Success: Democrats' Best-Kept Secret

Once, not too long ago, CNN and MSNBC carried news about Russia, all day every day.  Then hurricane season hit, and now we have Russia and Harvey, Russia and Irma, Russia and Maria.  And every now and then we hear about confederate general wannabe Jefferson Sessions and the human rights he is working to rid us of, and the republican Congress' umpteenth bill proposing to take health care away from Americans, and Kim Jong Un's latest missile test with subsequent threats and insults by our bully-in-chief.

Discouraging as that may be, there has been good news.  It may be the best kept secret in America but for Donald Trump's taxes, but there have been special elections across the country, and it looks like our protests and demonstrations are paying off.  If only someone would tell the Democratic Party.

Back in the spring, we actually had a special election that made national news.  In a solidly republican district in Georgia, apparently where IQ's are higher than most, Hillary had lost to Trump by only one percent.  Encouraged by that fact, a young man named Jon Ossoff garnered so much excitement that people who had once been afraid to put out lawn signs for Democrats were now campaigning door-to-door.  When republicans got wind of this excitement -- and while they suck at governing, republicans are really, really good at sniffing out the political winds -- they went all in against Ossoff.  Oppo research went into high gear, ads that were so nasty Mitch McConnell could only look on in envy.  Trump did a robocall telling republican voters to protect their right to not have Democrats be part of the electoral process in Georgia's 6th.

And despite Karen Handel's relative unpopularity, she won.  But despite all the dirty attacks against Ossoff in a staunchly republican district, he only lost by four percent.

And even more significant, in a race in South Carolina that went pretty much under the radar, Archie Parnell lost to his republican opponent by just about the same margin.  Here!  In South Carolina!  With little acknowledgement or help from the national party.

Well, if the situation had been reversed and these were republican losses in Democratic districts, the republican party would be celebrating a huge win.  We would have heard for days, maybe weeks, about what an upset had just occurred.  But what happened?  Democrats wondered if Ossoff was too young.  They worried that they hadn't done enough in SC's 5th.  In a masterly irony-free comment, the ever invisible state hero, Jim Clyburn, said,

"I don’t think we had the campaign that was designed to win," said Clyburn. "If we had gotten the resources, I think we would have won."

Ya think?

A week or so ago, I got an email from Ryan Grim who writes at The Intercept.  It had some amazing news...

A Democrat stunned in a special election in Oklahoma last night. In November, Trump won this state legislative district by 11 points, and Jacob Rosecrants, the Democratic candidate, lost his election by 20 points. Last night, Rosecrants -- the very same guy -- ran again in the special, and upset his opponnent by 20. I'll do the math for you: that's a 40-point swing.

It's the third special election Democrats have flipped in Oklahoma (!) since November -- and in a fourth, in May, they lost a race by two points in a district that Trump had carried by 50. (That’s not a typo; it was a 48-point swing.)

And in New Hampshire, in a 29-point swing, Democrats flipped another district. (There are like five gazillion members of the New Hampshire legislature, so I wasn’t paying close attention to that one.)

In the race I was watching closest, in Mississippi, there were reports of people -- many students -- showing up to the polls and being told they were no longer registered. The Democrat, Kathryn Rehner, finished second, but forced a runoff election in October. If you know anybody who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss., forward them this email and tell them to get in touch with me if they were turned away at the polls. (And tell them to sign up while they're at it.)

El-Yateem, the democratic socialist running for city council in New York, lost by 7 points.

Apparently, the Democratic Party has decided to keep the good news under their hats.  Now, some of you who do more serious news watching than I do may have heard of these victories somewhere, but please keep in mind that most voters just don't go beyond the headlines.  And these victories were not headlines.

Be aware that these are state and local elections, not national.  What is important about this is what we have been learning since November:  that we need to fight on the state and local level; that when we change the fight on the local level, it moves up to the national level.  Keep in mind that the abhorrent attack on redistricting could only have happened in states where republicans controlled the drawing of the maps.  And 2020 will be the election that determines who will draw the next census districts.

If the Democratic Party celebrated the narrow losses in once-republican districts as well as all those local victories, eventually the voters who don't have time to read the fine print will start to recognize that something important is going on, and the republican party is on the wrong side of it.

And believe me, it will convey to national elections, which is something republicans have known all along, or at least since the Kochs, Art Pope and ALEC recognized it and started throwing their money at local elections.

Our SC state party has begun to send out informative emails about upcoming candidates as well as those who are already in the Statehouse fighting for us.  If you aren't on their email list, go to their website and sign up.  I've been very excited to see them move away from their "Give $3" fund-raising emails to actually informing us about issues and individuals.

On the other hand, the national party continues to hide out, which I suppose is preferable to all that public hand-wringing.  My philosophy has become throw all my support and enthusiasm behind all those great candidates, and don't expect much from the party.  They may figure it out someday, but the excitement comes before the money.

There are a couple of national campaigns I've recently heard about.

In Texas, besides having a really great name, Beto O'Rourke has decided to take on the evil Ted Cruz.  A friend alerted me to him via a link describing what is becoming a famous road trip.  O'Rourke took a congressional seat away from a long-time republican incumbent, and looks like he could actually do it again against Cruz.  He has a strong personality and a strong progressive message.  What he doesn't have is Ted Cruz' wealthy donors.

Two things about that.  Social media has been proving to be more powerful than big bucks.  And Jon Ossoff proved that when the message is right, we will find the money.

And maybe it is better these days to not be controlled by a twitchy party.  I read an article a few weeks ago talking about all the great people who are stepping up to run for office in 2018.  The article talked about how they made the pilgrimage to the national party office to ask for support, which the party made clear was contingent upon their fund-raising ability.

Pardon my French, but fuck that.

While they obsess about why Democratic voters have stopped responding to the deluge of fund-raising emails, they seem to have no clue as to why Democratic voters have stopped going out to vote.  So, candidates first.  First, last and in the middle. Candidates with a message that puts the 99 percent ahead of the one percent should not have to make raising funds for the big dogs part of all the hard work they are having to do to be heard.

Candidates need to be fearless.  They need to know that the closer they come to being heard, the dirtier their opponents will stoop.  They need to incorporate that into their campaign, as in, "The reason my opponent's party is attacking me is because he knows I can win.  They know I am going to fight for you, and that you know I am going to fight for you.  Their special interests have lots more money than me, and they will do anything to keep us from talking about the issues.  I am not going to let that happen."

And our candidates need to resist the party message of cautiousness.  That is how republicans divide us.  They have used abortion and gay rights to throw shade on the real issues of individual rights and income disparity.  In January, Indivisible led the way to a movement in which our unity gave us power.  We have let that unity work for us in our fight for health care and against the Muslim ban, for transgender and reproductive rights, for DACA and voting rights and environmental rights.  We can get the candidates who reflect that unity elected.  We just have to show up and be heard.

We can help by letting everyone via email, on Facebook, Twitter and all those other social media outlets that I haven't yet gotten to, know right now about those great people who are considering running.  We need to show up at their debates and rallies, and we need to get them in the news on local TV and the newspaper.

I would like to end by talking about the other potential candidate, one who has me pretty excited.

Annabelle Robertson is an employment discrimination attorney.  She is also founder of Indivisible South Carolina.  Today she is contemplating a 2018 run against US House Representative Joe Wilson.  You may recall that he made it to national fame by yelling "You lie!" during Barack Obama's speech to Congress in 2009.  What was less well-known is that it was Wilson who was lying, and that he later apologized to Obama for his crude outburst.  He may have been wrong, and he may have apologized, but he has done lots of fund-raising on that undignified act.  Not only did those two words reflect a new low in respect for the office of the president, but once again made South Carolina a laughingstock on the national stage.

Robertson represents everything the Democratic Party should stand for, as reflected in Indivisible.  And the icing on the cake is that she is a really smart woman.  So we need to a) encourage her to run, b) support her any and every way we can, c) get the word out.

The naysayers may be out there, but you know what I say to them.

It's Not About Us -- Yet

We Dems worry a lot.  I know I have been all but losing sleep over the idiots who are running for president on the republican side.  Who hasn't, really?  But yesterday I (accidentally) slipped into the shoes of a republican voter, and suddenly all this insanity became clear.

Imagine that you have over the past thirty-plus years, after having been knocked around by everything from oil embargoes and gas shortages to war, unemployment, underemployment, unaffordable housing, loss of health insurance, and on and on.  Overwhelmed?

Now suppose that you had a work ethic that taught you that with a hard day's work you would be paid fairly, you would be able to raise your children in health and comfort and with the potential for an even better future, and that you would be able to retire someday without worry, to enjoy whatever years remain.

And then think about how little free time most people have.  And how exhausted they all are.  And worried.  And disappointed -- no, angry.

Imagine that there are people who have had wealth and power, and imagine that they are angry too.  They are angry because they feel under constant threat of losing that power, and resent that they may not be allowed to create more wealth, with no restrictions.  It only took a few evil geniuses to convince others that there are ways to "persuade" the American people that this small group is entitled to all that wealth and power.

From Carnegie to Rockefeller to the Kochs to Art Pope,  that has been the goal.  They formed clubs and foundations and think tanks where the best and the brightest could strategize.  They threw many millions of dollars into these groups and into every aspect of our lives where they could influence us with their newspeak, where freedom really means the freedom of the wealthy to pillage and plunder, but we learn that it means the freedom to be angry at those who might take our jobs.  Liberty means corporations enjoy no regulations, no taxes, no obligations, but we believe it means Andy Griffith's "America."  Corporations are not just "job creators," but, so we are told, are people.

These great greedy minds have not only figured out how to turn themselves into heroes, but also how to focus our rage away from the oligarchs to those of us who are in their way, and those who are disposable.  They have bought much of the media and threatened the rest of it.  They have dazzled us with distractions, celebrities and electronic toys, convinced us that we need whatever they have to sell and raised the cost of living so that we are never able to feel secure and end up living in a constant state of worry.  We are too exhausted to look at the problem and work at the best solution, and we are all too happy to grab at the solution they have fed us.

This is the message of the plutocrats:  the answer to our problems is to rage at the minorities;  the answer is to control the behavior of those whose values are different than ours;  the answer is to give it up to the leaders who will carry out our rage for us.

In other words, give the power to the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, all the others that have occupied the clown car.

One Trump supporter said it feels like giving the finger to the government.

And who is the government?  These days the government is the Congress that has popularity ratings lower than syphilis.  The guys whose only goal over the past eight years was to block Obama.  The ones who shut down the government in an attempt to deny people health care.  On some level republican voters know this, but this is not the message they keep hearing.  

Republicans in America know they are angry.  They know they are angry at government.  They know their Congress has done nothing for them.  They feel the anger, but they don't know the details.  So they blame Obama and they blame "government."  Basically, they are blaming exactly who they have been told to blame for decades.  Imagine Ted Cruz' surprise to find out that he is the government he has been telling people to hate.

I once had a conversation with someone as he repaired my washing machine.  It circled around money:  repairing rather than buying a new machine, pinching pennies after retiring, working as long as possible.  And at one point he exclaimed about people on food stamps who are ripping us off.  I countered that there are so few, and it is so much less than the corporations that are stealing from us.

His answer:  "But we can't do anything about them."

Our republican friends and neighbors know things aren't right.  And they are listening to the loudest voices in the room who are happy to give a shape to their anger.  Under the guidance of Kochs et al, the Rubios and Cruzes point the finger at Obama, as they have for eight years.

But what is interesting, is that so many of those republican voters know that there is something that doesn't smell right about the Rubios and Cruzes either.  They have all too well internalized the message that government is bad and politicians should not be trusted.  Trump supporters may not know that Trump has maximized his wealth by ripping off the government, or they may just give him kudos for succeeding at it.  What they do know is that Trump is not government and he is not a politician.  They know that he is angry at everybody,  except for them, because he has told them he loves them.

So that is my little foray into the minds of the republican voters.  Their support of Trump and the other idiots isn't about us just yet.  And hopefully Bernie and Hillary will be well equipped to offer the less crazy republicans a better choice come November.  And we have to remind ourselves that turning out to vote for one or another of the republican clown car isn't really about us.  Just yet.

The Stupids Run for President

As if there weren't enough to worry about, I am reading Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel.

In light of President Obama's final State of the Union tonight, I am going to say that the parade of creeps -- and their supporters -- lined up to take charge is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Based on the performance of the circus act known as the Republican Congress, we are in big trouble.  We currently have our crazy uncle holding the purse strings to our country, their kids are all eight-year-old bullies, and because they are religious freaks who don't believe God wanted them to use birth control, there are a lot of those bullies around.  They may not be smart, but they know how to riot and they are allowed to carry guns.  They may not understand how the world works, but they know how to line up at the polling place and push that button that says "R."

Those right wingnuts in Congress have taken the shock of 9/11, followed by war and a "great recession" and used those horrific events to train the bullies to set their sights on a black president, a woman leader in the House, and the poor and minority people of this country.  The Tea Party voters may not be good at math, but they make up for it with enthusiasm:  wipe out food stamps and NPR and we can get rid of that nasty federal deficit.  Build that wall and we'll have good jobs again, get rid of Muslims and all those white people carrying guns will stop shooting up theaters and churches.

I recently caught a minute of a Rand Paul event on C-Span in which one of those geniuses in the town hall crowd was railing about a government that can't control companies that pollute the environment with things like oil spills.  I should have taped it, because I still don't believe I really heard it.  "You idiot!"  I shouted at the woman.  "Don't you know who that IS?"  Rand Paul, who would get rid of the EPA, who believes government regulation is bad, bad, BAD.

It takes me back to the beginning days of the Obama administration, when the Tea Party turned up to protest in DC, complaining about the poor public transportation, which had been caused by Tea Party budget cuts.

Which brings me back to cybersecurity.  Because while fools like Ted Cruz are implying that "carpetbombing" our enemies will keep us safe, those who truly control the country, like Wall Street and all those companies that have their hands on the electric grid, can't be made to share their vulnerabilities with the federal government or each other in order to make them safe from cyberattack.  Like Nikki Haley a couple of years ago, I imagine once our enemies attack Congress will give us a free year of credit reports.

We're holding on to our guns while the smart psychopaths are working on the capability of pulling the plug on our government and industry computers.

And our candidates for president?  Clueless.  What they do know is how to get the crowd riled up.  Much like Barnum and Bailey, they know there is a sucker born every minute, and those suckers are happy to wave their guns and get in line at the voting booths.

And, by the way, I'd like to stop hearing that these are people who have been hurt by economic downturns.  Take a look at the people turning up to cheer for Cruz and Rubio.  They are teachers and small business people, they are trading in their economy cars for trucks and SUV's again, and they never have to worry about whether to see a doctor or repair the roof.  They are pissed off because they have been given permission to be pissed off, and it feels good to have someone to blame, even if they aren't entirely sure what they are angry at.

And if that's how to get elected, our bunch of republican candidates are happy to point them in a convenient direction.  The Stupids are not only running for president, but are waving their guns and cheering, and lining up to vote.  

Education - Corporate America's Biggest Victory

Ted Cruz is coming to town tomorrow.  He's going to be speaking at the 8th Annual Free Enterprise Foundation Dinner.  If that's not enough to get you to drop what you're doing and head out to the Citadel, Rick Santorum is also going to be there.  And Nikki Haley will be smiling her Miss Right-Wing South Carolina smile, soaking in the publicity.

To my astonishment, the Free Enterprise Foundation is tax-deductible.  As far as I can tell, they get away with this by pretending they are educational, as opposed to indoctrinational.  And I'm not just saying that based on the number of times they use the word "freedom."  Although if you click on the button called "Freedomville" on their website, it offers to take you to their "Financial Literacy Curriculum."

Except that when I tried to get to Freedomville I got an error message.

And more mysterious, there is no Free Enterprise Foundation listed on Wikipedia.

If not for the Washington Post article about tomorrow's big dinner, I would have no idea that they are brought to us by Americans for Prosperity and Citizens United.  Now, Americans for Prosperity calls itself an "organization of grassroots leaders," the leader of which is that old grassroots guy, David Koch, seen not too long ago on the board of Boston's PBS station, WGBH.  Apparently, if you can't kill public broadcasting, you just buy a position on the board.

This bizarre situation that finds David Koch running PBS, is I suppose the other reason these folks are allowed to be considered non-partisan, tax-exempt, and grassroots --  because they claim to be educational.  In fact, this Free Enterprise Foundation is not only based at The Citadel, but:

We have a close working relationship with faculty at the Citadel, the College of Charleston, and the Medical University of South Carolina.

Are we outraged yet?  Where are those liberal attorneys who can pore through reams of legal documents and confront these partisan corporate critters?  Are we so under the thumb of the Kochs and groups like this and the American Enterprise Institute that we will let them lay claim to Charleston's proud educational institutions?

Close working relationship with faculty???

Well, that does it.  You won't find me at the fundraiser tomorrow night.  I'll just be here at home crying into a beer and wondering how we in Charleston have so easily sold out our institutions of learning.

Every Day Is April Fool's Day

Lately I've been expecting to see headlines that say, "Lee Bright to introduce hand-grenade bill" or "Lindsey Graham Bill Says Life Begins Before Conception."

Really, this election year is turning out to be just the best season ever of that perennial favorite, "Idiots in Politics."  Graham can't be getting much sleep these days, firing off nearly daily emails pledging his war against Obamacare, educational standards, gun control and women.

Graham firing off emails.

The word "freedom" is getting its workout these days as well.  Freedom as we know it here in the South means the freedom of the powerful to trample the rights of the rest of us.  It also means making sure the wealthy continue to have freedom to be wealthy.  Basically, if you have to vote for freedom, you can't afford it.

Then there are all those fun-filled contradictions.  All those state's rights folks don't mind it when the federal government wants to ban gay marriage or twenty-week abortions, but listen to them all squeal when them-there liberals talk about a standard of education for the entire country.  Why, that would mean forcing us to change our standards from the proud "minimally adequate" bar that makes us Dixie.  And you surely don't mean that poor folk have the same right to an expensive education that those rich folk have.  To be fair, we do insist that rich and poor, black and white, are taught that God created the earth 6,000 years ago, and that we all romped with the dinosaurs back then.

We won't be straying too far from ignorance if we revisit the popular political stance that there is no situation that cannot be enhanced by the barrel of a gun.  To that end (of the gun), our right wing-nuts are enjoying a real shoot-out at the Okay Y'all Corral this election year, with Lindsey Graham matching Lee Bright dumb thought for dumb thought.

Only one idiot will win.

And as homophobic as is our Lindsey Graham, he's not going into battle alone.  His string of emails of late link him with homegrown lunatic Trey Gowdy -- against Obamacare -- and the Wild Bunch:  Chuck Grassley, Jim Inhofe, Mike Enzi, the unfortunately indefatigable Ted Cruz and even his strange bedfellow Tim Scott, the Bunch signing on against Common Core and pro-ignorance.  Wonder if Graham's gotten too crazy for even his old dancing partner John McCain.

Back to freedom and guns, though, which by the way go together like women and misogyny.  Freedom ends where the OB/GYN's office begins.  While it may be risky to let just anyone carry a gun anywhere in South Carolina, the risk to freedom is greater.  That same freedom, by the way, comes into play with women's ability to reproduce.  What I mean is, Lindsey and pals have the right to demand that a woman carry a pregnancy, or for that matter, get pregnant.  See, the freedom is that the guys with the guns get to control reproduction.  It's like "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant," but thanks to those commie liberals, most of us are going to be able to have shoes.

Here's a thought, and I hope Lee and Lindsey get right on it.  They have both accidentally come out on the right (meaning the correct) side against drone surveillance.  Only because our President has been caught with his hands on the drones.  What I fully expect to see in this battle of nitwits, is a bill to allow drones in the offices at Planned Parenthood. After all, the freedom of the wealthy and powerful are at stake here.

Halloween Favorites

It's that time of year again, and our favorite scary people are out and about.  Here are my top three, and what to look for:

Dick Cheney comes out from under his rock for all special occasions.

Even creepier when he's happy.

Vader gets angry when mistaken for Cheney.

Lately, in the pot calling the kettle etc. category, he is criticizing President Obama for lying, keeping secrets and wanting lots of control.  He's calling this "European socialism" by which he means "Bush era strategies."  I think he's jealous, misses the good old days.

How do I know that?  Because just one day earlier, he was pissed off at Edward Snowden and called him a traitor, adding that spying is just what the NSA does.

The good news/bad news is that Canada is still trying to arrest him for war crimes but he keeps giving them the slip.  Have no fear; if they get him he will no doubt still be out in time for next Halloween.

Antonin Scalia will be in the scariest costume he can find:

Likes to steal treats from little kids.

Was it just last year that Scalia brought forth his apparent childhood neurosis when he compared the health care mandate to forcing people to buy broccoli?  Antonin does tend to wear his heart on his sleeve, but with such a big sleeve it's often hard to see.  To say he's fearful, of broccoli, of gays getting married, of black people voting would be nothing compared to what he feels about the devil.

Scalia recently talked about his disappointment in the devil, that he is not around so much lately, and then confessed, in whispered tones that that is because he "got wilier."  He reminisced about the days when the devil (which he pronounces with a capital "D") would get pigs to run off cliffs, possess people "and whatnot."

He hopes next year to find a costume that gives proper credit to the devil, like perhaps a Supreme Court robe in red.

Ted Cruz of the scary state of Texas is the most recent addition to the Halloween Halls of Horror:

Pretends to look silly.

Cruz dresses for Halloween in his usual.  He wears silly expressions and tries to act nice so that people won't see what he's up to.  He also was born in Canada, in an attempt to get us to let our guard down by thinking he's ineligible to run for President.  He likes to talk -- for hours -- about his worries about our health care, but he gets confused, like thinking that the reason England has universal health care is because of Hitler.

Jon Stewart later givers a reading of The Bore-Ax.

And he enjoys reading Dr. Seuss, but doesn't get that Sam I Am actually tried Green Eggs and Ham and discovered that he liked them.

Yes that dopey well-meaning look is really the best disguise of them all.  Because Ted Cruz opposes Obamacare, women's reproductive freedom, food stamps, and I believe small children in general.  But who would know?

So this year, in spite of the Red Sox being off the streets sleeping off their hangovers, there will be some truly scary stuff happening.  And the only thing to do if you see any of these characters in your neighborhood is to give them ALL your candy.  And your health insurance.

Giving Them What They Want

I just heard Dave Cullen, the author of the exhaustive analysis of the Columbine shooting, make an excellent suggestion in reference to the Washington Navy Yard shooting on Monday.  He said that he has made a point of not referring to shooters by name.  Those who have been responsible for mass shootings are seeking notoriety.  When the media reports with familiarity on these killers, referring to them by name, showing photos, interviewing their family members, they are fueling the next one.

The reaction to Monday's shooting, given all that has happened -- and not happened -- since children were murdered in Newtown last December disgusts me.  The first bit that I heard on C-Span of all places was congressional tweets expressing their sympathy for the families of the dead.  The first one listed was Senator Ted Cruz.  I'm sure the very next thing he did was ring up the NRA to assure Wayne LaPierre that he will take this opportunity to re-energize his fight to arm every American.

Gun-totin' Senator Lindsey Graham rang in his support for gun rights, saying that we need to focus our efforts on mental health legislation.  This is the guy who wants to defund Obamacare.  I'm assuming that by mental health legislation he is talking about keeping data banks of anyone who has been hospitalized or imprisoned, and tracking their movements, as opposed to actually treating troubled people.

I would like to applaud Dave Cullen for his thoughts about the media not feeding the appetites of potential future killers.  And I would like to take the proposal another step further.

I don't believe we should allow a mass shooting to become a forum for assholes like Wayne LaPierre, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.  It is apparent that false words of sympathy are followed by words intending to incite fear and anger in those who cling to their guns.  With each shooting, they are able to play their followers like a fiddle -- or should I say, an AR-15.

So let's tell the media to stop showing Facebook photos of shooters, talking about their friends, interviewing a weeping mom.  And let's tell the media to stop for god's sake inviting Wayne LaPierre to interviews, and to stop printing quotes by right wing-nuts who are trying to stay in office by fueling their rabid base.

This morning I heard the sounds in my rural neighborhood that I hear whenever we have a shooting tragedy.  It was the sound of someone shooting.  Getting ready for the next bad guy with a gun.  And that ka-ching you are hearing is the sound of the money being made by the arms manufacturers, the NRA, and right-wing politicians.

Vote for Me

I've been thinking lately that maybe I should run for office.  Any office.

I have a Ph.D. in psychology and I read a lot, but I don't consider myself all that knowledgeable about the issues you need to know a lot about to make laws.  I don't think that would make much of a difference.

I've been listening (not on purpose) to people like Ted Cruz, who I hadn't even heard of a few months ago, and now he has "public service" ads telling you to make your elected officials get rid of the IRS.  Then there are creepy evil characters like Mitch McConnell who I imagine likes to take away his grandchildren's favorite toys just to see them cry.  Speaking of which, there is John Boehner, who cries when he is happy (haven't seen that happen in awhile).  One of my favorites has got to be Louis Gohmert, who can always be counted on to come up with "facts" like, for example,  more people are killed by hammers than guns.

I don't want to make it sound like men in public office have the prize for stupidity locked up.  There was the New Mexico state legislator who introduced a forced pregnancy bill stating that in cases of rape the fetus could be used as evidence.  And let's not forget Jodie Laubenberg, the Texas legislator who stated that if a woman were raped she could go to a hospital for a rape kit, that was like a morning after pill.

My point is, you really don't have to know anything to be an elected official.  In fact, being smart can and will be used against you.  Those Harvard educated wingnuts like Mitt Romney get to call Harvard educated Barack Obama "elite" because Romney has managed to pretty much renounce any intellect he may have had at one time.  William Safire, who despite not making it through college, got to write a column criticizing y'all's use of the English language and call us all snobs at the same time, was also a speechwriter for those two great anti-intellectuals, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

So it's not really how smart you are that determines your success in politics, it's really how convincingly you can kiss up to the truly wealthy and influential.  Look at our own Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.  I can't imagine there is a corporate backer that would have an opinion on which either one would beg to differ.

And then it just becomes a matter of practicing all those well-used arguments about taxes and the minimum wage killing jobs and guaranteed health care and food stamps making people less motivated to go out and work.  And trust me, the more I read, the more I find that today's right wingnuts are only just reinventing the wheel, in their case a square one.  They've been saying the same tired things for decades, and nobody notices they aren't true.

So how hard could it be to run for office?  All you need is a bankroll, and the ability to memorize your lines.

Brains and morals not required.