president trying something so extreme.  Hopefully, America will never sink to the level of Trump ever again.

2020, THE GOOD AND THE BAD

 

It is official's now:  Joe Biden has won the state of Pennsylvania, earning him the presidency.  Current President Donald Trump, who absurdly tried to claim victory before all the votes were counted two days ago, can scream and try to sue, but there is no path to victory for him.  Already the  legal challenges he has tried to make are  failing in different courts. Put simply, this election wasn't close enough for him to cheat.   Despite his  party's attempts to suppress the vote, or his attempt  to sabotage the post office to gum up mail in votes, there was just too much voter turnout, both in person and by mail, for him to pull off another upset.

First, the good news.  Despite the fears of many Americans, this election went as smoothly as possible.  There were no riots or violent confrontations, no Proud Boys intimidating voters of color.  The feared Civil War didn't arrive. And, despite the pandemic, the turnout was historically large, with over one hundred and fifty million votes cast.  That puts the turnout rate at around sixty six percent, the largest number since the year nineteen hundred.

And, of course, by rejecting Trump the country has rejected the corruption, lies and bigotry that he has displayed in the last four years.  Trump now enters the list of one term presidents, the first to lose since nineteen ninety two.  If he had won another term, American democracy as we know it would have been seriously changed for the worse; instead we have a return to normalcy, with a president who is a decent, good natured man.  And of course, with Vice President Kamala Harris the country will have its first female vice president who is also a person of color.   

But this election wasn't perfect; first of all, Donald Trump outperformed all the polls and came closer to winning than was predicted.  In fact, he got more votes this time than he did in the last election, coming in at around seventy million votes.  (Biden came in at around seventy four).   And all the things that drove his unlikely campaign to victory four years ago, the racism and xenophobia,  are still driving forces for many of those seventy million people.

And it appears that the Democrats will not win a majority in the Senate and lose a few seats in the House of Representatives.  Without the Senate, the Republican party will be able to do to Biden what they did to Barack Obama, which is to filibuster and block nearly every part of his agenda.  This will become a real uphill battle for President Biden in the next four years.  But there is still much that the president can do without congress, and so Biden will be able to reverse many of the terrible things that Trump has done in the past four years.  Like I said, there will be battles once Biden is inaugurated, but right now I'm too happy to care.  This is a great moment for the country and the world, and I want to savour it. 

A NAIL BITER

 I always knew that there was a possibility that Donald Trump could win reelection; that despite his horrible response to the pandemic and his brutish behavior during the first debate, he could pull off another Electoral College win.  And here we are, at four AM PST with no winner yet declared.

Every poll seemed to show that there was a blue wave coming, with Biden  leading in both national and swing states polls.  But the wave seems to have dried up; Florida went for Trump, along with South Carolina.  And Texas,  the prize that Democrats have been wishing for in the past few cycles, stayed red again.

Still, this is not to say that Biden doesn't have a chance, he's currently leading in the Electoral College, with millions of votes to be counted in Nevada, Arizona,Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's just depressing that the race is close at all.  Once again, Trump's ability to channel the angers and fears of millions of white voters seems to be working. 

Even if Trump does win, he will become the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice (he's currently down in the popular vote by around two million, with little to no chance of his making that number up), displaying what an absolute joke of a democracy our country has become.  And it may get worse, with a conservative Supreme Court sure to uphold whatever voting limitations Republicans put it place in the future.

In typical Trump fashion, he has already claimed that he has won and the vote counting should end.  This is, of course, insane, but nearly every public statement this man has made in the past four years is either dishonest or crazy, so that's no surprise.  The good news is that there appears to be no way that Trump can just end the vote counting, even by going to the Supreme Court.

Still, I feel utterly ashamed and embarrassed that Trump didn't lose in a blowout last night.  I am just completely incapable of understanding how anyone could vote for such a corrupt bigot.  I recently wrote that our president's terrible handling of the pandemic made me ashamed to be an American.  Even if Joe Biden does prevail, last night's vote counts still fill me with shame.  

THE NATION'S FUTURE

I hate to be hyperbolic, but the next two days could be completely game changing for the future of our country.  While every presidential election is, of course, important, this one is especially significant.  The best case scenario is obvious: Joe Biden wins the presidency by a wide margin, with most of the swing states going his way.  President Trump would almost definitely try to cry foul, but if Biden's victory is a landslide, even the Republican party that has meekly supported or ignored every insane tweet or statement the President has made in the past four years would have to concede.  And then, on January twentieth Trump would step down and Biden would begin the job of repairing the country's image.  And while the danger of violence on the part of some of Trump's supporters is possible, I think for the most part they would just retreat back into the corner they held during the Obama years. Sanity would return, and Biden would be a safe, dull president.

It's the other alternatives to a Biden landslide that get frightening: although Biden's lead looks strong, it's entirely possible that Trump could still eke out a victory.   While it appears that Trump can't possibly win the popular vote, he could once again get just the right number of votes in the right number of states to pull out a win in the Electoral College.  If that proves to be the case, he would be the first president in history to lose the popular vote twice and still serve two terms.  Even worse, it would be a slap to the face once again to the majority of voters.  It would somehow mean that the Republican party, who have had only one presidential candidate win the popular vote in this century (George W Bush in two thousand and four), would hold the White House for another term.  Even worse, it would mean an extension of the extremist policies of the past four years, with the revitalized Trump administration going even harder against immigration and environmental degradation.  In out deeply divided country, there is often talk of some kind of division, with states splitting off somehow from the rest of the country.  While most of this seems crazy, if Donald Trump does pull off another win tomorrow, it is understandable that the people who live in a blue state like California might wonder why it needs to be anchored to a country that constantly seems at odds with their values.  While I don't see such a separation happening, I am sympathetic to the appeal of it to people who see a corrupt, extremist right wing president hold power despite being opposed by a majority of the voters.

Another nightmare scenario is that Biden at first appears to be losing in swing states, and then starts to pull ahead as mail in votes are counted.  Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of possible widespread voter fraud going against him from mail in voting.  It is entirely possible that he may declare an early victory in those states before the votes are all counted, and then scream fraud when those late votes go against him.  This could lead to lawsuits and counter lawsuits on whether those votes should be counted.  The ensuing legal mess could wind up at the Supreme Court (three of whom are Trump appointees), which could result in Trump winning a completely corrupt  election entirely through legal machinations.  This would essentially bring an  end to democracy in this country, making us no better than a third world dictatorship.   Trump would become the full on fascist leader that he's always wanted to be, and knowing him, would start working on appointing himself leader for life.  The upswell of anger from the people at this could result in real violence, with both the right and the left energized and enraged.  While I think a full on civil war is highly unlikely in such a scenario, the fury at the utter corruption that Trump may bring to maintain power means that it is possible.

Donald Trump has spent the last four years basically testing the limits of the presidency seeing how much he can get away with: from refusing to release his taxes, to running businesses while in office, from appointing unqualified family members to important positions of power, to pardoning former campaign advisor Roger Stone for crimes that Stone committed on Trump's behalf (a move that the New York Times said pushed him beyond Richard Nixon's level of corruption).  And time and time again he has gotten away with things no modern president has ever dared to try.  Stealing a close election would just be the icing on the cake for an egotistical psychopath like our president.  Here's hoping that he can't.  

A WILD FINISH

 In early August of this year (which feels like ten months ago!) I wrote that I was feeling cautiously optimistic about the upcoming presidential election.  And now, with only around two weeks to go before before that big day, I'm feeling a little less cautious.

The funny thing is that, with everything that has happened in the last two months, the polls have hardly budged.  Joe Biden has consistently been running a lead of around ten points nationally over President Trump, and Biden also leads in most of the important swing states.  Amazingly, this is basically the same lead that he had way back in the Democratic primaries!  Biden has even out performed the president in campaign donations, a rarity for a presidential challenger.

The televised debate between Trump and Biden back in September was a chance for Trump to dig himself out of the hole he's in, and not only did he not win, he may have dug himself in deeper.  Instead of looking presidential, Trump displayed his true character as a bragging, insulting, dishonest bully.  Only Trump himself and his loyal base thought that he did well.

And when Trump revealed that he  had tested  positive for Covid 19, he received no sympathy bounce.  If anything, his own infection seemed to personify his failure to slow down the pandemic.  And that is what has been hurting him politically more than anything else; the president may have survived  his bout with Covid 19, but it could still drag down his presidency. 

The problem for Trump is obvious: the pandemic was a serious problem that required a sober, consistent, well thought out response from him based on information from scientific researchers and other experts.  In other words, the complete opposite of the chaotic style of governance that Trump had brought to the White House from the very beginning.  The fact that he dismissed the dangers of the outbreak, and then often ridiculed masks while often contradicting the advice of his own scientific advisors shows just what a mess he has made of this crisis.

And it appears that Trump's flailing attempts to dig up some kind of October surprise (from pressuring his Attorney General William Barr to arrest Joe Biden and Barack Obama for some vague and absurd crime to his refusal to disavow Qanon)  are failing because it's hard to distract the American public when they know that the pandemic is still raging, with almost two hundred and twenty thousand Americans dead as of this writing.  It looks like, for the first time in his life, Trump has been confronted with a problem that he can't sue, ignore or insult away.  And while I'm sure that he will attempt to deny the results of the election if he loses, Biden's lead seems strong enough to dispel that denial.  Like I said before, I'm cautiously optimistic about the election, and hopefully in  few months America will have a decent and admirable leader again.

NOTHING LEARNED

 

A brush with death can change a person.  A brush with death caused by something that you've actively ignored can really change a person.  Except, that is, for our president.  Donald Trump's reaction to his recent covid scare has been a return to displaying all the negative behaviors that he had before he fell ill, all of which helped  put the country at the top of the list world wide for the highest number of covid cases and deaths.

Even before he left the hospital, Trump was downplaying his condition.  In one of the oddest moments in presidential history, he got into his official presidential vehicle and waved to supporters outside the hospital he was in.  While this was a typical display of  macho toughness from him, it also showed a complete disregard for his driver and the security agent in the vehicle with him, who were forced to be in close quarters with a known contagious person just so he could get his silly little photo op.

And the foolish behavior from the president didn't end there; one of the first things he did after being discharged from the hospital was to dramatically walk up the steps of the capitol dome and tear off his mask, acting like a septuagenarian Superman. And his tweets were absurd: "Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life." He said, ignoring the fact that over two hundred thousand Americans had died from the virus.  He also added that "We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge."  Not only is this yet another absurd boast from him, but it downplays the reality of  the nature of his medical care.  As president, Trump is, of course, given the best possible medical treatment from an army of doctors.  The vast majority of Americans could never get the same kind of treatment that he received.  For him to hold himself up as some sort of macho, coronavirus beating tough guy is an insult to those who have died, implying that they were just too weak to survive.  As always, Trump has zero compassion for anyone but himself in everything he does, even when recovering from an illness.

This all gets even more appalling when one considers that it isn't just the president himself that has been infected, but also many of the people around him: so far fourteen people, including First Lady Melania Trump,  Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, and Aide to the President Hope Hicks, along with three Republican Senators.  And yet he still steams ahead with downplaying the virus, like a pandemic hitting the White House and Congress is somehow nothing to worry about.  (And really, is there any greater indicator of what a psychopath our president is than the fact that his own wife's infection seems to have stirred no sense of compassion in him?).  Yes, sadly, Trump will always be Trump, never admitting to any mistake or course correcting in any way.  From day one he has downplayed the danger of this pandemic, and months later, with millions of Americans infected and hundreds of thousands dead, he still chooses to do so.  All we can do as a country is vote him out in such large numbers that he and his party won't be able to steal the election.  Expecting him to ever do the right thing regarding this pandemic is fruitless.

THE PRESIDENT TESTS POSITIVE

“the end of the pandemic is in sight....”

The above words are a direct quote from Donald Trump from remarks he gave on Thursday October First.  He said them even after his close advisor Hope Hicks was showing signs of the virus herself.  And then he and his wife Melania tested positive themselves.

Although the irony of a president who has bungled the pandemic response so thoroughly getting the virus himself is not lost on me, I take no pleasure is his condition.  Sure, I've used words like "fascist", "bigot" and "psychopath" to describe him,  but I'm also a progressive who has argued against the death penalty.  I truly hope that Trump recovers, loses the election next month, and eventually winds up in the jail cell I think he deserves to be in.

But I can't feel any real sympathy for his sickness.  I just can't.  My reaction is much like how I felt when Rush Limbaugh recently came down with lung cancer after years of  publicly denying the risks of tobacco usage on his show and constantly smoking cigars.  He should have seen it coming.

A list of all the times that Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat could fill an encyclopedia: from the beginning he said it was nothing to worry about, that it would disappear when the weather got warmer, that the country needed to reopen, that masks were unnecessary.  He often has contradicted his own administration's advice, and insulted  his own advisors when they disagreed with him.  And perhaps worst of all, he has held indoor rallies without mandatory mask wearing.  Even after one of his supporters, Herman Cain, attended one of those rallies and died from the virus shortly afterwards, he didn't stop.  Given all of this, I can't say that I feel sorry for our president.

If there is one good thing that could come out of this, it's that it may push his supporters into realizing just how serious this pandemic is.  Hopefully, people will start wearing masks without complaint and listen to scientists instead of getting caught up in the crazy conspiracy theories running around the virus.   And who knows how this will affect the already unreal upcoming election.  Assuming Trump recovers, will this prove to voters just how disastrous his pandemic response has been?  Or will it garner him a sympathy vote?  How much will Mike Pence have to step in, and will that help or hurt Trump's campaign?  The only thing we know for sure is that twenty twenty is continuing to be the craziest year in  modern history, and the results of that craziness can't be seen right now.

"STAND BACK AND STAND BY"

 Well, the first presidential debate of the twenty twenty election just took place, and while what happened should have been no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to politics for the past four years, it was still a complete national disgrace.  I have never in my life time been more ashamed and embarrassed to be an American; not even during the Iraq war of the George W  Bush presidency.  Other countries must have looked  on in wonder and fear.  How could a country that claimed to be a beacon of democracy elect such a person? It was, to put it simply, the most disgraceful behavior that any president has ever displayed publicly.   Or as commentator Dana Bash put it, it was a "shit show."

Yes, Donald Trump, behind in the polls, came out angry and fuming.  Truly we saw who really was, a bullying, dishonest, egotistical psychopath.  Determined not to let Joe Biden even finish a single thought, Trump interrupted his opponent one hundred and twenty eight times in ninety minutes!  Host moderator Chris Wallace, continually tried to stop him and make him follow the agreed upon rules of the debate to no avail.   It's been stated before but it bears repeating, Trump's behavior in the debates would get him disqualified from a high school debate.  (It's really sad to think that  many children may have watched this and thought that his behavior was acceptable.)  When Biden snapped and told Trump to shut up, and also added that Trump was "the worst president ever", it seemed like a reasonable reaction.  Bullies have to be confronted, and if Biden hadn't fought back, he never would have gotten a word in edgewise.

Amid Trump's usual cacophony of lies, boasts and insults, one chilling moment stood out: while making one of his standard rants about the danger of Intifa (a left wing anti fascist group with few members that Trump has inflated into domestic terrorists) Wallace challenged Trump to condemn violence coming from right wing groups.  At first Trump grudgingly seemed to go along with the idea, but when Biden suggested specifically condemning the Proud Boys, an extremist right wing group with a history of violence, Trump instead blurted out “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,”  adding "Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem.”  Not since he claimed that a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville had "wonderful people" in it has our president made a more disgusting statement.  And this may be worse since it carries the threat of  potential violence.

Think I'm overreacting?  Here's this morning's headline about it from the New York Times: "Trump wouldn’t categorically denounce white supremacists. Members of the far-right Proud Boys are celebrating".  While it's open to debate, Trump's words could be seen as an endorsement of the violence of the Proud Boys.  Even worse, by telling them to stand by, it raises the frightening spector of Trump calling on violent extremist groups to help him win the election through voter intimidation at the polls.or some kind of power grab after the election, which, he has repeatedly said, he will only lose if it's stolen from him.  

The implications of all of this are staggering.  I've already mentioned that I've never been more ashamed to be an American, I also have never been more afraid to be one.  The upcoming election could be the first presidential election in our nation's history to result in violence.  And some of that violence may be coming from our president himself, who could turn full fascist, claim that the election was rigged against him, use the military to cement his power and proclaim himself president for life while he's at.  (These are all things he has hinted at and joked about doing in speeches).The fear I felt four years ago when Trump won has only intensified as the election nears.  I hate to say it, but Trump may pull this country apart, or even start some kind of civil war.  The world's most powerful democracy may be in serious trouble.

JOE BIDEN'S GOOD OLD DAYS

 On Sunday September twentieth, two days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gave a heartfelt declaration to the Republicans in Congress in which he implored them to “Please follow your conscience.  Don't vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created. Don't go there. Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience, let the people speak."  This was a perfectly reasonable request, especially because that same Senate refused to allow then President Barack Obama to fill  a similar vacancy back in twenty sixteen.  Biden even used the same argument that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell used back then:  let the voters decide.

We all know how Biden's plea turned out.  President Donald Trump and the Republicans in the Senate moved forward on filling the nomination, without even shrugging at the brazen hypocrisy they were showing in their quest for political power.

Although I don't fault Biden for attempting to appeal to the conscience of the Republican Senators, anyone who follows politics should not have been  surprised at the Republicans completely ignoring his pleas.  When it comes to attaining raw power, the Republican party has no conscience.  That is especially true when it comes to appointing judgeships; McConnell and the rest of the party know full well that the country's growing diversity and progressive younger citizens will mostly reject the aging, almost entirely white Republican party.  Lifetime judicial appointments can slow that tide.

Joe Biden first entered the Senate way back in nineteen seventy two, and in his speeches he often waxes nostalgic about the warmer and more convivial nature of the Senate back then, which often extended even beyond party affiliation.  I think he may be right about this;  it should be remembered that it was the Republican party finally turning on the criminal behavior of Richard Nixon that forced him to resign.  Yes, once upon a time, a political party was  willing to sacrifice their own leader for the good of the country.  Imagine that.

So what happened?  Why has our country become so polarized that there appears that there is nothing that Trump can say or do that would cause his party to turn on him?  Well, there have been several big changes that have occured since the days of Watergate.

First, when Ronald Reagan moved the Republican party rightward, he forged an alliance with Christian fundamentalists who were (and still are) unrepentant in their literal demonization of their political opponents.  And  as those fundamentalists gained more and  more power in the party, they pushed harder and harder against compromising on their core issues.  

And then the late eighties saw the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who with his mixture of insults, bigotry, misogyny and conspiracy theories about the Democrats, helped push the party further to the right and away from any kind of reconciliation with the other side.  As he grew more popular, an entire right media sprung up that aped his hardline rhetoric.  

Another sea change came in nineteen ninety four, when the Republican party retook the House of Representatives for the first time since the nineteen fifties, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich who had a brutal, cut throat approach to politics.  Now it wasn't just people like Limbaugh calling the Democrats "corrupt" or "fascist", it was an elected official, third in line to the President, no less.  Under Gingrich the House would shutdown the government twice and push for then President Bill Clinton's impeachment even as most of the country opposed it.  Although Gingrich's leadership would have mixed results, his take no prisoners style of politics still influences the Republican party to this day.

And with the right wing media (and social network) still screaming while people like Gingrich still run the Republican party, it seems like there will never be a time like the one that Biden entered into back in the seventies.  So while I sorta admire Biden's stated belief that after Trump is gone, the sane members of the Republican party will see how terrible it was to support him and be ready to move forward in a bipartisan way, I also think it's extremely naive.  Trump is just the ultimate extension of the modern Republican party; they won't improve once he's gone.  For proof of that, Biden shouldn't have to look any  further than the bitter way that the party dealt with President Obama for eight years: they gave him nothing and refused to sacrifice an inch.

What I think Biden needs to do if he wins is to ignore the Republicans as much as possible.  If the Democrats emerge from the upcoming election with not only the White House but also but houses of congress, they need to push their advantage as much as they can.  That means that they should pack the Supreme Court with progressive judges, abolish the filibuster in the Senate and grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.  If the Republicans can only play hardball, then it's time for the Democrats to respond in kind.  Compromise and bipartisanship are nice ideas, but  these days they are just relics of a bygone time.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG AND THE 2020 ELECTION

 

On September eighteenth, eightyseven year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon and Supreme Court Justice, died of cancer.  Like a lot of progressives,  I was a big fan of her not only as a justice, but as a wise and strong person who was one of only a handful of women to attend Harvard Law School in the nineteen fifties.  While her death was far from surprising (she had been in ill health for years), the timing of her passing has sent shockwaves through the already tumultuous upcoming presidential contest,  coming as it did less than two months before election day.  

President Trump immediately pounced on the opportunity to appoint another conservative to the court, giving him three such appointments in the past four years.  And, of course, most of the Republican party has fallen behind him.  Which shows just how cynical and hypocritical the Republican party has become.  Back in February of twenty sixteen, months before the election, with Barack Obama in the last year of his presidency, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow Obama to appoint another justice, blocking the appointment in the Senate and justifying it by saying that it was too close to the election to allow Obama to carry out his constitutional duty and  choose another justice.  It should be understood that this was a completely unprecedented move by McConnell, a shameless power grab against a popular president that McConnell delighted in carrying out.  And now, naturally, he has completely changed his tune, gleefully preparing to affirm another Trump pick less than sixty days before the election.

Another conservative on the court could push it to the right for decades to come.  Abortion rights, gay marriage, voter rights laws, and environmental regulations could all be put on the chopping block.  If it happens, it will be just another way that the Republican  party has managed to shove  through minority rule in this century:  consider that Democratic presidential nominees have won the popular vote in four out of the last five elections, and yet the Republican party has held the White House for twelve of the past twenty years.  That means that if Trump gets another pick, four out of the nine justices will have been chosen by presidents who did not get a majority of the vote.  And it's likely that those justices will make decisions banning gay marriage and abortion rights even as majorities of the American public now support those rights.

So what can the Democrats do?  Well, it's possible that a handful of Republican Senators in close upcoming elections just might refuse to go along with Trump and McConnell and put the brakes on another juridical pick until after the election. Senator Lisa Murkowski has already said she would prefer that, and others may follow.  

But, if that falls through, what can the Democrats do to stop another conservative justice from being appointed?  Not a lot.  After all, expecting the Republican Party to be consistent with their past actions is madness in the era of Trump, a president who often can't be consistent in the same speech!  

There is one other out, and it would be a bold move: if Joe Biden wins the presidency in November, he could pack the Supreme Court.  Although the number of justices has always been held at nine, there is no hard fast rule that says that no president cannot appoint more.  Sure, the Republican Party would froth at the mouth if that happened, but so what?  Remember that McConnell's move against Obama's choice was also unprecedented.  Biden, for his part, has downplayed the idea, but I really think he should consider it.  It's clear that when Biden first got into politics there was a sense of camaraderie between the parties, despite their disagreements.  He needs to realize that those days are over, and that, sadly, both parties have become so diametrically opposed that compromise on major issues is almost impossible.  The only way that a Democratic agenda can be achieved is without Republican help in any way.  And that means that there has to be a progressive majority on the Supreme Court.  The only way forward is to counter hardball politics with hardball politics.

THE WEST COAST IS BURNING

 The images have been stunning.  For days now fires have been ravaging the West coast of the country to devastating effect.  At least three million acres of land have been lost in California alone so far, a new record for a single year.  Oregon and Washington have suffered seriously also, with Portland facing unprecedented damage.  And even places not directly harmed by the fires have suffered seriously unclean air quality conditions, all in the middle of an airborne pandemic.  The most frightening aspect of this may be that this kind of natural disaster may become the new normal, or, as  Philip  B. Duffy, a climate scientist and the president of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, put it,"People are always asking, ‘Is this the new normal?’ I always say no. It’s going to get worse.”

It's a stunning thought that California, the most populous state in the country, the home of Silicon Valley, and other huge economic drivers, is becoming unlivable.  But that may be where we are.  For the past four years, the fire conditions have become more and more damaging.  Part of the reason for this is that an increased population has led to more homes being built closer and closer to the edge of forests.  But nothing contributed more to these fires than the onset of climate change.  The evidence is now impossible to refute, although we know many will try to find a way.

The really frustrating thing is that all of this was predicted decades ago when climate change first starting becoming an issue.  And it wasn't exactly a difficult concept to grasp:  a warmer climate would lead to drier forests with trees more likely to catch fire and burn longer.  And yet these warnings were mostly ignored.

How did we get here?  Well, part of it is that human beings are just better at dealing with a perceived direct threat than a perceived long term one.  Just look at how many people in the world continue to smoke even though the long term health effects of smoking have been known for decades.  Put simply, a lot of people are willing to shrug off something bad that may happen years down the line.

But of course, politics plays a huge role.  Although Richard Nixon may have founded the Environmental Protection Agency, the Republican party became the party that opposed almost any environmental protections when they stood behind Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty even as he said that trees cause pollution.  And things have only gotten worse since then, with George W Bush's administration scrubbing any mentions of climate change out of their own environmental impact reports, to our current president, who once tweeted out "The concept of Global Warming was created  by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non competitive"(!).  

Another crippling factor was when in two thousand and ten, the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case and equated money spent on political campaigns as an expression of free speech.  That  opened the floodgates for corporate money to influence politics.  And no company has had a bigger influence on this issue than the Koch industries, an oil company that has dumped billions of dollars into denying climate change and opposing solar power.  As NPR reported, in twenty sixteen alone they spent eight hundred and eighty nine million dollars in aiding the Republican party.  And their hold on that party is such that now no prominent Republican elected official can admit that climate change is real.  How radical is this Republican denial?  In twenty fifteen Sondre Båtstrand at the University of Bergen in Norway did a comparative study of conservative political parties all around the world, and found that America's Republican party is the only major political party in the entire world that denies climate change outright.  In any other part of the world, their beliefs would be seen as fringe.  Here in the US they are, sadly, part of the mainstream. 

So what can we do?  Well, obviously American needs to vote Republicans out until they are willing to accept the scientific proof that is literally burning in front of them.  But in the short term there appears to be no easy solution, and the terrible environmental devastation that is happening now may be just the beginning. 

AN ODD SORT OF SCANDAL

 

Way back in July of two thousand and fifteen, Donald Trump showed just what kind of political candidate (not to mention person) he was by blurting out in a interview how he really felt about Senator John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”  At the time, Trump was still running against numerous other Republican for the presidential nomination.  After making that statement, one of those rivals, Chris Christie, called another one, Jeb Bush, and tersely said that "Trump is out".  It was a logical assumption, given not only the offensive and stupid nature of the quote, but also that it came from a man who had never served in  the military, and who famously avoided the draft during the Vietnam war because of a mysterious bone spur.  The quote gets even worse when you consider that it is not only a slam at McCain, it's also an insult to any American soldier that has ever been taken captive.  Such a deep insult towards members of the military from someone who has never served in it would derail any normal candidate's' campaign.  (Imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had said such a thing when he was running against Senator McCain in two thousand and eight).

Sadly, as we all know, Christie was wrong and Trump's cult like stranglehold of a certain segment of the American public would somehow lead him to the White House despite this and numerous other terrible things he said  that should have doomed him in a rational world.  And now another scandal concerning Trump and the military has arrived.  In the Atlantic magazine, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg quoted several anonymous sources as saying that Trump once  referred to visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris by saying “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”   The article also said that he referred to those soldiers who died as "suckers".  The article goes on to mention several other dismissive things about the military Trump is supposed to have said as president.  Trump has, of course, vehemently denied saying these things, although Goldberg's reporting has been partly upheld by others ( including, oddly enough, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News).

To me there is no doubt that Trump said these things, given not only his history of other offensive quotes, but also his general view of the world.  Trump is, put simply, a psychopath that has spent his entire life looking out only for himself.  He sees all other people as lesser beings, and can not even comprehend the idea of risking your own life and limb in the service of your country.  Consider that during the entire length of the coronavirus Trump has never truly shown any sort of sadness or regret, even as the country approaches two hundred thousand deaths.

The media has jumped on Goldberg's article, saying that it may hurt Trump's standing with the military two months before the election.  I must say I'm a little puzzled by this; as president, Trump has violated the emoluments clause, been impeached by the House of Representatives for seeking to extort information from a foreign country, had it revealed that he possibly committed criminal offenses by paying off a porn star and a stripper to avoid them from going public about their alleged affairs with him during the twenty sixteen campaign, tried to dismantle the post office to give himself an electoral advantage,  and has had seven different associates either plead guilty or be found guilty of crimes.  One of them, Roger Stone, after being found guilty of obstruction of justice, lying to congress and witness tampering, (all of which he did to help the president), was pardoned by Trump, in a move that the New York Times pointed out, was far  more openly corrupt than anything Richard Nixon ever did.

Given all of that (and a host of other horrible and corrupt things that Trump has done that I didn't mention), it seems a bit crazy to me that some stupid and thoughtless comments about the military may be the thing that brings him down.  But, if this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, then by all means I'll take it.  Anything to bring back some level of order and decency in our country is a good thing.