Month: February 2020

Bernie Against the Pack?

/ oleblacklady / Leave a comment

Has it really come down to this? The mainstream media has cast the battle: Bernie or the moderates? The moderates are dividing the vote while Bernie is running away with the delegates. Bernie was at 25ish% before Nevada; obviously total moderate voters, including Warren as the committed capitalist who wants a more benevolent capitalism, outnumbered the left flank 4:1. Still that was with overwhelmingly white voters.But some commentators have conjured up a scenario where Sanders could wrap up the required number of delegates and carry the nomination.

Enter Mike Bloomberg onto the Nevada debate stage. He purchased that debate slot with a barrage of glossy commercials but who is he really? Those ads don’t tell us that he was the Republican mayor of NYC. He’s wanted to be president for years but obviously, he couldn’t run as a Republican. The Donald and his Trumpophants have that locked up with climate change denial, guns for everyone who wants one, eat as destructively as you want, huge budget deficits, religious freedom to discriminate and deporting Muslims and people of color. He didn’t want to run as an independent which could usher in the continued reign of King Donald by splitting the opposition vote. 

Mike’s a numbers man and his numbers said that Biden wasn’t cutting the mustard. The left wing seemed to be running amok, and what billionaire Republican turned Democrat would support asking businesses and corporations to pay taxes for the infrastructure they use and the resources they’re destroying? Wealthy capitalists have a narrative that somehow people won’t want to innovate unless they can become filthy rich. But history doesn’t bear that out. Engineers and scientists are naturally curious; they create stuff because they dream and they won’t stop if companies have to pay more taxes.

So not wanting to throw away his shot, Bloomberg swooped into the gap with his multimillion dollar advertising campaign to overwhelm the left wing of the Democratic Party. It’s ironic that 2 of the leading candidates for Democratic nominee are a johnny-come-lately and a lifelong unaffiliated self proclaimed Democratic Socialist. (There is no Democratic Socialist Party, just an activist organization called Democratic Socialists of America). It’s difficult to know what Bloomberg’s policies would be in the Oval Office if he doesn’t give us a more detailed look at what he stands for. Not that Democratic Party positions, as muddled as they appear to be now, are the end all and be all. But we do need to dig below the glossy ads to get a sense of Bloomberg’s positions, both past and present.

Bloomberg began as a lifelong registered Democrat until he ran to succeed Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York City on the Republican ticket in 2001. He simultaneously ran on the Independence Party ticket to narrowly win office. After winning a second term, he left the Republican Party to become a registered independent in 2007. He amended the city’s term limits law to run for a third term in 2009, saying the city needed continuity of leadership to help manage the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. The change was temporary and the two term maximum was reinstated when he left office. He returned to the Democratic Party in October of 2018 to launch his campaign for 2020.

After Bloomberg became mayor, he greatly expanded the city’s stop and frisk policy because as he said recently, murders had risen sharply. Acting on a directive from this staunch hardliner on crime, the police increased stops 6 fold. Recent tapes have shown that he stated bluntly that police action should be concentrated in the ghetto because that was “where all the crime is” demonstrating a racial bias that doesn’t just fade away, even when one is trying to garner the Black vote in a primary race. Behind his remarks were pervasive dog whistles that defined the drug problem as a problem of people of color so that the police could ignore the marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens and speed used by whites on the ritzy Upper Eastside.

   Bloomberg remained an unwavering supporter of the policy until 2019 when his desire to campaign sparked a come-to-Jesus moment that compelled him to apologize. Since then he has tried to rewrite his history in ways that demonstrate his insensitivity to the dignity of Black people and suggest that he has yet to realize the damage he caused to Black men and their families, no matter how much his team coaches him to say the words. 

Importantly, Bloomberg’s advocacy helped spread and support the stop and frisk gospel to other police forces, affecting Black lives across the whole country. But Elizabeth Warren eloquently hit home in the Nevada Debate when she remarked that when Bloomberg talks about bad policing, it’s always in terms of what it accomplished, not in terms of the lives and communities it crushed. There is not a whiff of empathy in his words. In fact, he tries to imply that there is some relationship between the fall in crime rates and the policy. Irrefutable evidence shows that nothing could be further from the truth which is born out by the fact that when the policy was rolled back, the crime rate continued to fall. This evidence was available to other police departments as they abandoned stop and frisk before 2019, but Bloomberg continued to support it.

The truth about the policy is that young Black men lived in neighborhoods invaded by armed police, much like the residents in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. They were randomly stopped often more than once a day. But the interactions with racially biased police who saw them as “the enemy” were both humiliating and violent. They generated anger, particularly in teenage boys, that ultimately determined their futures. Police intention was to intimidate Black men as part of the cracked window policing theory which proposed that enforcement of minor crimes would prevent larger crimes. This theory appears to apply only in Black neighborhoods; neighborhoods of white voters who would never stand for random searches of their kids apparently don’t have minor crimes worth pursuing. Meanwhile in minority neighborhoods, the random stops often generated criminal charges, for loitering, resisting arrest, assault on an officer or a host of minor infractions, all determined at the discretion of the officers involved. The initial arrests or charges created a criminal record which merely added to the length of sentencing for any later charges, forming the first or second of the three strikes rule. 

The statistics also show that the high school dropout rate increased and the graduation rate decreased under a Bloomberg administration whose stated first priority was supposedly to improve public education. All this data was out there long before Bloomberg left office. Not only that, demonstrations and political opposition from the Black community presented Bloomberg with the damage to their neighborhoods; he simply turned a deaf ear.

Bloomberg has also reimagined the end of the policy which didn’t occur until his successor, Bill De Blasio. The policy was challenged in Federal Court which ruled that the policy encouraged racial profiling and violated the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration sent moderators into the city to monitor compliance and that was the reason the program was scaled back. Bloomberg vehemently resisted and appealed the ruling. Just to be clear, the court forced the city to change stop and frisk policies, it was not voluntary. Bloomberg left office as a true believer, spreading his advocacy wherever they would listen.

Stop and frisk was not the only program Bloomberg instituted that violated civil rights during his mayoralty. After 9/11, he partnered with the CIA to create a “suspicionless domestic surveillance” program that used religion, ethnicity and language to surveil schools, restaurants, clubs, and stores in Muslim communities. The surveillance extended to all mosques within a 100 mile radius of the city. After the press exposed the program, it was finally shuttered in 2014.

The dust up over stop and frisk is more illustrative of Bloomberg’s true relationship with Barack Obama plastered over by those Bloomberg political spots that portray mutual respect and admiration. Postcasters Favreau and Lovett of Pod Save America, formerly of the Obama administration [24:38], call the relationship complicated. Obama and Bloomberg collaborated on climate change and gun control efforts, from which the complimentary quotes are drawn. But Bloomberg did not endorse Obama in 2008, and in 2012, he delayed his endorsement until right after Hurricane Sandy in October. His endorsement was what the pair called tepid; he criticized Obama for opposing cuts in Medicare & Social Security, Romney’s stated position, but he supported his stance on climate change. The podcasters summed it up with “on just about every other current issue, he [Bloomberg] is just a moderate Republican and not even moderate in some ways.” 

In response to Elizabeth Warren’s stinging barbs on accusations of sexual harassment at Bloomberg’s businesses and charities, he has agreed to release the parties from three NDAs. It’s not clear if that is the sum total of agreements and who will agree to provide more details on the cases.

Bloomberg’s record for trampling civil rights and the extension of his own term of office must be seen in the context of the current president who will leave office with the presidency vastly expanded into unrestrained despot. Power corrupts as no other force can and the leader who wants to have his own way believing that his will is what the country wants is dangerous. Bloomberg has been extraordinarily generous, but he has shown bully tendencies that can’t be disregarded in these dangerous times.

Still, Bloomberg’s philanthropy has shown his commitment to important issues like gun control, climate change, education and building wealth in Black communities. He spent a considerable amount to help elect Democrats to Congress in 2018. He has advocated for more banking regulation, increased taxes on the wealthy and stronger consumer protections. He has pledged to give away all of his money in pursuit of worthy causes including loosening the stranglehold of the Republican minority on Congress and getting Agent Orange out of the White House.

In terms of electability, Bloomberg is a mirror image of Trump: a billionaire, although a real one compared with 45’s pretense based in hidden financial information; a misogynist with NDAs and settlements; not floridly racist like 45, but more subtly racially biased; supporter of cuts to social services and opponent of increasing the minimum wage. In front of a mic, Trump is by far the better salesman. Bloomberg is so bland that he will certainly discourage people from voting for the survival of the nation. More critical is whether he is the candidate who can sweep Democratic congressional and Senatorial candidates into office with him. It’s great that Bloomberg wants to spend his money to dislodge the despotic Trump, he probably just shouldn’t be the man to replace him. 

If Sanders’ doesn’t represent the majority of the party, it is its selection process that must be faulted.

If Bernie Sanders can ride the wave of 30% primary wins to capture the majority of delegates at the convention, perhaps the selection process is at fault. The process should produce the candidate wanted by the majority of the party. One problem, it is the minority of Democratic voters who vote in primaries. People not voting may be casualties of the voting structure, e.g. timing and time commitment caucuses, voting conditions in various states, etc. Turnout may not simply reflect disinterest or disengagement. Still, the nominee will be selected in some convoluted allocation process where some states allot delegates proportionally and others use winner take all. And there are the superdelegates who can vote on the second ballot if no candidate has enough to claim the nomination on the first one. We should not suffer under the illusion that the nomination process is a broadly democratic exercise. 

Both political parties are essentially private clubs that make their own rules. And the leadership can determine how its nominee is selected, as the Sanders-Clinton fight demonstrated in 2015, where leadership tipped the scale toward what turned out to be a losing candidate. The Republican leadership was unsuccessful in keeping Trump off the ballot, even then, cowed by the backlash they envisioned from an angry group of people who felt unrepresented by their government. 

At this point, it appears that Sanders doesn’t represent the majority of Democratic party voters. Fear of the rage of those desperate to snatch the White House and Congress from dictatorial hands should compel the party to find a path to a different candidate, whether that is the coalescence of moderate candidates around a single candidate as the primaries move forward or maneuvering in a contested convention. Bloomberg apparently urged the other moderates to drop out, according to Amy Klobuchar and others have followed suit. The two women in the race have been targeted by a number of pundits. At the same time, there is fear of the rage of the Bernie squad who see in the Democratic establishment, the hand of the 1% trying to shut the movement down. Of course, Sanders’ momentum could build to represent a majority and so be it. On the other hand, moderate candidates are going to have to surrender some ego for the good of the country if they believe that the majority of the party doesn’t favor the far left. But unbelievably, the window during the primaries is closing fast. By March 17, 75% of the delegates will be committed on the first ballot, months before the convention in July. 

The news that Russia continues interfering in the elections to help Bernie as well as Trump can only be understood as an attempt to deliver the candidate the KGB thinks their Manchurian candidate can beat. In actuality, Putin’s main objective is not to elect any particular president but to cast doubt on the electoral process that it has somehow been rigged and that individual votes don’t count. Moreover, it’s another piece in his narrative at home and to the world that democracy is collapsing and Russian oligarchy is the best system of governance. Putin single mindedly pursues his interests above all else, much like 45 except that his are both ideological and financial enrichment and 45’s are simply self enrichment.

Disinformation is disrupting. A seed has been planted that some of Bernie’s momentum is attributable to Russian manipulation. There is also the possibility that crossover voting from Republicans can be stoking the appearance of a Bernie wave that isn’t there. Agent Orange himself called for it in New Hampshire. There is an organized movement in South Carolina and rumors about Georgia. But in primary contests, early victories stimulate later ones. All of this simply increases distrust of the system and is likely to spur chaos at the convention if no candidate has a majority of delegates on the first ballot. It will probably spill over into suspicions about the general elections as well, fed by the Trump/FoxNews and the GOP campaign machine.

Bernie supporters showed in Nevada what ugly bullies they can be, recalling the bitterness they showed at the 2015 convention which led many to sit out the election helping Trump to edge out Clinton. He has already adopted the position that the candidate with the most votes, not delegates should have the nomination, obviously in his favor if current trends continue. Let’s hope they don’t repeat their 2015 mistake this time around, but Bernie has been soft on wrangling the aggressive edges of his movement. In fact we don’t know that some of this noise is not the result of Russian interference. And that’s what the KGB is so good at, casting doubt on every twist and turn.

News from Nevada showed Bernie with 47%, Biden 24%, Pete 14%, Warren 9%. Still, more than 50% of voters chose moderate candidates. The state has 48 delegates, 23 of which are allocated by the caucuses. The remainder are selected by county conventions, party leaders, elected officials and at large.  The final delegate tally was Sanders 23, Biden 7, Pete 3. But the complexity of the allocation scheme creates wiggle room for party leaders with the rest of the 48 convention delegates, whatever the leadership has decided.

After Nevada, Bernie is leading in the overall number of delegates with 66, followed by Pete with 29, Biden 20, Warren 3, Klobuchar 7. It’s still a long way from the required 1991 of the 3979 delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot. Yet Bernie, in the first contest with a multicultural electorate, demonstrated that he can win people across race, class, income and educational level, age, location (urban, suburban, rural) and gender identity. The mainstream media seem a little disturbed that Bernie will take South Carolina and then emerge with the majority of delegates from Super Tuesday. Bloomberg will finally be on ballots then so we’ll see what profits he reaps in the form of pledged delegates from his investment in campaign advertising.

For some interesting tidbits on the finances of Democratic candidates who have been a little disingenuous about big money donors and a bonus on more behind the scenes maneuvering by the Trump administration to doctor and conceal documents from archiving for the historical record, check out this podcast. Imagine the future Trump presidential library, a golden Taj Mahal like palace filled with garish objects and screens of tweets, videos, powerpoints, photos, but no documents because the president doesn’t read. 

On February 27, 2013, Alabama attorneys argued before SCOTUS in Shelby v Holder that the 1965 Voting Rights Act protections were no longer needed. The Court agreed in June.

From the Equal Justice Initiative calendar 2020.

Lawdy, Black Folks Be Popular These Days!

/ oleblacklady / Leave a comment
Photo by picjumbo.com on Pexels.com

Across the mainstream media, everyone is talking about the importance of African American support for a Democratic candidate to win the presidency. It’s a cyclical phenomenon every two years in statewide races and every four in presidential races. We are the most important constituency to the party they say in one breath while in the next, they’re pursuing the white working class, having forgotten that Black people are part of the working class as well. Actually what they mean is that they care a lot about our votes but little about our fates once they’re seated in office. We are the Old Faithful balance of power, critical in many districts to tip states blue. No matter how little improvement occurs in the vast majority of Black lives, we’ll be back in 4 years because there are only 2 dice in the game and one has been peddling racist dog whistles if not outright prejudice since Richard Nixon. 

The Latinx community, now 20+% of the population, hasn’t yet replaced our bloc, likely because of a lower voting. Of course the community has many non-citizens and non-documented immigrants which makes their numbers more complicated to organize and analyze. Unlike the designation African American which is based on color, Latinx is a hodgepodge derived from speaking the Spanish language. These people have their roots in different countries and territories. Puerto Ricans are US citizens and can vote while they reside in the US. The Cuban exile community tends to vote Republican; 2 prominent Republican politicians, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were born outside the island, Cruz in Canada and Rubio in the US. Both are children of parents who immigrated before the Cuban revolution. The bulk of the first Cuban exiles were upper and middle class businessmen and professionals who are rabid anti-Communists, easily attracted to the Republican philosophy that individuals determine their own fate and those who don’t have only themselves to blame. Because of the special status of Cuban immigrants, later waves were often opponents of the Castro regime and some were “encouraged” to leave by the government itself. Appeasing this bloc exerts considerable influence on Republican party thinking.

Both of those communities are small compared to those with Mexican ancestry, some of whom were here before it became the United States. Mexico has been the largest source of immigration from the south over the country’s long history and apparently is once again the largest source of asylum seekers as the country has been wracked by drug wars, gangs and corrupt police. Central American as well as South American countries have supplied a smaller stream of immigrants as the political fortunes in their native countries varied. 

None of these groups has an innate attraction to Democratic policies and that’s the point. We are talking about individual voters, not a generalized phalanx. Each makes a decision based on their own circumstances and the politics of the day in their communities.

And therein lies the rub with the media and often the party’s approach to the Black vote. Our community is made of many varied opinions as well. There are Republicans who are Black, just as there were Blacks who were Democrats despite the presence of a dominant Dixiecrat contingent in the party that excluded the majority of African Americans from the ballot box when 60-80% of the Black population lived in the South.

We’ve always had differences of opinion about our position in the country, varying from emigration (Marcus Garvey and colonization societies) to equal rights or equal opportunity or a separate entity or be left alone or some combination of them. We’ve seen some who embraced white stereotypes about our brethren and called on those who behaved outside white ideals to straighten up and fly right, for instance WEB Dubois and his Talented Tenth. We’ve had our share of Uncle Tom’s, those who collaborated with the oppressors, but they came to their position by different routes. Some got an economic advantage for their families. Some obtained less tenuous security. Some believed it would improve our blight. Booker T Washington understood all too well that Negroes who asked for anything outside training to provide for themselves found themselves hanging from a tree limb, dragged behind a car or shot. It was damn dangerous not to keep our heads down and try to wrap ourselves in insecure cocoons.

There have been many different approaches to the fight for our freedom. Martin Luther King used civil disobedience until he understood that our natural allies are the poor of every color and the Vietnam War was sucking up bodies, natural resources and the national will, but when he wandered out of the lane he’d been granted by the powers that be, he became unpopular and they cut him down. Many in the Civil Rights movement decided they’d rather “Live Free or Die” and they would face the violence; in fact the violence proved an ally in winning the sympathy of the greater white population, at the cost of many lives. There will always be casualties and personal tragedies in war. The NAACP and Thurgood Marshall used the courts. There have always been those who believed we should arm ourselves and fight back, among them the Black Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver, Stokeley Carmichael, Malcolm X, the Black Muslims had their own approaches and goals. 

All the Democratic candidates provide evidence of the complexities of thought in the Black community. They each have their endorsements from various Black politicians. They have their brown skinned supporters prominently displayed behind them at their rallies. African Americans have different professions, occupations, income levels. There are large and small businesspersons, entrepreneurs, teachers and celebrities, just like in the white community. Black South Carolinians no doubt have some different concerns than Nevadans, Mississippians, Georgians, Californians etc. But we do share some common experiences, like an uneasy and dangerous relationship with law enforcement and the justice system, discrimination in employment and housing, interactions in the white community fraught with microaggressions and implicit bias. We face higher maternal and infant mortality and premature birth rates. We face a shorter life expectancy.  But the way those things impinge on our individual lives depends to some extent on where we live, our jobs, our organizational memberships, our local bloc political power, and our support systems. Each of these factors influence who we vote for or whether we vote at all. That and the number of electoral hurdles erected at the state and local level.

We’re so popular these days that King Donald is even interested in us. He’s advanced beyond his crude “What do you have to lose” from his initial campaign to a more sophisticated show although he still feels the need to throw that phrase out from time to time. In 2015, he knew he didn’t have a hook to land many African Americans outside the eccentric and well compensated “Blacks for Trump” who appeared at his rallies. He didn’t want one; his appeals were aimed at unsure whites to show that he wasn’t as racist as he sounded. They fell for it too. Or they didn’t care. At the same time, most of the MAWA candidate’s efforts focused on discouraging people of color from voting.

That a racist radio host received a Medal of Honor instead of a Tuskegee Airman who saved white pilots in WWII is a clear statement of the explicit racism and sexism of Trump’s vision for America.

Although Trump campaigned in 2015 to advance his brand with no thought of actually winning, the BullyPresident is more worried about retaining his throne now that he’s conquered the party, the Senate, federal government and the courts. He did what he does best, orchestrate a production entitled the State of the Union Address from the president who has answered every need. He trotted out his “African Americans” like acts under the Big Top. There was the 100 year old Tuskegee Airman, who got a shout out just before the MAWAPresident gave Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom. There is no clearer statement of the explicit racism and sexism that is Trump’s vision for America; the Black pilot who saved who knows how many white pilots missed out on the prestigious medal snagged by a racist radio host.

Next he announced a choice scholarship for a young Black girl, Janiyah Davis that proved to be more prestidigitation with some shady overtones than real. In a bait and switch, the scholarship actually came from Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss’s private charity, not a DOE program. Janiyah already attends a prestigious charter school; by what criteria was she selected? Furthermore, it raises questions about whether DOE officials are acting like grant officers for the secretary’s personal charity which would of course be inappropriate.

As usual, 45 stretched the truth about improved economic conditions for people of color. The unemployment rate is lower nationally, but many inner city neighborhoods still have youth unemployment rates over 20%. Similarly, nationally the Black poverty rate is the lowest since it has been recorded, but Alabamans were probably crying as they looked around their state where it’s 18%, 5% higher than the national average and 2% higher than whites in 2019. Still they’re probably happy for their neighbors. Trump’s message is simple: “I speak with forked tongue. If African Americans want low unemployment, you have to put up with a bunch of nig@*r calling.” It’s not a great bargain; much like during Jim Crow where a Black man could get a low paying job, but couldn’t have his dignity.

And least we forget, Agent Orange signed a criminal justice bill that will allow early release of nonviolent drug felons for time served rather than mandatory life sentences. The legislation percolated from a bipartisan effort initiated by Democrats which he failed to mention. He recognized one such released Black felon in the audience. Like most of what 45 claims, the nuts and bolts have not proven to be so revolutionary. Federal prosecutors in Florida have resisted approval of felon applications arguing for using the amount of drugs confiscated which would mandate longer sentences instead of the amount of drugs charged which came with shorter sentences. Obviously, they haven’t bought into the idea that the sentences are excessive and unjust because marijuana is increasingly becoming legalized and because of the inherent unfairness of ten fold longer sentences for crack than cocaine, the exact same drug. Higher penalties for the drug used primarily by Black addicts was designed to preferentially sweep up African Americans and remove them permanently from society. 

One recently released Black drug felon invited to watch Trump sign the legislation in the Oval Office was at that moment the subject of a prosecutorial attempt to send him back to prison. He was smart enough to know that his Oval Office photo op guaranteed his freedom. That incidence followed the well publicized pardon that he granted at Kim Kardashian’s request to Alice Johnson a Tennesseean who served 21 years for a first-time nonviolent drug offense. She appeared in a Trump Super Bowl commercial and is campaigning for him in Black communities. More recently, 3 others were released in the latest round of pardons for primarily big name white collar criminals. It’s not that these actions aren’t extraordinary for the lives of these individuals, but it has little impact on the millions presently unjustly held in prisons and on probation or the ones that will follow them behind prison walls. 

The Donald has not stopped with his TV production; he has some grassroots recruiting as well in key battleground states. In Atlanta, Blacks for Trump held an outreach event that coincided with a Trump rally elsewhere in the state. In Cleveland, the Urban Revitalization Coalition gave away $25,000 to members of a Black audience at an event also attended by Trump campaign officials. The coalition received a $230,000 grant from a pro-Trump super PAC run by Daryl Scott, a Black minister who co-chairs the Trump outreach organization, Blacks for Trump. The Coalition is a 501(c)(3) corporation that is prohibited from engaging in activity that promotes political candidates. The Trump campaign officials’ attendance is a definite no-no. It seems like if there is a law, the LawlessPresident just can’t help but break it. Trump campaign officials acknowledged that the coalition event appeared to be illegal even as they disavowed any official connection to it.

The strategy here is simple. Trump gathered 8% of the Black vote in 2016 and he’s hoping to top that in critical areas,  just enough to add to other narrow margins to win the Electoral College. In 2015, his racist actions were not fully on display. Throughout the last 3 years, his rhetoric has been backed up by his policies and actions on the southern border as well as his glorification of white supremacists like Rush Limbaugh, his support for the KKK and white nationalists in Charlottesville, the incorporation of religious freedom to discrimination in his policies, his aggressive deportation policies and his bans on immigration from African and Muslim countries. 

The number of Black voters who choose to overlook these transgressions in favor of perceived economic opportunities that may not actually reach into their lives is anybody’s guess. Maybe a few hundred dollars apiece will be enough to turn enough heads to get the current president over the Electoral College hump in 2020. In the past, buying votes was an integral part of electoral politics. It exists today as wealthy individuals and corporations pour millions of dollars into legislators’ campaigns. Why should Black folks be different?

February 21, 1956 A grand jury indicted over 85 bus boycotters with violating a statute that barred boycotts without just cause. from the Equal Justice Institute calendar

The New Republic All Hail, Donald the King!

/ oleblacklady / Leave a comment
RIP The Republic of the United States of America

Now is a good time to assess what was lost when the old American Republic perished. Gone is Congressional subpoena power and with it the oversight which the public’s window of scrutiny into the executive branch. The Trump administration has simply opted out. No documents, no testimony, no answers! Their refusal to comply has been sanctioned and abetted by the Attorney General, the designated lawyer for the United States. It has been rubber stamped by the courts, in the slow pace of the process itself as well as the resulting rulings. Chief Justice Roberts presided over the only sham impeachment trial in history with nary a whisper, except for his scripted bits. He is as much a party to the miscarriage of justice as all the other Trump enablers. 

The Supreme Court is anything but nonpartisan despite Roberts’ attempts to maintain that charade. Conservatives believe a narrative history of an activist court beginning under Warren that unraveled the constitution to comply with a liberal agenda. That elevated a campaign to reshape the court into a weapon of conservative malice to primacy that would reestablish the power of elite corporations over people of color and the individual. This is a white man’s country finally recrystallized into Make America White Again the straight talk reclaimed from the dog whistles of past Republican party platforms. Quite the opposite, liberals and progressives view the recent history of the court as a glorification of the rights of minorities (and the one majority, women) until it began falling apart under the 5-4 decisions of the increasingly conservative majority under Rehnquist.    

Trump’s Make America White Again crystallized the straight talk reclaimed from the dog whistles of past Republican party platforms.

Gone as well is transparency into the executive branch. For the most part, much of the transparency has depended on presidential goodwill, for example, disclosure of income tax returns and White House and federal agency visitor logs. 45 has established vast islands of impenetrance through actions like the conduct of government business on his business properties. He has spent an estimated one-third of his term on his properties, all private clubs which covet their membership rolls and visitors to the property. The press is excluded from them. However, these clubs do serve as information conduits to the wealthy and powerful as the RealityTVPresident has shared in casual conversation at the breakfast bar his intentions, desires and his activity extending to classified information, thereby creating significant ongoing national security risks. 

Where transparency has been dictated by federal law and regulation, the BullyPresident has refused to comply. The Washington Post has reported that during their investigation into Secret Service expenditures on Trump properties, entries into reports to Congress have just been left blank. The agency has justified these omissions by interpreting reporting requirements to include only permanent changes to residences rather than ongoing expenses. Surely reporting of those expenditures must be required somewhere. The administration has refused to provide information to the GAO and other oversight agencies within the government as well.

The dictatorial closure of windows into governance has been essential for the burgeoning topsy turvy in the country. What is up is down; what is black is white; what is back is front. Is there an entity called truth or simply different perspectives on reality? The media is free to interpret actions of the administration through any lens. The chief executive has his own propaganda vehicle, Trump/FoxNews, which pumps out false narratives, a potpourri of insinuation, conspiracy theories, outright lies and altered realities created from smartly edited audio and video clips. It is a vision of America that has sprung from the narrowly circumscribed vision of the amoral mind of the chief executive without empathy or compassion, much as a director shapes a script into a movie. The mantle has passed from Roger Ailes to the president mirroring the screen onto himself reflected back to the screen.

Almost gone is Senatorial approval of cabinet and appointees. Amidst the fast reshuffling of Trump administration personnel, he has appointed acting heads without getting around to nominating permanent replacements. Some temp actors have come and gone before a permanent nomination. This is intentional and not the result of the increasing difficulty in finding someone willing to serve in the hostile working conditions in the executive branch. There’s always someone; Barr auditioned in TV interviews for his spot. It does mean that the standards for talent and qualifications are scraping the dregs. But loyalty to Trump is the characteristic that he prizes; that and spinelessness to follow his twists and turns become paramount. Barr certainly has the talent, which should have invoked suspicion, and despite high hopes, the spinelessness as well.

Also gone is an independent Justice Department. Attorney General Bill Barr, supposedly devoutly religious, has long committed to saving the country from the onslaught of the irreligious and unfaithful. An advocate of the all powerful executive in the Bush 45 administration, he seems to believe that elevating the president above the law is the road to reestablishing the hegemony of a religious minority. No longer independent, his response to presidential marching orders is to make them legally palatable. Barr made the Mueller Report disappear, framing the rhetoric of Trump’s complete vindication before he released it and dismissing its findings on obstruction of justice as inconsequential.

Whether Barr believes the conspiracy theories or not, he has thrown himself into the hunt for international evidence to reframe interference in the 2016 election

Whether Barr believes the conspiracy theories surrounding the extortion of Ukrainian President Zelensky or not, he has thrown himself into the hunt for international evidence to assert that it was the Democrats who brought Ukraine into interferencing in the 2016 election rather than or perhaps in addition to the Russians. And Rudy Giuliani frequently asserts on Trump/FoxNews that he is forwarding his meticulously gathered depositions and documents from disaffected Ukrainian officials aligned with the former Russian dominated president Viktor Yushchenko to the Justice Department to build a case against Hunter and possibly Joe Biden. 

Now, Barr is heading up the squad that will wreak legal vengeance on 45’s political opponents. Colonel Vindman and his brother have been removed from their posts, despite the fact that Vindman was scheduled to leave national security for the War College in July. Vindman was of course responding to a Congressional subpoena as he is required by law to do. Although their fates will be determined by the military, outside Barr’s jurisdiction, the hit list of other lesser knowns involved may never be revealed. Lindsay Graham has vowed to ferret out the whistleblower who began the Ukraine probe which will certainly involve the Justice Department if the objective is to file criminal charges and intimidate anyone tempted to report illegal activity in the future. So far, the Pentagon has said there will be no investigations of the Vindmans.

Most recently, Barr has reached into the sentencing of Roger Stone, long time GOP trickster and Trump advisor, prompting all 4 career prosecutors to resign from the case. While the original prosecutors recommended a sentence of 7-9 years, the Justice Department has decided that, in defiance of federal guidelines, the number is too excessive. They suggested that a 3-4 year sentence would be more reasonable although they failed to make a recommendation, deferring to the judge’s decision. Barr may have acted after communication from the LawlessPresident or from a mindmeld that lays out the path that will please his boss. In any event, he replaced the US Attorney, Jessie K. Liu, with a former close aide, Timothy Shea, showing the former prosecutor the back door and withdrawing her nomination to a job as an undersecretary at the Treasury department. Trump hate-tweeted the judge and later the jurors to add his approval.

In another case involving a former Trump official, prosecutors month ago recommended probation for Michael Flynn, backing away from a recommendation of a maximum of 6 months in prison for pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. Flynn has since withdrawn his guilty plea claiming government misconduct. It’s probably mute. Flynn is likely to receive a presidential pardon in the near future. In fact, he might be next to follow Rush Limbaugh for a Presidential Medal of Freedom; he after all was a general who served in the war. Limbaugh’s only war was against people of color and women. For his part, Barr is launching an investigation into the “origins of the case and its investigators”, similar to the announced probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation.

Perhaps what is really gone is the rule of law, such as it was. These cases are a healthy reminder that the justice system was never fair; the brown skinned and the poor have always been treated differently from the rich. Imagine if Roger Stone had been an African American, oh wait, that’s not possible because a Black man would never have access to the upper echelons of the Republican Party, even if he was misguided enough to believe in their cause. So let’s say it’s a Black man accused of lying to the authorities and intimidating a witness with death threats, just 2 of the crimes that Stone was convicted of. Contrary to 45’s fantasy that there are murderers and violent criminals who have been sentenced to less than 9 years, our brown substitute-Stone would probably be facing life or at least 25 years in some crazy plea bargain. Ok, there might be some violent white felons with short sentences, but that’s a small minority.

The BullyPresident might be forgiven for his misstatements or not; he’s not a legal or any kind of scholar; his only contact with criminals is Ivanka’s daddy-in-law Kushner and his own cronies, all white, who have been convicted of various crimes like money laundering and false testimony who may cycle around for pardons some day; he is prone to listening to the last person who whispers in his ear; his mind is encrusted with long held misconceptions from the 80s; in short, he is heavily mentally handicapped.

What has the Democrats, Lindsay Graham and a few GOP stalwarts bent out of shape is the fact that the RealityTVPresident is intervening so publically for his law breaking friends while lying once again that he isn’t. We know these kinds of deals happen in the bowels of dark lawyer rooms. But this is the Twitter spotlight where the master makes his official White House pronouncements. It’s another example of what Roy Cohen describes as knowing what Trump wants without his telling you out loud to do it. This way, Butt-sucking Barr has plausible deniability, even if it’s only in the timeline between the announcements and the tweets. 

Conservatives now have to sign onto overturning jury verdicts after they spent so much time arguing that impeachment would overturn the verdict of the 63 million voters that elected the PiedPiperPresident. That oft repeated number was very important to them even if it represents the minority of 2016 voters. It’s embarrassing, but they long ago abandoned their pride and sense of guilt; this is just a slight hiccup that they’ll have to explain away with the appropriate spin. Not to worry, the base isn’t listening and doesn’t care. All Hail King Donald! 

In recent days, 45 has made his post impeachment revenge strategy even clearer, dating back to the Mueller investigation. He’s determined to acquit those convicted but he’s moved from defense to an aggressive offense, going after every last person involved in the investigations, as far up into the Obama administration as he can reach. 

The obliging Mr Barr, reduced to pleading with Agent Orange in a TV interview to stop tweeting rather than meet with him man to man in a private conversation is pretty pitiful. The cynical see this move as just more spin to document that Barr is defending his Justice Department employees when he is not. It’s important to note that it was an ABC interview, meant for the general public, not Trump/FoxNews where it could potentially disturb Trumpophants. They probably heard nothing about it. And the predictable continued Tweet bashing from the prez establishes Barr’s supposed independence.

It’s all just drama. Barr has launched an independent prosecutor investigation into the failure of prosecutors to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Michael Flynn in the context of a broader partisan review of the handling of other politically sensitive national security cases in Washington. The RealityTVPresident has launched his errand boy to carry out a partisan rewriting of history, believing that he can ultimately erase his impeachment. The victor writes history, so don’t count him out.

“I have the absolute right to do whatever I want” is the phrase that keeps rolling off 45’s tongue.”

For those holding out hope in the courts, a reading of the history of the judicial system reveals a persistent thumb on the scales in favor of the ruling elite, from decisions against the enslaved and freedmen to the war on drugs, the colorblind end to “affirmative action”, the abandonment of voter protections, and the rise of corporate speech among its many rulings. SCOTUS has served as a messenger for oppression wrapped in the guise of legalese. Judges are merely men, and more recently women simmered in the cauldron of US racist elitism.      

Fresh off his impeachment acquittal vote, 45 has been busy flexing his muscle. He’s attacking states, excluding New Yorkers from using the Global Pass Program for expedited entry through customs when returning from international destinations. The Punisher in Chief is spanking New York for refusing to allow ICE to use its DMV records. Can California be far behind? Do the “fly over” states want to attack the coastal flanks of what used to be a single country? And so soon after what some Republicans called 45’s persistent calls for unity in the State of the Union address. Was he extending a hand across the aisle when he snubbed Speaker Pelosi’s extended hand for a handshake when he mounted the podium for the state of the union? Blinded Republicans quickly asserted that he had not seen her hand. Baloney; it’s traditional for the Speaker to shake his hand. It was a retaliatory snub for Pelosi’s introduction where she skipped the traditional descriptor that it was the speaker’s pleasure to present the president in favor of a simple “the president, Donald Trump”.

What do Trumpophants think? Oh, yeah they don’t. A steady diet of Trump/FoxNews has fed them the narrative that their knight in shining armor is rooting out the real corruption in Washington- the “deep state” which is the intelligence agencies, the FBI, scientists and experts, career bureaucrats wedded to Obama and anyone whose professional and personal views may differ from the theirs. The real scoundrels like Flynn, Manafort, Mar-a-Lago cronies and big donors now stepping into political appointments across all departments have been glorified by Judge Pirro, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and the like. Honesty in government long ago fell prey to cynicism in government, buried alongside honesty in the news media.

Democratic outrage is no match for the president’s stranglehold on the wheels of the republic. We can look for the banana republic noose cinching the justice system to continue to tighten around perceived MAWA enemies. What tools do Democrats have? Investigations without documents, and there will be none, is theater without consequence. The sting of the failed impeachment eliminates the constitutional remedy. 

Democratic Party officials don’t seem to be up to the task of leading the resistance on the electoral front either, if the Iowa caucuses are any indication. Once more the party’s inability to cross the divide that separates them from advanced technology at the local, state and national level doesn’t bode well for the future.

One has to ask, if the Republicans undermined Iowa caucus results. There are rumors in the press that Republicans called the overloaded Democratic reporting center after the phone number was made public in order to tie up phone lines. Might they also have voted for Bernie in the Democratic caucuses, given the empty gesture of voting in the Republican one. Certainly there were Democrats turned 2016 Trump voters who could have been eligible to vote Democratic. Some who intend to vote for Trump in the fall may have been urged to crossover vote as they intend to do in South Carolina and possibly Georgia. Clearly the GOP is on a path to cheat their way to a 2020 victory by any means necessary.

The bulk of Democratic voters seem to paralyzed by the fear of picking The One, the candidate to beat Trump. Iowans couldn’t seem to make up their minds until the last minute. Despite the supposed enthusiasm, turn out was lower than in 2008 in caucuses that usually represent only 20% of Iowa voters. Could the low voter turnout reflect the volume of choices? Our brains rebel against too many choices, defaulting to either eeny-meeny-miney-mo mode or opting out. The anxiety about choosing only added to the default.

Add to that the nonsense of prognosticating electability clouded by the unconscious tendency we all have to project our own perspectives on others, voters are foregoing their own assessments of their political preferences. For Iowans who claim they are politically engaged and knowledgeable about candidates, media coverage is full of stories like the woman who asked that her preference card be returned after she found out that Pete is gay. She thinks he’s a sinner because he loves a man and yet plenty have no trouble voting for a president who’s committed all of the 7 deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Or the Pete supporter who left her larger caucus to join a friend in a Biden caucus to help him make it viable. 

Let’s face it, electioneering and politicking is not a high minded art. The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are meant to maintain the fiction that campaigning is about shaking hands and meeting voters face to face, answering their questions as voters size up the candidate. And yet, Donald Trump won by flying in to mass rallies, preaching his claptrap and flying out. Well there was a lot of internet hanky panky too and that is the dynamite that has exploded the myth of the good old days.

Michael Bloomberg is demonstrating the campaign of the future. The candidate maneuvered around the DNC by choosing the primaries he enters, skipping head to head interaction with other candidates and outspending the field. His strategy has netted 15% popularity in national polls on the heels of his massive media blitz of slick ads supplemented by a team of 2000 well paid staffers fanning out in upcoming primary states. But he’s been sewing his own seeds in other fields. Over the last few years, this billionaire Republican turned Democrat who flirted with running as an independent has funded projects in cities and towns whose officials are popping up now to endorse him. Ironically, his seemingly unlimited funds which exceed the billionaire pretender president’s form much of the basis for his electability appeal. Some seem to think that if he can outspend the Donald, he can win even though they know little about how he plans to accomplish those vague goals in his ads. His success suggests that detailing a plan to run the government may be more detrimental than simple sloganeering, much like the current president. That may say more about the shaky democracy we had before this New Republic and explain how we came to be where we are now.

In the old republic, presidential candidates presented a wish list of priorities, since domestic policy at least was based on a give and take between the president and majority coalitions in Congress. In the New Republic, a Democratic president without a Congressional majority in both houses will have to maintain an executive order presidency circumventing legislative gridlock as the Trumpophants, supported by a legion of lobbyists and deregulators, refuse to compromise in an effort to demonstrate the bankruptcy of liberalism.  That’s if King Donald can be pried out of the White House.

Still there’s a lot that can be accomplished by a Democratic president in re-regulating the deregulations of the Trump administration, recruiting scientific experts and analysts back to the federal bureaucracy, recruiting diplomats to the State Department and establishing decorum to the office of the president. 

There’s a lot of heavy lifting that needs to be done in the area of foreign policy with significant differences between the candidates in terms of their approaches. And yet, there is little information in the media and debates about these important issues, perceived by the media as less important to voters. But if we want a president who will chart a course radically different from 45’s, these are the broad considerations that should be part of the conversations. Global affairs are changing at a fast pace, often skittering toward catastrophe. The America Only course staked out by 45 has left shaky alliances in its wake with an enormous opening for the advancement of Chinese influence worldwide. We are, after all, choosing a leader for the next 4 years. Perhaps, that’s too complicated.

It may be that the only hope for the resistance to the New Republic is a grassroots movement to get to the polls to “throw the bums out”. We don’t have to wait for the Democrats to lead. Unfortunately, in a two party system we will have to coalesce around whomever the party nominates. We’ll have to hold our noses and vote a straight Democratic ticket, realizing that we may not get the president many of us, but King Donald will be deposed. We can work on the next administration once they’re in place. No third party candidates please. Or if some dummy is so ego invested that they believe now is the moment to pursue their personal goals, we have to simply ignore them. We have to resist the GOP, conservative and Russian disinformation meant to discourage voter turnout. We must oppose local and state voter suppression tactics everywhere. It’s either that or the New Republic could last well past the foreseeable future to preside over the self destruction of the human race on the planet.

February 15, 1804 New Jersey became the last Northern state to abolish slavery when it passed a gradual emancipation act.

The New Republic

/ oleblacklady / Leave a comment

On the eve of the senate vote that will keep Donald J Trump in office, it’s time to take a look at this new reconstituted republic of the United States of America. All Hail the Storytelling King!

This republic that 620,000 men, fully 2% of the total population, died in the Civil War to preserve has evolved into an oligarchy firmly controlled by a chief executive with unlimited power supported by a rubber stamp legislature reinforced by courts firmly ensconced in his hands. This is a tragedy. 

It’s a sobering thought to think that American exceptionalism has finally come to an end. In the absence of a coup, dictatorial governments usually creep in over time, visible only in retrospect when it’s too late. Adolph Hitler snuck up on the Weinmar Republic, accomplished through a series of compromises by those in power to quiet growing popular discontent.

It’s difficult to conceptualize how 45 could be even more emboldened than he was by the thud of the Mueller Report, but with him, anything is possible. He sees clear sailing to remain in the White House in 2020 and yet, is deranged enough to conspire against any challenge to that victory. It hardly matters though because he only has one bag of tricks and his core constituency, being Republicans, corporations, millionaires and billionaires and the poor slubs who act first and think later if at all, is mesmerized by them. Are there enough of them scattered over enough critical districts to seal the deal? 

Now is the time to face some unpleasant facts. First, that we are primarily a nation of the gullible, even those who think themselves educated and enlightened. How else can one explain the sellout in one day of Goop’s $75 My Vagina Smells Good candle? Or the millions of people who believe that vaccines cause autism on the word of a few “celebrities” despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, sparking the return of infectious diseases that had been eradicated in this country. Eliminating these infectious diseases is the major success story of modern medicine which has actually cured few other diseases. Or the millions who believe that they can eat unhealthily 90% of the time, be saved by some body organ cleanse regimen, and then resume assaulting their bodies with excess salt, sugar, fat and starch. And then there are huge numbers of people who have been conditioned to believe that African Americans are inherently criminal across many iterations, like rapists, civil rights activists, welfare mothers or drug dealers.  As a group, we have never been those things; they aren’t somehow baked into our DNA and yet each new mythical variant finds a home in the agendas of political parties which allow a few white people to retain power.

Popular gullibility is not new, having been a major concern of the Founding Fathers, but each new advance in mass media from the penny newspaper to radio to TV to the web has been a jolt of steroids to the process. The history of universal health care proposals, from Harry Truman to Obama, is one of concerted propaganda campaign from medical professionals, hospitals and insurance companies to defeat them. With the Clinton plan, ads attacked the lack of choice in health insurance plans designed by “government bureaucrats” when the proposal actually applied primarily to employer based plans. There were the “death panels” ads against Obamacare, now beloved throughout the populace. 

In the quantum leap from TV to smartphone computers in our pockets, Americans are now under constant assault from the airwaves and their screens filled with commercial content from the moment they wake until they sleep. Embedded in the content are the triggers that determine their actions, both consciously and unconsciously. The sheer volume makes it difficult for even the few who are interested in verifying content to squeeze it in between cat videos and celebrity news. Our priorities are cantilevered toward entertainment over substance, thanks in large part to the ingenious ways that the advertising industry has burrowed into our heads. Freed from any restrictions on information accuracy, social media has elevated disinformation to high art. Pretty much anything goes. 

Our default should be to suspect every piece of information, but that would be exhausting. In fact, it is contrary to human nature as argued by Malcolm Gladwell in Talking To Strangers. He contends that our brains are wired to give a person the benefit of the doubt and assume they are truthful. That coupled with our tendency to overestimate our own abilities, makes us overly confident in our conclusions. In addition, through our confirmation bias, we often reject new information that is inconsistent with old stored information, even reshaping the new into something that fits in comfortably with the old. The brain is lazy; rather than examine and test new information, we quickly dispatch with it so we can get on with more vital tasks.

Second, in this do or die fight, the Republicans are way ahead; they’ve lapped the Democrats once and are heading for a second go round. To begin with, they understand that it is a do or die fight. They understood decades ago that they are the minority and set about winnowing down the pool of eligible voters along multiple fronts. In light of the country’s  changing demographics, they also understand that they represent a shrinking minority and would need to stopper the spigot of new arrivals, hence the stalemate on immigration which became an aggressive policy of deportations and absolute bans on legal and illegal immigration of people of color.

Conservatives recognized that they would need a multifront assault on the culture in general to shift their ideas from the right fringe to the central party agenda. So they set about creating an intelligentsia, conservative think tanks and academic centers and capturing liberal academic institutions through large financial donations to establish independent “conservative” institutes within them. Through this device, they could woo the best and brightest to conservative philosophy. They created their own media, from academic journals to print, Breitbart and FoxTV.  

The creation of that cultural pipeline allowed them to methodically move to control all branches of federal, state and local governments. The consortium around the Koch brothers concentrated on winning state and local elections down to school boards, empowering conservatives to control almost every aspect of policy affecting people’s daily lives. Moscow Mitch understood way back that the court system was central to the mission and he set about both blocking judicial appointments when in the minority, most famously Merritt Garland, and once in the majority, ramming through appointments in a fast track to fill the huge backlog of judges that he had created while stonewalling.

And there you have it. We have arrived at the same level of polarization during the 1850’s that exploded into the Civil War. Then, as now, the populace has sorted into two distinct groups, bound by opposing moral commitments, pledged to maintain or destroy a way of life. Once positions became wrapped in morality, the art of compromise that greases the wheels of republican government, died. Either one was a devil who supported slavery or a saint for trying to abolish it. Today, one is a saint dedicated to preserving the cultural dominance of a white Christian male minority over people of color threatening to become a numerical majority. That is the populace cover for preserving the economic rule of a small group of wealthy, white males. Or one is a demon trying to elevate people of color over the rightful holders of power, the white Christian male minority. Or vice versa, depending on group identity.

This rigidity is held in place by larger and larger numbers of individuals who think of their primary identity as a political one. Many have fallen under this spell of identity fusion, where political identity becomes personal identity, in this case, to the Donald, not to the GOP. James Hamlin defines identity fusion as “someone’s personal and social identities become functionally equivalent”. After that happens, a leader who claims to be saving the country in their name is allowed to do anything and everything to defend them. Identity fused Trumpophants feel they too can explore any form of misbehavior and even commit murder, much like ISIS suicide bombers who sacrifice their life to destroy the enemy. In the mind of the Trumpophant, for them to do otherwise, is to allow Satan to seize control of the country.      

With identity fusion, it’s not blind obedience that drives behavior, rather it’s a reordering of self to embrace the values of the entity that then subsume the individual’s values. Here, people lie willingly because they’ve adopted a value system that condones lying. It’s not a matter of contorting their way of thinking, it’s outright suspension of their way of thinking. No conflicts with their old value system remain; those values have literally been flushed out of their minds. By in large, the same phenomenon has not occurred with significant numbers of liberals and progressives.

A sense of deprivation, even if only imaginary, fertilizes the ground in which identity fusion can grow. This is why the PiedPiperPresident replays his themes about what has been lost. Ours is a culture overrun by the “others”, the shuttering of manufacturing is their fault; religion has faded as a powerful force in life, etc.

The Impeachment Trial has played out like Kabuki theater, full of over dramatized actions careening toward a well known finale, in this case, a verdict to leave the PiedPiperPresident in the White House. The details are irrelevant in this atmosphere where people question the very existence of truth and accept lying as standard operating procedure without batting an eye. The Republican chorus in the Senate and House believe that they are ballot proof with no need to respond to the electorate. And they are damn near correct. 

Trump, by the way, was an outsider, not privy to the intricacies of Republican strategizing. Long term vision and complicated thinking are not something he can do. He simply bullied his way into becoming the face of the project because of his instinctive opportunism in service of his own self interests and his acumen in propaganda. Those are two things at which he excels. This may be the last chance for the opposition before plunging into a dystopian age of dictatorship.

What is there to do now that the shit has hit the fan? First and foremost, spread the message. Progressives/Democrats must suspend politics as usual, sound the alarm and adopt a different more aggressive approach. This is more urgent than a response to climate change because without it, the deniers will remain in charge and mute any response to climate change that is meaningful or imaginative. They have set about reversing what little has been done. 

Politics is essentially consumerism, as crass as that sounds. For instance, people fear loss of something they have more than they enjoy acquiring something. This is one reason why the PiedPiperPresident is relentless in his elevation of things his movement has lost summed up in the America they remember when white males ruled the roost. In his inaugural address, Trump’s country was so gloomy that it was on the verge of completely collapsing under liberal mismanagement. His campaign rings with claims that “he’s gotten X for his followers” and they will lose X if he’s not reelected.

Anxiety is an important driver of mental processes known as “fast thinking” or “system 1” by behaviorists. These are unconscious mental shortcuts mediated through implicit biases and heuristics. They happen without our knowing they’re at work. The advertising industry has long understood their power in creating desire to sell stuff we didn’t need or desire simply by creating the illusion that we’ll be “left out” without it. 

In contrast, Progressives/Democrats have always taken the positive approach to politicking about “what government can do for you”. In this hour of crisis, it is time to convert public anxieties into action in the voting booth.

The messaging must begin now. Recently a Pod Save America episode pointed out that the GOP already had 7 impeachment ads running during the investigation and Democrats had none. The GOP is already far ahead in its use of targeted advertising and the collection of the data that makes it effective. Brad Parscale, Trump campaign director, has shown that he’s adept at using it. The DNC hasn’t made much progress outside traditional radio/TV ads since the debacle of 2016; Bloomberg and Styer are advertising themselves and who the other big spenders are is a mystery to me. Democrats should have been diffusing information about the evidence in the impeachment case across nontraditional media, not just the press podium in the House and MSNBC.

Once Agent Orange has been let off the impeachment hook, progressives/Democrats should tailor ads about the coming of one man rule around the ways it impacts people in their lives, not from the perspective of defending the Constitution. Obvious examples would be “a vote for Trump is a vote to end Obamacare and kiss the exemptions for preexisting conditions goodbye.” Or “to watch our water supplies and waterways become polluted” or “the price of goods and services is increasing because of tariffs.” Or “a vote for Trump is a vote for higher drug costs”. Or “Your student loan debt wouldn’t get any smaller under Trump.”  Yes, ending corruption in government, now even more horrendous than in 2015, makes people angry but the fact that Trump’s objectives are diametrically opposed to what people want and need creates a contrast that sits squarely in the Democratic pocket.

The lack of a chosen Democratic candidate should not be a hurdle. The Democratic candidate race is a separate issue. In the end, it won’t matter who it is because everyone needs to vote for that person regardless. As an African American, I have a lot of experience with holding my nose and voting for the Democratic candidate no matter what. In this state of emergency, everyone will have to do that and no one can afford to be holier than thou. Not the young, the old, people of color, Warren, Bernie, Pete, Yang fans if Biden wins, millennials, the LGBTQ community, farmers, workers, poor people, business people, not anyone. Note, I did not say women as a separate group because women make up significant portions of all these groups.

We must pour all of our time and energy into spreading the word of this new banana republic style rule and getting people to the polls. This is a new order. We should not squander our efforts on calling, texting, or emailing legislators; the GOP that holds the reins of power isn’t listening. The only organized demonstrations should be to rally people to register and to vote for any and every Democratic candidate.

Progressives and Democrats have been reluctant to get down in the muck, maintaining the high ground when conservatives go low. But we don’t have to change our principles to alter the tone and emphasis of our political messaging. It’s a minor change to rescue the republic from extinction. In this battle, we don’t want ticket splitting; we want every voter to mark every Democrat on their ballot, just as the mesmerized Republicans do. The GOP has erected enough hurdles to one person, one vote that Democratic margins will have to be enormous to prevail. It seems almost numerically impossible to flip the Senate. The details of the individual Democratic plans will be pipe dreams in the wake of the ascendant Trump who will continue to govern around Congress by executive fiat, challenged but later approved by the courts. We can have policy debates within the party once we are in power, but the idea that legislators can effectively work “across the aisle” is folly as long as the GOP is saving its MAWA nation from the devil incarnate. The Republican conduct of the Impeachment Trial is the clearest indication that the game has changed.

Beyond the executive order, this administration has accomplished a great deal by reducing government employees, slow walking procedures and refusing to comply. Look at the actions at the southern border. Immigrants and asylum seekers are being held in dangerous areas in Mexico and an expanding network of detention facilities in the US; the appeals process is dysfunctional as immigrants go uninformed of appointments, must travel from Mexico by bus and have no lawyers or interpreters with the inevitable result that they are deported. The percentage of asylums claims granted is now in the single digits, closer to 3% than 10%. Every child has not been reunited with his family. The processing of thousands of legal immigrants has been tangled up with additional security screenings and delayed issuance of visas, and now increased fees for green cards. The sum total of these bureaucratic interventions has been to reduce legal immigration to a trickle over the last 3 years. Congress has no recourse in any of these areas.

But winning the 2020 election despite interference from outside forces, GOP dirty tricks, rampant disinformation and GOP machinations in local polling places is only the first step. In that vein, federal legislation that barred demonstrations at polling places expired this year, allowing resumption of activities like having sheriff deputies “guard” polling places, a particularly effective intimidator of African Americans and Latinx immigrants in rural areas. This presages a resurgence of the deployment of “volunteer” observation squads which were used extensively in 2010 and 2012 to intimidate voters by challenging their identification, calling citizens out as “aliens” and complaining to poll personnel that individuals shouldn’t be voting. There isn’t a trick that the GOP won’t turn.    

If the election is close, Trump may himself interfere using claims of voter fraud, much as he tried to explain away his popular vote loss in 2016. He may declare absentee or military ballots too late to be counted. GOP legislatures may try to change the mandates of Electoral College electors’ in his favor. Or because he thinks he can “do whatever he wants,” the BullyPresident may simply refuse to leave the White House and the Senate will create some legislative work-around. What institution would have power to overturn that? The generals? 

It is not completely out of the question that he would foment Trumpophant violence, as  both Donalds have hint-tweeted. Maybe it would be like the race riots of the early 1900s, such as Rosewood, Atlanta, and Tulsa Oklahoma where white mobs stormed into Black communities to kill and maim the residents while destroying their businesses and homes. Those were local movements which were condoned and unpunished by state or federal officials, just as they would be in 2020. Or ironically, it could like the Black ghetto riots in the 60s, fomented by administration plants. Or he might encourage more mass shootings by domestic terrorists or guerrilla activity in rural areas. In any of these scenarios, 45 would respond by declaring a state of emergency and mobilize the National Guard and perhaps the army. This is the epitome of a banana republic.