Electability

I was appalled when, on Wednesday morning, I read this headline in the Post & Courier:

Democrat Archie Parnell, who once beat his ex-wife, easily wins SC primary

No, it wasn't glaring red, but it might as well have been.

Sadly, it doesn't take much to get to this point when our own Democrats are so willing to jump in and push good candidates -- and elected officials -- off the ship.  Bakari Sellers, who has turned from a decent and caring public servant to a famous celebrity, was among the first to try to shame Parnell into stepping down.  Either no skeletons in his closet, or no plans to run for office.

Apparently, republicans have realized that all they need to do is to dig up (or invent) some dirt on a candidate who threatens their feifdom, and then step back and let us Dems pummel that candidate into the ground.  Lordy, the best they could come up with was college party videos of Jon Ossoff, who scared the crap out of republicans in Georgia last year.  They couldn't have done it without us.  While most Dems continued to stand by Ossoff, enough backed away to give his republican opponent the win.  That's all it takes.  Remember Hillary?  Thirty years of republicans flinging mud, with James Comey putting the icing on the cake and leaving him, and us, with feelings of nausea -- and with Donald Trump.

Focus, Democrats!  Focus on the issues here, because we stand to lose good candidates who MIGHT JUST WIN unless we get distracted by rumor, innuendo and the occasional irrelevant fact.

We are the party where we stand by people who have had tough times in their lives, made horrible mistakes, and come out better for it.  We don't need to support people who live bigotry and misogyny; we can leave that to the republicans.  We have enough good Democrats who will fight for us.  But we have to accept that they may be flawed.

We need to stop looking for the perfect candidate, because that is our Achilles heel:  the strength that becomes our vulnerability.

In fact, we don't even have the ability to look a gift horse in the mouth and say, "Aw, thanks."  As when our own Dimitri Cherny made the outrageous decision to run against Mark Sanford in the republican primary.  It was hilarious to watch the republicans (who have used the open primary system against us a number of times) squeal about how unfair it was.  What wasn't as much fun was watching our own party have conniptions over what they saw as Dimitri jumping ship.

Because in the cold light of day, there was absolutely nothing for us to lose in Dimitri's candidacy.  At best he might topple the horrible Mark Sanford, who has been like a piece of chewing gum stuck to the feet of South Carolina for decades.  At worse, he would... what?  lose?  In fact, he did lose, but the three percent of votes that he got just might have been what lost Sanford his cushy job.  To that I say, "Thanks, Dimitri."  Of course, now we need to garner some enthusiasm for Joe Cunningham instead of cowering over the fact that he will be running against a right-wing wacko Trump supporter.

Meanwhile, the DCCC, in an effort to prove their irrelevance once again, is currently sniffing around, looking to put the money they suck from us whenever they can into candidates that are "electable."  It saddens me to say that Nancy Pelosi, once my hero, is now so desperate to win in November that she is leading the charge against candidates that may be too progressive to be electable.  Pelosi: once a progressive firebrand herself, the woman who held the damn bag of cats that was the Democratic House together to pass Obamacare.  I have until this recent news defended Nancy with every breath I had, and continue to believe that it is ageism and misogyny that has been behind the push to push her from her position of party leader in the House.  And yet this picture of Pelosi seeking to support Democrats who appear safe -- electable -- and pass on those who aren't afraid to talk about significant change, that is the real threat to the Democratic Party and our success in taking back Congress.

We had Bernie "the socialist" shake things up in 2016.  In 2017, among other headline wins, Danica Roem became the first transgender elected official.  People are electing Muslims and gays without fear these days.  And yet we continue to have a party afraid to support "progressive" candidates.

On the other side, we had a child molester in Alabama who nearly beat an amazing Democratic candidate.  Thankfully, Doug Jones didn't have any scandals that could have been dug up.  And don't forget the current "president" of the United States, who ran happily on being capable of every possible crime that could be committed (including shooting someone on Fifth Avenue). While good Democrats stayed away from Hillary, muttering about "emails," "Benghazi," and never proven financial crimes.

I don't know how much more proof we need that voters want radical change.  They want to hear about their own lives and needs.  Donald Trump didn't win (he really didn't) on grabbing pussy.  He won because he lied about giving everyone health insurance and good jobs.  And now we have solid proof that the republican party has not only failed in those goals, they have actively legislated killing health care and job creation.  They convinced some of us that a $14.00 a week increase in our paychecks was a win, but psychotic economic policies have caused the price of gas to go up over $1 a gallon since the maniac-in-chief took office.  Social services are being cut to fatten the pockets of Trump, Ryan and McConnell, and all their rich buddies.  Trade wars with our once-friends will eat up more of our miserable incomes while Jeff Sessions and the cabinet of deplorables works to make sure that, from education to employment, we won't have a chance at a level playing field.

Archie Parnell is serious about winning this thing.  And he is damn close.  All it takes for him to lose is friends like Bakari Sellers, and us.

I did not support Parnell in his special election primary last year.  Rather I supported a young, smart, African American woman.  Big name Democrats came out in droves for Parnell, because he was "electable."  It is a shame that we do that to ourselves, keep women and minorities from representing us because we are afraid they won't win.  Talk about your vicious circle.  But when he was chosen, he became by far the best candidate, and I continue to wholeheartedly support him.  I'm glad he has the guts to stay with it, rather than hand this victory to the republicans.

On June 13, BuzzFeed published this friggin' headline:

National And State Democrats Won’t Support Archie Parnell In South Carolina

“What Archie Parnell did is inexcusable and deeply disturbing, and he should drop out of this race immediately.”

Well, there's a surprise.

Farther down in the article was a video posted on Facebook by Parnell.  The same video was published by the Post & Courier before the primary, and before their egregious post-primary headline.  I would like to post the video here, but can't do it from Facebook.  I urge you to listen to Archie talk about his decision to continue to run, in its entirety.  This is the kind of candidate we should throw our support behind, enthusiastically.

You know what, we might get hoodwinked.  But at some point we need to trust what we see with our own eyes.  And if we don't, for sure we will be the ones to lose.

Our Dysfunctional Family

A good friend and Democrat called me to account for myself yesterday.  She wanted to know, given the complaints I've made about the Democratic Party, why I didn't become more involved.  A fair question, but one that I have mulled over quite a bit, so I was happy to try to give her a good answer.

First of all, I am not a gregarious, or even terribly sociable, person.  I am content at home, working in the yard or curled up with a good book.  A few years ago, I began to attend Democratic functions.  In my fairly long life, I have done that from time to time, but never among such a group of committed, smart and strong women friends as I have here in Charleston.

For awhile it felt good.  I got to meet people that were running the Democratic Party, some candidates, and some who were in government.  But after a time, it became just something I had to do.  That's not on anybody but me.  It is who I am.

But I am also a retired psychologist and an avid reader.  I am committed to learning and observing, trying to make sense of the insanity that is politics, and writing to try to convey what I see in an effort to help turn the tide of corruption and deceit.  I stand somewhere between the typical voter and someone a bit more knowledgeable, so if I don't know that something is happening, chances are the typical voter doesn't know.  And as a life long Democrat, I would like to see a strong Party help us all move forward.

The "election" of Donald Trump was the last straw for women who have been used and abused by male politics.  From wages to reproductive rights to child health care, women have been the dog whistle of the right that nobody talks about.  And too often because of that, it is women that are thrown under the bus by Democrats.  There is no better proof of this than the fact that Bernie Sanders stumped for a candidate that, otherwise progressive, said he could not support a woman's right to an abortion.  Imagine a progressive supporting a candidate who admitted that he believed African-Americans should send their children to different schools, or that gay men and lesbians should not have the right to marry.

On January 20, the County Party held its organizational meeting.  You may recall that it was also the one-year anniversary of Trump's reign, and that on that Saturday a year ago, women marched in protest.  Maybe County Dems scheduled their meeting unaware of the conflict.  But wouldn't it have been something if they announced very publicly that they were changing the date so that we could all get to Brittlebank Park and support the women's movement?

It was the movement that began with the Women's March one year ago that has given voice to #MeToo.  I am neither surprised at those voices, nor am I surprised at the backlash.  The hashtag allowed women to speak up without fear of reprisal, but the next step is debate.  And the one after that is action -- consequences that protect the woman and send a message that a behavior is unacceptable.  Yes indeed, Roy Moore is a whole different can of worms (literally) than Al Franken, but our political stage acts out what is happening at fast food restaurants, high schools and homes throughout the country.  If the Congressional Ethics Committee really did its job, a hearing would have been the way to go, but for Franken to have gone through the charade and been given a slap on the wrist so that members of the Senate could continue to protect their own, it would have been wrong.

Women need to keep speaking up and speaking loudly, or this movement will never get past Hollywood and Washington, to the women without power who need it most.

There are an awful lot of more subtle ways that women are getting pushed aside, and if we are unwilling to look at our own state politics, we are not going to move forward.  Thanks to groups like Emerge America in South Carolina, women are being not just encouraged but assisted in their decision to run for office.  Women are leading, but if men ignore or minimize the candidates in South Carolina, our voters will select the man in the primary, and general election voters will choose "R."  That's on the state Democratic Party.  The one that, to my knowledge, has never been led by a woman.

Republicans know how to message their sick policies, and they know how to unite behind that message.  The other thing they really know how to do is choose their tokens.  Nikki Haley, both a minority and a woman, killed two birds with one stone.  She is smart and attractive, and knows how to toe the Party line, with style.  The republican party knew that putting up a woman would defuse criticism of sexism in the party, just as parading Tim Scott neutralizes accusations of racism and eases any feelings of guilt by white republican voters.

Lately, in fact just over a week ago, Nancy Mace won the race for state house representative for District 99 against Cindy Boatwright.  Nancy is Nikki in the making.  A woman who made a name for herself at the Citadel and has been polishing her conservative image ever since.  When she was unable to defeat Lindsey Graham as a challenge from the right, she settled for moving down to state politics.  Before she moves up again.  And the republican party is going to groom and support her any way they can, because she is going to do their bidding, happily, when she wins.

Could the State Democratic Party have done more (anything) to help Boatwright?  They think not.  And yet we Dems know we are on the right side of the issues.  And we know that far too many voters stay home, too many don't even know there is an election, and surely don't believe it matters.  Where there was a solid get-out-the-vote grassroots movement, here in Charleston, Boatwright won the votes.  Did the County Democratic Party help make the difference in Charleston?

Republicans don't back off when the evidence shows they can't win.  They double down.  And sometimes they win.  If they don't win, they make sure we all know it was some sort of victory anyway.

Brian Hicks wrote a brilliant and hysterical opinion piece yesterday about the republican race for governor here in South Carolina.  You may not be surprised to hear that the primary contestants promise to provide a clown show.  The issues for us should be clear, the republican positions ridiculous.  On the other hand, every-damn-one in South Carolina will know who they are.  As we should have learned from Donald Trump, the only bad publicity is no publicity.

For Democrats in South Carolina, unless the Party steps up with TV ads, billboards, and well publicized events, our candidates will be the best kept secret of 2018.  And that will be a shame.  Great candidates -- and we are fortunate to have lots of them this year -- still need help making headlines.  It would be a shame if, when states like Alabama are able to send a Democrat to the Senate, we are unable to change the color of our local, state and federal government.

We need leaders who are unafraid to shout out the issues and point out the hypocrisies of their republican opponents.  We need the ugly antics in the State House and in Congress made public, daily.  Fund raising emails might work better if they are linked to a candidate; otherwise we are going to donate directly -- if at all.  Issues and republican Newspeak need to be explained -- for example, republicans should not be allowed to do the damage to small businesses they get away with while claiming they are the party of small business.

Boeing and Mark Sanford understand that voters still watch TV.  Even as I fast-forward through commercials on the DVR'd local news I can't miss the polished anti-union or pro-candidate messaging from the right.  Debates -- primary and general -- get the name and the message out.  It was shameful that in 2014, PBS refused to air a debate between Brad Hutto and Lindsey Graham; the forum that was aired instead of a debate allowed Graham the upper hand and was so polite as to be ineffectual.  I truly hope that does not happen this year.  We need our party to push for debates anywhere and everywhere they can put our candidates' faces and ideas in front of the public.

Mark Sanford and Tim Scott know when to show up.  And how to get publicity.  And when to stay quiet.  And they have republican staff that knows how to get their names in headlines in the Post & Courier, and in the local Beaufort and Myrtle Beach newspapers.  They have buffed their down-home images so that every white haired lady except me and my friends believes there isn't a day that they don't do a good work for the people of South Carolina.

I may be wrong.  If candidates believe they are getting what they need from our Democratic Party, I would like to know.  I would also like to know what candidates believe the Party could do for them in 2018.  This, like #MeToo, is a talk we need to have.  Because, more than anything, dysfunctional families need to talk.   

All Politics Is Local

I have in the past tended to follow national politics, so much louder and glitzier than the local variety.  But a few years ago I began tracking state legislation for our ACLU and a whole new world opened up.  And sucked me into it.

Local politics is not pretty.  And it is exhausting work documenting so much stupidity.  But somebody ought to do it.  Because we really, really need to know what is going on up there in Columbia.  Because it has so very much impact on our lives.

Here in South Carolina, the dark work of the legislature is evident in our "minimally adequate" schools, with extraordinarily high dropout rates and inadequate employment.  Whenever a South Carolinian does not go to a doctor because they are uninsured, we can thank our legislature and our governor for refusing the federal Medicaid expansion dollars that are actually our federal taxes.  "No thank you, I don't want my money."

It was the wisdom of our state legislators that, in light of the horrific mass shootings in our country, passed a law allowing guns in drinking establishments, making restaurant and bar owners responsible for posting when guns are not welcome.  Of course, the thing about guns is that when you don't want them you anger the people with the guns.

And oh my, our infrastructure.  Any homeowner with an ounce of sense would make use of a windfall to make needed repairs -- keep up that important investment.  Yet when the price of gas falls precipitously, instead of looking at our crumbling and dangerous roads and bridges and seeing the opportunity to make them right argue about "new taxes."  We remain a poor state because we squander any kind of financial opportunity.

Meanwhile -- and you have all heard me rant about this -- the idiots at the Statehouse continue to flood the docket with new anti-abortion bills that say the same thing as the old ones.  We also apparently need a bunch more bills that honor and revere the 2nd amendment.  Instead of paying for better education, our tax dollars are going to go to plaques in every school that declare that "In God We Trust."  I guess with the poor state of our education, those yahoos figure we'd better pray.

And they are all over the threat to our state presented by poor Mexican immigrants, gays, Muslims, atheists, pregnant women, low wage-workers, and workers attempting to form unions.  They are on guard protecting the interest of big out-of-state businesses who have the god-given right to pollute and profit here in South Carolina.  Nikki Haley has fought the valiant fight to channel millions of tax dollars to big corporations while anyone living below the poverty line -- and there are quite a number of us here -- are subject to scorn and the threat of laws that would require drug testing and other humiliating and near-impossible requirements.  And pay attention, small business owners.  When our legislators say they are "for small business," y'all better check your pockets.

So we can track the legislation, call and write senators and representatives, but unless we change the makeup of the Statehouse, we are shouting into the big winds caused by global climate change that our legislators mostly deny.

Here it is, 2016, and every damn member of the legislature is up for re-election.  The sad thing is that in way too many cases, they will be re-elected without a breath of protest.  We can complain about gerrymandering, and it would be a legitimate complaint, but the fact is that most voters want the same things, and don't have (or don't think they have) anyone to vote for that would get us there.

If there are few courageous individuals that are willing to speak loudly to the abuses of our current legislators, not only will there not be options, voters will not even be aware of those abuses or the better options.

I don't believe that the majority of the people that re-elect Lee Bright really are voting against abortion, although I'm sure he does stay awake nights imagining all the dirty doings that create that "preborn child."  His war against anything that looks like a tax -- which I believe is the secret to his longevity -- needs to be countered with facts about how much more it costs most of us when taxes are cut.

We Dems don't tend to run on the need for taxes because we have let ourselves wear the "tax and spend" label even when it has proven false.  And yet, here is Bernie Sanders getting support from republicans who see him as more responsive to their needs than Trump or Cruz.  If we believe in good government services, we need to learn to sell it.  As Trump has shown, politics is mostly about sales.  And in sales, you have to believe in yourself or no one else will believe in you.

I am hoping that our State Democratic Party this year will show some of that fearlessness.  I am hoping that they will encourage people to run against the right-wingnuts that we have for too long thought were impregnable.  And put some money behind it.  A candidate that runs against a right wing wacko needs funding, needs publicity.  And our party needs to find a way to support all the Democratic candidates that are stepping up to fight this entrenched and old party.

Instead of thinking that money spent on a Democratic candidate may be money lost, we should believe that money spent to give a Democratic candidate airtime is money spent on the future of the Democratic party.  I believe that our platform is the right one.  I believe that responsible taxation creates jobs, improves our standard of living, and pays it all forward.

And on the other side, I see the party that claims to be for small government stealing from small business owners to give to big corporations and taking away workers' rights to fight for better working conditions so that those big corporations can boast bigger profits.  I see this party that fought Obamacare on the grounds that it would bring big government into our doctors' offices propose twenty or more bills doing just that to women, from conception to the disposition of a fetus.

That old party is the party that fights government regulation if it means making our neighborhoods safer, our air and waters cleaner, our children better educated.  Yet they propose bills to regulate the poor and monitor refugees.  Yes, under this bunch there would be laws that require immigrants and refugees to produce documentation, but they invite those from other states to bring in y'all's guns, and oppose background checks and bans on assault weapons.  Because as they say, if they can stop just one terrorist from coming into South Carolina it will be worth denying all those others the right to live free.  But if you take one gun away from one gun nut, you are denouncing American values and bringing down the nation.

So we have a lot of hypocrisies that need to be confronted.  And we have lots of smart people who could do the confronting.  So let's get our Democratic Party behind them.  And let's give them the opportunity to be heard this election year.

So You Say You Want a Revolution...

I have been getting emails from the South Carolina Democratic Party asking for my input via questionnaire, sending me the message that they want to change.  We can do it!

Well, I know they are sincere, and yes the words sound right, but I am skeptical.  Looking back on this last embarrassment of an election season, I would like to put forth a few ideas of my own.

First of all, we need to do something about the rotten primary system in this state.  The rot gets worse every election season.  The worms are in the voting system, and we can argue from here to tomorrow whether or not Alvin Greene really was nominated legitimately or not.  Fact is, we repeatedly allow people to get nominated who do not at all represent the ideals of the democratic party.

I believe that the easiest way to avoid the process called raiding is to have closed primaries.  Yes, democrats choose democratic nominees and republicans choose republican nominees.  Is that really a bad thing?  It is, after all a primary election, which purpose is to choose the best party affiliated nominees.  No, it does not give a person the freedom to go into a voting booth and choose the candidate most likely to be a laughingstock of the opposing party, which I have actually heard people admit to doing.  If you want the most honest primary possible, this is the way to do it.

Next most important move is going to be for the South Carolina Democratic Party to post, publish, advertise, disseminate, information regarding all democratic primary candidates.  It would not have taken volumes of information on candidates Vic Rawl and Alvin Greene to change the results of that primary, that is, if the primary itself was not corrupted.  If, as some say, the voters just gave it their best shot, which apparently was ABC order, we need to make their best shot a lot more informed.

Finally, after the primary is all said and done, the South Carolina Democratic Party needs to espouse democratic ideals.  We need to stop putting forth candidates that are afraid to say that businesses and the wealthy need to pay a reasonable share of taxes, and to have the data that proves that massive tax cuts for businesses neither considerably increase the number of jobs nor the quality of employment opportunities.  We need to be willing to prove that taxes do good stuff, that government jobs improve the standard of living of South Carolinians.  That good schools and libraries are a better idea than more jails.  That privatizing has cost the taxpayer more for less service.  That businesses need to act with responsibility, and their primary responsibility is to be a member of the community, and not merely to their bottom line.

And our good candidates need to unite; they need to pool resources and get in front of the people of South Carolina, with a united message, and they need to support each other.

In this last shameful election, we had good people who ran because the primary system didn't work, and they were good democrats who were abandoned by the South Carolina Democratic Party.  This is why we lost.  Because we were unable to think our way around this problem.  We could not come forward and support someone like, say, Tom Clements because he was running as a Green Party candidate.  And we couldn't have, say, Vincent Sheheen, another good candidate, form an alliance with this other good candidate.

So here we are, with Nikki Haley and Jim Demint.  Who are not afraid to do whatever it takes to convince voters that they are where the power lies.