Challenge to Democratic Party: Why Should I Care?

In its typical tone-deaf fashion, days after "Giving Tuesday," when we were all exhausted from being hammered by requests for donations by hundreds of worthy causes, I got an email from the South Carolina Democratic Party asking for -- not $3, not $5 -- a $25 donation.

The accompanying message, which I scanned rather than read, included the words "whites only."  It contained the terrifying idea that Henry McMaster would be our new governor soon, as though he might be worse than Nikki Haley.  Basically, the message was, "Scary things are happening, so give us money."

Meanwhile, on another absurd front, SCDP Chair Jamie Harrison, who kept popping up on MSNBC before the SC primaries and then disappeared during the general election, has resurfaced in order to seek the position of -- and I can't believe I am saying this -- Chair of the Democratic National Committee.  When asked why he feels he is qualified, we hear all about how he came up in politics.  Nothing about anything important that is going on right now.  Not to mention, why he should be considered given the sad state of Democratic politics in South Carolina under his watch.

This is what the SCDP is missing:

Voters can't possibly understand the complexities of the dirty games being played in politics (and I try, I really do).  We don't have the time to follow bills being introduced on a state or national level, much less sort out the meaning behind the bills.  Or where they come from.  They don't know the candidates or office holders, really.

What people know about politics is in the headlines.  And if it is too dense, they dismiss it.  Which pretty much describes the success of the republican party.  They, and their current leader, have been able to reframe issues and point voters in any direction they choose, just by using simple and stark phrases.  Remember the threatened "death panels" from Obamacare?  How about "death taxes," leading us all to believe that after we die, the government would take all our hard-earned money from our children?  Trump turned it into an obscene art form, boiling down the essence of his opponents to easy-to-remember memes like "lying Ted" and "crooked Hillary."

If the SCDP, or the DNC for that matter, want to get voters involved, they need to do two things:  educate themselves about the bills that are being written, and then educate the voters in a way that is meaningful to us.

For weeks, we have been hearing about the "emoluments clause" of the constitution.  Don't feel bad if you don't know what it means, even though you've heard it in the news a zillion times.  It has no meaning to us.  The first thing the republicans would do if they wanted voters to pay attention to the emoluments clause is:  rename it.  Turn it into a catchy, solid, simple phrase that is full of emotional meaning.  "Gifts for favors" conveys the idea more simply, but it doesn't have the emotional punch.  So I posted the idea on Facebook and Twitter, in the hope that others more clever than I will come up with the phrase that will let everybody know that the Trump family is planning on wheeling and dealing with corporate and world leaders while he is president so that he can increase his power and fortune.  In other words, reaping emoluments.

And let's take a look at Congress.  Just this week, to great fanfare about the new bipartisanship, the grandiose "21st Century Cures Act" passed the House, 392-26.  I heard it was to honor Joe Biden and his work to fund cancer research in the name of his son.  Even so, this was highly suspicious.  It took a little research, but not too much, to find that Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, had spoken in opposition to this bill.  Apparently, the pharmaceutical industry is going to make out like bandits from its passage.  Listen to Senator Warren:

You may be wondering a few years from now why we haven't cured cancer.  This is a clue.

And on the subject of Elizabeth Warren, Congress has set its sights on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she designed in order to curb overpricing and fraud in financial services, like in those credit cards we all carry.  Along with that, they plan on deregulating the banking industry further by cutting back if not eliminating the Dodd-Frank Act and the Volcker Rule, which were intended to prevent the financial chaos and destruction of the 2008 Recession, you know, where people lost their houses because big banks were allowed to gamble them away.  And this bill is called -- are you ready for it? -- the Financial Choice Act.

Feeling the need to further mask their true intent, the House this week passed a bill that moved forward tsunami research AND tweak -- deregulate -- Dodd-Frank:

H.Res.934 - Providing for consideration of the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 34) to authorize and strengthen the tsunami detection, forecast, warning, research, and mitigation program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6392) to amend the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to specify when bank holding companies may be subject to certain enhanced supervision, and for other purposes.

Now this is something we might pay attention to.

If the Democratic Party, both state and national, were to send out alerts whenever an explosive bill comes to the floor and tell us 1) what it means and 2) why it matters, and in actual easy to understand English, we all might become more invested in seeing our interests served.

And yet.  All we get are scary images of Henry McMaster taking over for Nikki Haley.  Or vague threats of what a Trump presidency will do to our country.

Y'all got to do better, Democratic Party.  Because nobody is hearing you.  And sending out a fund raising email three days after Giving Tuesday trying to get us to cough up another $25 without giving us a solid reason is proof that you aren't hearing us.

Not as Dumb as They Look

Yes, we all laughed at John Boehner yelling "Hell, no!" on the House floor after Obama's win.  And then there was the fiasco after the 2012 republican loss wherein they all stood in a circle and jerked off to the tune of, "We have to figure out how to say the same thing, but make it sound different."  You know that tune.  Just like Tim Scott's voting record, the republicans have gotten away with blocking and stalling any Democratic program that might succeed.

But wait.  Last week heralded a new day for bipartisanship, as Congress passed the bill that would "permanently" fix the threat of doctors refusing to accept Medicare due to lower rates of reimbursement.  Jon Stewart mocked the national moment of joy expressed at Congress at last getting together to do their job.

I am wondering, on the other hand, what we gave up in order to get those fools to agree.  Because what has been happening in Congress lately is a series of compromises that make the republicans look like real leaders while our Democratic goals and programs are being eroded.

Take the Human Trafficking Victims' Fund that just passed the Senate with 99 votes.  In March, this bill got bollixed up because the creeps in the republican party tied it to an anti-abortion amendment.  Fortunately somebody woke up and read the bill, and the media attention killed that sleazy plan.  Or so we thought.

These days, it seems that everybody wants to stop human trafficking, although it seems to me that this has become a term that can mean anything to anybody, and I doubt that the republican supporters are really planning on helping Mexicans who have been abused by coyotes after paying their way into the country.  But whatever we think it is, fighting human trafficking is so hot that a bill was even passed into law and signed by Governor Haley in South Carolina on April 2 of this year.

In the Senate, the compromise over which everyone is taking bows, involves splitting funds in a way that in no way no how can money for "health services" be spent on abortions.  Never let it be said that a Democrat would be unwilling to compromise when it comes to a woman's right to have an abortion.  Been abused?  Raped?  Coerced?  Have some "health services" sans abortion.

And then there is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which could be subtitled "a million ways to die at the hands of the republican congress."  The plan seems to be that the more Senator Elizabeth Warren works to increase protections from big banks and their hi-jinx, the more creative become the wordsmiths in the republican party, assisted of course by Wall Street, ALEC, and all those other helpful denizens of the one percent.  So as Warren calls for more regulation and demands for accountability, the House has passed a bill which would require additional advisory boards (including what they call "small business") and to offset the cost of these boards, has PUT CAPS ON FUTURE FUNDING OF THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU.

So thanks, Ronald Reagan, your plan to strangle government continues to thrive.

All I am saying is, this new era of "bipartisan politics" that has dawned in Washington is Democrats being roped in and hornswoggled.  If you want to know what is really going on, follow the comments of those who are opposing all these great moments in unity:  Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren.  Now is the time to find the truth-tellers on the left, and not those who are either so naive or so concerned with being re-elected that they will compromise away the things we have fought for, like financial reform and women's rights.  When you see a 99-0 vote, ask yourself what we've lost, because the chances are pretty darned good that we have.

Two Smart Candidates ... and Tim

This is what the debate for South Carolina US Senator was not:  it was not slick (despite the matching suits worn by Tim Scott and moderator Charles Bierbauer).  There were not a lot of fancy words or high-minded philosophies.  After all, this was South Carolina.  Instead, the responses by all three candidates were predictable, and if we did not know the candidates, left us with very little information other than how comfortable each was in front of the camera.

It turns out that the women, Independent candidate Jill Bossi and Democratic candidate Joyce Dickerson, shared similar views on most topics.  Both are strongly pro-women, pro-choice, both in favor of strengthening benefits for seniors and veterans.  They also (along with Tim) threw out the ever-popular "secure our borders" and "improve education" because who would not?

If you know Joyce at all, you are probably aware that she is not a formidable public speaker.  She has the tendency to occasionally mix up words.  But her understanding of politics and her democratic beliefs are strong ones.  I can see her in the Senate fighting for the middle class, as well as for those who are struggling to earn a living wage, and for children with inadequate health care and nutrition, and students who are unable to compete because of our government's unwillingness to commit to education.

If the race had been between Jill Bossi (I) and Tim Scott (Tea Party Republican), Bossi would get my vote easily.  But what concerns me about Bossi is her emphasis on her willingness to compromise, to find the middle ground, in an America where there have been too many compromises to an uncompromising right-wing.  Our middle ground is far right of where it was in the 60's and 70's, and our environment, our health care, our education, our infrastructure, have all suffered the results.  Bossi emphasizes her business creds, and I fear that once in Congress she would be all too eager to lean toward the big business dollars and lobbyists that would come her way.  Jill Bossi says she wants to institute a "fair, flat tax," a term that sends chills up and down my spine.

Tim Scott, on the other hand, for all his grooming by the big guns that control him, when left to his own devices, will talk about pretending to work alongside "everyday people," clueless as to the condescension.  Right from his introductory comments, he talks about wanting to be in the US Senate so he can spend time with his family, and help build a future for his nephew.  Clumsy, maybe, but he pretty much lets us know with this Freudian slip that the rest of us "everyday people" don't feature much in his consciousness.  Matter of fact, please go to C-Span and listen to his introductory comments, because I just can't do them justice.  You really do want to hear him say in regards to Washington, that if it weren't for relatives, people wouldn't like him at all.

But let's please get back to the issues.  Actually, not the issues, just the platitudes, because that is what Tim is all about.  Somebody invented something called an "Opportunity Agenda" for Tim, and if you listen to him talk about it, you will walk away wondering just what he's going to do to create all this opportunity.  Because he won't tell you.  The answer to the economy is creating "certainty" and "stability" in the workplace.  Now you know this doesn't mean certainty and stability for the workers.  This is just Tim Scott bullshit for cutting corporate taxes and deregulation.  Which has continued to drag us into the dark ages since Ronald Reagan's handlers first packaged it for the American people.

Of course, Scott called upon the evil Obamacare and was even told to bring up Dodd-Frank, as in "Dodd-Frank and Obamacare" as reasons why our country was failing.  Like Mark Sanford debating the cardboard Nancy Pelosi, this is a matter of throwing out red meat to the snarling and brainless base.  I am hoping that more than a few of us heard him and said, "say what???"  Apart from just the stupid pat phrases, there were the bizarre "facts," like that our corporate tax rate is ten points higher than the rest of the world.  Or that through Nikki Haley's leadership Spartanburg and Greenville are at nearly 100% employment.  And responding to the comment about his missed votes, that he has a "99% voting record" -- whatever that means.

Scott goes on to say that he "voted to reduce interest rates on student loans," which plain old made my head spin around.  So I looked it up.  HR 4628, prettily called the "Interest Rate Reduction Act," also repeals parts of the Affordable Care Act...

  establishing and appropriating funds to the Prevention and Public Health Fund (a Fund to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs). Rescinds any unobligated balances appropriated to such Fund.  

This bill had something in it for nearly everybody to hate, from those on the right that opposed keeping student loan rates low, to those on the left who opposed this sneak attack on essential parts of the Affordable Care Act.  In fact, the only group that officially supported the bill was the Christian Coalition of America.  Which made it good enough for Tim Scott.  Funny, though, how Scott made it sound like it was the student loan part of the bill he was supporting and not the strangling Obamacare part....

Oh, my, I wish I was a better writer, I could write a comedy and a tragedy on Tim Scott.  What's most important about the Senate debate for me, however, is that I got to hear just how lame he is next to the two smart women running against him.  I also had the chance to hear Jill Bossi, who was well-spoken and has lots of good ideas.  But not enough.

Joyce Dickerson may not have had time to rehearse for the debate because she appears to be spending every moment of her waking day running to different parts of the state to introduce herself to voters.  She is running on a shoestring, and doesn't have the staff to prep her and polish her.  But I prefer my candidate without the polish.  She is knowledgeable and caring, and she is not in it for the money or the power.  She is not likely to sell us out for business interests, and she understands the difference between healthy compromise and caving in.

So I will continue to support Joyce Dickerson, and I hope you will as well.

Joyce Dickerson

for US Senate