Trump Fatigue

Fewer people are reading my blog these days.  And I am signing fewer online petitions, and sending more political appeals to trash without opening them.  After all, how many $3 donations can one person make?

We have been overwhelmed since the day Donald Trump paid people to watch him ride down an escalator and begin to spew his bigotry and ignorance with an aim to becoming president.  We laughed at his ignorance, but we were also appalled, and like a car crash, the media couldn't stop filming and we couldn't take our eyes off him.

I can't watch him speak anymore.  I now assume it is totally unnecessary and a waste of whatever hours I have left of my life.  I safely assume that there will be far too much coverage of what he says, hours and hours of rerunning the same quotes and then analyzing those bon mots -- whose thoughts David Brooks has notably said amount to "six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar."  It is beyond disturbing that overnight we went from a president of strong values and intelligence as well as a great orator to a president with no moral compass, who is unable to face the nation without a teleprompter, whose words can be so obviously categorized as being ghost written or spewing from his own small and petty mind.  A president who chooses to communicate with the world through the safety of 140 characters.  A president who for-gods-sake "tweets."

His stupid phrases echo throughout our lives.  He faces world leaders who are intelligent and thoughtful with the same inane compliments, and shouts the same lame and angry promises -- and threats -- at his rallies.  A president who lives for his rallies, because his staunch supporters haven't noticed that it is not Mexico that will pay for his wall, but they themselves.

I was happy to hear that he is using the funds from his 2020 campaign to pay for his lawyers, lawyers who appear to be as stupid as he is, or maybe are just taking his money while not putting a lot of energy into a losing battle.  On the other hand, we seem to have tired of getting angry at the theft of America by the Trump family business; for the moment we are shocked that his cabinet members are following his lead by literally and figuratively flying first class on America's dime.  Eventually there will be a new horror uncovered and the excesses will continue.  Meanwhile, the ironically named "Department of Justice" and the excitable Attorney General Jefferson Sessions goes about the business of dismantling our individual rights.  Too many distractions, 24/7.

And then there is Congress.  We are tired of having to yell at republicans for their slimy attempts to placate their wealthy donors with bills that will take away the safety nets of most Americans.  They keep saying that their truly ugly bills to repeal Obamacare are really a need to fill campaign promises; what has become clear is that those promises were to their wealthy donors who are threatening to throw them out of office if they don't repeal.  Which explains why town halls and ground level approval ratings have been ignored.

And I am exhausted whenever I hear a Democrat or someone in the media refer to the latest planned heist as "tax reform."  There is nothing reformative about tearing down our social institutions in order to add more billions to the billionaire class.  Maybe we need to put David Brooks on the job to find a more fitting phrase, one that would alert Americans to what is really behind the tax cut plan that has Mick Mulvaney and Paul Ryan salivating.

I worry that we are so tired of fighting this unfair fight that we have turned back to the day-to-day things that really matter:  our families and our homes.  We made time to march, and to call out legislators at town halls, but we have jobs to go to.  And this is what Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham count on.  This is why they continue to try to pass the noxious bill that would destroy health care for millions.  Donald Trump is not a brilliant thinker, but he has wealth and a lifetime of being a successful con artist.  He knows that government can be manipulated, and he has a cabinet that has spent their careers doing it with great success.

Will we be able to bring forth the energy and outrage we had in January to fill our statehouses and Congress with people who represent us and not the wealthy and powerful?  Will we be able to spread the word to those who barely have time to care for their children and get to work on time?  Will we get out to vote and be able to convince those even more exhausted than we are to do the same?

I call it PTTD:  Post Traumatic Trump Disorder.  The trauma was the election, but the effects are the aftershocks that never stop.  Trump fatigue, Trump anxiety.  We feel discouraged; we don't believe we can win against the tsunami of hate and corruption.

But we have won an amazing number of victories.  We have won local elections across the country in once red districts.  We have stopped, and stopped again, the repeal of Obamacare.  We have turned the tide on the repeal of DACA and the Muslim ban.  We have, by our numbers of peaceful counter-protesters, halted the march of the white supremacists.

We are allowed our exhaustion.  We need our time with our families and we need our time to laugh as well as to cry.  We need to keep talking to each other.

We can't make all the phone calls or fight all the battles, but when we feel that spark of outrage we can use it to fight, and we can support those who are fighting other battles.  If we do this, we can reach inside and find the energy to drain the swamp -- no, the sewer -- that Donald Trump has brought to our government.  More important, we can clean out the Congress that since the election of Barack Obama has eroded the integrity of the legislature and the trust of the American people.  It took a dirty Congress to create the atmosphere that spewed forth a Donald Trump, but we the people can clean it out.  We have done it before.

Yes, our country has survived ugly times before.  We will do it again.  I believe that Trump fatigue is a treatable disease.

George W. Bush didn't last forever.  Even Hitler didn't last forever.  And our democracy is strong, with millions fighting all in our own way.  When we come back from this, we will come back stronger still. 

The Other Side of Pro-Choice

The other night, I turned off a DVD in frustration after about half an hour.  In the movie, a woman had learned that she was pregnant, and she was pissed off.  She was distraught, and went on about it as though this pregnancy had just ruined her career and hence, her life.  I turned the TV off when I got tired of yelling, "Get an abortion, you idiot."  "You know you don't HAVE to have a baby, for god's sake."  And, "What the hell is wrong with you???"  I was imagining an actual baby being born to this narcissistic stupid woman, and also the damage movies like this did to a woman's right to have an abortion, because it did not even consider that women had an actual choice.  I must add that I assumed in the end she had the baby and magically turned into a warm, loving mother, maybe because the title of the movie was, "Mothers and Daughters."  I may be wrong, in which case I apologize, but it truly wasn't worth another hour and a half of my life to find out.

On the other side, in one of the plot-lines in the brilliant television series, Shameless, fifteen-or-so year old Debbie intentionally gets pregnant, and battles the insistence of her oldest sister and parental surrogate Fiona to have an abortion.  As the baby is lovingly accepted into the family, Debbie realizes that parenting is far more than she thought she wanted or could handle, and that she may have made a big mistake.   

In Dr. Willie Parker's dynamic and personal account of the battle for women's right to abortion, he talks about how crucial it is to be sure a woman has actually decided that she wants to have an abortion independently and with certainty.  In Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice he describes a heartbreaking incident in which he thought a woman had made that decision, only to learn after the procedure, that she had been coerced by her husband.

It's been a few weeks since I read that book, and the description of that incident has stayed with me.

One of the things that we pro-choice advocates tend to ignore is that pro-choice means that women -- and girls -- have the right to choose pregnancy as well as abortion.  That is certainly my bias.  I was truly fortunate that I never had to face that with my daughter, because it may not have been my shining moment as a parent.  I know MY choice would have been for her to have an abortion, regardless of her choice.

We make quite a big deal, we liberals, about how pregnant girls should not be forced by parents to have a baby.  About how it can ruin their lives.  About how they will be hurt emotionally and financially.  We know that raising a child on her own is an extraordinary hardship for most women.  It is likely to impair relationships, with family, friends and potential partners.  It will interfere with educational opportunity and career goals.  The emotional stress of having a baby without adequate support will affect the health and well-being of the baby.

And of course, it just makes sense that they wait to have a baby until they are emotionally and financially ready.

But is that right?  If I am to be truly honest here, is it more right to deny a teen the right to have a baby than to deny her the right to an abortion?  And what about the pressures from husband, boyfriend, parents on adult women to end a pregnancy?

Let's take care of that latter question first.  A woman should be in charge of her own decision regarding a pregnancy.  Period.  There are social mores, as with some religions, that put the decision in the hands of the husband, most often forcing a woman to bring the pregnancy to term.  It may also happen the other way, as Dr. Parker described, in which the spouse has ordered his wife to end the pregnancy, and she complies.  Which is why it is so critical that clinics have the ability and training to interview and assess whether the woman has independently chosen an abortion.

Far more difficult is the teenager's choice.  Would you let your teenager really choose?  When I was pregnant at age twenty there was no conceivable way I would have told my parents.  My father, with whom I wasn't speaking on and off since I was fifteen, would certainly have stopped speaking to me.  My mother, with many tears and recriminations, would never ever have approved of an abortion.  And I would have been totally unable to care for a baby on my own.  But had I decided to tell my parents and keep the baby, they surely would have loved it.

Decades later, had my daughter become pregnant, I would have assumed that she would have an abortion.  Her teenage years had been rocky enough between she and I; I can only imagine the rage on both our parts as we each fought for what we thought was right.  Her life as I wanted it to be would have been over.  But her life as she might have wanted it to be....

The irony is that as parents it is up to us to make decisions about our children that affect their well-being.  And as they grow older, at some point we lose control over those choices, even though we may know better.  They may experiment with drugs and alcohol.  They can choose to fail in school, drop out or refuse to go to college, take a low-paying job with no future.  They can decide to date or live with someone who has himself made bad choices.  And one of the things they may choose, even under our roof, is whether they become pregnant, and whether or not to have a baby.

Because we have needed to be so rabidly engaged in the fight to protect our right to reproductive freedom, i.e. contraception and abortion, we have let the right wing control the other side.  We have let them talk about killing babies and how those who are pro-abortion would take away a woman's right to have those babies.

It is time to take this argument away from the anti-choice brigade.  Because what they are proposing is not "pro-life" but anti:  against both sides of "choice."

Pro-choice should mean certain rights to women and girls who choose to be pregnant.  It should mean that the government will provide to them the safety net that will assure the well-being of both mother and child.  A pregnancy should not mean hardship and punishment, difficulty finding work or even the need to find work while caring for an infant.  Proposing that pregnant women and girls should be required to carry the pregnancy to term without financial security, health care, and emotional support services is not pro-life.  It is punishment.  Punishment for those who are pregnant, punishment for their families, and punishment for the child to come.

Those who are most rabidly in the anti-abortion league tend to be those who are most determined to cut away any safety net that would actually optimize life.  That is why Texas now has the highest maternal death rate in the developed world.  In a country that has no problem spending tax dollars on prisons, we are hearing Tea Party idiots like Mick Mulvaney talk about how taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for food stamps.  While they are promoting fanciful lies about how abortion kills babies, they are cutting funding for clinics that would provide the care that would save the lives of women, infants and children.

If we honestly believe our stance is "pro-choice" we need to start talking about the right to have babies as well as the right not to.  And then we can have the argument on our own terms.  That is, that a woman or girl who chooses to be pregnant deserves the support of the government.  Health care, housing, child care -- no one who claims to be pro-life should obstruct those rights.

It is time to own this side of women's right to choice.

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

Fighting for Alexis... So She Can Fight for Us

Well, we have been marching and rallying, we have been sending postcards and going to town halls.  We have been energized, then depressed and then back again.  We have been watching in horror as the right-wing fanatics, the wealthy, the corporations, led by Donald Trump, have been taking apart America, piece by piece.

Mick Mulvaney, former representative from South Carolina's 5th, now holds the purse strings to the country.  And like our crazy uncle, he plans on "draining the swamp" of anyone who needs the government to level the playing field, get back on our feet, exist day-to-day.  He, like the rest of the Deplorables, believes that to the victor go the spoils, meaning tax breaks for the rich, and draining "the swamp" of the rest of us.

But the good news is, Mulvaney's plum post leaves a vacancy in the House of Representatives.  And there is a primary being held on May 2.

SC's 5th Congressional District borders Columbia, Spartanburg and North Carolina.  It includes Rock Hill, which is the fifth largest city in the state.  I am happy to say that it also includes Union, home of the best burnt bologna sandwich I have ever had.

from Ballotpedia

As of this writing, there is the usual clown car full of republicans running in the primary, assuming that this district will be an easy win, you might say, a steal.  There are also a bunch of third party candidates throwing in their hats.  But we have a really exciting choice among the three Democrats that are running.

To be fair, let me run down all three.

Les Murphy is the newest candidate, and other than the fact that he is a former Marine, I can't tell you anything about him.

Archie Parnell appears to be the guy most people are going to be watching.  He's got the smarts and he has a lot of experience.  And he has the funding.  The thing is, what he has to say on the issues is pretty much what everybody says on the issues.  He is going to make the tax code shorter and simpler.  He wants to work for small businesses, not big corporations.  He knows a lot about budgets.  What Archie doesn't tell us is where he stands on things like:  health care, the environment, education, voting rights, minority rights, women's rights.  Oh, and he doesn't tell us that he was a senior advisor for Goldman-Sachs.

But wait!  The candidate we really need to take a look at is Alexis Frank.

She is smart, and she is on our side of every issue.  She understands about rural South Carolina because she grew up there.  She knows that the priorities are jobs, education, and health care.  She will fight to save the rights that are being attacked by the Trump administration and a right-wing, out-of-control republican congress.

I was going to summarize her positions on some of the issues, but thought it would be even better to just pass on what she wrote me:

Healthcare: I do not believe that the new Ryan plan is better than Obamacare. I acknowledge that Obamacare was not a perfect system, but this new plan is worse. I agree with removing the mandate, but replacing it with a 30% charge to your premium for the first year is craziness. Also, I do not agree with removing the medicaid expansion. Most parts of District 5 are rural, with hospitals providing most of the jobs in those regions. With medicaid not as widely available, jobs in those hospitals will also suffer. We are also talking about 10 million people losing coverage, how is that better?

Environment: I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but it was remarkably warm this winter. That is not a good thing, that is Global Warming. The fact that some lawmakers do not think that Carbon Dioxide contributes to global warming is completely unfounded. There are numerous scientific reports that back the fears that these gasses and emissions are causing our polar ice caps to melt. Also, placing someone in charge of the EPA who doesn't believe in global warming is nuts. And in no way, shape, or form should the EPA be dismantled or not continue to be funded.

National Security: Donald Trump himself is a threat to national security with his reckless tweeting and a need to host foreign leaders at Mar-A-Lago. He does not regularly consult his National Security advisors and putting someone as smug, and uneducated in national security matters like Steve Bannon on the National Security Council threatens the security of every American.

Taxation: I will admit, I am not as well versed in this as I should be. However, I know that we should not be allowing big businesses to benefit the most from tax breaks while middle class families that make 50,000 a year are paying 10-15,000 of that just in taxes. There should also be no discussion of not allowing homeowners to write off their mortgage interest or having to pay taxes on capital gains from selling their homes.

Worker's Rights: I believe that the minimum wage should be a living wage, but I believe that varies from state-to-state.  I believe that the federal minimum wage should be raised to at least $10/hour. However, depending on the economy of each individual state, it should be raised from there. The minimum wage in California should not match that of South Carolina simply because the economy, housing markets, etc. are completely different. SC is a right to work state; however, I believe that unions have a powerful purpose in helping workers fight for better healthcare, pensions, and other benefits. Also, in SC we need to understand that in many of our rural counties, blue collar jobs drive those communities. We need to make sure those jobs are available and that we are striving to find people to fill those jobs.

Small Businesses: Are the framework of the American dream. These entrepreneurs deserve the utmost respect and their businesses should not be run into the ground because of taxes and high costs of providing healthcare to their employees. They should benefit from lower taxes than big businesses, and allowed more tax breaks for situations like expansion.

Women's Rights:   I absolutely feel that women's rights are currently under attack. I would never choose abortion for myself but I stand with a woman's right to choose that for herself, and a woman should not be made to feel like a criminal or less of a woman for making that choice. I stand with Planned Parenthood because I acknowledge how much value the services they provide, bring to women.

And here is her background:

I was born in Hartsville, SC and I moved to Rock Hill when I was 15. But for my husband being stationed in Jacksonville, NC, I consider this place to be home. When my husband deploys, I come home. When he goes to extended training, I come home. I live here now, so that I can properly represent the people of this district. My ties here are strong. My mother teaches at Rock Hill High and my brother teaches at Winthrop. It is important for people to understand that me getting out to hear the people and talk to them face-to-face, is the best way, and the only way we will truly learn about the people of our district and their concerns. That is what I am here to do.

As you might guess, Alexis doesn't have deep pockets, and doesn't have the connections to big money that other candidates might have.  Rather, she is one of us.  So she is going to need our help and support.

While she is working on her Facebook profile and website, and until she has her ActBlue account up and running, you can donate at:

Alexis Frank: Protect What You Love

It really is time to make a difference.  If we don't live in District 5, we know people who do.  Chances are, they don't know there is a special election primary on May 5.  And if they do know, and if they have read the names of the candidates in the newspaper, they probably don't have the wealth of information you now have.

And I can guarantee that when it comes down to the issues, Alexis is going to be the candidate that the voters will want to see in the House of Representatives.

So spread the word in person and on social media.  Make a donation if you can.  Mark your calendar, and make sure your friends and family mark their's.

We have marched a few miles to change things this year, and now we just need to make sure we all march to the polls to take Alexis Frank to Congress.

With Us or Without Us – Special Election Edition

It was a bad news/good news thing.  The bad news is that Mick Mulvaney is now in charge of the federal purse-strings.  The good news is that there is an opening in Congress.  And we – the people of South Carolina – are fired up and ready to go.

Except that there appears to be a huge information vacuum.  Typically informed people (like myself) are scrounging around Facebook and the internet trying to get information about who and when.  There appears to be an awful lot of information about the republican side of the equation:  a clown car full of enthusiastic right-wingers eager to fill the stingy shoes of Tea Partier and loyal Trumper Mick Mulvaney.  It seems obvious that they are looking at it as an easy win for their side, and well worth the fight.  On the Democratic side, there are three, all new to politics, and there are even a couple of independents.

Isn’t this when the Democratic Party should be stepping in?  We’ve got two good people who have stepped up to run, and a primary coming up on May 2.  And District 5 has gone Democratic enough times in the recent past that one could imagine voters angry enough about losing their health care and tax cuts for the rich that this district could flip.

In typical Democratic fashion, I have my fears and my hopes for my party.

My fear is that we won’t hear much from the party, state or national, other than the ubiquitous fund-raising email.  In the few weeks before the primary, we are going to hide somewhere and let the republicans fight it out.  And then after the primary, there will be some half-hearted support, with the general philosophy being that the Democratic Party should save their strength (and financial support) for 2018.  Over the last election season, with a number of great candidates, there was little party support, and even South Carolina hero Jim Clyburn commented in one of our major newspapers that there was little chance of a win.  I am not expecting that I will hear much more from Jim than those auto-generated emails asking for money or explaining that while he enjoys hearing from me he is much too busy to answer.

My hope?  I am thinking that, much as the Democratic Party has woken up to support Jon Ossoff in Georgia's 6th, our SCDP and the DNC will take off.  I am hoping that they won't wait for a kvetch from Rachel Maddow, whose where-is-the-Democratic-Party rant appeared to light the fire under the party in the Ossoff race.  And I am hoping that they won't wait till the primary is over to act.  This is why:

There are a couple of factors that will ensure a republican victory.  One is that no one has ever heard of the Democratic candidate.  I have seen this happen time and again in races in South Carolina.  Everybody knows Tim Scott, because the republican party and wealthy right-wing donors have put his face and name front and center in the media for as long as they have been grooming him to carry their water.  He does photo-ops at elementary schools and gets fake awards from right-wing organizations that commend his fight for seniors and the environment.  And the last time he ran, even though he had a strong and passionate opponent, a man who represented the ideals of the Democratic Party, who fought in the community and for the people of South Carolina, to most voters he was running unopposed.  ETV refused to sponsor a debate.  There was no push to get him in front of the cameras or in the newspaper.  And that was true of the other good candidates, who threw themselves into their races in spite of the lukewarm enthusiasm of the party.

And it isn't just name recognition.  The other factor that moves the republicans to victory is that they have been making their arguments in the public forum for months before the final election.  By the time someone has won in the primary, they have been debating the issues and they know their stuff.  And the public has heard them speak.

The Democratic primary candidates need to have that same opportunity.  They need to rehearse their positions and become more confident about them.  They need to get out in front of the people, and the cameras, and do a bunch of interviews.  The Democratic Party needs to use their influence, their fund of knowledge, and their media clout to generate the publicity.

And debates.  We -- my party -- made a big mistake during the presidential election by trying to avoid letting Bernie and Hillary debate.  Not only did it look like favoritism, which it was, it gave the appearance that the party did not think the voter had the right or the capacity to listen to the candidates and make the best decision.  In other words, to be exposed to the democratic process.

The more debates, the more publicity, the more exposure Democrats can generate in the primaries, the more experience they can gain, the more likely they will be entering the general race equal to the fight.

So, I am hoping that the SCDP will get busy letting us all know a) that we have candidates in this race and b) that we have a primary.  I am hoping that they will see the primary race as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

I can't emphasize enough how much enthusiasm there is for this race.  We people on the ground -- you know, the voters -- could really use the resources of the Democratic Party to help us move the election.  We need information about the candidates, maybe fact sheets, position papers, but done in a way that we will all be sharing the information on social media.  We need youtube videos to share.  We need exposure to the candidates themselves; they need to become familiar to not just us Dems but to everyone.

And because this is a social media world, I hope the party will be aware that it won't just be District 5 that will be watching this race.  We will all be working to inform our friends about the candidates.  We can truly work together, even without the deep pockets of the republican side.

Indivisible has given us the tools, and the travesty of the Trump administration and the 115th congress has given us lots of voice and motivation.  Most important, it will be the issues that will lead us to this win, and not the party identity.  And yet, without the party, the candidates will have to fight with less organization and media presence.

This race could be the one that proves that the Democratic Party and the people can be the formidable force that will begin to take down Trump's destructive reign.

The Sequester Backfire

Looking back on it, President Obama signing the sequester bill was a bit like an angry parent sending a child to their room to be with their computer and television.  He pretty much gave the right wing-nuts exactly what they wanted.

When people lose much needed income and benefits, South Carolina's own Tea Party idiots like Trey Gowdy, Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Duncan, and of course our poster boy of denial, Tim Scott, are cheering on the cuts.  Scott has the nerve to call it posturing when the President talks about cuts to police, educators and firefighters.  I guess if a job doesn't directly effect Mr. Scott, it really doesn't matter.

These clowns will come out cheering the austerity measures, and bragging on how they engineered the reduction in the deficit, while people are losing needed income and government services, and subsequently tightening their belts, leading to lost dollars for businesses.  The fact that austerity resoundingly did not work where it was put into place in Europe has no relevance for these fools, who have never felt the need to use facts to make an argument.

It's sad for our country, sad for the state of South Carolina, and sad for the voters who trusted that these people maybe knew what they were doing, and would have the courage to do what was best for their constituents rather than what made them look tough.