Category Archives: Joe Biden

Five Things That Should Keep Trump Up At Night

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Politically speaking, Trump has a lot going for him. Very early in the primary season, he is the runaway front-runner for the GOP nomination.  Wrapping this up early will save him a lot of money and allow him to aim resources at Biden, instead of at his fellow Republicans.

He is battle-hardened. He has already endured dozens of serious scandals that would have ended most candidacies – two impeachments, 91 criminal indictments, a videotaped incitement of insurrection, the “grab em by the” lady bits tape, dozens of embarrassing gaffes, a porn star hush money conviction, a sexual abuse conviction, popular vote losses in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, etc. 

Despite all of those calamities and more, Trump somehow still has around 35-ish percent of voters consistently enthusiastic about him and another 15-ish percent of voters who currently seem willing to hold their noses and vote for him.

After all of that, it’s difficult to imagine what could cause Trump to lose much electoral ground in the next 10 months.

Moreover, Trump has the good fortune to be running against a politically wounded, gaffe-prone octogenarian who has had to endure post-pandemic economic headwinds throughout his term.

Add to that the very real possibility of a third-party candidate siphoning off anti-Trump voters from Biden, and it can’t be denied that Trump has one hell of a strong political hand. At this stage, he should be considered the favorite to win in November.

But if I were on Team Trump, these are five challenges that especially would concern me.

Surviving a Conviction(s)

A major conviction, especially on the insurrection-related charges, could weaken Trump with a block of undecided voters. The Washington Post recently reported:

“…election-day surveys showed 31 percent of Iowa caucus-goers and 42 percent of New Hampshire GOP primary voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime.

Those are big scary numbers, but I would add two caveats to them: First, with an army of Trump lawyers trying everything possible to delay proceedings, it’s going to be very challenging for prosecutors to get a conviction and subsequent appeals completed before the November election.

Second, I’d be surprised if even one-quarter of those people who today say a conviction would be a deal breaker for them would actually abandon Trump. After hearing Trump and his supporters endlessly claim how the conviction(s) was the product of a politically motivated witch hunt, I think many cynics will agree with that cynical argument.

Still, if even a relatively small fraction of that large block of conviction-sensitive voters abandon Trump because of a conviction(s), that could be decisive in a close general election.

Moving Beyond “The Base”

Also, Trump is currently weak with swing voters. While much is made of how loyal Trump’s base is, once the primaries are over the MAGA base is not anywhere near large enough to give Trump a general election win.  He needs to win over the non-affiliated independents, soft Democrats, and soft Republicans who will decide this election. Like Biden, Trump has a lot of work to do to win over those voters.

Trump should be very worried about his poor showing with independents so far. MSNBC’s data geek Steve Kornacki noted a remarkable 71-point difference between how New Hampshire independents voted for Haley by 21 points compared to how the state’s Republicans voted for Trump by 50 points.

Fox News exit polls in New Hampshire found that 35% of GOP vote primary participants, many of whom were independents, indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump won the Republican nomination that they wouldn’t vote for him.

Again, if even a fraction of that holds in November, that could seriously hurt Trump’s chances in battleground states.

The Economy, Stupid

Then there is the economy. The state of the economy has traditionally been very important to swing voters – independents, soft Republicans, and soft Democrats.  Up until now, that has helped Trump pull ahead in the polls.

But as pandemic-related economic challenges have eased, the economy under Biden has very quietly gotten robust – historically low unemployment, consistent economic growth, much lower inflation than earlier, interest rate decreases likely on the way, a historic boom for the stock market/retirement funds, wage growth outpacing inflation, and, at long last, increasing consumer confidence.  The United States under Biden has the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery in the world.

Even if that good economic news only neutralizes the enormous past advantage Trump enjoyed on this issue, rather than turning it into a strength for Biden, that could help Biden win over persuadable swing voters.

Doh! Roe!

Trump also continues to face tricky political winds related to abortion rights. Surveys show that two-thirds of Americans think the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that kept abortion legal and safe was a mistake. Meanwhile, Trump is out there telling anyone who will listen that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade.”  That’s music to Democrats’ ears.

The 2022 elections showed how much Republicans’ post-Dobbs abortion bans have hurt Republicans, particularly in suburban battlegrounds where battleground state elections are often decided.

Now congressional Republicans are promising a national abortion ban. That just adds fuel to this fire.

That would also worry me a lot if I was a Trump supporter.

Trump Being Trump

Getting voted out of the White House and kicked off Twitter has made Trump’s outrageous behavior a bit less visible than it was when he had the presidential bully pulpit. To the extent that Trump has been visible, a lot of the news coverage has been focused on how resilient he remains with the relatively narrow band of Americans who make up his political base. That success appealing to Republicans has made Trump look, up until now, relatively strong and normal.

But in a general election campaign, Trump’s steady stream of outrageous comments and actions will once again be more visible. Trump can’t keep himself from sounding childish, bigoted, incoherent, unstable, and dictatorial. That persona led Trump to lose the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.

Highly visible “Trump being Trump” news coverage is great for Trump when the task at hand is appealing to the Republican base. But a constant stream of Trump outrageousness doesn’t always help him with more moderate swing voters. Moreover, his undisciplined stream-of-conscious blathering keeps him from repeating the most persuasive anti-Biden messages and pro-Republican messages.

Again, Trump is far from politically weak. He is rightfully favored to win in November. But if I were a Trump operative, these are five things that would certainly keep me up at night.

A More Consequential Assignment for the Lincoln Project

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I have a suggestion for the Lincoln Project, the much-celebrated organization formed by a collection of Never Trumper GOP and former GOP political consultants and activists who banded together in the 2020 presidential election cycle to help defeat Trump.

The Lincoln Project

If you haven’t heard of the Lincoln Project, starting in the 2020 election it raised money to air brutally pointed ads criticizing Trump. Liberals like me loved watching their ads, but I wasn’t convinced how effective they were.

While always cathartic for committed Trump opponents, the ads too often seemed to pick topics and a tone that they thought would get under Trump’s skin or raise money from Trump opponents, rather than topics and a tone that would prove most persuasive to the decisive right-leaning swing voters. 

But overall, I don’t mean to criticize the Lincoln Project. Co-founded by recovering Republicans Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, it was well-intentioned and helpful. It produced a huge volume of ads and social media videos that were widely aired and shared. Those ads served as a primal scream for Republicans who had watched in horror as their party got hijacked by the most corrupt, inept, and bigoted president of our times. It “fired up the base,” which is one important need in any campaign. In the process, it developed a huge database of Trump opponents from across the ideological spectrum, which helped it raise over $80 million in the 2020 cycle. 

A New Focus for Lincoln Project Money

But in 2024, more of this “singing to the choir” advertising isn’t the best way for the Lincoln Project to keep Donald Trump or his Mini Me Ron DeSantis out of power. Instead, the Lincoln Project should back a strong Republican running as a third-party candidate.

Such a right-leaning third-party candidate could serve as an Election Day safe haven for people who hate Trump or DeSantis, but will never be able to stomach voting for Biden, who has been a committed and effective champion for liberal causes. 

If such a right-leaning third-party candidate could even draw 1 percent of the vote in 2024, that could be enough to keep Trump or DeSantis out of power.  If the candidate could draw something like 10 percent, it could lead to the kind of landslide loss that could perhaps finally cause the party to jettison its Trumpian fetish, which is the Lincoln Project’s long-term goal.

Also, a conservative third-party candidate could completely or partially offset any otherwise-Biden votes that might be peeled away if a more left-leaning third-party candidate is on 2024 ballots, such as Andrew Yang. Yang is the businessman and 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate who left the Democratic Party to form the Forward Party. A third-party candidacy from the left without a counter-balancing third-party candidacy from the right could easily help Trump or DeSantis gain power.

Even a modestly successful conservative third-party candidate could swing the 2024 election.  Keep in mind, Trump could have escaped defeat in 2020 if he had only gotten about 44,000 more votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. That is only about 0.08 percent of the 154.6 million people who voted for president in 2020. Those 44,000 votes wouldn’t have been enough for Trump to have overcome his 7 million popular vote loss, but because the United States is stuck with the profoundly undemocratic Electoral College system, it could have given Trump an Electoral College tie.

Source: National Public Radio

Third-Pary Liz Could Prove Decisive

The ideal choice for a Lincoln Project-based third-party run is Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.  The Cheney surname is well known, and she gained a great deal of national visibility and respect during the congressional January 6 insurrection investigation and hearings.  She is the most well-known and politically talented of the Never Trumper elected officials. 

Photo credit: Politico magazine

Perhaps most importantly, Cheney has the background, knowledge, demeanor, and inclination to make an aggressive case against Trump that will connect with some right-leaning swing voters. When it comes to Trump, she clearly is not inclined to pull punches, and the news media covers what she has to say.

While Cheney is vehemently anti-Trump, with a voting record that aligned with Trump 91% of the time, she is not so moderate that she would tempt many liberals or left-leaning independents to vote for her instead of Biden.

One of the primary reasons running as a third-party candidate is so daunting is that it’s very challenging to raise enough money when not affiliated with one of the two major political parties. The Lincoln Project is the only Never Trump-oriented organization that can raise anything close to the amount of money it would take to help a Republican third-party candidate get onto state ballots and make sufficient amounts of noise.  Again, the Lincoln Project raised $80 million in 2020, so it already has the donor database to raise a substantial sum in a hurry.

The Lincoln Project leadership should go all-in supporting a Cheney candidacy, whether as the Lincoln Project as currently constituted, or as Lincoln Project leaders disbanding and formally joining the Cheney campaign. Doing so would be a more effective way to keep Trump out of power than pumping more snarky Lincoln Project ads in an environment that will already be plenty thick with tough anti-Trump ads.

A Potential Silver Lining In the Dark Cloud That Is Trump’s Vaccine Rollout

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It’s painfully obvious that former President Trump badly screwed up the parts of the Covid-19 vaccine initiative that he actually controlled.  While he obviously wasn’t equipped to be in the lab developing vaccines quickly, he was in a position to order the right number of doses, develop a plan for getting the vaccine to at least 70 percent of us, and marshal resources to implement the plan.

He botched that assignment, and that has put a very dark cloud over President Biden, who needs a relatively swift end to the pandemic in order to have any hope of having a successful presidency.

But maybe there is a bit of a silver lining in that dark cloud–highly visible consumer demand created by the shortage.

As all good Adam Smith fanboys know, the law of supply and demand tells us that low supply will create high demand for a product.  In a nation with a sizable slice of vaccine doubters, creating more demand for the Covid-19 vaccine will be critically important. 

It’s no secret that shortages, or perceptions of shortages, are powerful tools for marketers.  For instance, the makers of Teddy Ruxpin and Nintendo Wii produced too few products, perhaps intentionally, and that generated tremendous consumer demand.  As a result of the shortage, those companies benefited from months of millions of dollars worth of free new media coverage of consumers waiting in line.  Sales ultimately surged, as consumers apparently thought to themselves, “I mean, if all of them want it so badly, I must want it too!”

This happens all the time in capitalistic economies. Shortages increases consumer demand.  That’s also why so many internet marketers go to great lengths to tell us how few of their products remain available.  It’s why the Starbuck’s Unicorn Cappuccino and McDonalds’ McRib sandwich are only available for “a limited time only.” 

Based on those examples and many others, all of this news and social media coverage about Americans fretting about vaccine shortages and bragging about getting their vaccine before the rest of us may help convince some number of Americans that they want this product as well. 

“I mean, if all of them want it so badly, I must want it too?”

And indeed, newer surveys are showing that more early skeptics are getting interested in getting vaccinated.  In September 2020, when Trump was still in charge, and wildly exaggerating everything about his Covid response, the number of Americans saying they would definitely get vaccinated was only about 51%.  This posed a huge challenge, because  epidemiologists tell us we need about 70% to get the Fauchi Ouchy in order to achieve the necessary herd immunity. 

By December, with Biden starting to take the reins and positive test results rolling in, the number had grown to 61%. That’s important progress.

But how do we get from 61% to 70%? The news media and social media obsession with the vaccine shortage, and Americans doing victory dances on their social media feeds after getting vaccinated, may do for Fauci what the Wii shortage did for Nintendo.

To be clear, there will be lethal implications of Trump’s bumbling of the vaccination distribution plan.  A delay of a month or two will mean many Americans will needlessly get sick and die. That’s tragic and inexcusable.

But as we continue to mop up Trump-generated calamities, we have to take the good news wherever we can find it.  And maybe this current vaccine shortage will help convince enough of the remaining vaccine fence-sitters to join the herd.

BLM and Capitol Rioting Not Equivalent

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I strongly oppose looting, rioting, and vandalizing at protests. I often share the frustration that drives a small minority of protesters to destroy during emotional protests. But I unequivocally oppose it, because it’s illegal, it usually victimizes innocent people, and it hurts the cause. 

Because an overwhelming majority of Americans share that sentiment, conservatives work overtime to falsely paint the left as being somehow pro-rioting.  The latest example of this can be found throughout social media and political discourse. It goes something like this: “At least the Capitol protesters didn’t burn and loot, like the Black Lives Matters (BLM) and Antifa. Why are you outraged about the Capitol protesters but weren’t outraged about BLM looters?” 

Let’s dissect that piece of false equivalency, a logical fallacy where two very unequal things are falsely implied to be the same, or of equal magnitude. What happened at the U.S. Capitol building is qualitatively different than what happened at a relatively small number of the BLM protests.

Trump’s Inciting v. Biden’s Condemning.  First, President Trump incited the Capitol assault.  That conclusion is shared by both Democrats and Republicans, including members of his Administration. Then, after the violent insurrection happened, and the nation and world were watching in horror, Trump hit the airwaves to say of the Trump-supporting violent rioters: 

“We love you. You’re very special… I know how you feel.” 

Trump embraced and celebrated his followers’ violent insurrection.

In sharp contrast, President-elect Biden never called for looting. When it happened, he immediately and repeatedly condemned it, and called for protesters committing crimes to be prosecuted.

“Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.”

Supporters of Trump have no basis for criticizing supporters of Biden on this issue. None. Biden has clearly denounced violence and destruction at protests, while Trump has cheered it.

Just Cause v. False Cause.  It’s also important to recognize that Black Lives Matter looters had true and justifiable reasons to be filled with raged when they took to destruction in the heat of the moment.  They had just witnessed a clear video of a black man needlessly and casually murdered slowly by an arrogant white police officer. They had lived their whole lives in a country where people of color are disproportionately victimized by police officers, and where police officers are almost never held accountable for their brutal crimes.  

Martin Luther King, Jr. opposed rioting, but he explained it to white people who can’t know what it’s like to be black in America:

“…it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

In stark contrast, the Capitol insurrectionists had no evidence of election fraud.  During dozens of counts, audits, recounts, re-recounts, certification reviews, and lawsuits, often overseen by Republicans or Republican-appointed officials, no evidence of fraud was produced by Trump’s team or found by election officials.  Those reviews, conducted over a long 64-day period, corroborated the finding of the Trump-appointed head of election security, who found that the 2020 election was the most secure in history.

Those reviews found that Joe Biden won by 7 million votes and 74 electors, the largest margin for a challenger since 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover.

In other words, the BLM riots were sparked by serial murder and denial of justice, while the Capitol insurrection was driven by a well-proven lie. 

Destroying Property v. Destroying Democracy.  Finally, looters at BLM marches destroyed property, while Capitol looters were trying to destroy the most meaningful and valuable thing in America — democracy.   Ignoring Republican-overseen counts, audits, recounts, re-recounts, certifications, and lawsuits finding the 2020 presidential election to be free and fair, the Capitol insurrectionists were trying to silence the voices of 81 million Americans, and effectively end American democracy.  They were attempting a traitorous coup against America.

Again, I strongly denounce looting, rioting and vandalizing at protests.  But this must be fully understood: Torching property in the name of a proven injustice is infinitely less harmful to the common good than torching democracy in the name of a proven lie.

Post-election playlist

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Guest post by Noel Holston

The Washington Post’s Sunday magazine yesterday featured a powerful article about our bitterly divided country’s prospects for healing after Tuesday’s election. The author, Gene Weingarten, though he’s a humor columnist by trade, has a hard time keeping his optimism up.

I understand how he feels. So do millions of us.

A dear old friend, a naturalized American citizen who fled South Africa because of apartheid, told me the other day that despite accusations from the Right, she doesn’t hate Trump supporters, she simply can’t fathom their allegiance to such a creepy guy. Another old friend, a former Peace Corps volunteer no less, has been arguing with me on Facebook, determined to convince me that Joe Biden is thoroughly corrupt, senile and certain to drag the country down to socialistic hell.

They’re very civil representatives of the respective sides. I’ve actually had a gun-loving Facebook acquaintance use the phrase “Lock and load” during a testy exchange.

I’d say that the prospects of our healing and reclaiming some common ground are better if Biden wins, if only because he will at least try. That’s not only his promise, it’s also his history. Don’t forget he was harangued by his opponents in the Democratic primary for having been too friendly with Senate Republicans and “blue dog” Southern pols of yore.

President Trump, on the other hand, has demonstrated little if any interest in mitigating his policies or his behavior to win over Americans who disagree with him.  The notion that he would suddenly turn magnanimous and conciliatory in a second term seems pretty farfetched.

Whatever happens Tuesday – or the Tuesday after that or the Tuesday after that, depending on how the vote count and the likely challenges go – we’re going to have to make the best of another four years together.

 And because I would much rather us be singing and dancing in the streets than shooting, here, respectfully and not at all facetiously submitted, is a little playlist for the days ahead, a diverse, non-partisan Top 10 of songs that speak to wellness, optimism and unity:

“Peace in the Valley” – Elvis Presley

And the lion shall lay down by the lamb.

“Medicated Goo” – Traffic

My own home recipe’ll see you through

“Get Together” – The Youngbloods

Come on, people now, smile on your brother

“Coconut” – Harry Nilsson

Add lime, then drink ’em both together

“We Can Work It Out” – The Beatles

 Life is very short and there’s no time.

“A Spoonful of Sugar” – Julie Andrews

Helps the medicine go down

“Why Can’t We Be Friends” – War

The color of your skin don’t matter to me/As long as we can live in harmony

“Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills” – Ray Stevens

Guaranteed to be just what you need for quick, fast, speedy relief.

“(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” – Nick Lowe

Seriously.

“Sexual Healing” – Marvin Gaye

Helps to relieve my mind.

Bonus track for the hopelessly devastated:

“Whiskey River (Take My Mind)” – Willie Nelson.    


Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

MinneMirage?

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Why is Trump obsessed with investing so much time and money in Minnesota?

Last night’s Trump rally in Duluth was old hat for us. The visits from Trump and surrogates are non-stop, and the incendiary attack ads are wall-to-wall.

Yes, I understand that in 2016 Hillary only won Minnesota by 44,593, or 1.5 percent. Yes, I realize that there are “soooo many Trump signs up in rural areas,” where “real Minnesotans” live. Yes, I realize the Iron Range is continuing to evolve into a reliably red East Dakota or North Kentucky, politically speaking.

But still, the data from 2020 just don’t look all that encouraging for Trump, or puppets such as U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis. Despite all of those massive Trump signs in rural areas, 55% of Minnesota’s population is in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and Biden is doing well there. Here are the most recent polls, aggregated by fivethirtyeight.com:

(P.S. The Star Tribune/KARE-11/MPR poll published on September 26 had Biden ahead 48 percent to 42 percent, with eight percent undecided. It has Trump’s approval rating at 43 percent. Not sure why fivethirtyeight.com didn’t list that one, but that poll is consistent with the average of these other polls.)

As we all know, the 2016 polls didn’t match up with the 2016 results on Election Day, though for the most part the difference was within the polls’ statistical margins-of-error, or nearly so. It’s important to note that these most recent findings in 2020 are mostly outside the margin-of-error.

To be clear, I’m not saying Minnesota is a sure thing for Biden. The margins shown in these polls are not insurmountable, particularly if Trump continues to dump a disproportionate amount of time, money, lies, and voter suppression efforts here over the next 33 days.

But if these numbers qualify Minnesota as one of the most hopeful swing states in Trumpland, how bad must the other swing states look for Trump?

The False Equivalence Trumpists

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Trying to pick your least favorite type of Trump supporter is not easy. The competition is stiff, and there are strong arguments for all of them.

Trumpist Typology

Greed Trumpists. There’s the Greed Trumpists, who will put up with any Trump outrage – kids torn from mothers and put in cages, white supremacy encouragement, coordinating with foreign enemies interfering in our democracy — to get a tax cut, even a tax cut that represents relative crumbs compared to the mountains of loaves lavished on billionaires.

Personality Cult Trumpists. There are the Personality Cult Trumpists, many of whom watched far too many episodes of The Apprentice with an uncritical eye.  They find Trump entertaining and embrace the myth of Trump’s deal-making skills and “only I can fix it” hucksterism, despite his pandemic response debacle and tax returns that expose Trump as a bumbler of epic proportions.

Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. Then there’s the Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. They ignore of the dozens of Trump’s extreme anti-Christian actions—serial sexual abuse and infidelity and cutting food subsidies for the poor to name just a couple — that make a mockery of the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes  in order to hoard as many Fallwell-endorsed judges as possible.

Tribal Trumpists. Who can forget the Tribal Trumpists, who will let Trump take their loved one’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) health protections and Social Security benefits just to be able to say that their Red Tribe of “real Americans” stuck it to the Blue Tribe of “libtard snowflakes.” Go team!

Changeophobe Trumpists. Changeophobe Trumpists are fearful of our fast-changing world and ever-nostalgic about the glories of what they view as the good old days of their childhoods. They are particularly susceptible to Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” by keeping coal dirty, light bulbs inefficient, America white, global competition at bay, and bigotry unchallenged.

Racist Trumpists. The Racist Trumpists are obviously a very strong contender for least favorite.  They insist that Trump’s villifying of immigrants and people of color is a “refreshing rejection of political correctness,” instead of a wink and a nod to the full spectrum of racists, from those of us who are sometimes lousy at recognizing systemic racism to full-blown white supremacist activists like the Proud Boys, Aryan Nations, Volksfront, American Freedom Party, Ku Klux Klan, and White Aryan Resistance.

Thug Trumpists. And then there are Thug Trumpists, who can’t recognize the difference between bullying and actual strength, and gravitate towards authoritarian personalities to serve as a binky to make them feel more secure in the face of their overblown fears of our changing and more diverse nation.

False Equivalence Trumpists

But the last month of the election is when we unfortunately have to be hearing a lot from perhaps my least favorite type of Trump supporters — the False Equivalence Trumpists.  They continually declare that “both sides do it” to make their vote for the most bigoted, incompetent, and corrupt President in U.S. history seem somehow defensible.

Since last night’s presidential debate, the False Equivalence Trumpists were out in full force, complaining about “both candidates” being equally bad and lamenting that they “once again have to choose the lesser of two evils.” 

Though they carry an air of intellectual superiority in their assertions, False Equivalence Trumpists are among the most intellectually lazy of all of the Trumpists types. 

Obviously, both candidates have sold out to a special interest, lied, supported an unwise policy, or made a big mistake. Same as it ever was.  But from that truth, False Equivalence Trumpists quickly jump to the safety of “both sides do it equally,” instead of digging into the facts to determine which candidate does it more.  In a democracy, doing that kind of qualitative differentiation is a voter’s duty, and they consistently shrink from it.

Because False Equivalence Trumpists find it distasteful to be held accountable for supporting an imperfect candidate, they stubbornly cling to the truth of “both sides do it,” but not the whole truth.  The whole truth is that any fair-minded analysis comparing Trump and Biden will show that Trump is much more incompetent, much more bigoted, much more dishonest, and much more corrupt. 

But this group of Americans lacks either the judgement to see that truth, or the courage to speak it.

The False Equivalence Trumpists are top-of-mind right now because, we are entering the final month of the presidential campaign with about 6 percent of the voters somehow still undecided.  Tragically, these pathologically indecisive Americans could be decisive on November 3rd.  The fact that the fate of the nation, and maybe even the planet, falls to this group of Americans is crazy making and terrifying.

United States Headed for Splittsville?

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Guest post by Noel Holston

“Like they say, it takes all types to make the world. But sometimes you wish it didn’t.” — Gloria Naylor, Bailey’s Café

Our country hasn’t been so divided since the run-up in the 1850s to the Civil War, but this time, though there are similar moral and social issues at the heart of the conflict, the geographic aspect is not so defined than you can draw a Mason-Dixon line between North and South.

Animosity is festering among citizens who live side by side, albeit dispersed in different proportions from state to state. If shooting were to break out — as some worry it will and a few appear to hope — it would be like a massive barroom free-for-all, an ugly, bloody mess that would wreck our economy and make us easy pickings for a hostile foreign power.

Hand-crafted GOP political sign, outskirts of Watkinsville, Georgia

If one side firmly believes four additional years of Dirty Donald Trump would turn the United States of America into a fascist state and the other side is dead certain that a Sleepy Joe Biden victory would make us communist, is there anything we can do preemptively?

Secession isn’t an option, for reasons alluded already. Our hostile factions live cheek to jowl.

If we are indeed dealing with many of the classic complaints — irreconcilable differences, mental cruelty, unreasonable behavior — what about separation instead, a monumental divorce?

What if we divided up the property, the land mass of the continental United States into two roughly equal acreages, East and West, not North and South, so both factions get some Sun Belt,some coastline and some places to ski and snowmobile? We can flip a coin to determine who gets which slice.

Obviously, this restructuring will require a monumental migration/resettlement, the most complicated game of musical chairs ever attempted. First, however, we have to figure out who belongs where.

To facilitate any necessary reassignments, we’ll all fill need to fill out the following 13-question — in honor of the 13 original colonies — questionnaire:

1. Do you believe that being asked to wear a COVID mask in public infringes on your Constitutional liberty?

2. Do you believe that every American citizen should have the right to own and carry an assault rifle or pistol?

3. Do you believe climate change is a plot hatched by Chinese communists and/or anarchist scientists?

4. Do you drive an extra-large pickup truck as a leisure vehicle?

5. Do you believe George Soros is a closet Nazi determined to spend his vast fortune to turn the world socialist?

6. Do you believe Hillary Clinton operated a child-sex ring out of a Washington pizza parlor?

7. Do you still believe Barack Obama is Kenyan by birth?

8. Do you believe Black Lives Matter is terrorist organization?

9. Do you believe we need a tall, spike-topped wall along our southern border to keep Mexican and other Latino asylum seekers out?

10. Do you believe Redskins is a fine name for a sports team?

11. Do you believe windmills cause cancer?

12. Do you support fracking and oil drilling in national parks?

13. Do you believe Donald Trump’s face should be added to Mt. Rushmore?

If you answer yes to more than two of these questions, you could soon be a citizen of the new right-wing nation of Murica.

If you answer no to all but one or two of these questions, citizenship will be granted to you in leftist Portlandia.

Flag designs to come.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.

If Trump Loses and Refuses to Leave, We Need A Plan

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We’re all thinking it, but are afraid to say it out loud. If Trump loses the Electoral College in a close race and refuses to leave the White House on January 20, 2021, claiming he actually won but was cheated, what will the guys in and around the White House with the guns do?

It feels paranoid to even discuss this.  This is what people living under dictatorships in Moldova, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and Gambia discuss, not citizens of the self-described “greatest democracy on earth.”  America has long have been admired for its ability to follow-up bitter political campaigns with the peaceful transition of power.  Our ability to consistently do this is arguably our single greatest achievement as a nation.

But with Trump, we can no longer be sure that the peaceful transition of power will be a given.  Keep in mind what Trump’s former right hand man Michael Cohen said: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” 

Trump himself, has more than said as much, as documented by The Atlantic:

“In December (2019), Trump told a crowd at a Pennsylvania rally that he will leave office in ‘five years, nine years, 13 years, 17 years, 21 years, 25 years, 29 years …’ He added that he was joking to drive the media ‘totally crazy.’

Just a few days earlier, Trump had alluded to his critics in a speech, ‘A lot of them say, ‘You know he’s not leaving’ … So now we have to start thinking about that because it’s not a bad idea.’

This is how propaganda works. Say something outrageous often enough and soon it no longer sounds shocking.”

One thing is almost certain:  Even if Trump suffers a clear defeat in the Electoral College, he will still claim mass cheating.  Remember, this is the guy who made the false assertion that “millions” voted illegally in California, and that was after he won the Electoral College. 

If he loses the Electoral College, and subsequently faces the prospect of multiple criminal prosecutions as a civilian, his claims of fraud will get even more desperate, expansive, and outrageous. The question is, will armed authorities in and around the White House listen?

(By the way, I’m being vague here, because I’m not sure who would ultimately be responsible for removing the President. Secret Service? U.S. Marshals?  The military?  We don’t have historical precedence to guide us here. )

Trusted Third Parties Needed

By January 20, 2021 at noon, the Secret Service, U.S. Marshal Service, and U.S. military no longer would be under Trump’s control, unless they decided that Trump’s claims of cheating were correct, and that Trump therefore was reelected and is still their boss.

Will those armed authorities agree with Trump’s claims of election cheating? I’m not sure. “Was Trump cheated in the election or not” is not something that will be easy for armed authorities to judge. After all, they’re not experts in election law or in a position to investigate claims of election fraud.

In trying to sort out the Trump claims of election cheating, I would hope that the guys with the guns will look to third parties who they find credible.  The courts obviously will be in play, but that will take quite a bit of time to reach a final decision in the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In addition to the courts, we need third parties that can act more quickly than the courts, and be credible with the American people and the armed officials who may need to remove Trump on January 20th.

Bipartisan Presidents Weigh In Jointly

Here’s my hope:  We need a bipartisan group of former Presidents from the past three decades to unanimously weigh in on this by mid-November. 

Specifically, I propose that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle (the second in command under George H.W. Bush, because he passed away), and Jimmy Carter privately pledge to each other right now that they will stand together to counter any false claims of mass fraud and publicly affirm the presidential election outcome as soon as it becomes apparent.

I understand that it could be that the election outcome won’t be clear enough for the quintet to make a unanimous declaration, and their decision has to be unanimous for it to carry the necessary weight.  In that case, all of this is mute.  (I also definitely understand that Trump could easily win reelection, and that it might not even be close enough to be contested.)

But if the bipartisan group can agree on the outcome, they should commit to jointly and publicly announcing the outcome in November, before Trump has a chance to send several weeks to sell his conspiracy claims unrebutted.

Why ex-presidents, and a vice president proxy?  First, their political careers are effectively over, so they can’t credibly be accused of wanting to further their political careers.  Second, they’re bipartisan, so it will be more difficult for Trump and his cult to marginalize them as a “partisan group.” Third, they have knowledge and credibility on the issue of fair elections, because they’ve worked in that world up close for decades. Fourth, ex-Presidents have extra gravitas, so their announcement will feel weighty, newsworthy, and historic.  Finally and perhaps most importantly, the Secret Service and Generals are used to following these former Commanders-in-Chief, and likely have residual respect for at least some of them.

If the nightmare scenario I describe here plays out, an early bipartisan declaration of the past three decades’ ex-Presidents won’t guarantee that the guys with the guns will do the right thing and remove Trump.  But it’s the best thing I can come up with to try to avoid an event that could mark the end of democracy in America. For something that historically consequential, we need a plan.

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Liberals

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The 2020 elections are the most important elections of my lifetime, and potentially the most important in American history.  Will we replace the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times, and his shameless congressional enablers, or will we go further down the road to authoritarianism and corporatism?  That sounds melodramatic, but given what we’ve learned about Trump over the last three years, it’s not an exaggeration.

The stakes are high, so liberals need to step up their game. 

This isn’t about trashing liberals.  Liberals have done a lot of great things for America.  At a time when all of these things were quite unpopular, liberals had enough vision, courage, and commitment to pass Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, marriage equality, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protections, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

But we grassroots liberals also can be also our own worst enemies.  To win in 2020, we need to make five New Years resolutions to do better than we did in 2016.

STOP THE PETTY, PERSONAL ATTACKS.  With hundreds of substantive reasons to criticize Trump and his lackeys, there is no reason to stoop to snotty attacks about personal issues like the President’s complexion, hair, waistline, hand size, penis size, verbal slips, and misspellings.  The same goes for personally insulting his supporters.

Among the moderate swing voters who will decide the outcome of this election, those kinds of personal shots inadvertently create sympathy for Trump and others who don’t deserve swing voters’ sympathy. I get that they are cathartic, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek.   But they’re also and self-defeating in the end, and therefore self-indulgent, so liberals need to get better at taking a pass on the personal shots.

STOP THE CANNABILISM.  Liberals also need to be mindful of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “thou shall not speak ill of other Republicans.” 

I understand the temptation to wage civil war.  My top presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has already dropped out of the race, and my second choice, Cory Booker, doesn’t look like he will last much beyond Iowa.  Having to go to Plan C is deeply disappointing to me. Having to go to Plan D, E, F, G, H, I, J, or K, a distinct possibility in a field this large, likely will be even more disappointing to me. 

In the end, I realize that I am unlikely to be in love with my Democratic Party nominee.  But if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. Unless we learn something dramatically scandalous about one of the Democratic candidates in the coming months, I’m pledging to myself that I won’t trash other Democratic candidates, vote for a third party candidate, or sit out the election.  For a long time, I’ve even been making monthly donations to the eventual nominee, whomever that ends up being, via the Unify or Die fund.  

All liberals should make a resolution to forgo intra-party cannibalism, because it greatly increases the chances that we have four even more catastrophic years with the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times.  That can’t happen, so we all have to suck it up and pledge to support the candidate that prevails in the nominating process.

STOP THE SHINY OBJECT CHASING.  We all know that President Trump is going to do and say hundreds of things before the election that are mock-worthy and outrageous, but probably are not issues that are going to sway swing voters or motivate non-voters.  Every moment we spend talking about those side issues –say, a funny golf story, a boneheaded gaffe, a stupid joke at a rally, a silly exchange with an athlete or celebrity–is a moment we’re not talking about issue differentiators that are more likely to influence voting decisions.

What Trump actions are more deserving of our focus? His giving lavish, deficit-spiking tax cuts to the wealthy. His separating young children from parents and caging them. His taking birth control and other types of reproductive health care away from women. His blocking legislation to control pharmaceutical prices. His cowardly refusal to cross the NRA to support common sense gun safety laws. His erratic Russian-friendly foreign policy decisions in dangerous places like Iran, Syria, the Ukraine, and North Korea. His repeated attempts to repeal Affordable Care Act protections, such as preexisting condition protections for 133 million Americans.

Polls show those kinds of issues work against Trump with swing voters and non-voters, so those kinds of issues should be the primary focus of conversations at the break room, bar, barbeque, or online chat. 

With such a steady stream of Trump’s outrages, it’s difficult to not take the bait from the ever-outrageous tweet stream. I’m far from perfect on this front.  But we liberals have to get better about focusing on the issues that matter the most to swing voters and non-voters, and that means shrugging off a lot of the side issues.

FOCUS ON ROOT CAUSES.  When deciding how to spend time and resources, liberals should also consider focusing on the root causes of Trump’s electoral success.   For instance, rather than only supporting individual candidates, consider supporting groups like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 and the ACLU. Those groups are battling Republicans’ relentless voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color, which threaten to swing close elections to Trump and his political toadies now and for decades to come. 

Ensuring that every vote counts and voting is easier will help progressive local, state and federal candidates up and down the ballot. It will help preserve our representative democracy for future generations. Supporting those groups isn’t as obvious to most of us as supporting parties and candidates, but it’s every bit as important.

SPEAK OUT EARLY AND OFTEN.  Speaking out against Trump and Republicans in person and on social media is frowned upon by Americans who are “non-political,” ignorant, and/or in denial about what is happening to America.  That can make speaking out about Trump unpleasant and exhausting.  Goodness knows, no one relishes being called, gasp, “political,” and being accosted by trolls. 

But in America today, we have politicians who are all too willing to separate brown-skinned kids from their parents and put them cages indefinitely.  We have politicians trying to repeal health protections for 133 million Americans. We have a party that gave a massive, deficit-ballooning tax gift to the wealthiest 1% at a time when we have the worst income inequality since 1928 and record deficits.  We have a President taking birth control and other reproductive rights away from women. If we don’t vote out this crew, we could easily have much worse developments on the horizon in a second, even more unhinged Trump term.  

All of which is to say one person’s “politics” is another person’s life, livelihood, and rights.  A while back, writer Naomi Shulman helped put this issue in proper perspective for me:

“Nice people made the best Nazis.  My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

I’m not saying liberals have be jerks and nags to their friends and relatives. We don’t have to be the turd in the punch bowl.  In most cases, we should be calm, respectful, factual and measured when we speak out, even when the respect isn’t deserved and returned, because that’s usually the best way to win hearts, minds, and votes. 

But we do have to speak out, because silence implies consent.  As Martin Luther King  famously said of another movement in another time:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  

The same is true of the movement to save America from Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.  I’m about as conflict averse as they come, but unfortunately that excuse just is not going to cut it with so many lives hanging in the balance.

So my fellow liberals, this New Years Eve raise a glass of your favorite truth serum, and make some challenging resolutions that nudge you outside of your comfort zone.  Your country needs you now more than ever.

Left of Eden

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Guest post by Noel Holston

On the first night of the first round of debates among Democratic presidential aspirants, Julián Castro, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, had a spotlight-grabbing moment when he upbraided fellow Texan Beto O’Rourke for not supporting his plan to end criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants crossing our southern border from Mexico.

On the second night, when a different 10 hopefuls fanned across NBC’s Wheel of Fortune stage, the impact of Castro’s attack was obvious. Aked if they backed Castro’s plan, nine candidates raised their hands. All 10 said they would back federal health subsidies for undocumented immigrants, an idea President Barack Obama nixed a decade earlier.

The candidates’ stampede to out “left” each other reached its most bizarre point when Castro volunteered that his universal healthcare plan would cover abortions, including abortions for trans women. At least this would not be a benefit that would significantly affect the deficit.

Since those nights, one of the hottest topics among the commentariat has been whether Democrats are going to blow their opportunity to dethrone President Trump by catering to their most progressive constituents.

Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart asked, “Will the Democratic Party go too far?”

“I’ll vote for almost any Democrat, but lurching left won’t beat Trump,” read the headline on a USA Today editorial by Tom Nichols, a national security professor at the Naval War College and a self-identified “Never Trump”-er.

“Democratic candidates veer left, leaving behind successful midterm strategy,” read the headline on a Washington Post analysis piece by Michael Scherer, one of its national correspondents.

Hogwash, say others, among them Keith A. Spencer, writing in Salon.com about “hard evidence” that supposedly proves a centrist Democrat will belly flop in 2020.

Other op-ed’s have warned Democrats to beware of Republican trolls trying to trick them into pursuing foolish moderation.

So, what are Democrats to do?

Well, what if they borrowed a phrase from “A Clockwork Chartreuse,” Loudon Wainwright III’s tongue-in-cheek paean to an anarchist: “Let’s burn down McDonald’s/Let’s go whole hog.”

Here are few things Democratic candidates can advocate at the next round of debates – July 30 and 31, CNN — if they really, really want to test the notion that the way to deny Donald Trump a second term is not moderation but a triple jump to the left. In no particular order:

Claiming “originalist” interpretation, ban private ownership of all firearms designed after 1789, the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

Ban bacon and big-ass pick-up trucks.

Remove slave owners’ heads from Mt. Rushmore.

Outlaw Mountain Dew.

Expand national park acreage to include Texas.

Along with abolishing private health insurance and replacing it with Medicare for All, reimburse patients for parking at hospital ramps.

Mandatory kale consumption.

Stop construction of Trump’s wall; commence construction of automated “people mover” walkways.

Change national anthem to Neil Diamond’s immigrant-friendly “(Coming to) America.”

Abolish apple pie as the national dessert. I’m thinking rhubarb.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” which is scheduled for publication fall of 2019 by Skyhorse.

Are Progressive Candidates “Out of Touch?”

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Among political reporters and pundits, the fashionable take on Democratic presidential candidates is that they’re recklessly veering too far to the left, consequently putting their chances of defeating Donald Trump at risk. That critique is all the rage.

Fox News‘s Howard Kurtz::

“But the Democrats are in danger of marching so far left that they go over a cliff. That’s not just my view. Mainstream reporters, who tend to be less sensitive to liberal positions that match their personal views, are openly acknowledging and debating the dramatic shift. It was even on the front page of The New York Times.”

The New York Times:

“The Democratic debates this past week provided the clearest evidence yet that many of the leading presidential candidates are breaking with the incremental politics of the Clinton and Obama eras, and are embracing sweeping liberal policy changes on some of the most charged public issues in American life, even at the risk of political backlash. But with moderate Democrats repeatedly drowned out or on the defensive in the debates, the sprint to the left has deeply unnerved establishment Democrats, who have largely picked the party nominees in recent decades.” 

Time:

“That sound you heard in Miami on Wednesday evening? El partido demócrata dando un fuerte giro a la izquierda. The screech of a Democratic Party swerving hard to the left.  As the first 2020 Democratic debate wrapped here, there was a palpable sense that the 10 contenders on stage were reflecting the sentiments of the most liberal corners of the party.”

Yes, Democrats are more liberal than they have been in my lifetime.  Yes, it’s possible that they could eventually go too far. But I disagree with the punditosphere that Democrats have hit that point.

Why Moving Left?

The explanation of aghast pundits has been that Democrats are supporting progressive policies for two primary reasons: 

  • Echo Chamber Parrots. First, they argue that Democrats are more liberal because they spend too much time in self-reinforcing  “echo chambers” — social media and cable news channels where like-minded ideologues radicalize each other and get isolated from opposing viewpoints. Pundits say candidates spend too little time in the habitat of “real people,” which they usually identify as Mayberry-esque Main Street cafes.
  • Liberal Bidding War. Also, pundits explain that Democrats are now more liberal because they’re desperately trying to out-liberal each other to court ultra-liberal primary and caucus voters.

These are both very real occupational hazards for politicians, and valid contributory factors for the shift to the left.  I don’t disagree with them, but they’re not the only explanations.

Democrats Are Listening To Americans

Many reporters and pundits are missing or under-emphasizing another explanation that is at least as important,: 

  • Listening To Americans. Democrats are moving left because they are actually listening to Americans.

Democrats are not just marching in lockstep with Rachel Maddow, Moveon.org, Daily Kos, Paul Krugman, and Bernie Sanders. They’re not just trying to one-up each other. They’re also reading the survey research.

The polls support a move to the left. For instance, market researchers are finding that Americans’ support for progressive policymaking is at a 68-year high.   

The American Prospect recently compiled a long list of recent survey polls showing overwhelming majorities of Americans embracing a broad range of progressive attitudes and policies, excerpted below. Remember, the following is dozens of independent statistically significant surveys speaking, not the liberal American Prospect magazine speaking:

The Economy

82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.

78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement on the financial industry.

Inequality

82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.

66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.

72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, and 23 percent say it is “somewhat important,” to reduce poverty.

59 percent of registered voters—and 51 percent of Republicans—favor raising the maximum amount that low-wage workers can make and still be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, from $14,820 to $18,000.

Taxes

76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.

60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.

87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.

67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.

Minimum Wage

54 percent of registered voters favored a $15 minimum wage.

63 percent of registered voters think the minimum wage should be adjusted each year by the rate of inflation.

Workers’ Rights

74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.

78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

Health Care

60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”

60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”

64 percent of registered voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.

Education

63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.

59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.

Climate Change and the Environment

76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.

68 percent of voters think it is possible to protect the environment and protect jobs.

59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.

Gun Safety

84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

77 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

Criminal Justice

60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).

Immigration

68 percent of Americans—including 48 percent of Republicans—believe the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” Just 29 percent say that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.”

65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”

64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. Only 5 percent say it makes the United States a worse place to live, and 29 percent say it makes no difference.

76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. Only 15 percent think they should be removed or deported from the country.

Abortion and Women’s Health

58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

68 percent of Americans—including 54 percent of Republicans—support the requirement for private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control.

Same-Sex Marriage

62 percent of Americans—including 70 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans—support same-sex marriage.

For people who suffered through eras when the NRA, the Catholic Church, the health insurance lobby, the Moral Majority, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Tax Reform, and trickle downers like Reagan, Gingrich and Bush dominated politics and policymaking, these findings are pretty stunning.

Make no mistake, America has changed. A solid majority of Americans now are supportive of left-leaning policies, whether or not they self-identify as “liberal.” In a representative democracy, public opinion is supposed to have a powerful impact on candidates and policymakers, and it is.

“Scaring the Independents”

“Harumph,” say the grizzled veteran pundits and reporters. Hubris-laden Democrats are going to scare away the Independent voters and be responsible for four more years of Trump. 

That’s certainly a danger, and an important thing to monitor in coming months.   But remember, all of those polls listed above have a representative number of Independent voters in their samples, and breakouts show that on most issues a solid majority of Independents also are backing very progressive policy positions. 

In addition, when you look at how Independent voters are currently leaning, they are leaning in the Democrat’s direction by a net nine-point margin.


Obviously, these polls are just a snapshot in time, so Democrats could still lose Independent voters after they are exposed to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of attacks.  However, it’s worth noting that, after watching Democrats being lambasted for embracing progressive positions in recent years, Independents are still leaning fairly decisively blue.

Expanding the Electorate

Finally, let’s not forget that it will be easier for Democratic candidates to win if they can expand the electorate. That is, Democrats need to make the overall size of their electorate larger than it has been in past presidential election by motivating and activating the parts of their coalition that have traditionally voted in relatively low numbers, such as low-income people, people of color and young people. Even just a few percentage points improvement with those groups could impact the outcome of the 2020 elections up and down the ballot.

Positions in the “mushy middle” — ACA stabilization tweaks, incremental tax reform, inflation adjustments only to the minimum wage, semi-punitive immigration law changes, Pell Grant adjustments, etc. — probably won’t particularly motivate and activate these important voters.

Bolder progressive policies — Medicare-for All, Medicare buy-in option, repealing Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy to fund help for struggling families, increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, family medical leave benefits, bold immigration law changes, higher education loan forgiveness — might.

Short-term Needs. So even if supporting progressive policies were causing Democrats to lose amongst Independent voters — and remember, so far the data seems to indicate that they aren’t — there is an argument for Democratic candidates to take those progressive stands anyway, in order to keep young people, poor people, and people of color from sitting out election day in large numbers, or backing a left-leaning third party candidate.

Long-term Needs. Appealing to those lightly voting groups with progressive policies is also important for the long-term future of the Democratic Party, not just the 2020 election. That’s because people of color are the fastest growing portions of the population, and today’s young people obviously will be voting for many years. Making those groups into committed members of the Democratic coalition would pay long-term dividends.

More Room To Grow. Still, some maintain that voter turnout is going to be so large in 2020, due to the polarizing nature of President Trump, that the size of the electorate will be maxed out without having to motivate lightly voting groups with progressive policies.

But when you look at the dramatically lower than average turnout figures for loyal Democratic constituencies in 2018, when their turnout levels were actually very high compared to 2014, it’s clear there is still much room for growth with these groups. For instance, 36% of young people voted in 2018, compared to 53% of the total population. Again, even an increase of a point or two in some of these categories could be decisive.

Who’s Out of Touch?

So yes, Democrats have indeed moved left in recent years. That much is obvious. But given this consistent stream of survey research from a wide variety of sources, I can’t agree with those who conclude that Democratic candidates are the ones who are “out of touch” with the pulse of the American people.

Don’t Donate To Presidential Candidates

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If you want to defeat Trump in 2020, I’d argue one of the worst things you can do right now is donate to Democratic presidential candidates.  I’m serious. 

Bear with me. 

Last time I checked, Democrats have something like two dozen candidates in the race.  That means any given donor’s chances of picking the winning candidate who ultimately runs against Trump are poor.  Therefore, the contribution you give today could be, for the purposes of defeating Trump, pretty much wasted.

But what if you really feel strongly about a candidate? 

Look, the policy differences between most of the candidates are not very significant.  The differences get artificially magnified in heated primaries, but let’s keep things in the proper perspective.  If you feel strongly about Issue X, the odds are very good that you are going to have several candidates in the race who agree with you, if not all of them. 

So, donating now won’t particularly help promote Issue X. That’s why it’s very difficult to pick a Democratic candidate deserving of your donation.

Finally, making a contribution to an individual candidate now could inadvertently prolong the portion of the campaign season where Democrats have so many candidates in the race that their message is pretty much incoherent.  Candidate winnowing is particularly needed with a field of 24, because a crowded, contentious field muddles the eventual nominee’s message and probably muddies the nominee’s reputation. 

Candidates typically leave the race when they run out of money to pay for staff and ads, so giving to candidates now could simply delay the badly needed winnowing phase of the campaign. 

So, which candidate or candidates should get your contributions?  None of them. 

Instead of contributing to one of the Democratic presidential candidates at a stage of the process when the race is essentially a roulette wheel, direct your contributions to Unify, Or Die. 

Unify, Or Die was started by the hosts of the excellent podcast Pod Save America, in partnership with Swing Left.  The idea simple and brilliant.  People who want to defeat Trump can Donate to the Unify, Or Die Fund now, and the minute there is a Democratic Party nominee, all of the accumulated funding immediately will go to the Democratic nominee, so they can hit the ground running post-Democratic Convention against Trump and his massive war chest

So before you write that next big Hickenlooper check, stop, think big picture strategy, and redirect your money to a unified movement to remove the most corrupt, incompetent, and bigoted President of our times.

It ain’t so, Joe

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Joe Biden is stuck in a bygone era where Democrats were desperate to be accepted by wealthy donors.  That’s at the root of his recent comments that he opposed “demonizing” the wealthy.

“’Remember, I got in trouble with some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side, because I said, you know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who’s made money,’ Biden told about 100 well-dressed donors at the Carlyle Hotel on New York’s Upper East Side, where the hors d’oeuvres included lobster, chicken satay and crudites. 
 
‘Truth of the matter is, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done,’ Biden said. ‘We can disagree in the margins. But the truth of the matter is, it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change,’ he said.”

Just to clarify, contemporary Democrats are mostly talking about restoring tax levels for the wealthy to, at most, something like the Clinton-era levels, a time when the wealthy still were getting plenty rich.  That’s hardly “demonizing.”  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

At a time when the United States has the worst wealth inequality since 1928, in no small part due to massive tax giveaways to the wealthy under Donald Trump and George W. Bush, a correction is obviously warranted.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race.

Moreover, restoring tax fairness through progressive tax reform is the only real way to responsibly finance badly needed help for families, children, students, patients, workers and the environment. Democrats can’t live up to their progressive values if they don’t make those investments.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

Policy substance aside, this episode reveals a dangerous political blindspot, and/or insufficient awareness that everything you say anywhere in 2019 is very much “on the record.”  Characterizing core progressive ideas as somehow “demonizing” the wealthy is spectacularly dumb primary politics. It also forfeits perhaps the strongest issue Democrats have for running against a corrupt billionaire and his congressional apologists, whose entire agenda has been designed to further enrich billionaires at the expense of the middle class and future generations of Americans. 

If Joe doesn’t understand that, he especially doesn’t belong in the race.

And you know what? After reading Biden’s remarks, I’m pretty concerned that the 76-year old, who has been an elected official for 48-years, during political eras that were very different from the current era, doesn’t sufficiently understand any of those 2019 realities.

Democrats’ Pending McCain Moment

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Arguably Senator John McCain’s finest moment came in Minnesota, when he corrected a Minnesota woman who called Barack Obama an Arab, a shockingly widespread belief at the time among Republicans.  With the audience chuckling, and an easy cheap-shot applause line tempting the candidate, McCain showed political discipline, courage and integrity when he famously corrected her. “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with…”

(By the way, it would have been much more admirable had Senator McCain added something like: “And ‘Arab’ should never be used as a criticism or slur, because most people of Arabic descent are decent family men and women, and many are American citizens who love this country every bit as much as we do.”  That would have been even more courageous and constructive. But I digress.)

Very soon, I suspect Democratic presidential candidates will have their own McCain moment in front of them.  For instance, eye-for-an-eye Democratic activists at rallies will surely echo and mock Trump supporters by chanting “lock him up.”  Though that chant isn’t as racist or removed from reality as the “Arab” remark, it’s also ugly in its own way.

In that same moment, Trump shamelessly promoted ignorance, disinformation, and mob rule by leading the chant, because he is a petty, short-sighted and dishonest authoritarian.  But Democrats should show swing voters that they are better than Trump and his sycophantic Trumpublicans, and should not further normalize Trump’s abhorrent behavior by aping it.

A primary problem with the Trump supporters’ “lock her up” chants was not just that Secretary Clinton hadn’t been found guilty of any jailable offense, or even charged with one.  It also was that politicians should never be making incarceration decisions and declarations about political opponents, Putin-style.  In our American democracy, those are decisions that should be reserved for the independent judicial branch of government, after due process has been completed.

So when the “lock him up” chants inevitably start at Democratic rallies, Democratic candidates and party leaders should immediately stop their crowds and gently but firmly say something like this:

“No my friends, that’s them.  That’s not us.  That’s not how it works in this great democracy of ours. Incarceration is for the judges and juries in the judicial branch to decide, not for us.  But here is something that we can do, and must do. Vote them out!  Vote them out! Vote them out!”

That will show swing voters — Independents, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans — that Democrats are the adults in the room. It will show them that it’s not true that “both sides do it,” as moderates frequently assert.   It will show them that Democrats are focused on democracy and not being an authoritarian lynch mob.  It show them that Democrats are leaders not demagogues.

For a country suffering extreme Trump fatigue, those things will matter a great deal in the 2020 elections.

Barack Obama showed Democrats the way.  At campaign rallies, his fired up supporters often started  booing their opponents.  But Obama firmly redirected his supporters in a more constructive democratic direction. “Don’t boo. Vote.”

In other words, Obama was a moral leader, not a demagogue.  His wannabe successors will have a similar moral test in front of them in the upcoming campaign.  They need to follow President Obama’s lead.