Tag Archives: Ted Cruz

After 19 Dead Fourth-Graders It’s Time to Apply “Muscular Bravado.”

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Like everything else, reaction to Beto O’Rourke’s crashing of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s post Uvalde press conference immediately split into two separate camps. Tribe A was indignant that anyone, much less Abbott’s rival, would “exploit a tragedy” for “political gain”. Tapes of the incident include voices from the stage around Abbott calling O’Rourke a “son of a bitch” and ordering him thrown out of the building.

The other camp, of which I’m a part, applauded O’Rourke for having the chutzpah, the cojones, the level of proportionate moral indignation to get in the face of a cynically self-serving cast of gun-slaughter enablers, right then and there with all cameras rolling. And this was before we learned how much of what Abbott and other “leaders” of Texas’ law enforcement community was saying at that presser was pretty much utter bullshit.

The O’Rourke Incident instantly recalled an interview with Atlantic writer, Anne Applebaum, that I was listening to driving back from up north this past Tuesday, almost simultaneous with the murder of 19 kids and two adults at yet another America school. Applebaum was the guest on New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s podcast and the topic was her new introduction to the classic book by Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”

Klein is an interviewer with an exemplary talent for drilling down to the most salient issues of whatever topic he’s covering. And soon the discussion was moving into the “why” of people’s response to often crude, authoritarian leaders and their flagrantly obvious perfidies. I encourage you to listen to the entire episode for all that Klein and Applebaum get in to.

But at one point Applebaum used the phrase “muscular bravado” to explain the appeal of characters like Donald Trump.

Rogues like Trump present themselves as unfettered-by-common-rules-of-decorum warriors defending what large masses of people want defended. Or at least as “fighters” antagonizing the same people large masses want antagonized. The responses are not entirely rational. But it often translates to “heroic” in the eyes of people, as Applebaum and Arendt say, isolated by their ignorance and fearful of what they don’t understand.

A salient point here being that in 2022 USA this kind of bravado is entirely in the possession of Trumpist Republicans, and this explains much of the imbalance of energy and enthusiasm between Republicans and Democrats.

The takeaway is that politics/leadership is a profoundly emotional game. Barack Obama swung millions his way in 2008 through charisma and the belief that he had the strength and bravery/star-power to make change happen. More to the point, liberals, Democrats and the millions rightfully repulsed and horrified by the complicity of Republicans in America’s gun slaughter, erosion of Constitutional rights, degradation of our court system, indifference to climate change, wildly out of balance tax system, etc. have no real choice but to accept the power and importance of “muscular bravado” in rallying voters.

Liberals may accept this in theory, but are often embarrassed by it in reality. Bravado of a sort that appeals to largely non-ideological, non-partisan voters strikes the average policy-intense liberal as corny and suspicious, and beneath the dignity of a serious leader.

The dilemma for liberals, is that bravado works, on swing voters if not them. And in our current moment, as we reel from yet another grade school slaughter, genuinely indignant bravado could be a very effective emotional trigger for voters.

O’Rourke isn’t a newby to gun reform. He’s favored a flat-out ban on assault rifles for a while now. So I’m accepting his indignation as genuine. He’s demonstrated he’ll take the political risk that comes with his position on the issue. Just as with his “stunt” at Abbott’s press conference he’s demonstrated he’s prepared to take the blowback for getting right up in the grilles of the ghouls (Ted Cruz was standing behind Abbott) and accuse them for their complicity.

Liberals are notoriously not single-issue voters. Get a Democrat or a Democratic politician going on what needs to be done to set the country right and you invariably get a list longer than a Cheesecake Factory menu.

But 19 more dead fourth-graders presents as unequivocal a single-minded life-or-death issue as any imaginable, and O’Rourke is correctly calculating that no matter how short our attention spans, the outrage over gun-mutilated grade schoolers is something that carries deep, long-lasting moral outrage. Horror-struck outrage of a kind that can — and should — be resurrected repeatedly, with muscular bravado, for months until November and years beyond that until the cynics are driven back under their rocks.

The final point being, Republicans have no good faith response to their role in our gun insanity. With an unabashed siege on their corruption and reckless disregard for … children! … Democrats have an issue that like Joe Pesci in some Marty Scorsese mob movie they can hold Republicans’ faces to the burner with.

They need to do it.

And What If a Black Cop Had Shot a QAnon Goon Yesterday?

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For me, one of the most indelible images of yesterday’s Trumpist riot at the Capitol was the video of the (black) Capitol cop retreating back up flights of stairs as a pack of vandals — every reason to believe they were armed — pushed deeper and deeper into a supposedly high security government building. Clearly, that cop had every good reason to believe his safety, if not his life was in danger.

But he didn’t shoot. Not even a warning shot.

The contrast with the previous day’s decision in Kenosha, Wisconsin not to prosecute a (white) cop who pumped seven slugs into the back of black man … who was walking away from him, but later was discovered to have … a knife … and therefore acted in self-defense … is pretty damned stark. And it now fits much too perfectly with the attention DC cops are getting for doing, dare I say … fuck all … to impede TrumpNation from careening like feral pigs through Capitol chambers and offices.

Watching that feckless response, who among us didn’t recall Bob Kroll and dozens of Minneapolis cops rallying for Trump at the Target Center in October ’19? I’ve read in several places estimates that at least 60% of military personnel support(ed) Trump and that the percentage among American cops is even higher. (I apologize for not having links to that data. But I’m still looking.)

Despite the FBI telling Congress that white supremacists/nationalists are the primary terrorist threat to the “homeland” when push comes to sign-carrying protests only blacks get the full, tactile SWAT and “call-out-the-guard” treatment. (Remembering scenes from last June’s George Floyd/BLM protests in front of the White House, I kept wondering yesterday, “And where is the menacing helicopter blasting MAGA World with rotor wash to disperse them from the Capitol steps?”)

Everything about yesterday was disgusting. As obscene poetry it was, I guess, a fitting final scene for the Trump era. Rampaging mayhem. That is if, god help us, it really is the last atrocity he unleashes on us.

But I can’t say I was “shocked” by what happened. I wasn’t shocked by the flaccid response of the cops to a white mob. That’s the nature of the people who want to be cops and get hired to be cops. And I sure as hell wasn’t shocked that Trump and Rudy and Donny Jr. and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and the likes of Alabama’s new imbecile ex-football coach/senator Tommy Tuberville egged it all on, “inciting” being the legal term for the crime they committed.

It’s what’s been building and coming for years. It began well before Trump, as many have said. Trump merely exploited the ignorance and rage Republicans and their infotainment complex have been cultivating with reckless avidity since the early Clinton years.

In his famous book, “Explaining Hitler,” author Ron Rosenbaum (no connection to the deceased local lawyer), explored all the ways the “little people” with their liw information stew of fears and superstitions and greivances were cultivated for harvesting by a bizarre little man whose power lay in his willingness to tell the mob everything they wanted to hear. Mainly, that it was all someone else’s fault.

I often think of that when I reflect on the food chain of ordinary citizens “just doing a job” working, say, for a radio station spewing the noxious, self-serving bullshit of your Rush Limbaughs, Jason Lewises or Tom Emmers (before he rode radio power to a seat in the Trump caucus.) Unless you say those “little people” were too hapless and clueless to understand the effect of what they pushing out on the public, there’s responsibility and blame there for Trump and what happened yesterday.

I have no hope — zero — that yesterday’s riot will mark a sea change in American politics. Even if there is a mass prosecution of the selfie-taking, Facebook-posting vandals, it’s inconceivable that Trumpism will diminish enough that grifting sociopaths like Cruz and Hawley will shift course to some kind of neo-George H. W. Bush style of conservative politics. If not votes there’s simply too much easy money to be made off the mob raised up out of soil fertilized by FoxNews, NewsMax, talk radio and now, all the sewage of the internet.

Had that lone black cop in the famous video pulled out a gun and plugged some goon in a QAnon hoodie, or a maybe the guy carrying the “Trump/Jesus” flag, the “victim” would a hero on Limbaugh’s show ten minutes later and Hawley would be on the Senate floor railing against the “cancel culture” that shoots patriots for exercising their First Amendment rights … and encouraging everyone listening to send him a check.

The Race of Snakes for 2024 Has Already Begun

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Very much true to form, 2020 is slithering back under its rock pretty much the same way it lived its 366 days in the sun. Which is to say covered in the ash and sewage of incompetence, grift and noxious self-interest. As we prepare to sing Auld Lang Syne by Zoom, the Trump administration is (again) blaming the state and local officials for the inept roll-out of vaccines … to fight a global pandemic. Meanwhile, never a crowd to let a crisis go unexploited for personal gain, big name Republicans are busting their first moves for 2024.

First among equals in naked self-service is of course The Donald himself. As of New Year’s Eve, the Lord of Low Information has scammed another $250 million from MAGA zealots, many of whom I’m guessing had to shave $20 off their welfare disability checks.

Looking at (known) debts in the $600 million range and facing the near certainty of criminal prosecution for bank and insurance fraud, His Grand Orange Incontinence is, I read, toying with the idea of charging the Red Hat Brigade to attend “Trump 2024” rallies, along with launching some kind of All-Donald-All-the-Time streaming TV service, which at say $5 month for even 10% of his 70 million Twitter followers adds up to $35 million a month, or a little over $400 million for the first year, little to none of which will be reflected on his federal income tax returns, of course.

There’s just too much easy fool’s gold to be picked up off the ground for Trump to ever say he’s not running again in 2024. Plus, even his putative opponents are falling over themselves to sustain his standing as the Anointed Redeemer of Aging White Deplorables. Pundit John Heilemann, (one of the few who emerges from 2020 with credibility intact), recently asked listeners to imagine a “hands up” question in the first Republican primary debates in 2023.

The question? “Do you believe the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from Donald Trump?”

Being Republicans trying to win votes out of a Republican base, all 30 of them on the stage, from Louie Gohmert and Don Jr. to Ted Cruz will of course raise their hand and attest that The Donald was robbed, thereby implying his rightful claim to the crown. (It will be an echo of that infamous moment in Iowa years ago when John McCain and every other Republican raised their hand when asked who took issue with the Theory of Evolution?)

Speaking of Cruz and the Republican affinity for grift, you have to love The Most Hated Man in the Senate taking a clue from Trump and making a Facebook appeal to MAGA Nation for money to help near billionaire Kelly Loeffler and China-trader/multi-millionaire David Perdue win their run-offs in Georgia. Except Ted did Donny one better. Where Trump had to peel off a percentage to the Republican Party, Ted … can keep it all. To himself. Without giving a nickel to his already richer-than-Croesus colleagues.

As the Brits so often say, “Brilliant!”

Post-Donald, the existential issue is early identification and a tactical plan to stop “competent Trump”, the not so mythical “conservative” who is not just smarter than Trump, (which is easy, hell even Louie Gohmert could jump that bar), but more disciplined. Cruz is one such animal. So is Tom Cotton from Arkansas.

But the horse breaking hardest from the gate here, 20 days before Joe Biden gets sworn in, is 40 year-old Josh Hawley of Missouri. As you may have read, he intends to carry the MAGA Warriors banner into the Senate chamber next week and refuse to certify the electoral college of Biden. This really won’t do anything but piss off every Republican who really doesn’t want his/her name on a forever vote to undermine an election that wasn’t even close. But as naked grifts go, it will create a mega-ton of publicity for Hawley and raise at least Cruz-size cash from perpetually raging Trumperoos.

As a candidate, Hawley is already on different track — or in a different lane — than Cruz and Cotton. His strategy is to aim everything at pissed-off rural/blue collar whites, promising them more free money. (He says he supports those $2000 checks, knowing Mitch McConnell will make sure he never has to actually vote on it.) All while reigniting their self-pitying grudges against mongrelizing immigrants, high-tech slicksters and sneering, anti-cop big city elites.

But unlike Trump, who can’t be bothered to read a cue card, much less a legal brief, Hawley, the former John Roberts law clerk, former half-term attorney general of Missouri, “educated” at Yale and Stanford, is all about utterly shameless, serpentine calculation. (Who can forget as a Senate candidate two years ago the fresh-faced Hawley appearing in TV ads underlining his support for the key elements of Obamacare while — at that very moment — leading the Republican court challenge to kill it?)

Hawley has chutzpah and strategy chops neither Cruz or Cotton have shown to date. Moreover, no major Republican donor is going to be confused or dissuaded by Hawley’s talk of moving significant cash downward toward “real Americans” in a “worker-focused approach”, as Hawley likes to say. GOP money men and women know a slick con job when they see one, and Hawley is the slickest on the scene at this moment.

You gotta hand it to Republicans, they have a deep, nearly fathomless well of these snakes.

The Biden years went by so fast … .

Let’s Play Nightmare Scenario 2020

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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.

Next Up for Must-See TV, Kavanaugh v. Ford

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The so-called “Golden Age of Television” will get another turbo-charging next Monday if both Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Prof. Christine Ford show for their close-ups. Along with all the seismic shift changes since Clarence Thomas v. Anita Hill in 1991, the fact the media universe has quintupled, septupled … whatever … since then means this will be an instant, blockbuster TV classic.

The one unequivocally sane and rational suggestion for this latest battle of The Culture War is that there should be, you know, an actual investigation. Not another variation of the archaic farce these confirmation hearings always are. An actual investigation. With professional investigators. People not controlled by the Judiciary Committee’s fossilized Republican membership. Something other than — Orrin [bleeping] Hatch, or Chuck [for bleep sake] Grassley and Ted [are you bleeping kidding me?] Cruz — parceling out data for the aid and comfort of Mr. Kavanaugh.

Likewise, some independent entity like, uh, the FBI, would relieve the Committee’s Democrats/presidential aspirants of the need for splashy, empty theatrics. (Here’s looking at you Spartacus Booker.)

Personally though, I’m not inclined to expect anything rational to happen in D.C. ever again. But that’s just me.

Until Prof. Ford put her name on the accusation against Kavanaugh I was of the mind that CBS honcho Les Moonves was #MeToo’s biggest scalp to date. A vaguely recognized background character to most of the country, Moonves was a bona fide, no doubt about it titan of industry, as thoroughly protected by vast, thick layers of money and legal talent as any executive in the country. But #MeToo took him down.

Now though, if #MeToo, embodied by Prof. Ford, can chop block Brett Kavanaugh it will have a far, far more significant scalp. And we all will know for certain that this revolution not only has legs, but granite-like pillars. And if that happens — and the likelihood becomes more possible with each passing day — it will be a very good thing.

At this moment Kavanaugh v. Ford  is quintessential “he said, she said” with both camps of supporters deeply, emotionally invested in their player, pretty much regardless of any verifiable facts.

But here are the point(s) of separation for me.

Based on her reluctance to go on record until this past weekend, Prof. Ford seems to be fully aware of the shitstorm about to land on her … forever. Stepping up like she already has, much less after everything accelerates next Monday, her life has taken at least a 90 degree turn, never to return to its previous, peaceful, anonymous course.

Who does that if they’re lying?

A tatted-up, gum snapping, meth-head, maybe. But a 50-something career college professor? If she were as whacked and deluded as she would have to be to fake something like this I kinda think she’d have struggled (badly) in the notoriously pissy, petty world of academic politics.

But then there’s Kavanaugh. I very much agree with former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold’s view in this morning’s Huffington Post. Sirens and flares went off in my head with the first words Kavanaugh said accepting the nomination at the White House — with Trump looming inches away.

Said Kavanaugh, “No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.”

And to be clear, that is Donald “Can’t read a bleeping book, much less a bleeping daily intelligence briefing and is uniformly regarded as a bleeping moron by everyone with a bleeping post-grad degree” Trump he’s talking about.

I mean, really. You’re expecting the country to take you seriously as an avatar of supreme (quality) judgment and that’s the first impression you decide to make? To publicly engage in a kind of verbal fellatio? WT[bleeping]F?

Feingold goes on to remind anyone who cares — not Grassley, Cruz, Hatch or John Cornyn — that Kavanaugh has pretty obviously already lied twice, (we call it perjury in this courty thingy job he’s up for) during this round of hearings,. Lying being something we’ve come to shrug off from politicians we can vote out of office, but plays juuuuust a bit different when a guy is getting a mega-powerful, lifetime gig.

As must-see TV, I’m loving the thought of Ted Cruz, formerly the most repugnant personality in D.C., interrogating Prof. Ford at this moment atop the still rising wave of #MeToo and while he’s facing a truly serious challenge from a progressive Democrat back in Texas. Likewise, I can’t wait for the line of questioning from Orrin Hatch, long one of the most walled-off from reality dinosaurs of Jurassic-style conservatism.

Talk about turbo-charging the “enthusiasm” of educated, suburban women.

Again, I don’t know if Prof. Ford’s story is true. But nothing about it is implausible given the nature of privileged, (i.e. entitled) teenaged boys partying hard at elite prep schools. (And that truly weird list he produced in a nano-second of 65 women he didn’t try to rape? Again, WTF?) In fact, after reading the stories of Les Moonves literally jumping his (bleeping) doctor as well as prominent actresses and producers in private meetings (because he couldn’t control himself, you see — but also because he felt entitled, and was insulated by layers of lawyers), my thought was, “Jesus, dude. I’ve seen drunken frat boys with smoother moves and more impulse control than that.”

And now one of those boys it seems is poised to join legendary deep-thinker, Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court.

 

Why Trump Can Win it All, and I Mean “All”

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI missed the Hillary and Bernie show last night, partly because I am still fighting off the depression of last Thursday’s “No, I Am More Apocalyptic Than Thou” Republican shoot out, in particular the moment when I realized that Donald Trump could win it all, as in become not just the anointed candidate of The Doomsayer Party, but POTUS 45.

The argument is this: After six months of doing presidential campaigning his way, traditional courtesies and decorum be damned, Trump is at worst as strong as he’s ever been, and all others, with the exception of Ted Cruz, are demonstrably weaker, to the point of irrelevance. Moreover, Trump continues to demonstrate a quality — a talent — none of the other Republicans possess, least of all Cruz, which is  … wait for it … likability.

In a pond of alternately flailing lost causes (Kasich, Christie, Bush) and panicking empty suits (Rubio), Trump has not only maintained his cool, but continued to flash an everyman sense of humor as well, or at least sustain a style of rebuttal the infamous, mythical “average voter” not only relates to but is familiar with, thanks to our pervasive pop culture. Sure, to prissy, wine-sipping elites like me his standard comeback of, “Who cares what you say? You’re a loser” seems beneath the dignity of a President of the United States. But I’m not the crowd that could put Trump up on the south steps of the Capitol Jan. 20 2017.

Trump’s game, and so far he’s succeeding at it, is to rally millions of your and my fellow ‘Muricans who haven’t voted in probably 25 years, and even then Ross Perot didn’t have anything like Trump’s pop personality appeal. The psycho/sociological specs on this large herd of regularly untapped voters are pretty well known. They’re not ideological. They’re not particularly religious. They’re certainly not evangelical unicorn people. But they are pissed off. Chronically, and pretty much about everything, certainly everything that reminds them that for one reason or another they’ll never be “great again”, never mind that they never were.

These people, fueled by a vast methane-like sea of resentments, are indisputably ill-informed. But so what? Their vote counts as much as yours and mine.

So, if the first choice comes down to Trump or Cruz, it’s, IMHO, a no-brainer. Cruz’ palpable vibe is that of a fer de lance, a truly dangerous untrustworthy snake with no redeeming personal qualities whatsoever, other than that he’s not Hillary Clinton or a pathetic, mumbling nob like Jeb Bush. If this heretofore untapped crowd slides off their bar stools and turns out to vote — and that’s the question Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will begin to answer — they go with Trump, a guy who cracks lines they laugh at instinctively, as he confirms that the whole country has gone to shit, 99 times out of 100 over Cruz.

Then … the great revolutionary dynamic becomes this: Does that same crowd — chronically angry and ill-informed — feel a mojo they’ve never before felt in their lifetimes, a pleasurable tingling sensation that says, “My time has finally come”?

A time to pull the damn rug out from all the self-serving, prevaricating, “smartest kids in the class” who have deprived them of their, well, self-respect to put a fancy phrase on it, and install someone totally different? Someone who sees, or at least describes a world exactly as they see it, full of thieves and killers, and with whom they feel entirely comfortable, in part because he’s already so familiar to them by virtue of having been on TV most of their adult lives?

The choice then is Trump, as the official Doomsayer Party nominee, still taunting, confident and funny or Hillary Clinton, yet another one of them, and who cares if she uses the other rest room? 99 out of 100 at that point becomes 100 out of 100.

A Trump coronation by the Doomsayers will energize Democrats like no other election I can think of, not even Bush in ’04, which we all thought was ours to lose, and we did. (Thank you, Ken Blackwell and Ohio.)

My theory is that Trump has the potential to tap a bloc of voters — this would be the “rarely-if-ever” vote crowd — far larger than Clinton, even with with the full Democratic coalition of liberals, minorities and every catalyzed woman. Trump after all, and let’s be honest about this, is this year’s “transformational candidate”. Hillary is nothing of the sort. Never mind the pantsuits.

Moreover, Trump has the enormous advantage of not being tethered to anything more than a fleeting whiff of fact-based reality. Nothing he says has to be true, at least as you and I know it. It just has to feel right … to millions of people who have been waiting for an engaging character who sees the world exactly as they see it.

Trump does not have to lay out a single tedious position paper, demean himself with one “Hey look, I’m a manly dude out hunting in fresh-off-the-rack camo gear” photo op, or even really press all that much flesh with the people who want him so badly.

Ask yourself, what line of attack could Clinton or any institutional/Beltway/political lifer make on Trump that hasn’t already been leveled and that he can’t shrug off — to the utter delight of the crowd I’m talking about — with another variation of, “Well you say that because you’re a loser.”

For some reason, the potential in this reserve of until now disaffected, apathetic voters reminded me, as so much in ‘Murica today does, of this snippet from Richard “Boyhood”, “Dazed and Confused” Linklater’s under-appreciated film, “Waking Life”, a clever, dream-within-a-dream concept full of questions about the primary conflicts of life.

At one point our REM-drifting hero has a drink with University of Texas philosophy professor, Louis Mackey, who asks him, ” … which is most universal human characteristic? Fear … or laziness?”

Trump has the line on both.

 

 

Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Tea Boys

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When I watch coverage of the 2015 Republican presidential rallies and look out into the audiences roaring their approval of every outrageous statement, I sometimes hear an old tune going through my head.  With  apologies to Waylon and Willie:

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
Don’t let ‘em blame brown folks and new immigrants.
Let ‘em be learned and lucid and such.
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
‘Cuz they’ll always be bitter and troll us on Twitter,
even with someone they love.

Tea_Party

Tea boys ain’t easy to love, if you’ve ever been trolled.
He’d rather cut taxes for Koch bros than help your household.
Grim, grey, and grumpy: “Get offa my lawn, boys!”
Keepin’ his weaponry near.
We can’t understand him, conspiracy delusions.
He’s gotta heart full of fear.

Tea_party_racistMamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
Don’t let ‘em blame brown folks and new immigrants.
Let ‘em be learned and lucid and such.
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
‘Cuz they’ll always be bitter and troll us on Twitter,
even with someone they love.

tricorn_hat_and_tea_bag

Tea boys like Rush rantin’ mornings and Fox Newsin’ evenins,
whole lotta snake flags and tea bags and black machine guns.
Them that don’t “ditto” won’t like him, and them that do
sometimes look awesome in tricorns.
He’s quite well-intentioned, but his angst won’t let him,
resist the extreme far right.

Tea_Party_guns_2Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
Don’t let ‘em blame brown folks and new immigrants.
Let ‘em be learned and lucid and such.
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be tea boys.
‘Cuz they’ll always be bitter and troll us on Twitter,
even with someone they love.

GOP_presidential_candidates_tea_party

Why Progressives Have Every Right To Question Hillary Clinton

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Hillary_is_ready_for_HillaryA lot of liberals I know are privately not all that sure if they are “Ready for Hillary,” as the Clinton boosters put it.

How can a good progressive not want to elect the first woman to the White House? If we’re not “ready,” that must mean we are sexist, right?

Hillary Clinton is running for President, not just precedent. Progressives have to make sure she truly is the best person to promote the progressive agenda over the next eight years.

This progressive has questions, and I’m not apologizing for them. Here are a few:

Is Hillary progressives’ best messenger? John Kerry.  Al Gore.  Michael Dukakis. They are all fine people, brilliant policy minds, and relatively unpersuasive on the stump. Consequently, progressives lost with them.  The 2008 vintage Hillary Clinton fell into the same category for me – relatively robotic, condescending and insincere in tone.

After President Obama, progressives are spoiled on this front. During the last two presidential elections and debates over the stimulus, health care reform and other issues, Democrats have re-learned what we learned during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House — what a huge advantage it is to have a talented Persuader-In-Chief.

Having this concern doesn’t mean I’m a misogynist. It means I want progressives to win arguments. After watching Hillary Clinton on stage for a long time, I’m not at all convinced she possess that talent.

Is Hillary a hair-triggered neocon?   In the wake of President Obama finally cleaning up George W. Bush’s messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, liberals are understandably wary of more catastrophic preemptive wars promoted by neocons.  Therefore, it should give progressives pause that neocon Robert Kagan reportedly advises Ms. Clinton on foreign policy and military issues, and considers her a kindred spirit. Here is what Kagan told the New York Times.

“If she pursues a policy, which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that…”

Because of disturbing reports like this, and because Hillary voted to authorize the disastrous Iraq War, progressives have every right to question her very carefully before blindly endorsing her.

Will Hillary Take On Wall Street? As a U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary has built very close ties on Wall Street. She is no Elizabeth Warren in either tone or substance. Politico recently reported what corporate types who know Hillary well have concluded about her:

Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.

The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

At a time when the country has the most income inequality it has had since 1928, I’m just not too thrilled with the idea of electing the corporate lobbyists’ favorite Democrat.

An unpersuasive communicator?  A darling of the hair triggered neocons?  The Wall Street lobbyists’ favorite Democrat?  No, progressives should not automatically pronounce themselves “ready” for that kind of leader.  These are not small issues for progressives. The rumpled septuagenarian socialist Bernie Sanders is hardly an electric personality, but he is getting an increasing amount of interest from progressives, because of these types of concerns about the front-runner.

To earn the right to win the Democratic presidential election, Hillary Clinton needs to prove to progressives that she has improved as a communicator since the 2008 race, explain in detail what kinds of military actions she would and wouldn’t support, and lay out a detailed plan for reigning in corporate abuses and reducing income inequality.

If Hillary Clinton doesn’t do those things in the coming months, I will make no apologies for supporting an alternative. (Oh, and I’m also extremely ready for Senator Elizabeth Warren, if she changes her mind in coming months.)  At the same time, if Hillary does those things, I then would be ready for her to be my party’s nominee for President, and precedent.

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

Place Your Bets: Handicapping 2016

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Lambert_to_the_Slaughter[Updated]. From the number of pieces I’ve read recently, handicapping the 2016 presidential race has become a click-bait hobby for plenty of allegedly reputable people. So let’s see how it works with a disreputable, unabashed, socialize-all-medicine, raise the tax and fix the damn roads, free community college for all, screw the F-35 and legalize pot liberal.

With Hillary Clinton a given for the Democrats — although god help them if she’s hit by a bus or caught in a love nest with Vladimir Putin, because there is no “Plan B” — I’ll assign a percentage value to the Republican field poised against her. 0% being the most serious candidate, someone likely to beat her, and 100% being a laugher, the equivalent of another Michele Bachmann delusion.

Jeb Bush: 5%. The Republican ruling class actually did a very good job sweeping the worst of the nut cases off their candidate slate last year. (Yes, Joni Ernst won in Iowa.) But there were no witches, no “legitimate rapes” and very little open Tea Bag pandering, at least compared with 2010. This suggests authority –spreading money to local Tea Party captains — is capable of getting Jeb through the primaries without forcing him to wear a tri-corner hat, leggings and ‘rassle snakes at prayer breakfasts. If that’s true, he’s bona fide serious opposition. He certainly more serious and intellectually engaged than his feckless brother. (I seriously doubt we’d have gone to Iraq with Jeb instead of W*, if only because he wouldn’t have laid the “detail stuff” off on Dick Cheney). But I still don’t think he could beat Her Regency. The Democrats have a profound electoral map advantage, the horror of another Bush is just too much for millions of active voters and while Hillary Clinton is hardly anyone’s idea of a “transformational candidate”, the stage is set and lit, with roses in place for a woman.

Scott Walker: 15%. In most ways a textbook example of the ideal Movement Conservative. He’s got that Tim Pawlenty careerist talent of rarely sounding like the pathological narcissist/cynic he is. Despite a Pawlenty-like mismanagement of his state’s economy, laying on massive multi-billion dollar deficit while Minnesota tries to decide what top do with giant surplus, his “go-big” brawl with public unions is all it takes to be hero to … the rubes who aren’t in unions and his industrialist, union-hating benefactors, most notably the Koch brothers. He’s no serious threat top defeat Hillary in a general election, but there’s no question he has the duplicitous wiles to survive a GOP primary campaign.

Rand Paul: 25%. He’s sort of this year’s version of Newt Gingrich. “What dumb people think a smart guy sounds like.” There are college-age wonkers who love his contrarian poses and think tankers who see a guy who’d go out play with their most batshit Ayn Randian theories. But he’s also a little like Joe Biden, in that he’s not big on filters. Over the course of the grind he’ll say at least 20 nutty things that will serve to remind fence-sitters that Hillary at least is a predictable commodity.

Mitt Romney: 40%. Face it. He’s the only Republican with the exception of Jeb, who doesn’t have bury his face in the laps of the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson. He could pay for the race out of his mad money jar. Moreover, he might have learned something about pandering to the loonies in 2012. But, come on. Everywhere outside of a Palm Beach investment bankers luncheon Mitt is still the clueless rich guy, a cartoon who gives no indication that even he knows what he really believes.

Ted Cruz: 60%. Now this guy can do some damage. Not to Hillary. It’d be a landslide in her favor if he ever went mano a mano. But he’s the sort of wholly self-absorbed, unapologetic douche bag who’ll blow off any notion of collegiality and force the Jebs and Mitts to explain why they’re not sending in the Marines to block Obamacare. Frankly, I’m amazed that someone hasn’t dug up a juicy scandal on the Tedster. If ever someone looked like they’re hiding a closet full of perversions, its Cruz.

Marco Rubio: 75%. By now his reputation is locked in concrete. An empty suit. A cutey-pie shill for old money interests without the Clintonesque imagination to make a serviceable case for either pole of the same argument.

Rick Perry: 80%. An even emptier suit than Rubio, even with his new “I must read something because I’m now wearing glasses” look. Worse, for him, Jeb, though associated lately with Florida, is closer to the big, safe-bet Texas money. Still, in terms of pure entertainment, Perry was good stuff on the campaign trail, we’d all love to see him back

Rick Santorum. 90%. Say what you will, Santorum was the hardest working guy in a sweater vest Iowa and the Deep South primaries have ever seen. Lacking Bush and Romney-style money, he has no choice but to pander to the most medieval of the crazies, while reminding everyone else of the guy in high school who no other guy wanted to hang out with. He’s the Republicans’ Harold Stassen, unless Romney wants to fight him for it.

Mike Huckabee: 95%. He’s one of those sweaty, grasping characters who just refuses to go away, clinging to the belief, like Jim Carrey in “Dumber and Dumber”, that “there’s still a chance”. There isn’t. There never has been. Besides there’s more money in slinging stale meat to rubes from FoxNews.

Sarah Palin: 1000%. There’s nothing, short of a long weekend with Sofia Vergara, (sorry, dear), that would delight me more than a Hillary v. Sarah face-off. Michele Bachmann was an opportunistic nut-case sucking up $20 checks from embittered revivalists living on Social Security checks, but Palin is the gold standard for naked pandering, startling stupidity, rank incompetence and non-stop public buffoonery. We are already looking back on her as an icon of the age of celebrity worship. “Does she look good in a form fitting suit? Well then she can be president.” I think John McCain said that.

Time for Obamacare Supporters To Let Their Light Shine

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insurance_denialObamacare is easy to misunderstand.  It’s complex, confusing and heavily demagogued, and those things all plant seeds of doubt in a lightly informed citizenry.  Given the barrage of lies flying around, it astounds me that a majority either still want to keep it or make it stronger.

But as Senator Ted Cruz and many others can tell you, it is very easy to whip about a third of the population into a fervor over Obamacare.  Listening to Cruz, Boehner and the boys discuss Obamacare, you’d think the End Times are nigh.

One of their favorite tactics is the ritualistic burning of the Obamacare Card.   Though there is no such thing as an Obamacare Card, a conservative group called Freedomworks printed up a batch of faux cards so they could burn them in the public square.

The minority intent on repealing Obamacare has created a good visual with the card burnings.  Now, the majority of Americans who either want to maintain or strengthen Obamacare need to create a memorable counter visual.

I nominate burning insurance rejection documents.  For decades, insurance companies have been denying health coverage for seriously ill Americans, because seriously ill people are expensive and unprofitable to cover.   I’m not blaming insurance companies for doing this, because we have built a system that effectively requires them to deny coverage to those with expensive medical needs.  After all, any insurance company that started covering the most sick, expensive patients would be run out of business, because they wouldn’t be able to compete against competitors who reject the most sick, expensive patients.  Unless all insurance companies are mandated to cover these folks, none will.

Everyone agrees that these denials have tragic consequences for an enormous group of ailing Americans.    According to research by the Commonweath Fund:

An estimated 9 million were turned down or charged a higher price because of a health problem, or had a preexisting condition excluded from their coverage.

The tragedies that stem from such denials are widespread.  Non-treatment.  Under-treatment. Inefficient and ineffective treatment.  Bankruptcies driven by mountains of unpayable medical bills.  Cost-shifting to the rest of us.

No more.  Starting with the insurance policies going on sale  October 1, 2013, Obamacare makes it illegal for any insurance company to ever again deny coverage based on a preexisting condition.  As a result, 9 million of some of the sickest Americans finally will be eligible for coverage, and if you get sick or hurt in the future, so will you.

This Obamacare-mandated change is revolutionary for those who have been rejected in the past, and for any of us who could be denied in the future, which is all of us.  It is a vastly under-appreciated aspect of Obamacare.

bonfire_celebrationSo to celebrate this momentous occasion, let’s burn some insurance company rejection documents.  Since there are 9 million lives impacted, let’s burn 9 million denial documents. Just as fake Obamacare Cards needed to be produced for theatrical effect, symbolic rejection documents would have to be recreated.  (Most people don’t save their rejection letters to put into their baby books.)

Imagine what that blaze would represent.  Coverage denial for victims of all types of cancer, diabetes, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, quadriplegia, Parkinson’s disease, AIDS/HIV and countless other ailments?  Up in smoke.  Coverage denial for patients in desperate need of doctor-recommended medications?  Burn, baby, burn.

Think about it.  Never again will any of your desperately ill family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors receive a coverage rejection letter again.  The banning of pre-existing condition denials is now a reality, thanks to Obamacare.  Let’s tell that story.  Let’s create that visual.  Let’s have that celebration.  Supporters of Obamacare should quit cowering in the shadows of the Obamacare Card burnings, and let that light shine brightly.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was featured as a “best of the best” in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.