Still Waters Run Deep

The events over the weekend in Virginia have shocked and outraged so many and rightfully so. It was a despicable act of a depraved individual that turned a protest march into a bloodbath. However, we, as a nation, should not be shocked by the lengths that individuals will sink to in order to prove a point. That hatred that fueled the murders in a Charleston church is the same hatred that fueled the attack in Charlottesville. This hatred runs deep and wide across this country. It always has and it always will. 

I've mentioned in a previous post that perhaps the election of Donald Trump would allow those on the left to take off their rose colored glasses and realize what country they are living in. Hopefully we are no longer living under the illusion that we have turned some corner or crested some hill on our way to racial and cultural harmony. We thought that the wounds of our past were beginning to finally heal and that we were ready to face a new reality. 

The election of Barack Obama was seen as the beginning of a new age on enlightenment. We had finally put to rest our ugly history. We were in a post racial society were people were judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. The only problem was that none of that was true, but the belief in that new America allowed those on the left to become complacent. Their work was done. We had reached the mountaintop that Dr. King spoke of. We had seen the promised land and it was rose colored and beautiful. In their eyes America would never look back. The big picture was complete and the details would take care of themselves. 

Those filled with the racial and cultural hatred, that is so deeply rooted in this country, did not see an age of enlightenment. They saw the election of an African-American to the highest office in the land as an affront to all they hold sacred. There was no complacency on the part of those who hated what they saw. Hatred doesn't take a day off. Hatred is never satisfied with the status quo. Hatred cannot be satiated. Hatred is a 24/7 job. In the age of Obama, those filled with hate may have been less vocal and less visible, but make no mistake, they were always there. That is what those on the left cannot forget. 

I've said this before but it bears repeating, complacency is the enemy of victory. The fervor on the left is genuine at this point, but will that translate at the polls? That remains to be seen. We can quickly become comfortable with the status quo when our day to day lives seem to be sailing along peacefully. The hatred that people feel based on skin color, religion, nationality, sexual preference, etc. is very real and it's not going anywhere. I would ask those who are not a member of a discriminated class to remember how you felt when you heard about Charlottesville. I would ask those whose skin color does not immediately make them a target for racism, to think about how it feels to wake every day and know that you have a target on your back. 

The hatred in this country isn't going away. It won't be beaten by slogans about love, or light or fairly tales. The battle will continue forever. It is just as easy to teach hate as it is to teach love. Remember that fact, the next time life feels a little too comfortable. 

Street Fight

What now? That's the question that millions on the left are asking. For some the answer is to take to the streets or organize rallies or talk about the popular vote or try to overturn or undermine the results of a fairly contested election or hide their head in the sand and refuse to admit what happened last week. None of these actions is going to either change the results of the election or help the Democrats in the next presidential election. 

We on the left (and I certainly include myself in that group), along with the media made a critical mistake when dealing with president elect Trump. We got caught up in the cult of personality. We made the mistake of attacking the person with the belief that the majority of Americans would agree with us that he was un-electable. What we didn't realize is that we got in to a knife fight with a samurai warrior. President elect Trump played the media and the left like a concert pianist. Every attack on him only served to give him more exposure and helped spread his message of being an "outsider". The attitude from the left provided the platform for him to turn his campaign into a crusade. A crusade that spoke to the disaffected in the Midwest in just enough numbers to allow him to defeat an under performing Hillary Clinton. 

The problem right now is that the left is currently continuing along that same path. The protests do nothing to change the outcome of the election. The calls to change the rules of the election after it has already been contested just sound like sour grapes. These kinds of acts only confirm the feelings of those who felt that the Left was hypocritical. We continue to be amazed that our idea of America is radically different from reality. We on the left became very smug in the thought that we had moved beyond the point where an appeal to an entirely white audience could carry the day. We were too busy basking in the post racial glow of Barack Obama to realize that outside of the major population centers, this country is awash in a sea of red. The Republicans control the majority of state legislatures, Governors, school boards, judges, sheriffs and dog catchers across the country. In fact outside of the presidency and the coasts, the post racial utopia is a fantasy.

We still live in the same country that repeatedly sent avowed racists Jesse Helms and Strom Thrumond back to senate, basically until they died. We live in a country where you can get killed for being the wrong color, in the wrong place at the wrong time. We live in a country where state officials would rather go to prison than allow gay people to get married. We live in a country where you get a national following by questioning the birth place of the President. We live in a country where the color of your skin, your gender, your sexual preference can give you an unearned advantage. We all live in the real world and perhaps this election result will finally allow the rose colored glasses to be left behind. 

We on the left became so complacent because of the echo chamber that we limit ourselves to. I remember Carl Rove being flabbergasted that Mitt Romney had lost Ohio and the election because he had been assured by this people that the opposite would be true. The Right and Left have become so insular that they only believe their perceived reality. They have demonized the opposition to the point of being unable to accept that there is merit in any argument on the other side. We have lost the ability to engage in civil discourse to the point that we limit ourselves to one viewpoint. How many facebook friends were lost because of this election? Screaming LIES! RACIST! KILLER! CRIMINAL! SEXIST! ABUSER!, has gotten us nowhere. We are and for the foreseeable future will be, a divided nation. 

So the questions remains, what now? With this election, the Republican message and appeal has been laid bare. There is no longer the ability to claim a lineage to Lincoln. The word compassion is no longer part of their brand. They threw their hat in with their candidate and they are what he says they are. They have finally gone all in on the strategy that presented itself when LBJ pushed the civil rights agenda. They pushed all their chips in and white America responded with an electoral victory. Their path is clear. It's a bright white line that runs through the middle of America. 

The Democrats response should be equally as clear. They can no longer pretend to be based in the center. White America has seen your center and raised you whatever the hell president elect Trump is. The response on the left should be to go all in as well. The secondary causes of the Democratic party need to become their primary causes. Clearly laying out a reality based plan to help those hardest hit by globalization lost out to empty promises of greatness and wealth. The biggest factor in this years election was not a surge in voting from the Right, but a complacency and lack of inspiration from the voters on the Left. 

The Democratic base will naturally grow at a faster rate than it will for the Republicans as we become a less white nation. The pundits talk about Texas and Georgia becoming pink then blue states in the next three presidential cycles. That is all well and good, but I'm fairly sure that the democrats do not want to wait until 2028 to take the White House back. First of all the Left loves diversity, so the era of the dynasties and white males is over. No more Clintons or Kennedys or Cuomos or Roosevelts for that matter. The past is dead and gone. And unfortunately white males just don't inspire the most loyal of democratic voters. Bernie Sanders was great at inspiring the young and the left, but his rallies had the same color spectrum as Donald Trump's did. So to start we need new candidates. The Castro brothers, Corey Booker, Duval Patrick and Kristen Gillibrand are just a few of the faces who should be out front for the party going forward. Sorry, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. Your day has come and gone. You can still help the cause, but not in service of your own ambitions. 

Next step is the platform. Equal pay, abortion, immigration rights, civil rights, gay rights, environmental protection, affordable college tuition/student debt and universal health care should now become the primary calling cards of the democratic party. I do understand that these have always been part of the agenda of the party, but they now should become the rallying cries to inspire it's voters. The economic agenda should remain the same, but apparently talking about it does nothing to get some democrats to come out and vote. We continue to experience an unprecedented period of continued job growth. The unemployment rate has decreased significantly and increasing the minimum wage was a significant part of the 2016 platform. None of these things inspired democrats or moved the needle among right leaning independents or republicans during this election. The resources utilized in trying to attract the white rural middle class was significant and the return was minimal. The democratic party has muted its appeal to its most loyal and consistent voters in the false hope of attracting white republicans. This is fools gold and needs to stop immediately. The middle of the road is where dreams go to die.

I think this election result makes the third step one which is already underway which I call realistic enthusiasm. Complacency is the enemy of victory. The democrats have to be realistic about what is a winnable state and what is not. They also have to make sure that they spend the resources and time needed to secure a win. And that amount is equal to all the money you have. Ending a campaign with money left over is a waste. Spend it all and get the boots on the ground to help get the vote out. In fact we already know that the republicans are going to get 60 million votes or so in a general election. We know this because that is the number they've gotten in the last three elections. The so called midwest blue wall came crumbling down by a mere 100,000 votes. Time spent wooing anything other than your base is time lost. The democrats have the votes, they just need to be realistic in targeting and messaging to reverse those losses.

That is the big picture, three step process for the democrats to get back to presidency. Candidate/Platform/Realistic Enthusiasm. So what do we on the Left do for the next two years while we wait for 2018? We fight for what we believe in. We fight President Trump over every policy that doesn't fit our agenda. We fight every political and judicial appointment that doesn't meet our standards. We fight with our words and deeds and votes. We fight with a new understanding of our opposition. We fight knowing what this country is capable of. I'll say it again, complacency is the enemy of victory. I'm going to end with something I wrote a while back.

We fight because "...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope". We fight because senior citizens should have not have to chose between food and medicine. We fight because American Individualism is not an open invitation to social Darwinism. We fight because Gay and Lesbian are not dirty words. We fight because we believe that all men are created equal. We fight because we believe that people should be judged by the content of their character. We fight because having tens of thousands of people die each year because of a lack of affordable health care is morally unacceptable. We fight because having thousands of children go hungry in the richest nation on the planet is morally reprehensible. We fight because every child deserves access to an education that will prepare them to compete in the global economy. We fight because torture committed in our name is still torture. We fight because everyone should have the right to marry who they chose. We fight because we only have one planet. We fight because diversity makes us stronger, not weaker. We fight because the status quo is unacceptable. We fight because a lie repeated often enough must not be permitted to become the truth. We fight because women deserve to paid the same as men. We fight because our veterans deserve to be treated with respect they have earned. We fight because the expenditure for the Iraq war could have paid for health care for every man, woman and child in the country who cannot afford it. We fight because the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We fight because the forces massed against us never take a day off. We fight because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We fight because as FDR put it, at the height of the Depression,

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of the those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little".

 Never stop fighting 'til the fight is done. 

The Cause Endures

We finally really did it...famous last words from the Planet of the Apes. We as a country have finally decided to elect a game show host as our leader. I have no explanation for the results last night except to paraphrase Patton Oswalt who said, " We are way more sexist than we are racist, and we're pretty fucking racist". 

We will have to live with this result now for the next four years at least and from the fallout from this for maybe a generation. Such is the democratic process. We take a chance every four years and the people decide who they want as a leader. Sometimes we choose hope, sometimes we choose fear, but we always get to choose. That's really the biggest takeaway from last night. I'm not happy with the outcome, but I am satisfied that the democratic process was served last night. 

As I have stated before, we get the leaders that we deserve. That may be a harsh statement, but it's true. Our broken and divided country will be led by someone whose rhetoric smacks of all the hallmarks of a despot. From locking up political opponents to shutting down press access to singling out people based on race or religion, it all sounds very much like so many of the dictators that we have around the globe. 

Our saving grace is that we have a judicial and legislative branch to provide checks and balances. The problem is that they will now be in the hands of the same party. No more gridlock. No more shutting down the government. It's onward and upward with the agenda that we, as a country have voted for. And as hard as that may be to accept, it's the truth. We as a country have voted for the Republican agenda and all that stands for. If you read their platform, it sounds scary. I can only hope that general ineffectiveness of Congress and the in fighting within the party itself will slow the rate of that change. 

We will be stuck with it however. The mid terms are two years away and the chances of changing the balance in the Senate or the House will continue to remain only a faint glimmer in Nancy Pelosi's eyes. Democrats seem to have a problem showing up at midterm elections. Now it seems they have a problem showing up for general elections. Hillary Clinton lost Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by 1%. Her vote totals are down by about 5 million from 2012. Those 5 million disinterested, disillusioned or disaffected voters are the difference between a landslide and a loss. 

We as liberals, progressives, democrats or whatever we are calling ourselves today, have no one to blame but ourselves. We couldn't help ourselves from piling on the Hillary Clinton hate train. All she has done is give her time and efforts to public service for the last 40 years and all we can do in return is react with faint praise at best. All public servants make mistakes. Hell, even the sainted FDR sent Asian Americans to internment camps and refused integrate the armed services. Hillary has done nothing to deserve the apathy and downright hostility she faced from her own party faithful. That, however, is an argument for another day. 

Four years is not a lifetime and two years will be over before we even realize it. Life as we know it didn't change last night and it will not change the day after Inauguration day. We will be in uncharted waters though. We have no idea what is coming with then next administration. Can you honestly say that you know what our foreign policy will be? or our domestic policy? Education, energy, etc. We will all take the leap of faith together as a country. Those who voted for this administration may take it with their eyes open (instead of tightly shut in sheer terror), but it is still a leap into the unknown. I would ask everyone who is predicting Armageddon to remember that eight years ago, Fox news had entire specials devoted to the nightmare that was about to take place. Our country was supposedly going to be unrecognizable in four years. Our children were going to be sent to camps to be programmed, our guns would be ripped from our cold dead hands and economic disaster would leave the country a wasteland. 

People today are asking what are they supposed to tell their children. You  tell them that the democratic process worked the way it was supposed to. That doesn't mean that your candidate or point of view always wins and that the goal of a republic is to work within the system for the betterment of our country. We must strive to make this a successful transition and and a successful presidency. If you are truly a patriot, you don't take your toys and go home just because you didn't get your way. That is too often the way that we react to a losing election. Are we better than our opposition? I certainly hope so. A loss like this definitely stings but as Ted Kennedy famously said after his run for the presidency came to end "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die". 

Caution: Children at Play

The presidential election is a few months away. We now have time to take an honest look at the candidates and decide which one is best suited to run the country for the next four years. We have time to look at the qualifications of each candidate and try to project how they will govern. We have a chance to listen to their plans for the future. We have a chance to consider how their choices are going to affect us in our everyday lives and the lives of our fellow citizens of the world. We can be thoughtful and careful when we decide who to vote for in November.

OR

We can act like children and decide to take our toys home. I always thought that people who consider themselves liberal/progressive/socialist had a bigger world view than their own front door. I always thought that it was the conservative/republicans/libertarians who would only think of themselves. I thought they were the ones who could be talked into voting against their own self interest. 

I can boil this election down to three words: THE SUPREME COURT. If you don't understand the ramifications of those three words, then frankly, you shouldn't be voting. 

And this is all I have to say about that. 

The Party of Palin

The Trump tidal wave is about to wash the Republican brand out to sea in its wake. The group that is so proud to wrap themselves in the title, "party of Lincoln", is about to become irrelevant. I'm not saying that the party will disappear, but it will no longer be able to make a claim to the lineage of Lincoln. The Party, which so proudly adopted the southern strategy in the 60's and doubled down on that with the Lee Atwater tactics of the 80's, is about to fully reap what it has sown. 

In the last election cycle, I thought that Sarah Palin was the ultimate payoff for what had been done to the Republican brand over the past 40 years. I was incorrect. She was merely the town crier for what would be the ultimate invasion. As the Vice Presidential candidate, her jingoistic, vapid and simplistic slogans electrified the crowds, however she was not the main voice of the Party. The crowds ate it up though. So much so that John McCain became the warm up act for the red meat that the crowd hungered for from Sarah Palin. When a supporter said that Obama was a Muslim, McCain immediately said that he was not. That was clearly not what the crowd was looking for. They wanted blood. Sarah gave it to them, but unfortunately, she was not at the top of the ticket. 

Those of us who fancy ourselves as political observers should have taken more notice of the Sarah phenomenon. For while she and John didn't win the election, it was clear that at the end what the crowd wanted was more of her and less of him. The foreshadowing was clear, we just chose to laugh it off. Sarah Palin became a punchline of sorts because she had no substance to back up her lack of substance. Her family life became fodder for the tabloids, she quit her job in government and tried to become a reality star with terrible results. She even started her own pay TV channel, which apparently no one outside of her family subscribed to. She basically made herself irrelevant, but the blueprint that she left behind was there for someone to pick up and run with.  

So now we have someone who runs on the same sort of empty, jingoistic slogans, but has the semblance of substance behind him. Perhaps not since the days of Huey Long have we seen this type of appeal be this successful. "Make America Great Again" is just an updated version of  "A roof over every head and a chicken in every pot". The promises have no basis in fact and there is no way to accomplish them. First of all, just like the people who wanted to take America back, I ask the same question, whom and what do you speak of? Take America back from whom and what time period are we speaking of when we refer to the greatness of America? It must be a rhetorical question because it has no logical answer. 

The problem with the Republican party is that it has courted the angry white voter for some time. It has used the dog whistle call to let them know that they have a home in the Party. They have created or accentuated the idea that "America" is being stolen, watered down and lost to... (pick your minority group) for so long that they don't really know how to do much else. Every election cycle, they pick an issue (integration, abortion, immigration, gay rights, welfare, health care) and frame it as an "us against them" issue. Everything has been black and white, for lack of a better term. They blow their whistle and wait for the angry American to show up at the polls to maintain their position in the pecking order. 

The biggest aid to the call to arms in the last 20 years has been Fox News. Fox News broadcasts propaganda and alarmist rhetoric as fact. According to the Murdoch mouthpiece, real Americans and the American way of life are under attack every day from the forces of evil. Is the President a Muslim? Fox News can't be sure. Will the President open up camps to indoctrinate our young people? Fox News can't be sure. Will the Democrats bring about Armageddon if they control the White House and Congress? Fox News can't be sure. Is there a war against Christians? Fox News is pretty sure there is.  Is global warming real? Fox News is very sure that it's just a hoax cooked up by the people trying to ruin this country. That type of nonsense "journalism" broadcast into the homes of millions every night has made America a less intelligent country, and it has also made us an angrier country. 

Until now, the Republican running for president has always been able to maintain the cover of "compassionate conservatism" while still managing to blow the dog whistle call to the minions. Sarah Palin had no such pretense to maintain. Pat Buchannan was not afraid to paint the country as conflict between good and evil, but he lacked the disarming charisma and charm of Palin. His argument came across as scary to too many, even in his own party. Palin never looked scary. She was however spewing the same kind of rhetoric that excited the voter who believes that their way of life is under attack. 

Donald Trump has never claimed to be a compassionate conservative. I take that back. Donald Trump has claimed to be everything under the sun. His opening salvo in his run for the nomination was to claim that Mexicans are rapists and that he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. Many in the media laughed at the idea that he could be taken seriously. What many, including myself, missed was that the angry voter, that the Republicans had courted for so long, had grown tired with pretense. The rise of the Tea Party after the election of Barack Obama should have been a warning to the Republicans that their voters were growing wary of pretending to be part of system. They didn't want incremental change, they wanted to blow the whole thing up. The Republican party thought that they could control the Tea Party, but as we have seen on numerous occasions, they can't. 

Donald Trump doesn't really stand for anything. That has allowed those angry voters to latch on to his brand of populism. His followers don't want to work within the system, they want to start something new. In poll after poll, the Republican primary voters have spoken about the appeal of an outsider. They are looking for someone who is not a Beltway veteran. They want someone who speaks to their frustrations and who can shake up the system. They are looking for a transformative figure who will lead them to the promised land of relevance. They want to matter. They want their voices to be heard. They don't care about gay rights or immigrant rights or abortion rights or welfare rights, they only care about their right to be heard. They believe that they are losing the war for America. They believe as Fox News has told them over and over that their religion, their guns, their families, their very way of life will be lost if they don't make a stand. 

The saddest part of this story is not that their are so many Americans who believe that they are under constant attack. The saddest part is that they have put their faith in someone who is so unworthy of it. I think the perfect ticket for the GOP in 2016 would Trump/Palin. It makes perfect sense. She  opened the door and showed the way and he went barreling through. It would only be fair that he join up with the heart and soul of the new Republican Party, The Party of Palin. God have mercy on us all.