Gullibility

I turned on the TV last night, and there was that crazed, ugly man screeching.  "And more people like me now than they did before the election."  Or some such bullshit.  I turned him off.  But I knew that, even though all the polls say otherwise, his lie about his popularity had its impact.  The ugly crowd loved it.  And because of that, it chilled the rest of us.

Oh, yes, we have laughed at the stupidity of those who believed his lies.  But they voted for him, and there he is.  Which makes us feel really vulnerable.  And when Dems feel vulnerable, we just might do some dumb things.

Yes, the Trump base is easily manipulated; his right-wing fans, led by their fear and envy will follow child molesters and indeed, continue to love Trump if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.  But we liberals are also easily manipulated, by using our values and our guilt against us.  We don't have to look farther than the Clintons to see the truth to that.

Way back when Bill was governor and running for president, the right wing tried to nail him on his obfuscations and infidelities.  When that didn't work, they shifted just a tad to his wife.  And they hit the jackpot.  Not because she was guilty of a damned thing, but because she was a woman, and a strong one who fought for the ideals the right wing hated.  They couldn't win on the sex stuff, or the not-inhaling business, but they scored with Hillary's legal career and business dealings.  And they took down as many people close to her as they could.

Again, not because she was found guilty of anything.  The attacks and innuendos worked every time, for thirty years.  Was she the smartest crook for getting away with the crimes they had been accusing her of all these years?  Or was she just the nerviest criminal, getting away with dirty dealings in plain sight?  The result of thirty years of accusations is that we Dems forgot who Hillary actually is and felt uneasy about her; we couldn't tell you why, but we just didn't trust her.  Or we remembered that we heard something about something she did that was shady.

Instead of remembering her lifelong battle for children's health and her fight to bring independence to women in third world countries, we remember that we laughed at her pantsuits and changing hairstyles.  We criticized her for staying with Bill, and you know we would have criticized her for leaving him.  But the fact that she had financial dealings made it so much easier to accuse her of crimes, to question her honesty in every sphere of her life.  To walk away feeling that there was just... something... we didn't trust about her.

And during the 2016 election season, instead of listening to her speeches, we listened to every damn pundit talk about how she was as unpopular as Donald Trump, and we watched as the media flooded us with Trump's campaign rants and Hillary's email investigation.  Remember when CNN and MSNBC carried Hillary's stump speech live?  No, you don't, because it didn't happen.  It didn't take a bot or a troll to turn our heads; whatever possessed James Comey to publicly carry water for the republican email witch hunt (and we have yet to find out what exactly motivated him to go so far against his principles and the law), the media was happy to spread the bad news. 

A few years ago, there was a guy who was beginning a campaign to run against Lindsey Graham.  He was smart, he was funny, he was unafraid.  And you know that he had to go.  It didn't take much.  Rumor had it that he wasn't even from here, and that he had had some shady financial dealings, and -- oh my god -- he had pranked some republican or other.

In the same circumstances, republicans would have ignored the "accusations," or laughed at them, or defended them.  But we Dems wouldn't let our guy run.  We couldn't stop him, but we damned sure wouldn't help him.  To the point, I am still embarrassed to say, that he was not allowed to come and introduce himself to a group where candidates had always been invited to stop by.

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about the candidate who is running against Joe Wilson.  You remember Joe Wilson, the ignorant piece of work that shouted "You lie!" at president Obama during a speech to Congress.  He is being opposed by the most wonderful woman you could imagine:  smart, strong, activist, and someone who stands up for our values and our lives.  My friend's problem was that she had heard that she was once a republican.

If that is all it takes to back off from supporting a Democratic candidate, we can honestly say that we are doing the work of our opponents for them.

I can't get very excited about the bots and trolls crawling around Facebook.  The Russians aren't doing any more to us than actual republicans have been doing to us since Reagan's handlers brought together big business and the moral majority, the latter of which was neither moral nor a majority of anything other than bigots.

We could use a good dash of cynicism, and a lot more intelligence as we approach the 2018 election.

We have so much information at our fingertips, there is no reason we should be spreading rumors.  And when we run across something that sounds suspect, it takes seconds to go to Google and look for confirmation.  We know the major media outlets and, yes they have biases and make mistakes, but they are the fastest way to discount a blatant lie.  And when media gets a detail wrong, let them know it.

Candidates have Facebook pages and websites.  They are often on Youtube.  If you hear something about a candidate that makes you wonder, check it out, don't just spread it around.

And most important, we need to remind ourselves what we are doing here.  We are voting for candidates that will work to promote issues we believe are important.  We are not voting for the candidate with the least controversial college years, or the one who has never made a mistake.  We are voting for people who will go to county council or the statehouse or congress and fight for all of us.  And should our candidate lose the primary, we need to fight just as hard for second best, because second best is going to be a whole lot better than what the other party is offering.

The republicans know they could lose their power in November.  What republicans do when they are afraid they are going to lose is, they double down.  They fight with more viciousness and greater lies.  And because we are a country being ruled by billionaires, there is lots of money being funneled into the coffers of anyone willing to do their bidding.

We need look no further than the ridiculous and ugly ads that were run against Jon Ossof last year, when republicans realized the seat wasn't going to be easily won.  And, for those of us who weren't so easily manipulated by videos of college parties, they horrified us by pointing out that Ossof lived just outside the district in which he was running!

Archie Parnell's special election campaign ran pretty much under the radar, and to our delight, he lost by only 3 points.  He is running again in November, and now he has the attention of the republican party.  And they will throw everything they've got at him.  I imagine they will start with attacking him for being a Goldman Sachs elite.  Oh, the irony, but it works every time.  Just like accusing someone of having been a republican works just as well as accusing someone of being a liberal.

Much as the right wing has promoted the fiction that Hillary is crooked, they have spent years frightening republican voters with the image of Nancy Pelosi and her liberal -- read, evil -- agenda.  Mark Sanford did it when he had to run against a smart woman a few years ago.  Couldn't have possibly beaten her on the issues, so he ran against Pelosi.  And NOT the issues Pelosi represents.  He ran against a woman that the republican party had invented over the years as a symbol of the devil.  You know, like they do with Hillary and Elizabeth Warren.

I recently watched supporters of accused pedophile Roy Moore state proudly that they would support him over a Democrat, the word spoken in a tone that clearly implied sins far worse that pedophilia.  I see that we have tried to move away from the word "liberal" and we on the left are preferring to call ourselves progressives.  Until the right-wing focuses their laser linguistic experts on it at least. 

We have let the right wing control our message through their  attacks and innuendos.  Yes, those repeated attacks make their supporters more unthinkingly and rabidly loyal.  And they make us on the receiving end defensive and queasy.  We find ourselves backing away from Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, two of the strongest defenders of Democratic values.  We also lost Congress because candidates backed off from Obama, believing the hype that the Affordable Care Act fight had rendered him toxic.

We don't need to convert Trump supporters to win in 2018.  We need to find candidates that will fight for all of us and throw our support behind them.  That means we need to know where they stand on the issues, and not be manipulated by the rumor mills, whether they come from Russian trolls or republican trolls.

We need to encourage debate throughout the primary season, because here in South Carolina, that is the way we Dems will be heard.  We need to cheer on the candidates who have the courage to step up to run knowing that they will have to fight rumors and lies, and knowing how hard it will be to even be heard.  And after the primaries, dammit, we need to get together and fight for the winner.

Hone your instincts.  If you hear something that doesn't sound right, check it out.  And keep going back to the reason we are doing this.  We aren't voting for best looking or best personality.  This is about our values.  This is about rights that have been decimated, and about taking them back.  This is too important for us to allow ourselves to be manipulated.  And we are better than that.

When They Go Low...

In that sparkling election campaign that was Hillary Clinton's, Michelle Obama led the call and response:  "When they go low... we go high."  Problem is, and the election of 2016 is proof, when they go low... we lose.

This is what republicans are good at.  In The Cynic, a disturbing book about the political career of Mitch McConnell, we find a gawky, not-very-popular young man who supported women's reproductive rights (!) as well as collective bargaining (!) in his early years.  He soon found out, though, just how sweet was the taste of victory, won in any way possible.  And the easiest way to win was by attacking your opponent.  And claiming to support any cause that would win the election, followed by enacting legislation that benefits the wealthy and powerful.

This is the republican playbook.  The moral vacuity that is the republican party will stoop to any depth to win.  The wealthy and powerful pay their way.  Voters hear what they want to hear, and believe the lies they are told writ large:  in ad buys, billboards, Russian fake news (yeah, that's what fake news was until Donald Trump appropriated it to his narcissistic ends).

We Dems just aren't comfortable with lying to win an election.  We shy away from attacking our opponent, whether it is because of our values or fear of retaliation.  I don't believe we need to, or could possibly, stoop as low as has the republican party.  But we have let republican strategists beat us to a pulp while we fight among ourselves.

I imagine that republican opposition research just can't be any more fun these days.  What happens is:  they find some questionable detail about a candidate, toss it out, and watch Dems fight about it.  And if they can't find some small actual thing, they make something up.

Take Jon Ossoff.  It wasn't that long ago that he ran the most exciting campaign since Bernie, in the truly red (don't get me started on gerrymandering) district in Georgia from which Trump's handlers plucked the evil Tom Price to Orwellize the Department of Health and Human Services.  It is no accident that they have been plucking their deplorables from redder than red districts (South Carolina has been fertile ground).  But Georgia's 6th, while solidly republican, also has its share of intelligent republicans, who chose Trump over Hillary by only one percent.

So imagine their alarm when republicans saw the populist excitement over candidate Jon Ossoff.  Of course, they did not spend much time biting their nails.  They went into action, fund raising and scheming.  They (RNC, PACs, and those even shadier groups) went into overdrive.  Had the situation been reversed, Dems might have made excuses for why they probably wouldn't win, or complained about how unfair it was that someone from the other side was giving them a tough race (only Donald Trump, in his robocalls, did that, telling voters not to let Democrats STEAL THE ELECTION).  Republicans immediately regrouped.  McConnell's playbook from his early years proves to have been the gift that keeps on giving.  When you are running against a formidable candidate there are two things that work:  lying about your opponent, running attack ads, and running attack ads that lie about your opponent (three things...).

Beginning with an ad showing clips that under a more, shall we say, objective framework, would have us think: "What a fun guy, and he sure is clever."  But in the hands of the Congressional Leadership Fund, it became a dark-tinged piece of hysteria that nonetheless made national news.  And why shouldn't it?  Republicans and republican supporters know how to get oppo research and negative messages into every crevice of the American media.  That success was followed by pieces of work that became progressively more desperate and evil, from falsely linking Ossoff to "Bay area liberals" and Nancy Pelosi, to a last truly disgusting ad that pronounces that "Now the unhinged left is endorsing and applauding shooting republicans."  Of course, once it was out, it was an easy matter for opponent Karen Handel to denounce the ad.  But fact is, it may have gotten those last crazies out to the polls, for which she is no doubt quietly grateful.

Yes, there was some grumbling about the ugliness of these ads.  But what did not happen was Democrats coming out in droves to talk to the voters about what they were seeing, that is, a desperate, nasty effort to manipulate the election to vote for the least popular candidate of the two.

If you are planning on running for office as anything other than a right-wing republican these days, you need to start with the assumption that the first thing republicans are going to do is find dirt on you.  If it's not dirt, they will make it so.  If they can't find anything to turn into dirt, they will lie.  So you need to tell the voters that this is going to happen.  You need to say:

"Republicans are going to do everything they can to win.  They will turn over everything in my past to find something they can twist to make it look bad.  They will distort everyday aspects of my life to make them look questionable.  They will lie.  They will put ads on TV that you won't want your kids to watch....  Why will they do this?  Because they can't run honestly on the issues.  They know that if you take a good look at their candidate, you will see that they don't have your interests in mind.  They know that if you are able to hear my message, without their lies and distortions, you will vote for me.  So know that, and let's run this campaign on the issues."

And you need to say it and say it again, every time there is a negative ad or attack.  Keep bringing voters back to the issues.  Keep reminding them why your opponent is going so low.

The other thing we Dems need to all get together on is getting together on our candidates.  These are people who for the most part don't have donors with deep pockets.  If they do, as did Hillary, you can bet republicans (talk about the pot and the kettle) will bring up their ties to Wall Street.  If they have gone to Harvard, they will make the Ivies sound like dirty words.  For gods' sake, they will bring up Nancy Pelosi and make it sound like you cohabit.

And here is where they get us, every time.  I am still hearing the smackdown between Bernie and Hillary supporters.  Trump taunted us by talking about his love for Bernie, gloated in the in-fighting.  Could he have done better after Bernie's admittedly half-hearted pleas to support Hillary than to have us turn against each other?

And then they threw out the Ossoff bones and sat back and watched us fight.  Does he support Pelosi, and why didn't he stand up for Pelosi?  Republican hate of all things liberal even became, "Is Jon Ossoff really a liberal, or is he just pretending?"  After the attack ads claiming that Ossoff wasn't really a small business owner, I heard Democrats repeating their concern that he wasn't really a small business owner.  Boy-o, talk about getting bang for your buck.

In some ways it is truly nice that Democrats don't toe the line the way republicans do.  But it is time to get political, folks.  I may have my problems with the Democratic Party, but I value any candidate that steps up to what is likely going to be a bloodbath.  Republicans don't just control all three branches of government, plus most of the states.  They have made sure that their tentacles reach the media and college campuses, where they successfully divert attention from their own manipulations by attacks on "liberal media" and "liberal college campuses."

And what they will do every time in every way, is support their candidate.  Right-wing republicans represent corporate America.  Period.  And they will do anything they need to do to get that victory.  McConnell is the master at controlling the message and the race.  Ryan knows where his financial bread is buttered.  And voters routinely mistake the unity of those who run the republican machine for truth.

Democrats can "go high," but we need to recognize the reality of politics.  You are not going to get your perfect candidate.  That means you confront a candidate that threatens not to support those democratic causes that make us Democrats.  But when it comes down to the vote, you ALWAYS vote for the best person.  That means Hillary over Trump, no matter how your heart aches for Bernie.  That means Archie Parnell even though you could see Alexis Frank, another woman on the floor of the House over the years becoming a national treasure.  And that means, stop chasing those nasty old bones the republicans throw out so they can step back and watch us fight.

About Pelosi.  She is the person who brought a bunch of hissing cats together to get the Affordable Care Act passed.  And Hillary.  She is the one who has fought internationally for the rights of women, standing up to Putin knowing that he would be a nasty and powerful enemy.  When republicans are done with them as useful targets, they will turn their sights on Elizabeth Warren (as both Trump and McConnell have already done).

These women are being targeted, not only because they are women, but because they are smart, powerful women.  And they tell truth to power, and to everyone else who will listen.  We need them, and we need to support them, wholeheartedly.  Shame on those who say Pelosi is too old to be effective, when republicans stand behind the old white men who are united with Trump in his plan to destroy our democracy (After the Georgia election there was a time when I was hearing Dems say Pelosi is too old AND Ossoff was too young, both bones tossed out by republicans.).  And shame to those who have let the unproved allegations of thirty years keep them from taking a look at all Hillary has done for us.

Fact is, when they feel threatened they attack.  What threatens them is candidates that will fight for the people and for democratic values.  And the louder we shout, the more voters respond, the bigger and uglier the attacks.  We know this.  We can fight back.

2018 is happening.  Let's stand with our courageous candidates.  Let's stop fighting among ourselves; let's stop listening to the lies and rumors put out by republican opponents.  Let us vote for our values, but let us be loud in our outrage at the perversion of our democracy that has been created by money and power.

We can go high when they go low, but we need to get down to their level to look them in the eye when we call them out.

Dems with Time on Their Hands

I have been known in these pages to gripe about the Democratic Party standing on the sidelines while good candidates struggle to be heard against well-connected and well-heeled republicans.  I have urged in a strident tone party Democrats to jump in and help level the playing field.

Well, be careful what you wish for.

While Tea Bagger Mick Mulvaney is fulfilling all his wet dreams by being able to use the eraser end of his pencil to cut from the budget every penny his former constituents depend on to survive, the race to replace him in South Carolina's District 5 has heated up.

In Kansas, in a district in which Trump won by 27 points, the House seat in last week's special election went to the republican candidate, but beating Democrat James Thompson by less than 7 points.  It appears that, while actual Democratic voters are fired up and ready to go, the Democratic Party took a look at the race and said, "Nah, too hard."

In Georgia's 6th, Jon Ossoff has had such a head of steam by virtue not only of his great credentials, a strong endorsement by Congressman John Lewis and the excitement of voters, that the Democratic Party has leaped into the battle.  He has been in the news for months, beginning with Rachel Maddow's interview with Daily Kos' David Nir, in which she scolded Party Dems for sitting on the sidelines and ended up lighting a fire under them.  He is so hot that republicans are paying for ridiculous attack ads to counter the groundswell of support.  And don't be surprised if the Trump-and-Pence show makes an appearance.

I am proud to say that here in South Carolina's 5th, while the republican clown car predictably is full (seven candidates) we have had three good people stand up to run in the Democratic Primary for Mulvaney's seat.

Here's the thing.  A few weeks ago, to my amazement, I got an email from Daily Kos endorsing Archie Parnell.  Not too long after that I heard that he was being endorsed by former Congressman John Spratt.  Then, last week, my email box was hit by pleas for donations from familiar names like Robby Mook, Daniel Barash, and the candidate himself.

Since I am not in the district, my first thought was to wonder who had given away the email list.  I hadn't gotten any mass emails from the woman I am endorsing, Alexis Frank.

And the publicity has been skewed.  The Union Daily Times reported on an event appearance by a Parnell staff member by referring to Parnell as "the sole Democrat" running.  Take this headline in The State:  "In SC Congress race, Goldman Sachs executive faces student."  Maybe if Alexis was a guy, the headline might have been "...Goldman Sachs executive faces army veteran."

This was an octopus of a candidate.  Suddenly he was everywhere.  It was a slick political race of the type we don't usually see in sleepy South Carolina towns.

When I first became aware of the race, I had sent an email to Alexis, asking for her positions on an array of issues.  She responded immediately, and I wrote endorsing her on my blog.  Parnell may look harmless,

and the video of his announcement with his wife wisecracking in the background was certainly clever.  But behind it all is the fact that he is a former Goldman Sachs senior advisor -- a fact that he does not explicitly mention, merely talking about his international financial expertise.

And with that, along with all the fund raising spam I have been getting from the various and sundry familiar names, and with the professional slickness of the campaign, I realized that Parnell's connections come not just from GS, but from Hillary.

I can almost picture those big guys at GS urging Archie to run.  And political contacts being made.

I hate to say it.  I believe Hillary's heart is in the right place, as are the campaign staff that don't really want to be twiddling their thumbs while Democratic candidates fall in special elections.  But here's the thing.

A primary is a different animal.  A primary is where the Democratic Party gets a chance to make headlines, to get people to show up.  It is a time when the Party can say, "look at all these great candidates that want to run for office.  Give them a listen."  It is a way of making people aware that, for one thing, there is an election happening, and for another, that there are real issues that need to be talked about.  And we Democrats have a few really good people that aren't afraid to get up there and debate those issues.

And, by the way, it gives the eventual winner the experience and confidence to go on and make their case to all the people.

Instead, we have the national Democratic Party coming into our town and putting their finger on the scale.  Much like what the DNC did under Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, when she decided that it would be better to try to block Bernie Sanders from the spotlight because he might hinder Hillary Clinton's shot at the nomination.  When in fact, the more the merrier should have been the call.

Meanwhile, Parnell never got back to my email asking for his stand on the issues, but at least now he has issues listed on his website.  It concerns me that his primary cause seems to be simplifying the tax code so we all can pay less in taxes.  That is a republican game, wherein they throw a few dollars at the middle class, millions more to the 1%, resulting in budget cuts to important programs to cover the loss in taxes.

The other concern I have is that he is running on his ability to "work with" republicans.  Wow.  So we have a Congress run by an extreme right-wing party which purpose is to cut needed programs from the working class and the poor, and Archie wants to work on compromise?  For too many years our party has been Charlie Brown hoping to get a chance at the football.  We make deals that cost us dearly, like Obama backing off on a public option so that the health insurance industry could retain control over the market, for that matter Ted Kennedy "working with" W. on the Medicare drug plan that would fatten the already bulging pockets of the pharmaceutical industry.

We saw President Obama get smacked around by a party that will do anything to win, including refusing to hold hearings for a moderate, well-respected Supreme Court nominee.  That is an insult to the Constitution that I believe even Scalia might have balked at.

It is a sad day when once again, the Democratic Party chases down the shiny object instead of doing the smart thing -- and more important, the right thing.

So here is what we can do about our SC District 5 special election.  The primary is coming up fast, on May 2.

1.  Continue to spread the word.  If you aren't in District 5, you surely know somebody who knows somebody who lives there.  Facebook, phone calls, or over Easter dinner, introduce people to Alexis Frank.

2.  Tell them why it is important to vote in the primary.  Let them know we don't need another representative of Wall Street going to Washington to simplify the tax code in order to make his old buddies richer.  And we don't need someone who is eager to work with republicans to cut programs.  It chills me when I hear people even suggest "working with" Trump on health care.  Because I guarantee, whatever we gain we will have more to lose.  We have been sliding down that slippery slope of compromise for too many decades.

3.  Those who live in District 5, show up whenever there is an event.  Support Alexis, ask questions of her and Parnell.  Ask Parnell the tough questions he hasn't yet had to answer.  What would he do about the minimum wage?  About raising the Social Security retirement age?  About vouchers for schools?  What business incentives does he support/oppose?  Where does he stand on women's reproductive rights?  Funding Planned Parenthood?  What rights should religious institutions have?  What would he do about campaign finance?  What should be done about immigration?

4.  Donate.  She's like us.  She doesn't have Wall Street bankrolling her.  That's why we need her fighting for us.  But she needs all we can give.

And Vote, Vote, Vote.  Remember that these special elections have low turnout, and getting out there, and taking someone with you, will make a difference.

Let's show the Goldman Sachs / Hillary bunch that we Dems can make our own decisions among ourselves.  And when we have a primary winner and we really need the power, the expertise and the deep pockets, we hope they will stand there with us.

Alexis Frank for Congress

SC District 5

Primary Tuesday May 2

Playing at the Town Hall

One thing you can say about our own Lindsey Graham is that he is having a good ole time.  I watched all I could tolerate of his performance at his town hall on April 1, about a half hour.  Of the two of us, he was the only one really enjoying himself.

He knew he was being televised, and he had a full house, in a way a captive audience at his mercy.  Which I must say was a pretty clever turnaround after all the legislators who have been caught as though running red-handed from a crime scene.  Which they pretty much were, given the horrendous acts they had committed on their constituents over the past years.

Anyway, the thing about Lindsey is that he does a smooth transition, back and forth, from a level headed, rational person to a rabid right wingnut.  Likewise, his strut across the stage and his ready laugh go from charming to a bit maniacal.

What he did on Saturday was maintain control even in the face of a furious, fed up audience.  They were actually constituents, but he sure made it feel like they were an audience.

He started off with Russia.  Russia was easy.  I could tell he knew he nailed it with the audience, because we all know that Russia is the bad guy.  Trump was another easy one, because by now we all have shorthand for what we think of him, and we knew he agreed.  And that even though he hoped the Senate could do a sound investigation, the most important thing was not to get in the way of the FBI.

Once he got us all warmed up he tossed the bucket of cold water at us.  Gorsuch.  He’s been playing that tune since the nomination.  Lindsey Graham LOVES Neil Gorsuch.  How could he not?  Gorsuch is as slick as they come – as I learned to say in the South, he cleans up real good.  But underneath that well-dressed white haired dignified suit of armor is an angry, mean control freak.  Gorsuch is going to act out every damn thing Graham can only dream of.  He will consistently rule for corporations, which I don’t even think is the most important issue for Graham.  More important, he will take down women, dashing any hope for reproductive rights, worker rights, and basically, self-determination here in the 21^st century.

Because Lindsey truly has a thing about women.  He could be reasonable about Obama, but when it comes to Hillary, his hatred is visceral.  And lately, you can see it in his eyes when he talks about Susan Rice.  Women in power.  Competent women.

So when those types of issues come up, that’s when we see crazy Lindsey.  That’s when facts fly out the window.  I believe this is why his defense of Gorsuch on Saturday was so shrill.  As though he had no idea that the nominee was even more right-wing than Scalia, he told the group that if they couldn’t see how qualified Gorsuch is then “you are blinded by your own partisanship.”  And that our problem with Gorsuch was entirely to do with Trump (and not Merrick Garland):  “You want to set the election aside because you can’t accept the results – that’s your problem,” adding, inevitably, that Trump is being investigated by the FBI, big deal, “so was Hillary Clinton.”  And of course, bringing up the made-up “Biden rule,” as though he has so much respect for Biden’s philosophy that he would follow him anywhere.

After that things went downhill.

There was the usual “Obamacare is failing,” followed by the very strange accusation that the ACA “was not designed to get us health care but to get single payer through the back door.”  A truly through-the-looking-glass moment as I recalled progressives’ anger at Obama, who had not just omitted the possibility of single-payer altogether, but also did away with a “public option” at the polite request of the insurance industry.

When that idiocy brought about some loud boos, he laughed and said, “Good fun!  This is better than going to the Flower Show.”  And proceeded to tell folks that if they like single payer, well, Canada has it.  And if we want his insurance we can join the military, apparently believing that his stint in the military is what makes him deserving of government health care, and not just being an American.  Adding that the VA system is a failure not because it does not have the funding to streamline and have more doctors, but because it is a monopoly.  Ending with a fantastical suggestion for improving health care with a combination of managed care for people of high risk (anybody remember the abomination known as managed care?), tax credits, and allowing sales across state lines.  Done and done.  Everybody insured.

About Betsy DeVos:  “She has spent most of her life working on alternatives to failing schools.”  The alternative being taking money out of public schools to profit private schools.

Around about that time, Graham had a brief attack of sanity.  Regarding social security and medicare, he offered that those with high incomes, like himself, should pay more, take less.  But then came the trade-off:  We should all be willing to raise the retirement and Medicare ages.

Now this has been a bee in Lindsey's bonnet for a very long time.  Way back in 2011, I made an ad for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee pleading with Lindsey not to change the social security retirement age.  It was actually featured on Keith Olbermann's Countdown; it was my fifteen minutes of fame and a truly proud moment.

Point being, that Lindsey is so out of touch with his constituents that he has no clue how many of us finally retire with aches and pains and actual disabilities at age 62, or force ourselves to work to age 66.  He has dismissed us whiners by saying we can just apply for disability, as though his gang of criminals has made it real easy for people who are hurting to cash in.  He has no idea how, thanks to folks on his side of the aisle, Medicare has been chipped and hacked at until it requires costly private supplements, another boon for the insurance industry.  I don't know how people survived before the pharmaceutical boondoggle known as Medicare Part D, but the way it stands now, with the drug plan, we are all in a position where cutting meds in half or living without them -- or not -- is a real option.

And then there is Planned Parenthood, where Lindsey has his final split from reality.  Again, a woman thing.  He doesn't much care about facts at this point, saying that the debate about funding "is about providing abortion services."

Lindsey is not an idiot.  He knows the government does not pay for abortion services -- although they damn well should -- yet he contends that this is the crux of the issue.  And this sometimes rational legislator is willing to not just vote for, but support cutting a truly essential source of women's reproductive health care because they also do abortions.  Like his blind spot with Hillary, the thought of women making their own choices about their bodies brings him to near Trump-level irrationality.

And I am just sick to death of having these unmarried old white guys obsessing over control of women's bodies.

But we are indeed left with crazy Uncle Lindsey.  He might toss you a quarter, but then you have to listen to him rant about Hillary and abortion if you want to keep it.  Unlike the other unmarried right wingnut who "represents" South Carolina in the Senate, at least Lindsey's head clears every once in awhile.  Is it good enough?

Graham has fought off challenges from the right.  He has lately blown away what the state Democratic Party seemed to think was its best chance, a challenger with the all the right stands on the issues, but one who was outmatched in the ability to take center stage.

Invincible?  I'm afraid it would take lots of money and a candidate brimming with personality and chutzpah, who could talk to the folks as though they were having barbecue and beer, and damned, knew what they were going through with that dad-gum gub'mint and was shore gonna fix it.  Somebody who could make even a thick-headed southerner admit that they didn't want their nutty next-door neighbor carrying a gun, or their teenage daughter having to have a baby when that nasty boy she was with got her knocked up.

That would surely do it.  And there's somebody out there just dying to step up. 

The Truthless Presidency

The first time I heard Donald Trump speak as a candidate, he said that Obamacare was so bad that even if you got hit by a truck you wouldn't be covered.  At that time I had been covered by the ACA for over a year and found that it wasn't just really "affordable," but it was the best coverage I had ever had.  The alarms went off in my head and haven't stopped since.

The man is a liar.  What we do with that is what truly concerns me.  We have never had a pathological liar as president, or even as far as I can recall, as a candidate.  I believe that, without both his celebrity and wealth, his apparent lies would have discredited and disqualified him from his first trip down that escalator.  When, by the way, he paid $50 per head for extras in the crowd.

But those who support Trump don't just support him, they crave him.  They feel about Trump pretty much the way I felt about Paul McCartney when I was 14 years old.  They would believe anything he said and follow him off any cliff, assuming he was fully aware of what he was doing and knew better than anyone else that it was the right thing to do.

Rationalization knows no better friend than the Trump supporter.  The proof of that has been over the past couple of weeks, as his past promises and claims have fallen by the wayside.

The most oft-repeated of course is that he would lock Hillary up.  In a cross between a WWF chant and one delivered at a Third Reich rally, the crowd couldn't wait for the moment they could start to yell, "Lock her up."  It had been a proud moment during the convention, and several speakers, some of whom are now in the Trump cabinet, ran with the cry.  In the true promotional spirit of the event, t-shirts had already been printed with the chilling slogan, along with Hillary behind bars and other similarly ugly and extremely un-American and undemocratic sentiments.

I would like to say that this was a new low in politics, but the Obama presidency was what truly set the animals free of their restraints.  Hitler mustaches on Obama's face along with obscene references to his ancestry have just become the norm for the supremacist lover of free speech over the past eight years.

And Donald Trump may not be "like smart," but he has an uncanny sense of what brings the crowds to the carnival -- and what shocks and intimidates his opponents.  So he caught a whiff of that mob mentality and harnessed the power.  It worked, too.  While the crowd went wild, the media spent a year and a half silenced while Trump ran rampant over the truth.  And while they lacked the spirit to defend the truth, they still, like deer in the headlights, kept the cameras on while the abominations grew.

If Donald Trump is a stupid man, and he is, his followers are mindless and devoted believers.  When he tells a lie, they believe it.  When it is proven to be utterly false, they still believe it.  When Trump and his minions finally admit the lie, the believers know that he had a good reason for telling it.

And he is happy to confirm it.  Trump, these days, has been inoculating his followers by simply explaining what he was thinking and that now he's changed his mind.  "Lock her up:"  "that plays great before the election -- now we don't care, right?"  And while the first reaction may be that of disorientation, it doesn't take long for his fans to get it:  he just said it to get elected, what a great idea.

Except that that may also be a lie.  When Trump starts to actually take heat for his ideas exploding in his face, I have no doubt "Lock her up" will resurface.  That herd of sycophants that comprises our republican Congress have already shown us that there is no expiration date on hating Hillary; it's been working for them for decades, with the enthusiastic help of the media.  Except that this time Trump will turn on Congress the instant it becomes expedient; a few days ago he called Paul Ryan "genius" and added, "now if he ever goes against me I'm not going to say that."

And so, having a presidential candidate prove that the brazen lie is the path to power, and do it more brazenly than the congress critters, has sealed the fate of this republic.  And our society.  The president can now ignore laws with the blessing of a congress that will accept, just as do his followers, whatever he tells us today.  And taking it from the Trump playbook, who got it from Putin, it doesn't matter if the rules change, wrong is now right and after all, might is right.

And, have I said, he is a stupid man?  So what he says today not only won't make sense today, but may change tomorrow, to something that equally makes no sense.  And the media will chase it like a dog chasing a bus.  Or, every now and then, by chance, he may say something that does make sense.  And then the media will marvel at the possibility that he may be beginning to figure things out.  Except that won't be the case at all.  Unlike W., who did begin to figure some things out, and was guided by some kind of moral imperative, Trump is guided by no such thing.  Trump is guided by ego.  And money.  Period.

The "liberal media", while doing mea culpas about the mistakes they made by giving him exposure during the election season, yesterday spent hours slicing and dicing and analyzing his 74 second "interview" in his own hall of power.  When I turned the TV on this morning, they were still talking about it.  Yes, they were snarky, but as Donald Trump knows, a camera is a camera, and they always work in his favor.  And he will continue to use the media, because he knows how to make news, and the media has hours to fill.

Once again, I end by urging caution.  And cynicism.  We can all get caught up in this era of truthlessness.  It took only days for the Trump minions, after the media uncovered "fake news" and its influence on the election, to start to call anything questioning Trump -- you got it -- "fake news."  It didn't start this year, or even with the internet.  George Orwell called it "newspeak" and we have heard it with every invented right-wing word or phrase that has been created to curb our critical thinking skills with emotional rhetoric.

With Donald trump as the figurehead, and white supremacists making their way to the White House, with a greedy and insecure republican Congress and fearful Democrats rewriting the election to urge us all to listen to the neglected white men, we are about to take a step backward that will cause us to topple off that cliff.

These days, when the biggest liars claim to be calling out liars, we need to search for our moral compass.  Black people are being killed by cops, and white people are yelling for more guns.  Despite Dylann Roof and PizzaGate, radical right-wing Christians are calling for Muslims to be registered and tracked.  Gun deaths in the US far outnumber those in other major countries, yet legislators dog-whistle abortion and curtail women's reproductive rights in order to detract from gun deaths as well as death caused by poverty.

There is truth out there, and we can track it down.  But we need to ask the right questions.  If something doesn't make sense, it often only takes a minute to track down the source on this amazing internet.  A headline sounds incredible?  Shocking?  Too good/bad to be true?  Track it to the publisher.  Some jackass gets an award -- or gets promoted for a cabinet position?  Find out what organization is giving the award, or how the promoter connects with the nominee.

And then share the information.  We all need to be fighting for truth these days.  We'll be getting our lies straight from the leader of this currently free country soon, and the media is as vulnerable as the next person, so it is up to us to question, to learn, to inform, and, yes, to keep our media honest.

1984 comes late, but we have been warned about the normalization of Donald Trump, and we don't have to let it happen here.

Silver Lining

It occurs to me that Silver Lining is the color of the roofing tiles I am having installed this very minute, with great noise and fanfare, thanks to Hurricane Matthew.  There have been a few Hispanic men hammering away since minutes after seven, no coffee break, no stopping to talk, just hard, physical work.  I don't know if they are legal immigrants or not, and, honestly, nobody really cares if it keeps the price of their new roof lower.  All the protests are bullshit and dog whistles, shamefully attacking and victimizing good people.

But other than the coincidental title of this post, that is not what I need to talk about today.  Today I'm not quite through my period of mourning, for Hillary, for our country, for all the mean and ignorant or just naive and foolish voters who hammered their own nails into all our coffins on Tuesday.  But I have been commiserating with friends, and posting on facebook, and talking to my kids, and just as with George W. Bush in 2000, there is a day after this one too.

In fact, I have started to compile a list of all the things we have to look forward to during the "presidency" of He-Who-Just-Cannot-Be-Named.

For one thing, once they have worked through their own mourning, our wonderful comedians will have far better fuel than they would have had with Hillary in the White House.  I imagine Samantha Bee has only just been getting warmed up during the election season.  And Alec Baldwin, after working so hard to nail Trump, surely will be willing to show up (or call in) to SNL from time to time.  After all, we did miss Tina Fey's Sarah Palin once we didn't have the original around anymore.

I am also thinking that, given Trump's failure to grasp economics and his need to continue to be adored by those undereducated and underpaid workers, it is just possible that those of us liberals who work hard for too little will also reap the benefits, at least till the crash.  And as long as Donald doesn't insist on an ideological test for us white Americans, I should be okay for awhile.  It occurs to me with some relief that when the Bush years started I was on the low end of the wage scale, so when they ended I hadn't lost anything.  And now that I am attempting to live on Paul Ryan's social security, it seems not that much has changed.

Let's be honest, Donald Trump is a hoot.  He is every bit as stupid as W., but without the charm.  I am looking forward to those 365 day calendars of Trumpisms, and for a couple of reasons.  Not only were those idiotic gems ("More of our imports come from overseas.") something to brighten the dark days, but at the end of the Bush years I had stacks of scrap paper, perfect for phone messages and grocery lists.  And I am running low.

The younger generation, those we have been falsely accusing of being disinterested in politics, are infuriated.  They have truly had it with people trying to legislate their bodies, and sexual and marital choices.  They are sick to death of big corporations getting handouts from the government while they are spending their young lives trying to pay back student loans while failing to get a job that pays what they are worth.  They are not going to tolerate intolerance of race or religious choice.  The riots and protests over racism aren't going to stop, and women are not going to be forced to choose between an unwanted  pregnancy or a backroom abortion.  My son, who could be safely ensconced in his Ph.D. program, has told me that as he has become an activist, he knows he may someday be arrested, and it is a risk he is willing to take, a sentiment that fills me with pride even more than fear.

It will be fun to see the reaction of Trump supporters when Congress finally succeeds in repealing Obamacare.  They apparently had forgotten that before the ACA insurance premiums rose precipitously each year.  That will be a happy thing to watch, for me anyway.  As long as the Democrats are ready to yell loud and long when the right wingnuts try to blame it on Obama -- and probably Hillary as well.

And while they are targeting others for their failures, let us also remember that our new "president" gets bored with people when they have outlived their usefulness.  I can only imagine that it won't take long for the smugly pious Mike Pence to get under Donald's skin.  Imagine the name calling, followed eventually by the inevitable tweets.  And wouldn't it be fun at some point to hear that Pence has been "fired."

Of course, once Pence is gone it will be safe to impeach Trump.  And wasn't that clever of whichever brains-behind-the-boss manipulated Trump into choosing the white-haired Satan for his running mate?  Anyway, point being, nothing lasts forever in Trumpworld.

Along the way, it isn't going to take long for these characters to put the economy into the toilet.  And once it is there, I would say by 2018, the voters will be ready to appeal to a Democratic Congress to get us out of the toilet.

Again, though, let us not forget the Bush years.  And Trump's reigning philosophy.  When some lose, others win.  For a couple of years I had been able to afford amazing timeshare rental vacations, weeklong getaways at resorts for $500 a week, the cost of the annual maintenance fee for those who needed to recoup the cost more than take the vacation.  That ended with the resurgence of the economy (thanks, Obama).  Now, the vacations that went for $60 a night are up over $300 a night.  But when the economy tanks, and until they take away my social security, I'll be able to get in on a couple of weeks a year of vacations on the beach once again.

I honestly can't believe that here we are, doing the Bush years over again.  But our electorate truly does have a short memory.  And they are gullible, easily manipulated.  It takes the pain of an interminable war and the tanking of the economy to the point of loss of jobs and homes before they realize that those sugar-spun fantasies of cutting taxes in order to make us rich are just fantasies.

On Tuesday afternoon, before the end, it occurred to me that this race was more like Nixon than Bush.  The Trump crowd that adopted "lying Hillary" as their mantra and made excuses for Trump's blatantly illegal and immoral behaviors could have been the same hardhats that chanted that they would rather have a crook in the White House than Hubert Humphrey.

It is hilarious that in retrospect, Nixon doesn't look that bad.  It is criminal though, that our memories have been so thoroughly wiped of all the damage done in the Reagan years that Democratic and republican politicians alike would no sooner fail to mention Ronald Reagan than walk onto a stage without a flag pin.

And then there were the Bush years, as we went from a growing economy to the brink of disaster.  Bad choices made by a gullible president at the behest of the evil Dick Cheney.  And surrounded by a cabinet of ideological idiots.

And finally, here we are again, with a growing economy, a strong military, better foreign relations than we have had for quite a while, more jobs and even wages slowly rising.   Instead of Bill Clinton, we have the most admirable couple to grace the White House maybe in my memory.  And instead of Al Gore, we have Hillary Clinton.

Instead of the evil capitalist Dick Cheney behind the wheel, we have the evil religious fanatic Mike Pence.  And then we have the proposed cabinet of deplorables:  Chris Christie, the guy who claims he didn't know about "bridge-gate;" Newt Gingrich, the man who ended his marriage at his wife's hospital bed, and last but truly least, Rudy Giuliani, whose contact with reality is so completely shot that he believes the US was not attacked on George W. Bush's watch.  That same Giuliani by the way, who giggled like a madman a couple of weeks ago when he alluded to his knowledge of the FBI re-opening the investigation into Hillary's emails as another surprise.  Yeah, he's going to be the next attorney general.

So, lots of reasons to weep, and hopefully lots of comedy potential as well.  And lots of reasons to get fired up to fight.  It is true that we will be fighting two branches of government rather than just congress.  But with a cast of characters as shady and corrupt as this bunch, as long as we fight as fearlessly as did Bernie and Hillary for what is right, as long as we don't let the bullies intimidate us, we can not only survive but win this thing.  And by "this thing" I pretty much mean our country and our freedoms.