Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Why Is Florida At the Front Of the Pandemic Response Line?

Posted on by

Sometimes, even the great Washington Post buries the lede.  Disguised in a terrific story with a bland headline that only a supply chain manager could love (“Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile”) was this disturbing and fascinating pandemic response story: “Florida Is Only State to Receive Everything It Asked For” 

That’s the salient nugget Political Wire chose to highlight from the Post story, even though it was buried in paragraph twelve of the Post’s 2,500 word tome. Political wire got the headline prioritization right.

While the Post’s headline and lede didn’t promote the most ethically troubling part of its reporting, the three reporters who worked on the article, Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sen, and Beth Reinhard, certainly did great reporting about the differences in how various states say they are being treated by Team Trump during the pandemic response. 

Beyond the widely publicized problems that hotspot states like New York and Washington have been having with the Trump Administration’s response, the Post piece documented how other states also are struggling due to lack of adequate federal help:

Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558 — about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado — 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies — would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.) told the White House in a letter several days ago.

Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.

“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director.”

“Florida has been an exception.” While my jaw dropped when I got to that part of the article, the Post shrugged it off:  “Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines.”

How about this for a potential “political line?” Unlike the underserved New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Maine, the fully served Florida is one of the six states widely considered a “battleground state” that will determine the outcome of Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.

“Those will be the six most critical states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin),” Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, told Newsweek.

“There will be others that’ll be important in varying degrees,” he said, “but those will be ones we’ll ultimately look back on and say, ‘How many of them did Democrats win back and were they able to win enough to win the presidency?'”

Given Florida’s undeniable status as a crucial swing state in Trump’s 2020 Electoral College calculus, it’s critically important for any news publication to pose this very legitimate question:  Is lifesaving equipment being distributed based on patients’ needs or political needs?

I’m open to the possibility that there is an epidemiologically sound explanation for why Florida has been at the head of Team Trump’s pandemic response line, while bright blue hot-spot cities like Boston and New York City are not.  Skeptical, but open. But to ignore the obvious political angle, not pose that legitimate question to Trump officials, and bury the Florida exception in paragraph twelve is baffling.

What’s even more puzzling to me is why people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi apparently aren’t raising the same legitimate question. Because the reckless game Trump seems to be playing here is not just ethically untenable, it’s also politically perilous.

Fear the Bern

Posted on by

Bernie Sanders is fond of saying, “People want real change”, just as in pretty much every election one candidate or another hypes his or her power to bring just that. Big time, transformational change. The problem is the data on that “real change” thing is pretty spotty-to-discouraging. In reality, mostly voters are afraid of “real change”. Mainly they want things to stay kind of the same, just with a different face at the helm of the ship.

Last night in South Carolina, Bernie took more than his usual share of hits. This wasn’t surprising given his solid-looking front runner-status. The Democratic establishment and a remarkable slice of the punditocracy have mobilized to prevent his nomination.

The primary argument being that once we leave the bubble of the primary season and Bernie is exposed to the full brunt of the hysteria and nefariousness of Donald Trump and Team Trump media, Bernie will play like a 78-ton millstone around the neck of every Democrat in every district and race where large numbers of voters — independents and moderate Republicans — mainly want things to stop being stupid and embarrassing and just go back to the way they were four years ago, no revolution required.

Sanders points to polling showing him regularly beating Trump. Skeptics point to other data showing how viscerally/emotionally voters respond to just the label of “socialist.” Hell, “atheist” polls better. And “gay” is no real issue at all. But “socialist”, even soft-core “Democratic socialist”, remains an American boogey man with very deep roots. It may be meaningless to people of the post-Soviet era, but it remains as toxic to (many) Boomers and ultra geezers as “pedophile.”

(From the article linked above: “Most Americans don’t like the idea of moving toward socialism, regardless of how you qualify it. In a Suffolk poll taken last spring, a slight plurality of Democrats said they’d be “satisfied with a presidential candidate who thinks the United States should be more socialist.” But steep majorities of independents (72 percent to 18 percent) and voters in the aggregate (67 percent to 22 percent) said they wouldn’t. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for the Democratic nominee regardless. But these grim numbers go much further.”)

It’s of course another low-information problem. Beyond the primary season bubble of “activists” and “zealots” and “revolutionaries” — amounting to a fraction of a faction of the total electorate — are far more people, (likely voters), who have never processed how much “socialism” is already baked in to American life. Nor have sussed out how what Bernie is constantly yelling about would really work. Wish all you want that that wasn’t the case, but it’s a harsh reality.

And it’s hard to see how this improves in a long head-to-head with the disinformation/distortion Trump machine.

Through the primaries thus far Bernie has managed to play coy with his math on Medicare for All and with his health records. But there’s a gruesome gauntlet awaiting him on those two matters alone, post nomination. And then we’ll start adding on every “socialist”-sounding thing he’s said for 40 years on Vermont Public Access TV.

My feelings about Bernie remain pretty much what they’ve been for the last five years. Were it to happen, his vision for the mechanisms of the world would be better than what we have in almost every way … but I can not for the life of me imagine how he, or anyone, can possibly deliver them. His “revolution” of “real change” requires leading a wave election so large and definitive that it not only sweeps Mitch McConnell and a dozen or more Republican senators out of DC, but is also so sweeping and commanding it intimidates the truly titanic forces of American finance. To the point they concede resistance is futile and melt away from the fight … for their very existence.

The numbers aren’t there. (Here’s Kevin Drum at Mother Jones breaking down how much better Bernie will have to do with young voters than any Democrat has ever done.)

My pet response to anyone giddy over the thought of Medicare for All and a four-year timeline to put the private health insurance industry out of business is, “Ok, great. They’re carnivorous bastards. But just walk me through exactly how you unwind UnitedHealth, for one example. Never mind the employees out of work. Where does the shareholder value — held by pension funds for teachers unions and others besides the usual plutocrats — go? Are we just wiping it out? If so, I see some resistance there.”

As my blogging colleague Joe has said several times, the poison pill factor in Bernie’s support is the obsessive and (justifiably) angry faction that will not accept anyone but him. Should he lose they’ll likely repeat what they’ve done in recent memory and shift to some/any third party candidate making the same “principled” noises, ignoring what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore, or Jill Stein to Hillary Clinton. (Somewhere within Bernie’s support remains the “blow it all up” crowd who were down to a coin flip between him and Donald Trump in 2016.)

In both “Platoon” and “Saving Private Ryan” a character on the battlefield appeals to his commanding officer, “I got a bad feeling about this one.” That’s me today with Bernie.

Of course in “Saving Private Ryan” Tom Hanks responds by asking, “When was the last time you felt good about anything?”

Mike Bloomberg Is Stalking Me

Posted on by

It was officially too much when Mike Bloomberg followed me to the barber shop. I mean the glossy mailer had already come to the house. And the constant TV ads long ago became a disorienting seige barrage … to the point I’m seeing perpetually joyless Mike Bloomberg in gaudy cruise wear strolling the Captain’s Deck as Grace Slick roars on about those worthless pills that Mother gives you. But at the barber? (Excuse me, “bespoke artisanal hair stylists”.) Where the tattooed fashionistas clip and trim to cheesy pop and classic rock? A Bloomberg radio ad? After a Lizzo song?

Too much.

But maybe it’s because I personally can’t imagine a less plausible character as the 2020 Democratic nominee. (Ok, maybe Marianne Williamson, or Kid Rock.) But come on! Yet another New York billionaire? A former Republican? Who gushed over George friggin’ W. Bush only 16 years ago? Who unconstitutionally “stopped and frisked” five million black and Hispanic guys? A dude with the quintessential “Yes, boss” mentality and corresponding lack of people skills? And a guy who, you just know, has a closet with a hundred more wince-inducing clips like the one kicking around today, which he has very unsuccessfully (and unwisely) tried to suppress?

For me, Bloomberg 2020 is the Democratic equivalent of the weird crush Republicans get on bizarre “outsiders” like Fred Thompson, Herman Cain, Alan Keyes and Ron Paul. The problem with that analogy is that New York fake billionaire Donald Trump was once one of those weird crushes and he won. Therefore, the thinking goes, don’t scoff at Bloomberg! He could save us!

Please. Bloomberg may be setting a new campaign tech precedent with his gargantuan media buys, and some of the ads he’s put out vivisecting Trump are exactly the kind of “put an end to the vulgarity” messaging Democrats should be hitting the public with. But a bit like Pete Buttigieg, a majority of the Democratic-inclined public has no idea who he really is. “He used to be mayor of New York. Letterman made a lot of jokes about him. I went to New York once. Had a drink in Times Square. Rode the Staten Island Ferry. Noisy place. And expensive! But, you know, we didn’t get mugged.”

It may be possible to run a mostly-all media campaign these days. But the twist in that notion is that it’s still show biz. You still have to sell a personality. A human being people can trust and relate to … on some level. Which means Bloomberg the Billionaire Boss is going to have to press some flesh somewhere and start doing a lot more impertinent media interviews than he’s done, all of which will be asking about “stop and frisk”, smooching George W. and trying to suppress embarrassing video clips … where he was simply showing who he really is.

Bloomberg will have his 2020 debutante moment at the next Democratic debate, and baby-oh-baby is Bernie Sanders going to be happy to see him. Few things strengthen Bernie’s claim to the Democratic mantle more than the possibility some stone-faced corporate titan, (“a billion-nayah!”) is the alternative to him atop the ticket this year.

Pundits are warning of the ultimate Democratic blood bath if by some infectious virus Sanders and Bloomberg are the two choices left standing after Super Tuesday. And it isn’t hard to imagine how the “Bernie bros” will respond to being blown out of the nomination by a half a billion dollar check from one guy.

What Was Elizabeth Warren Thinking?

Posted on by

I still don’t understand the purpose of Elizabeth Warren “letting it be known” that Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t get elected president. If she wasn’t prepared to contradict him to his face and say, “That’s what you said, Bernie” in last night’s debate, why bring it up at all?

The story of Warren and Sanders having a private conversation in 2018 and Bernie saying what she claims he said pretty clearly originated from her campaign, yet her prepared response when asked at the debate brushed it aside and spun off into how Amy Klobuchar and her have never lost an election.

What am I missing?

It may just be a personal thing, but I’m appalled by people who engage in private conversations only to hit the PA system when what was said — between friends — serves their greater purposes. It’s a fundamental violation of “trustworthiness.” If you’re truly a friend, you retain that confidence … no matter what.

Warren’s too-slick by half non-response to being asked (essentially) if Bernie said what she said he said contrasts with Sanders’ response, which was a lot more digestible. Namely, that given Hillary Clinton’s three million popular vote plurality two years earlier, what sort of fool would ever say a woman couldn’t win?

There’s an interesting debate discussion to be had with the various candidates breaking down the particular pitfalls facing: the kinda doddery old professional DC animal, the billionaire(s), the really smart but pretty damn young gay dude, the you-can-smell-the-ambition-through-her-pores Midwestern Mom, the old socialist and the up-from-hard-scrabble-professor … who doesn’t seem as trusted a good friend as her advertised scruples would otherwise suggest.

But we didn’t have THAT debate.

Let’s Play Nightmare Scenario 2020

Posted on by

Well, 2020 has certainly started with a bang, hasn’t it? For months I’ve been telling the (very few) who would listen to buckle up for this one, because “normal” has never been an option. Never mind duelling attack/counter-attacks with Iran, the simple fact of Donald Trump requiring re-election to avoid a torrent of criminal indictments guaranteed a long season of ever-compounding insanities.

So, since dystopian fantasies are all the rage in teen sci-fi and Hollywood, let’s imagine what the next 358 days might be like.

Mid-January: With Congressional Democrats denied access to any intelligence proving the existence of the “imminent attack” necessitating the killing of the Iranian general, the House opens hearings … and as usual is denied access to administration communication and officials, many of whom do however go on “Fox and Friends” to vilify Democrats as “soft on Iran.” Simultaneously, Nancy Pelosi continues to outrage Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson by not accepting Mitch McConnell’s conditions for a Senate acquittal trial.

Early February: ISIS forces, no longer constrained by American troops, re-constitute, attack and re-take a major Iraqi city. This follows a mysterious day-long black-out in New York City. With impeachment still in limbo and thousands more U.S. troops re-deployed back to the Middle East, Trump delivers his State of the Union speech amid large-scale anti-war/pro-coniction protests outside the Capitol and around the country. An organized mid-speech walk out by progressive Democrats leads to Trump to extemporize about “America-haters”, for which Laura Ingraham says he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

March: Simultaneous terror attacks on U.S. government targets in South America and Asia and a Trump Hotel in the Phillipines are all Trump needs to demand a large-scale attack on Iranian military and government targets in Iran itself. Several key Pentagon offcials refuse to obey the orders and resign. Their replacements carry out the bombings, which kill hundreds of civilians as well. Iranians close-ranks around the once-reviled ultra-conservative religious government. Meanwhile, the Democratic race, post-Super Tuesday, has boiled down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, with Sanders the standard bearer for impassioned anti-war activists. Bolstered by long-delayed court rulings, Pelosi and House Democrats add new articles of bribery to impeachment charges. But the Supreme Court rules along straight ideological lines that White House officials do not have to obey House subpoenas.

April: After demanding NATO allies join the U.S. build-up of forces in preparation for a major attack on Iran. Only Montenegro agrees, at which point Trump announces the U.S. is leaving NATO, a decision Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh and Vladimir Putin hail as a “courageous, principled stance.” This is followed by a series of large-scale hacks, brown-outs and cyber-corruptions of major U.S. corporate infrastructure. An actual invasion is left in limbo.

June: Three oil tankers are attacked and sunk, blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices in the U.S. spike to $5.50 a gallon. In retaliation, Trump orders attacks on all major Iranian military ports. The U.N condemnas Trump’s “reckless adventurism”. Trumps withdraws the U.S. from the U.N. Democrats fume and “call for” restrictions on his war powers but are, us usual, ignored by McConnell’s Senate. Despite a fever pitch of anti-war fervor, and the deaths of dozens of U.S. troops in skirmishes in Iraq, Joe Biden wraps up the Democratic nomination under the familiar cloud of “inside power players” freezing out Sanders. Bernie’s supporters denounce the system and mount a write-in third party candidacy for him.

August: Full-scale, violent riots break out at Trump’s nomination convention. Several demonstrators are killed, hundreds injured in the police/security response. Sean Hannity suggests that demonstrators were actually “Iranian agents and sympathizers.” Water purification systems in over a dozen U.S. cities fail simultaneously. ISIS attacks and seizes a Carnival cruise liner in the Mediterranean and holds 3000 Americans hostage. The impeachment deadlock is broken when Pelosi and McConnell agree to two witnesses and limited questioning. Trump is quickly acquitted and Brian Kilmeade appears on the “Fox and Friends” set wearing a red, white and blue “exonerated” t-shirt.

September: After a 21-day siege, Trump orders a SEALs/Special Forces rescue of the cruise ship hostages. ISIS terrorists blow up the ship. Only a couple hundred passengers survive. Trump, riding hardened support among his base, who are filling is twice-weekly rallies in West Virginia and Alabama to over-flowing, declares all-out war on Iran to ecstatic cheering. Democrats demand a formal Congressonal inquiry and vote on war, but on the advice of Bill Barr, Trump declares he has “total power” to “protect America” and ignores them. It goes to the Supreme Court. Anti-war rioting becomes a constant feature in every major American city.

October: On a straight-line ideological vote the Supreme Court rules Trump does not need Congressional authorization for a war against Iran. Rioting takes place outside the Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. Trump nominates Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to replace her. McConnell orders a “fast track” confirmation. Polling shows Trump — who has refused any debate not moderated by Lou Dobbs — leads polling with 41% to 37% for Biden and 20% for Sanders.

November: Election day. Hundreds of computerized polling precincts across the country report hackings, breakdowns and “wildly erroneous” tabulations, yet Biden wins by two electroal votes. Trump though refuses to concede. The latest cyber attack cripples VISA and American Express, rendering them unable to process transactions. Washington D.C. endures a three-day power outage. Bill Barr meets with the Supreme Court to decide how to rule on the election melt-down. After more than a month of deliberating, marked by more demonstrations and rioting, the Court rules to void all election results. The decision about when to hold new elections is left to Congress. Pelosi and McConnell begin discussions … which linger well into 2021.

Until then Trump remains in office.

Handicapping the Democrats 18 Months Out

Posted on by

[Correction included]. Even if his name is not mentioned directly, every Democratic candidate entering the 2020 race is being measured and labeled on how much of a response they are to Donald Trump, or “Trumpism”. Which is to say, what degree of repudiation are they offering? Total? A bit here and there? Whatever they can get from “across the aisle”?

As of this morning Bernie Sanders, now 77 years old and grumpy as ever, is back in the hunt. Say what you will about The Bern, he isn’t shy about calling it as he (and most of us see it). Trump is a career low-life and criminal (laundering money for Russian gangsters to sustain his “brand” being the least of it), and establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are guilty as sin for greasing the skids for every absurd-to-vile thing Trump has promoted.

Personally, I don’t feel the need to throw myself on any bandwagon (or funeral pyre) this early in the circus performance. But I am telling myself to keep the radar up for what people like Yuval Harari think of as a fundamental breakdown of traditional politics. In other words, we could be seeing a large-scale disruption on the left in response to the disruption of the chaos and criminality of Trump and enabling Republicans on the right.

Put another way, it may be a feeling among comparatively well-informed and rational people who believe “the old way” is too timid and under-powered for the threats against decency and logic presented by Trumpism.

I can’t say how real it all is at the moment. But to mangle Gertrude Stein, there’s definitely some kind of there … there.

The wag-nerds on Nate Silver’s 538 podcast have broken down the Democratic field (as of last week) into a small handful of “lanes”. For example, our gal, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand are described as running in “the beer lane”, trumpeting mostly unexciting, traditional values that have satisfied collegial Democrats for decades. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, are described as contenders in “the wine lane”, riling up the passions of mostly well-educated (and female) voters. That crowd can also be described as upscale, (in terms of smarts if not money) and extraordinarily upset with the numbskull, mysogynistic antics of the right as any specific policy position.

But then, by way of fine-parsing, 538 suggests a possible candidate like Beto O’Rourke, defies both of those appeals by splitting the difference with a “craft beer lane”. You know, lots of traditional stuff — blue jeans, rock’ n roll, drive through hamburgers, rural Texas, pickup trucks — all whipped together with a thick, rich hipster sauce of “stop the [bleeping] madness!”

As I say, I have no specific favorite in the hunt here 18 months or whatever before the next election. But I’ll do a bit of my own lane handicapping anyway.

In the “Forget About It” lane. Tulsi Gabbard. Too much conspicuous opportunism. Do four years of serious reading and get back to us.

The “Been There, Done That” lane. Joe Biden and Bernie. The Bud Light crowd loves you in Scranton, Joe. I get that. But the game has changed since you were in your prime, and that was 20 years ago. And Bernie: love ya too, man. But 77 is way past the “serve by” date in modern politics. Your job this time around is to keep goosing the actual contenders to keep the fire and faith.

The “A Little Too Cool for School” lane. Cory Booker. Kind of like what I say about people who want to be cops; the fact they want it so bad is the main reason to disqualify them. No human, much less any successful politician from New Jersey, can possibly be as immaculate as Booker purports to be.

The “No, Just No” lane. Kirsten Gillibrand. The creepy bane of the #MeToo movement. Way too many of the obnoxious “beliefs” she needed to play upstate have done a miraculously 180 since elevating to the Senate. Also, for so many reasons too obvious to mention: Michael Bloomberg.

The “If This Was 1956, Then Maybe” lane. Klobuchar. Being a darling of George Will, Republican colleagues and the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn’t make my pissed-off little heart go pitter-patter. When you can’t quite say you’re in full favor of a medicare access for all on Obamacare I get an even worse case of morbid eye-roll. [*]

The “I Like What Yer Sayin’, Dude. But Yer Style Needs Some Work” lane. Sherrod Brown. Otherwise known as The Most Rumpled Man in the Senate. Unlike Amy delivering Minnesota’s 10 whopping electoral votes, Brown pulling in Ohio would be serious numbers in 2020. Wonk liberals know the guy and like what they hear. But it’s very hard to imagine any dispassionate independent spending 90 seconds listening to him.

The “You’re Checking My Boxes, Now Sell It” lane. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke. Harris has the feel of the front-runner, based on a near perfectly staged roll-out, and she’s got an interesting mix of prosecutorial dagger and pop-culture crede. Warren, while on the cusp of aging-out at 69, has demonstrated the mix of righteous indignation and legislative bona fides that play like sweet music to liberal ears. And O’Rourke has demonstrated a level of energy and charisma above and beyond anyone else out there.

But he’s got to, A: Decide, and B: Convince a whole lot of women like my friend at a dinner party the other night who announced to the crowd, “I’m never voting for another man!”

[*] The early version of this post suggested Klobuchar wasn’t on board with at least a public option into Obamacare, which she is. My mistake. (To many minds “public option” and “medicare access for all” are very nearly the same thing. But she’s being very careful here.)

 

 

 

 

There’s Only One Connection Between Bernie’s People and Trump’s People

Posted on by

Brian_LambertNew Hampshire is now in the past and if we agree on nothing else, let’s settle this: Bernie Sanders’ people and Donald Trump’s people have nothing in common … nothing that is other than the realization that we’re all chumps in an epic con game.

Beyond that, in terms of what they really understand about The Big Con and what actually has to be done to pull the plug on it, we’re talking a gulf as vast as, oh I don’t know, the difference between an episode of “Duck Dynasty” and a “Frontline” documentary.

I’ve watched way too much punditry over the past week, yesterday and last night in particular. And amid the flood of exit-polling data and the sage analyses of anchor desks groaning with marvelously well-remunerated players of the DC-media establishment, I was amazed at how little discussion there was of a key statistic that keeps leaping out at me. Namely, the education level of Trump’s core supporters and how he dominates the field among people with a high school diploma or less.

Says ABC: “Voters who haven’t gone beyond high school were Trump’s best group by education; he won 45 percent of their votes. His support fell as education increased, to 21 percent among voters with a post-graduate education – still highly competitive even in that group.”

That single fact goes a long ways to explaining the much more frequently discussed 66% of Republicans who like The Donald’s idea of closing the borders to all Muslims, which is linked to other gob-smacking numbers like the 60% of Republicans who think Obama is a Muslim and not an actual citizen, not to mention Trumpists’ irrational level of fear of rampaging terrorists. For whatever the reason, the pundit class chooses not to make so much of that startling 45% number, much less dwell on it as they should.

No doubt they’re terrified at the thought of calling Trump’s people “stupid”. I mean what would The Donald say about that in his next live call-in interview … after his last call-in interview 15 minutes earlier? Moreover, The Donald’s people watch a lot of TV, and what TV performer dares call their viewers “stupid”.

The thing is there’s a more nuanced and interesting discussion to be had than just saying, “Trump’s voters are dolts”. To be sure they are unsophisticated and largely ignorant of critical facets of reality, but drooling morons? No. What they seem to me is a very large chunk of the American population that has never paid a lot of attention to why things are the way they are, much less who is responsible for making it that way, and — this is the part that Democrats are going to have understand and twist to their advantage if Trump makes it to November — this is a group of rare-to-never voters who mainly consume information that comes saturated with entertainment value. They need sugary frosting on everything.

I suspect these are the kids we all remember from high school, the ones who only perked up in class when something was funny, or easy. The stuff that was “boring”? Not so much. (I should know. That was me in Algebra.) Which of course goes a long ways to explaining their predicament in life today. Honest? Most likely. Hard-working? I don’t doubt it. Good neighbors? Yeah sure, friendly enough. But disciplined enough to exercise critical thinking in their own best interests? No way.

Everyone has noted that Trump’s people carry no white-hot ideological torches. All that standard Republican blather about religion and “Godliness” and “My Lord above”? It’s a big “whatever” to them. Having been “educated” primarily through pop culture, and by that I mean commercial radio and TV, they have developed an appetite, an addiction you might say, to the entertaining, politically incorrect ear candy spouted by celebrities and stars. People who are bona fide success stories, omnipresent larger than life characters who never fail to dominate their environment and enemies.

The fact that show biz acts like Rush Limbaugh and Trump “win” by a carefully calculated design that avoids genuine confrontation, isn’t something this audience notices particularly. The bigger point is that these guys talk like winners and live like winners. (They can buy all the cool stuff advertised on TV). Plus, they have mastered the art of using a vernacular this particular audience understands.

And this audience understand it because it is essentially the same language they use. And that’s because … to keep the perpetual wheel turning … they picked it up from pop culture.

So when Trump gets up in front of an auditorium of the faithful and calls Ted Cruz a “pussy”, the crowd howls with delight. Sheeeeeit! It’s like night out watching a stand-up comic at the nearest casino. And the guy’s a billionaire!

Weirdly, all this seems “authentic” to the Trump faithful. But I doubt the notion of authenticity is tied so much to Trump personally as it is that what he’s saying and the way he is saying it sounds so familiar to them. I mean, it’s their grievances and grudges blasting back at them … in their own words, from the mouth of a super rich, super-famous star. It’s a long-sought confirmation that while they’ve been dealt a shitty hand, they’ve been right all along.

In no way though does this describe the Sanders crowd. Yes, they too smell a grand, grotesque con. But they see, as the Trumpists don’t, the symbiotic connection between the conniving elite and the hapless chumps who routinely vote to keep them in power, sometimes by not voting at all.

Sanders’ authenticity on the other hand is, well, “authentic” and as much about him as a person as his message. In terms of critical thinking in pursuit of their best interests, Sanders’ people correctly assess The Bern as honorable. There is, as I’ve said before, a lot of misty-eyed idealism about what President Bernie could actually accomplish in a Quixotic fight against Wall St., UnitedHealth, Pfizer and on and on. But his appeal to his followers has nothing to do with pandering to chronically low levels of accurate information.

All that said, I repeat something from a few posts back. Roughly 48% of eligible voters never bother to show up on election day. That describes a big chunk of the crowd hooting and howling for Trump right now. If he gets 10% of them to vote in November we’ve got serious problems.

Bernie v. Reality

Posted on by

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterFor the past week the trending buzzword for Bernie Sanders has been “reality”. As in: “Is Bernie out of touch with reality?” “Bernie’s ability to win is not connected to reality.” And, “Revolution in 2016 America is not a concept rooted in reality.”

If he weren’t about to throw a serious scare into Hillary Clinton, who is sort of Reality-Plus, or Reality-Minus, depending on your enthusiasm for her, no one would bother to think too long about Bernie Sanders setting up as Our Guy. I mean, Bernie as the one sent out to do battle with all the massed forces of the Wall St. kleptocracy, Big Pharma, UnitedHealth and all the other richer-than-Croesus “managed care insurers”? Not to mention chilling out every panicked authoritarian convinced “total war” with someone now is the only way to keep rabid jihadis from stepping off the 7 bus and cutting all our heads off. Until recently not too many of us actually stopped and considered Bernie Sanders being that guy.

Like a lot of the people I hang around with, I get a big smile on my face whenever I hear Bernie laying into the 1%, which as he is quick to point out is really the .1%.

“[Bleeping]-A right, Bern!”, I yell back at the TV, scaring the dog.

In terms of isolating and drawing big, bold neon-colored circles around the fundamental issues, no one comes close to Bernie. He’s absolutely right. Income inequality in the USA is off the charts, at least for an alleged democracy. The system is rigged. Big money has bought off not just Congress but most of the conglomerate media as well, to the point that at this moment, there is, truly and genuinely, no effective resistance or counter-narrative to the most affluent forces in the country accumulating even greater control over our supposedly free markets, government and culture.

Other than the issue of how to best achieve effective gun control, which has to be a federal system, I don’t really disagree with Bernie on anything. Medicare for all. Check. Free tuition for higher education. Check. And on and on.

My problem — my “reality” dilemma — is that I haven’t believed in the one-man revolution theory in a long, long time. Every empirical piece of data you can gather and pretty much every historical touchstone you can summon tells us it It is a physical, sociological, intellectual impossibility for one man (or woman) to make sweeping, radical, revolutionary change in the way the United States does business.

Can one person crank the rudder another 5 or 6 points starboard or port? Maybe. But even that’s easier if it’s a conservative “trimming big government” and cutting taxes for big donors than a Democratic Socialist handing the fat cats a big new tax bill and adding to the authority of government.

But come on. Pulling the control, the profits, the share-holder value out from under UnitedHealth and Cigna and the others? Essentially dismantling them? And not just “breaking up the big banks” but larding them with serious levels of unavoidable taxation to fund free-tuition and infrastructure repair? Am I really supposed to wonder if one guy, and in this case a cranky 74 year-old, can pull this off in four years? A 180-degree financial revolution? In the United States as it is today, if it took less than 100 years without a counter-revolutionary firestorm it be would be a miracle.

I just don’t see it. I wish I did. But I don’t. Life doesn’t work that way. It never has. Anywhere.

The “primal forces of nature”, as Mr. Jensen explained to Howard Beale in “Network” are simply so big, so vastly more influential and, as public-companies, so deeply integrated into middle-class dreams for an RV and a few winters in Florida, that President Bernie Sanders would first have to have a Congress as progressive as he is to achieve even his most modest proposal, like improving veterans health care or some small beer like that.

And that’s the key to “Bernie reality.” As it is currently elected and convened, Congress has one overriding goal, and that is to hustle and shill for enough money to stay in office. Anything it ever does for middle class voters is strictly a happy, residual accident. Bernie’s entirely admirable progressive agenda, his fervid revolutionary dream, requires that that equally progressive Congress to be there when he arrives, and that ain’t going to happen. Citizens United and gerrymandering are years if not decades away from being gutted and replaced with something, you know, democratic.

Further, many of the people most eager for Bernie’s revolution have a bad habit of taking Congressional elections off. They get whipped up every eight to twelve years, and then fade off when the one-man revolution fails to single-handedly dethrone the royal families in the first couple weeks. And this crowd isn’t all dewy-eyed college kids. It was striking to listen to adults my age grumbling and throwing up their hands over Barack Obama within a year of his first election. The naivete, from allegedly intelligent adults, that one guy could swiftly transform everything they despised into gems of unblemished purity was startling to behold.

Startling, but utterly familiar to any student of human nature.

So what then? Cautious, triangulating, incremental Hillary Clinton?

Well, I gotta tell ya, when you look at Mitch McConnell controlling the Senate and Tea Party holding the House hostage and the banks and corporations controlling controlling all of the above, not to mention the banks and corporations controlling most every other Democrat too, (including Clinton), there’s something to be said for a couple more rounds of Obama-style pragmatism. Something to be said for someone who is (way) smarter than the raving Tea Party lunatics and wily enough about how the game works to balance the feudal greed of JP Morgan Chase, K Street and UnitedHealth with the goals of progressives, labor, women and minorities.

The reality of Bernie’s revolution is pitched warfare, which is fine and righteous and noble, but a lot better idea when you have a good chance of victory.

I wish it were different. But right now Bernie doesn’t have enough firepower on the front line.

Out on the Fringes: Bernie and The Donald

Posted on by

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThe next time you hear someone blither on about how “both sides” are equally to blame for how colossally [bleeped] up government is, or how the “extremists on each side” have driven them to distraction with their hysterical gibberish, remember this moment in time, and remind them. The “fringes” of each wing, right and left, are currently in full display and it couldn’t be easier to judge the nature of wing-nut “extremism”, if making a reasoned judgment were actually ever the point.

Out there on the left fringe/extreme is Bernie Sanders, a sitting U.S. Senator chronically PO’d at the way his party and the political system in general is forever grabbing its ankles for any big money influence that knocks on their door. To listen to the nuance-free argument of the “both sides do it” crowd, most of whom give off the odor of dime deep apologizing for the status quo, Sanders is a dangerous if not senile radical, barely more coherent than the rumpled drunk railing at a parking meter. Again, that gives them credit for ever once listening to what Sanders is saying, which I sincerely doubt they’ve ever done.

Nonetheless, Sanders is the current face of the “left wing extremist”, replacing people like Michael Moore and, oh I don’t know, Bill Maher or anyone who writes for The Daily Kos.

Meanwhile … 180 degrees to the right, among a dense herd of loudly-braying like-thinkers, we have … Donald Trump, currently nudging up in the polls of likely Republican voters with his “really classy” rants about drug-dealing, raping Mexicans, Obama’s birth certificate, his torrent of law suits and absolutely anything else that will earn him free TV time.

Candidates like Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are just as silly, and Scott Walker is far more sinister, but Trump is the guy of the moment telling the modern conservative base exactly what it wants to hear. He’s the guy with mojo in the polls, to the point that his comrades-in-candidacy are attacking him, and (I sincerely believe) putting pressure on Republican National Chairman Reince Preibus to call Trump and tell him to “tone it down” … and then go on national TV and tell political junkies that he … told Trump to tone it down. (Sort of like The Doomsday Machine in “Dr. Strangelove”, you defeat the purpose of such a call if you keep it a secret.)

As far as I know, no Democratic leader has as yet called Bernie Sanders. Mainly because Bernie, as “extremist lefties” are wont to do, has not made genuinely screw-loose, racially-offensive charges against anyone, much less an ethnic group composing 15% of the population. Nor has old, frazzled-looking Bernie made a habit of absurdist fantasies about birth certificates or hired dozens of chumps off the street to wear campaign t-shirts and shriek his name as he glided down a gilded escalator. (I could get into hairstyles, but in fairness to Bernie I’m guessing he spends a lot less time getting his bouffe looking camera-ready.)

Now, I’m not saying either gentleman has even a remote chance of winning their party’s nomination. Trump is playing this summer’s version of The Loudest Fool, because every available metric tells conservative candidates that they can not sound too unhinged, hysterical or racist if they want to fire the imaginations of the GOP’s almost exclusively white, exurban-to-rural base. But as the real Big Lebowski tells The Dude, in the end, “The bums will always lose.” And Trump most certainly will, leaving the field to Jeb or, don’t think about this before you go to sleep, Scott Walker.

The (very obvious) point here is simply that the left extreme’s avatar, Bernie Sanders, is by the starkest of contrasts, making entirely reasonable complaints about the way we govern ourselves, if anyone can say “govern” without laughing. What is “appealing” to the “extreme left” bears no resemblance to that which excites the “extreme right”. Your classic lefty may be smug, sanctimonious and a simmering pot of righteous contention. But he/she isn’t willfully ignorant.

Personally, I don’t know where exactly I disagree with Sanders. (The exception would be leaving gun control to the states. A set of federal regulations is the only way to apply even a modest level of sanity.) His criticisms of the system and the Clinton’s coziness with the most cancerous elements of the system are entirely well-founded and fair. The crowds he’s drawing and his rise in the polls are a reflection of the large (but not large enough) appetite among liberals for, at the very least, a vigorous discussion — with Hillary Clinton — over what exactly she would do to re-align the distribution of wealth in this country and how, exactly, she would clamp down on our pay-to-play political game.

Bland, conventional thinkers, whose first order of business is truckling to customers pretty much like themselves, are simply too lazy to make qualitative assessments of “fringe” characters like Sanders and Trump. They certainly aren’t going to explore Trump’s appeal, beyond “telling it like it is”.

Characterization is so much easier. Even better: Counter-balancing characterization.