Pivot

 

On the first anniversary of the attack on Congress by Trump-inflamed insurrectionists, President Biden's speech in the Capitol Statuary Hall--one of the places where the mob fought and injured its defenders--was widely hailed for its forthright condemnation of those responsible, and those who continue to defend what happened (mostly by denying it happened.)  

It was not a distinguished speech rhetorically.  It was repetitious, overusing the clash of direct opposites (democracy not autocracy etc.),  and missing opportunities for more memorable language ("dagger at the throat of America" is less direct and familiar, and therefore less powerful that "knife at the throat of America.")  "Inflection point" is a fashionable expression that even President Obama couldn't resist.  But I doubt it communicates forcefully to the general public. I'm also not sure if it's what he really meant.  An inflection point, outside of math, is a turning point or a pivot point.  But that means a change in a certain direction. Did he mean that, or a point in which things could go either way--a decisive point, or point of decision?  Politically, "we're at the point of decision" between (yes) democracy and autocracy (dictatorship is better) seems more appropriate and powerful.

And while I'm in the communication weeds, my own response is that Biden behind a podium, shot straight on from a distance, is not to his best advantage.  He seems better to me when the camera is closer, or when he is standing without a podium, talking person to person.  I miss the intimacy of those White House talks all Presidents used to give, seated at their desk in the Oval Office. 

But in this speech Biden covered the ground he needed to cover.  He was especially good in placing the attack in the context of American history.  He also made the point that I recall making here just after the election that Trump's minions disputed that Trump lost, but not that Republicans elected on the same ballot won.  He was forthright in condemning Trump, and identifying the Republicans party as dangerous to American democracy, now and for the future.

There was speculation about why Biden hadn't talked like this sooner.  I expect it was part of the plan to work for Republican votes on the infrastructure part of the Build Back bill, ultimately separated from it and passed--with Republican votes.  The pivot to voting rights was always going to be made--although the process of getting that early huge legislation took longer (and a large part of it still hasn't been passed, thanks to Senator Joe Mansion.)  

Meanwhile, Republicans regressed to abject fealty to Homegrown Hitler in a way that nobody predicted.  The only strategy left to get Republican votes for voting rights is shaming them, and confronting them.  Shaming hasn't worked so far, but confronting them could shake things up, since so many of them are cowards.  Congress may even get serious about clarifying rules to prevent the kind of direct reversing of election results either by Congress or in the states that Trump wanted.

Otherwise, we should expect to see some hardball--some momentum behind efforts to call the perpetrators to account, including criminal charges, and confrontation over filibuster rules in the US Senate. We'll see if all of this is more than words in the coming days and weeks.  

But President Biden's speech alone puts pressure on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to defend the Constitution.  None of it may work.  But by the time it's over, everyone involved will have to own up.  Politicians, like other rich and privileged, always have somewhere to hide.  But their options will shrink.  Come November, the choices should be pretty clear.  

In fact, they should be clear now on the state and local level, where traditional Republicans could join in resisting the Trumpian candidates who want to manipulate elections for El Duce.  It was Republican officeholders that guarded election integrity in several key states in 2020, though most of them will be gone by 2022.  How quickly voters become aware of the dangers of letting election subversives take over voting rules and vote counting may be decisive.

 So far, at least some of the fears broadcast last year have not been fully realized.  Indications are that partisan gerrymandering in the states hasn't changed things much, at least for the next few elections.  And the scary poll numbers being widely publicized, of the high proportion of Republicans who say that the election was stolen, and that violence may be necessary, etc. are basically a majority or near majority of a small minority, little more than a third of the potential electorate.  Getting the majority to vote, and making sure they can vote, and that their votes will count, is the task ahead.  President Biden's speech, and presumably the continued repetition of its main points, should aid in motivating those voters.  

That leaves the battle for voting rights at the federal and state level, and again President Biden's speech begins to make the case for why this is so crucial.  Because there is a knife at the throat of American democracy. 

Politics 2021

 I don't write much about politics here anymore.  Why warn of what everyone knows is happening?  Just because the Rabid Right misuses Nazi analogies, doesn't mean they don't apply.  We are Germany in the early 1930s.  Our march to 21st century virtual reality fascism seems inexorable, if not inevitable.  

How many times did political pundits declared the Republican party discredited, disreputable and dead as they crossed one normative line after another?  But Republicans either quit or got with the fascist program, or else were punished and purged.  Now they are all but officially the American White Supremacist Fascist Party, even if many of their officeholders have zero integrity or commitment to democracy or even an ideology, and are only interested in retaining personal political power at any cost and the open taps of certain corporate supporters.

But the clincher is Covid.  Republican officeholders are creating conditions for more people to get sick and die so they can blame it on Biden.  They are sacrificing actual real lives (though mostly old people) for political gain.  Usually politicians don't do this so blatantly.  But is the American public alarmed and outraged?  Nearly 800,000 deaths officially--half a million people over 65-- and certainly many more than are officially counted, apparently aren't enough to matter.  How many lives will it take till we know that too many people have died?  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Whatever the historical analogies of our current rigid political and cultural divisions, the mutual disdain and distrust in any government (or science or anything else) by what seems like a substantial proportion of the population--this polititcization of everything--offers gloomy prospects for effective response to future national challenges, including the foreseeable effects of climate distortion.  And that's regardless of any electoral outcomes.   

The electorate in 2021 seems composed of one-quarter Rabid Right fascists and one-quarter surly and impulsive voters, unable or unwilling to absorb or judge crucial information, whose voting patterns is little more than acting out.  Because of them (and Democrats who didn't vote), Republicans successfully market-tested their fascism in this year's elections.  Who would have believed that fulminating members of a party that says what everybody saw happen on January 6 didn't happen, would actually win the next elections. (We will see if these elections were won on national issues or local issues plus the respective candidates.  Less publicized were some recent local elections that Democrats unexpectedly swept.)

The other half of the electorate broadly agree with one another, but obsess on what fractures them from the others.   They can be coalesced around a candidate like Obama, or to oppose a Trump.  But in 2021 no Obama is apparent. 

 President Joe Biden is fearless and a smart political operator--he knew enough to ask for more than he expected to get, and he still may wind up with several multi-trillion dollar changes for the better.  But the default position of the American media and public is to listen to very little of what a President says.  Even a politician with the skills of an FDR would find it difficult to get through.  Homegrown Hitler did, but being the Troll-in-Chief only gets you attention and a cult of personality --it can't get bring a country together around a vision or a program.  Demagogues have the advantage of evoking the violent dark side; it's harder to guide the light.  

Making a speech while standing in front of a broken bridge or a sparkling solar panel doesn't get you more than a sound bite that comes and goes.  Not since JFK and LBJ has there been a Democrat who could command attention over the noise, at least enough.  Whatever it takes to "communicate" these days, Democrats haven't yet figured it out.  In 2021, it's hard to see where that skill or voice will come from.  It's also not clear who will replace Biden and Nancy Pelosi--the Last American Hero--in effective legislating.

President Biden is less than one-fourth into his term. Things can change (though I wouldn't count on the egregious abortion/choice issue, to do it.)  Whether or not voting rights legislation is possible or can come soon enough to govern the rules for 2022 or 2024 is one of the big questions for the coming year.

But Biden will still be President for both those elections.  In the coming year--and certainly by 24--the White House should be seriously gaming out federal responses to various alarming possibilities, just as if they were the Pentagon preparing for various war scenarios.  For it seems that if the Republicans haven't gerrymandered themselves into power, they will try to negate elections and elect themselves at the state level.  And if that doesn't work, armed insurrection is next on the menu. 

 Before January 6, 2021, that might have seemed like paranoia.  Not now. So what will the federal response be to an insurrection taking over the government of Georgia?  Of Michigan?  Of reversing the outcome of federal elections?  Some folks need to be thinking about this now, and getting reliable resources ready. For the United States has enemies, foreign and domestic--and the most obvious right now are the domestic.

Regarding Wave: It's the Vote, Stupid

The chief reason for the 2016 election outcome wasn't who voted or why they voted as they did.  The overriding problem was who didn't vote.

That's becoming the lesson of the 2017 elections as well.  It appears that Democrats won because their voters were motivated to vote.  And because they are increasing support among new voters, especially women, Latinos and racial minorities.

Ryan Lizza's column in the New Yorker suggests that Homemade Hitler is showing signs of becoming the Prop 187 of today, first of all of Virginia, and perhaps of many states.  Proposition 187 was the California measure that temporarily created lawful discrimination against Mexican immigrants in the early 1990s.  It resulted immediately in sweeping Republican victories, but ultimately in the self-immolation of the R party, which almost doesn't exist in California anymore.

The difference, Lizza writes (and others have made this analysis as well) is that Prop 187 energized Latinos and drove them away from the Rs (towards which they tended) to the Democrats.  It took a little while to develop their own candidates and political infrastructure within the party.  But once it changed, it changed big time. Meanwhile, overt racism became more and more repugnant to other voters, including whites, who responded to these candidates and issues.

Lizza notes that the R candidate in Virginia ran a particularly racist and anti-Latino campaign. It was overwhelmingly rebuked.  Instead:

"In northern Virginia, six older white Republicans in the House of Delegates were swept out of office by a group of candidates that included a transgender woman, two Latinas, an African-American woman, and an Asian immigrant. These victors were part of a wave that, pending recounts, may hand the Virginia House to Democrats. The one white male candidate among the new Democratic winners in the region is a self-described Democratic Socialist (and, as some observers, commenting on the rainbow-like quality of the Democratic candidates, have wryly noted, a redhead)."

Moreover these new candidates ran grassroots, community outreach campaigns.  This is in a sense old fashioned politics, in which local campaigns--inherently more face to face--are more important than top of the ticket races.  But eventually in those races the lower level campaigns matter.

Local races are also harder to analyze except one by one; even statewide races can be determined by factors not apparent outside the state.  But in general: it's the vote, stupid.

A Politico poll out Wednesday finds that 85% of those who voted for the dictator apprentice would do so again.  Their story on Johnstown fleshes this out with notable paradox.  While attention should always be paid to their problems (especially the growing effects of what is inadequately called income inequality,) it's useless to spend too much time or much energy at all trying to convince these voters or change their vote.  Similarly it's going to take organization and mobilization of non-white voters to change the South.  It would be surprising if today's controversy over charges of molestation will derail Roy Moore in Alabama, though it won't do the national Rs any good.

What can and must happen is potential voters voting.  Beyond the strategic and tactical mistakes of the 2016 campaign, Hillary lost because in a few key states people who should have voted for her did not vote at all.  That's the problem (though the potent factor of overwhelmingly favorable polls that turned out to be spectacularly wrong that discouraged lazy voters is unlikely to be repeated.)

Some of that is down to the candidate, who should have been able to motivate women to vote with the sense of history (the first woman) that compelled so many to vote for Barack Obama (the first African American.)  But Obama was a much less divisive and much more compelling candidate.  Plus, the return to familiar white politicians after 8 years of President Obama may have caused some letdown among black voters who stayed home.

It's the vote, stupid, which is why the forthcoming Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering will be important, as are state vote suppression efforts (responsible for losing Wisconsin in 2016.)  But most important will be community-level efforts to deliver votes to candidates who deserve them.

Regarding Wave

On the day that marked one year since the notorious election of 2016, results from elections on Tuesday showed impressive gains for Democrats and their issues, from coast to coast.  Some call it a Blue Wave, and why not, we need the rush.

For some, it suggested re-thinking conclusions based on 2016 results.  Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post wrote that pundits, like the DNC, underestimated how unpopular and polarizing a figure Hillary was, which doesn't account for other R victories.  Nevertheless one of her conclusions seems borne out by results Tuesday:

Jennifer Rubin:
"...the mood of the country a year after Trump’s victory may not be as anti-government as some thought. Instead of unrelenting hostility toward government, verging on nihilism, we see voters going for pro-government candidates, even ones seeking to expand health care. You never know what you stand to lose until you look into the abyss and see the loss of a politically sane and functional government."

Health care was the top issue in Virginia, guns was second.  These victories in Tuesday's elections aren't the only evidence on healthcare.  Despite the worst efforts of this administration to incrementally destroy Obamacare and discourage participation, new sign-ups are surging.

Analysts also pointed to the educated white vote, which flipped from R to D in Virginia.  More broadly:

New York Times:

The American suburbs appear to be in revolt against President Trump after a muscular coalition of college-educated voters and racial and ethnic minorities dealt the Republican Party a thumping rejection on Tuesday and propelled a diverse class of Democrats into office. From the tax-obsessed suburbs of New York City to high-tech neighborhoods outside Seattle to the sprawling, polyglot developments of Fairfax and Prince William County, Va., voters shunned Republicans up and down the ballot in off-year elections."

At Slate, the emphasis was on the importance of women, as candidates as well as voters.

In Washington, an ebullient E. J. Dionne saw a sea-change:

Forget those repetitious tales about some piece of President Trump’s base still sticking with him. It’s now clear, from Virginia and New Jersey to Washington state, Georgia, New York, Connecticut and Maine, that the energy Trump has unleashed among those who loathe him has the potential to realign the country.

In droves, voters rebuked his leadership, his party and the divisive white-nationalist politics that was supposed to save Republican Ed Gillespie in the Virginia governor’s race, the centerpiece of the GOP catastrophe...

The gun issue was supposed to hurt Democrats whenever it was salient. It was the No. 2 issue in Virginia, after health care. But in a historic rebuke to the National Rifle Association, voters who said they cast ballots on gun policy split narrowly. Sane gun policies are no longer a political third rail. It’s time for fearless opposition to the NRA’s extremism...

Republicans take note: You can demean yourselves all you want by trumpeting Trumpian themes. It won’t buy you gratitude, and — except in the most deeply red parts of the nation — it won’t buy you victory. The leader of your party is a boor, an ingrate and, as Northam declared in his effective Democratic primary advertising, a “narcissistic maniac.”

Dionne wasn't alone, though John Cassidy's  analysis was more tempered.  The most salient observation to me in terms of electoral futures was the impression that since 2016 Democrats recruited good candidates for the kind of offices up for election in a non-presidential, non-congressional year.  This has been a longstanding problem, and is reflected in the apparent dearth of clearly superior candidates for higher offices, including president.  That a not great candidate like Northam could win such a convincing victory in Virginia is fine in the short term, but for years Ds have not matched Rs in creating infrastructure for identifying and supporting candidates.

Another measure of the D wave is that the current internal strife over the 2016 campaign, especially related to Donna Brazile and her book, didn't deter voters.  Her own analysis of the results was: Tactically, Tuesday was nothing short of a blue wave, which proved that grassroots campaigns are the key to the Democratic Party’s success next year. Democrats must no longer cherry pick which states and which dates to invest in the grassroots. We must go everywhere. And we plan on doing that."

This was President Obama's veiled critique of 2016 and advice going forward, which he made shortly after that election.  It seems key to future elections.

Though D leaders anticipate 2018, at least one analyst says prospects are still difficult.  Of course as this tragic anniversary suggests, the damage to the country and the world at a very delicate time will continue and could very well get worse, because Homemade Hitler is still in the White House, and even if it does nothing else, Congress enables the destruction to continue through policy reversals and appointments of the profoundly ignorant, rigidly ideological and thoroughly corrupt.

The Editor

What a hard week: the death of three irreplaceable voices and icons of the age, all in their late 80s.  And joined by a fourth: Robert Silver, who died on March 20 at age 88.

Silver was the surviving founding editor of the New York Review of Books, itself an irreplaceable element in global intellectual life as well as in domestic politics since it began in the 1960s, which is also when I started reading it.  I can add little to all the praise by those who knew him and were edited by him, except that I was and remain envious of the experience and the relationship.

He did email me once out of the blue--or had his assistant email me, since he didn't do it himself. He wrote about piece I did on NYRB, specifically on the articles in the then most recent issue. So my one and only communication from Robert Silver was this: "I was touched by what you said about the paper. During 46 years, I’ve never read a piece in which a writer said what was actually in an issue." 

I notice now that in several of the remembrances, writers note that Silvers always referred to the NYRB as "the paper." But at the time, I was astonished that no one had ever written about a specific issue before, as well as that he would write me about it.  Or even that he saw it--this was not even an article in the San Francisco Chronicle or other publication, but on Daily Kos (and here at the Daily of course.)  I assume the same assistants who handled his email found the online piece, and printed it out for him.

There are remembrances online at the NYRB site, and several others at the New Yorker site: here, here and here.  Read just a few and you'll see why Bob Silver was the paradigm of Editor.

I can only echo one of those quoted, famed editor and NYRB writer Robert Gottlieb: “The loss to all his writers is profound, and the loss to our poor imperiled world, incalculable.”

May he rest in peace.  The good he did lives on, and let's hope the example he set does, too.

Common Sense, Common Good

The weariness in the voice and demeanor of President Obama when he first talked about the Orlando gun massacre illustrated what he has often called his biggest disappointment in office, the failure of the federal government to enact the most basic controls over deadly rapid-fire semi-automatic guns, or access to them.

On Wednesday Senate Democrats began an old-fashioned talking filibuster on guns while actual negotiations were going on about a bill that would at least prevent those on terrorist watch lists from buying these guns so easily. For awhile it seemed the dimensions of this massacre finally broke some common sense loose from the political rigidity--the polaritics--of Washington.  Even Donald Trump and the NRA made encouraging noises on this subject, but at least by Wednesday's end, actual effective legislature looked almost as far from reality.  (Although a late report suggests that Republicans will allow some unspecified gun control bills to be voted on.)

But as on so many other problems that more local officials must deal with, states have led on banning assault weapons, especially since Newtown.

While the Orlando massacre has again dramatized divisions on this and other issues, it also has revealed some soul searching on homophobia and on how the media glorifies mass killers (just as this one checked the Internet during the standoff inside the club to see how his mass murders were being covered.)  It also evoked a sense of community beyond just the various geographical, identity and ideological "communities" in response to the victims.  Common sense for the common good may still be on the other side of polaritics, but empathy at least is evoked and alive when specific human beings are the focus.

Polaritics and Trickle-Down Racism

The extremes represented by Donald Trump make the upcoming election a stark choice between evil and sort of good.  In a binary choice, the politics of polarization--polaritics--becomes inevitable.  Both sides will promote their visions of the Good while mostly bombarding us with the alleged Evil of the other one.  Of course, one of them is Evil, which complicates any argument against polaritics.

But what is usually and somewhat bloodlessly called the polarization of politics and of the American electorate is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy.  And it only takes one example to suggest why: In South Carolina last month, a tow truck driver refused to tow the car of a disabled woman because her car carried a Bernie Sanders sticker.  He left her stranded on the side of the road.

Polls show up to 90% unanimity on many issues according to party.  That's a bit troubling but more important is the lack of tolerance for divergent views.  Internet trolls may be leading the extreme abuse heaped upon people of another opinion, moving quickly to personal threats and violence, but it's becoming widespread.

When it begins to affect the basic social contract, more than symbolized by a tow truck driver whose job it is to render aid to fellow citizens, then society is in danger of falling apart.  Our society might agree that the owner-operator in this instance might be justified in refusing service because of inability to pay him, and in times and places (like South Carolina), such services would routinely be refused because of race.  But this is saying that the political candidate a person chooses to support in a major party primary marks that person as evil, as outside society.

This is just one case, but it is worthy of attention not because of its novelty but by its possible prophecy.  It sounds like the next step, and we do get the feeling that this is happening more than this once.  And once it does happen, it becomes an example for others.

It has its origins in theocratic politics most recently promulgated by the religious right, and in the behavior of Washington politicians, particularly Republicans, who oppose and condemn every idea supported by Democrats--especially by President Obama--even if it is an idea that Republicans recently supported or even originated.  And the easy vocabulary of hate, of hating Obama, of hating Hillary, that has gone mainstream.  There was plenty of Roosevelt hating in the 1940s, but by and large it was fringe.  Now the rabid right fringe is the establishment.

Donald Trump has wakened some Republicans to the danger, basically by being Donald Trump.  In today's news there are remarkable stories about a confab in Utah where party luminaries mixed with big donors, and some of those luminaries were outspoken in their dire warnings about Trump.  Meg Whitman reportedly compared him to Hitler and Mussolini.  An informal poll of big donors showed that only 20% were ready to back Trump with bucks, with others choosing "country over party."

 And Mitt Romney, of all people, contributed to the dialogue by highlighting an effect of Trump's candidacy that others have written about, but Romney gave it a name:

"I don't want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America."

At the moment Hillary is making this a teachable moment with her "Stronger Together" theme.  But it's about more than diversity as usually defined.  Political diversity, a diversity of ideas, are also at stake.  Our American society has been through this before (as has western civilization, many times, and eastern civilizations as well), for example the enforced conformity of the 1950s, patrolled by HUAC, the Blacklist, J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthyism, with the power to end careers, livelihoods, lives.

But political polarization that affects relationships at the root of society is particularly threatening given the likely future. This climate crisis-dominated near future will provide many tests and challenges (among others not directly related to climate that we can intuit may well present themselves.)  There will be many people who need help from strangers who are also neighbors.  There will be times when trust in each other, and in government and other institutions, will be matters of life and death.

In The Absolute At Large, one of the enormously skillful science fiction novels by the early 20th century Czech writer Karel Capek, a series of catastrophes rends civilization to tatters.  But some of the same people of a small town met at the beginning of the book manage to survive to the end.  They are discussing the reasons for the apocalypse they lived through.  One of them says: "Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man.  We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind.  And that isn't right, your Reverence.  The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people."

That's part of it.  But one doesn't have to be very optimistic about other people to realize that there's a principle worth putting into action.  Some people call it decency.  It doesn't sound like much, but if you read accounts of people in Europe who sheltered Jews and helped them escape the Nazis, it seems to be the difference.  It is the very powerful ethic of "you'd do the same for me."

That principle, that assurance is a necessity, which can be a trickle-up or trickle-across phenomenon as well as a trickle-down example by leaders.  In most basic societal ways, "We're all in this together" is a statement of fact as well as a rallying cry of principle.  It's how we act on it that's important, and social norms that support common decency are the social bedrock.  Trickle-down racism etc. starts breaking that down, but polaritics is already eroding it.    

Update: Divided response to the mass killings in Orlando Saturday night might be a tragic illustration of where this polaritics leads.  Both to the murderous violence itself, and in certain responses.

"We're in This Together":California Primary Conclusion

With all precincts in--but with an unknown number of mail-in votes still to be counted--Hillary Clinton has won the California Democratic presidential primary with nearly 56% of the vote, to Bernie Sanders 43.2%.  So it wasn't close.  And as Ed Kilgore worked the numbers, whatever the surprise AP announcement Tuesday that Clinton had clinched did to turnout, Clinton had enough momentum from mail-in ballots (which is most of them in CA) to win handily.  If anything, Bernie picked up late momentum.  The LA Times analyzes.

As I expected, Bernie pretty handily won Humboldt.  He did well way up here in the northern counties. But that was pretty much it.  His hopes in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley didn't work out.  Apart from a few rural counties in eastern CA, plus Santa Cruz, his southernmost county were Mendocino and Lake.  Except for Santa Barbara county (50/49), Hillary's lead was usually in the mid 50% to mid 60% range.

Apart from other factors, California is pretty comfortable with women candidates. After all, the state has been represented in the US Senate for decades by two women, and in this election, two women will contend for one of those seats, as Barbara Boxer retires.  Thanks to this new non-partisan primary system for non-presidential candidates (the top two vote-getters regardless of party face off in the general), the two women (Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez) are both Democrats.  That was much remarked on, of course, but the fact the race is between two women is too normal to mention.

Clinton earlier won New Jersey (63%-37%), New Mexico and South Dakota primaries.

Bernie Sanders spoke in Santa Monica after the close of voting, when Hillary's landslide victory in California was already obvious.  Wednesday there were conflicting reports on what he is likely to do, and on his state of mind (responding to one set of reports that he remains angry and committed to a convention fight, New Yorker satirist Borowitz posted a column claiming that: Sanders Vows to Keep Fighting For Nomination Even if Hillary is Elected President.)

Eric Levitz parsed the speech in a different way, and isolated this quote: "And tonight, I had a very gracious call from Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victories tonight. Our fight is to transform our country and to understand that we are in this together. To understand that all of what we believe is what the majority of the American people believe."

Though Levitz didn't note this, the phrase "we are in this together" indicates not only a common effort to defeat Trump which Sanders had begun his speech saying is the number one objective, but it is a phrase that Hillary emphasized in her victory speech.  "We are all in this together" is a major expression of her "Stronger Together" theme (which wasn't quite...together in the speech, but it's getting there.)  I notice this phrase--which again is one that President Obama uses--because I've long advocated it as the theme we need, to face the challenges of this century.

Whether and when Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in it together is yet to be seen.  But Sanders meeting with President Obama Thursday, and Obama's endorsement of Hillary as the nominee shortly after, will suggest the shape of that eventuality.

Doozy Tuesday

It was a doozy of a Tuesday.  For Hillary Clinton, it was time to claim the Democratic party nomination for President.  She won New Jersey big, New Mexico, South Dakota and was far ahead in California, where mail-in votes will be counted for days.  That's enough votes to give her a majority, even without superdelegates.  Bernie Sanders has begun the deliberate road to the end of his candidacy.  

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was taking more fire--from Republican leaders.  Senator Paul Kirk took back his endorsement, Senator Jeff Flake decided he could never endorse Trump, Senator Graham and others suggested the party could still look elsewhere.  Even wiggly Paul Ryan said that Trump's attack on the judge presiding over a Trump U. case were textbook racist--though he still backs Trump for President, because apparently he doesn't mind racism in the White House as long as he gets a GOPer hand to sign his dumb bills into law.

Trump, facing the prospect of being head of a party without nobody in it,  tried awkwardly to reign himself in.  Not a lot of people were buying it.  There was a sense of the dimensions of Trump's potential fall in Hillary's victory speech, which was the kind of appeal that LBJ made for consensus in the face of the scary Barry Goldwater in 1964.  (Whereas in 2016, Goldwater would be way too moderate, professional, conciliatory and sensible for the GOP.)

Clinton talked about her mother, who would have been 97 and just missed seeing her daughter make history. Hillary is not my favorite candidate of all time and I'm uncomfortable with her aggressive military policies, so I was surprised that my response to the unexpected news Monday night that she had clinched the nomination as the first woman presidential candidate of a major party was so emotional.  I've voted four times for the first African American President, and today for the first woman President.  It's wonderful.

Campaign Reverb

Update: As of late Monday afternoon, the AP is reporting that Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, becoming the first woman nominee of a major party for the presidency of the US.
As the new week begins, the import of several events last week becomes clearer, regarding the presidential campaigns.

Hillary Clinton's speech on foreign policy in which she dissected Trump's candidacy of the absurd is turning out to be her most significant, and perhaps a turning point in her candidacy as well, both within the party and in general.

As one indication of its resonance, it was amplified and praised in Washington Post columns both by liberal E.J. Dionne, and the Post's designated conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin.  Rubin's column contains the most extensive description of the speech as a whole, with quotes in more context than offered in news stories. (She followed up Monday with a lacerating column on the delusions of Republicans who think they could control a Trump in the White House.)

Rubin also reproduced a quote I hadn't seen before that's one of the best because it cuts to the core of Trump's rhetorical style: "He also said, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” You know what? I don’t believe him."  It's the "You know what?  I don't believe him."  Trump never even attempts to back up his simple declarative statements with any facts.  Everything is an assertion, or more specifically, a boast.  This especially was a naked emperor moment.

I wrote about nuclear weapons recently, when President Obama visited  Hiroshima.  Clinton made several references to the dangers of Trump having the nuclear codes, and the casual way he discusses nuclear war.  Here's the heart of it in an extended quote:

"Making the right call takes a cool head and respect for the facts. It takes a willingness to listen to other people’s points of view with a truly open mind. It also takes humility – knowing you don’t know everything – because if you’re convinced you’re always right, you’ll never ask yourself the hard questions.

I remember being in the Situation Room with President Obama, debating the potential Bin Laden operation. The President’s advisors were divided. The intelligence was compelling but far from definitive. The risks of failure were daunting. The stakes were significant for our battle against al Qaeda and our relationship with Pakistan. Most of all, the lives of those brave SEALs and helicopter pilots hung in the balance.

It was a decision only the President could make. And when he did, it was as crisp and courageous a display of leadership as I’ve ever seen.

Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States. Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.

Do we want him making those calls – someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism? Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"

Though she was reportedly reluctant to go after Trump so directly now, and not certain of the response to this speech (she didn't pick up its themes in stump speeches right away), Clinton has reaped praise and a collective sigh of relief from Democrats.  With this speech she provided confidence in her candidacy just as she is about to cross the threshold to the nomination.   (And it's likely to help her in California Tuesday.)

Lacking only 30 pledged delegates for a majority (after weekend wins in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), Clinton will cross one numerical threshold on Tuesday.  By the end of the counting she may well also have won a majority without super delegates.  In any case, today's news is that her nomination will be affirmed by party leaders immediately, including an endorsement by President Obama, followed by very active campaigning on her behalf.

For Donald Trump, the revelations concerning Trump University hurt, but Trump made it far worse by questioning the impartiality of the judge presiding over the current Trump U. case on racial (or if you prefer ethnic) grounds.  That charge met with immediate rebuff from Republican leaders, which indicates just how beyond the pale it is, giving how much other stuff they're able to put up with or even promulgate.  These included the House Speaker Paul Ryan (just moments after it became known that Ryan was endorsing Trump) and Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

But Trump did not recant or say he misspoke and he certainly didn't apologize.  He doubled down, and added Muslims to those of Mexican heritage who would be biased judges.  On Sunday, Newt Gingrich, one of his biggest boosters who based in speculation that he might be Trump's v.p., said Trump's statements were "inexcusable."  On Monday, Trump went after Gingrich,  saying his criticism was "inappropriate."  He then tripled down by countermanding an advisory by his staff to let the issue cool off by insisting that his supporters should continue his claim that the judge is biased.  (He also reportedly insulted members of his staff, which is already so small that it may well not be adequate to conduct a general election campaign.)

All of this plays into other stories over the weekend and today, indicating that GOPer leaders are increasingly alarmed by Trump and his prospects.  We've heard those stories before, but it clearly is going to be hard for them to conduct campaigns the way they usually do with Trump trampling over everything, not only improvising but thereby at times being untrustworthy even to his allies.  On the other hand, they had plenty of warning--and aren't fooling anyone but themselves by being shocked that Trump is a racist.

These are the leaders who are supposed to go out and campaign for Trump, as his "surrogates."  These are also the people in the pool of vice-presidential candidates who can help him where he needs it: political experience, reputation, knowledge, and access to the party's billionaires.  All this makes Trump's v.p. choice really up in the air.

As for Trump's charges regarding judicial impartiality, Garrett Epps (who I had the pleasure of editing in Washington long ago) summarizes the complete lack of legal basis in the Atlantic.

At least one opinion writer sees another recent event as pivotal to this campaign: Trump's press conference where he denounced investigative reports on Trump U., calling one reporter "a sleaze" to his face.  Trump has triumphed so far mostly because of the free media he gets, because he knows how to get it.  But in the past week at least, media coverage has not been so sweet for him, as reporters no longer simply give him a forum but are following up on his falsehoods (Hillary raising this issue in her speech also gives the media reason to follow up) and on more detailed reporting.  Waldman writes:

"Put together this series of developments coming one after another, and I suspect that many journalists are deciding that the way to cover Trump is just to do it as honestly and assiduously as possible, which would itself be something almost revolutionary. If the tone of his coverage up until now has been “Wow, is this election crazy or what!” it could become much more serious — as is completely appropriate given that we’re choosing someone to hold the most powerful position on earth."

The California Primary

For awhile it seemed that the California primary might matter this year in presidential contests.  Now it looks as if, after all, it probably won't.

 Despite campaigning here anyway, Trump no longer has opponents.  And it seems that Hillary Clinton will have won enough delegates to attain the majority needed for nomination on Tuesday but before California polls even close.  (It's possible but not likely that she will obtain the delegates necessary before Tuesday. She started well this weekend by reportedly picking up all 7 Virgin Islands delegates.)

 That would blunt even a Sanders victory in California in terms of impact.  Her presumptive nomination will likely be announced in network prime time, after the New Jersey polls close.  Whatever happens in California won't be known probably before midnight Eastern, and possibly much later.  By Wednesday morning, when all the votes are counted, Hillary will likely have won an outright majority of total elected delegates this year, even absent her substantial haul of super delegates.  Even if Bernie wins California, it will likely be by a narrow margin.  It will be a story, but not the big story.

In his CA speeches, Sanders says "If there is a large voter turnout, we will win and win big."  A surge in voter registration this spring helps make that a possibility.  And if this indeed happens, it will have an impact on the 2016 race.

The possibility of a CA victory hinges on Sanders expanding his appeal beyond young white voters to young Latino, Asian and African American voters, which the last Field poll indicates is happening.  His speeches continue to gather very big audiences.  (But he would not be the first candidate to win large, enthusiastic audiences, and lose elections.  George McGovern in 1972 spoke before such large crowds even in the general election campaign, and lost every state but one.)

In Oakland for example, Sanders gave about an hour speech before tens of thousands.  He called out a corrupt campaign financing system.  He said the economy is rigged for the rich, the criminal justice system is broken.  He called for investing in young people, in "jobs and education, not jails and incarceration."

 He wants to de-militarize local police and end corporate prisons, to rethink the war on drugs, deal with the crisis in opiates and heroin, treat addiction as a health issue (not a criminal issue), expand mental health treatment, decriminalize marijuana on the federal level, and in CA legalize it.

In one of his few direct swipes at "Secretary Clinton," he said his campaign is financed by small individual contributions and not a single superpac.  He questioned whether a candidate who takes Wall Street money can stand up against Wall Street.

To further the goal of every American child being able to obtain a college education regardless of income, public college and university tuition should be free, and existing student loans re-financed at the lowest available rate.

How will this be paid for?  Middle class incomes have been redistributed upward to the 1/2 of 1%; it's time to redistribute them back to working families.  A tax on Wall Street speculation, break up the major banks.

He is favor of immigration reform and a path to citizenship, and if Congress fails to pass such a law he will do "what I can" by executive action.  No more unnecessary wars.  No more tax breaks for Wall Street. More investment in inner cities and rural poor.  He criticizes Trump for being a climate crisis denier and says we have a moral responsibility to the planet, so he supports moving from fossil fuels to clean energy. He said we need to go beyond the Affordable Care Act to guarantee health care as a right, as every other industrial country does.

His rhetorical finish was to go through various movements that changed America--union, black, women, gay.  "Let's go forward with this political revolution."

When I look at this speech--admirably honed, simply stated--I see almost nothing that President Obama hasn't said, as a candidate or President, and with the exception of breaking up the big banks, nothing that Hillary Clinton doesn't support as a principle or goal.

In fact there is so much of Obama here--the campaign financed by small donors, the agenda--that at one point, some in the audience began chanting "Si se puede" and Bernie actually said "Yes, we can!" Bernie's promise to do what he can by executive action on immigration is what President Obama has already done.

Bernie's promises are apparently more restrained now than at other points in his campaign.  He said the word "revolution" exactly twice--in his closing sentence, and earlier he called for a "revolution in mental health treatment."  There is in reality nothing revolutionary in the proposals he made in this speech, with little that progressive Democrats from Robert Kennedy to Barack Obama haven't said. Nevertheless, his young supporters seem to believe what he says is revolutionary.  (Free college tuition and legalizing pot don't exactly hurt with this demographic either.)

The political revolution Bernie calls for however is one in which, thanks to a popular uprising at the ballot box throughout the country, progressives take over Congress and pass the legislation he favors.  That is very unlikely to happen this year (even if Democrats take majorities) but presumably his election he hopes would be the beginning.

I can see the appeal, and not only to the young who perhaps haven't heard--or haven't listened--to these statements or positions before.  I can understand their strong commitment to him, but I don't share it. I don't have the confidence in him that I had in Obama as a candidate.  He has not demonstrated to me that he can be a more effective President than Hillary.  And since Republicans haven't attacked him--hoping he would be the nominee--the polls that show him beating Trump are invalid.

 But it's a long way now past simple preferences.  The maniac Trump is the other party's candidate for President of the United States, and we all have a lot to lose.

Hillary is not just coasting on her early huge majorities in primaries.  She picked up major endorsements this week--from Governor Jerry Brown, from the political arm of the National Resources Defense Council (which her campaign director John Podesta worked for, after the Clinton White House and before he started the Center for American Progress) and a major gun safety group.  More endorsements are likely before Tuesday.

More to the point, her scathing attacks on Trump this past week (what CNN writers called an "evisceration") have energized her supporters and relieved other Democrats.  The latest Reuters poll returns her to a double digit lead over Trump with likely voters nationally.  A long-awaited trend of rising wages in the Obama recovery may eventually help her as well.

Sanders now says that he is taking his candidacy to the convention, no matter the electoral outcomes.  This is a little different than his campaign has said recently, that he will reassess when all the nominating contests are over (June 14.)

Chances are that once Hillary has the majority, and especially once the primaries are all over, Democratic officials including super delegates will add their weight to support her, so Sanders candidacy will become less and less relevant to the campaign.

Sanders' campaign can still cause discord at the convention, and cause supporters to turn bitterly away from voting in November, which helps only Trump.  There is no compelling moral cause involved in this as a protest--it isn't 1964, when the party discriminated against southern African American delegates, and it isn't 1968, with the party leadership supported an immoral war.  Sanders' agenda is just not that different, while his means to attain it may be, though frankly what those means are is a mystery to me.

It's likely that a Sanders victory in California would encourage him to continue, while a defeat might cause him to re-evaluate. Since I believe the party needs to unite behind Clinton, the certain nominee, in order to defeat Trump, and Sanders must begin, as soon as possible, the work of bringing his supporters to vote for her in November,  I will be voting for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.  To bring us closer to the time that all progressives can concentrate on defeating the worst threat in generations to American democracy and to the future, including the future of Bernie's young supporters.

So maybe the California primary will play a role--in beginning the sustained and unified fight against Trump, or  delaying or even dangerously dividing it, which is risky at best.  I don't see any real reason to take that risk at this point, not with the stakes as high as they are.  

In A Word

Today Hillary made news by calling Trump "a fraud," due to revelations concerning what she called Trump U. (as explained here and here and especially here), while others were implying the word when discussing Trump's delayed donations to veterans' organization (summarized here and here.)

But a couple of days ago, the word scientist Steven Hawking used to describe Trump was "demagogue."  Satirist Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker responded: "The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking angered supporters of Donald J. Trump on Monday by responding to a question about the billionaire with a baffling array of long words.

Speaking to a television interviewer in London, Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” a statement that many Trump supporters believed was intentionally designed to confuse them.
Moments after Hawking made the remark, Google reported a sharp increase in searches for the terms “demagogue,” “denominator,” and “Stephen Hawking.”

In this case satire was not far from the truth, at least in one respect.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary site reported an immediate 9000% jump in searches for the meaning of "demagogue."

But reviewing that definition can be instructive for everyone.  While "fraud" is certainly applicable, "demagogue" turns out to be a remarkably precise fit for Donald Trump: "a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”

Ante of Evil

The ephemeral nature of political news, most of it disgusting anyway, is prime motivation for not spending precious time writing about it.  That impulse clashes with the almost cartoonish importance of the 2016 presidential contest, shaping up to be a battle of good (sort of) against evil so grotesque that it tempts self-parody and caricature.  But there it is.

Everything coming out of Trump's mouth ups the ante of evils.  The latest is his so-called energy policy that is so reactionary even the fossil fuel industry has gone past it (even though it was blatant pandering to a North Dakota coal country audience), but with the likely outcome of destroying the planet we know.  And if efforts to define that evil can clarify the nature of horrors and especially motivate voters, there are plenty of such attempts to delineate Trump and the consequences of his terrorizing potential reign.

Some old hands at this have made new efforts.  Adam Gopnik wrote again in the New Yorker about the dangerous consequences: "One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke made in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United States—the order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is." Etc. at length and with eloquence.

Jonathan Chiat defined the anti-nuanced man further. "Donald Trump is a wildly promiscuous liar. He also has disturbing authoritarian tendencies."  Maybe in Trump they are the same thing: "His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited."

So apparently he can get away with, for example, blatantly praising the dictator of North Korea--for being a dictator.

But does he actually have a chance of being elected?  By the demographics, no.  But recent polls show him nearly tied with Hillary or ahead.  Besides the futility of such early polls in terms of election results (especially since, in my view, the debates are going to make a big difference), they are currently skewed by the ongoing Bernie v. Hillary thing.  Some analysts see the difference in the polls being that GOPers have "come home" to their candidate, while Dems haven't yet.

So will they?  Past experience and more nuanced polling suggests most of them will, and that include Dem-leaning independents.  Bernie's major appeal is to the young (some of whom don't normally vote) and Hillary will have at least a couple of allies who can appeal to them: Elizabeth Warren, who even if she is not v.p. is doing the v.p. candidate's job of needling the opponent; and President Obama, who is popular with young Dem voters (64% approval) and almost as popular with Bernie voters (82%) as with Dem voters in general.

And while some remain alarmed at the possible damage the aggressive and acerbic Sanders campaign is wreaking on Hillary (though Hillary is proving again she's fully capable of damaging her own campaign), others believe it's being inflated, and that Sanders has signaled plenty of times that he'll support Hillary vigorously against Trump.

Meanwhile Trump keeps finding new outrageous acts to bait the headlines, like suggesting he'd debate Bernie before the CA primary--for $10 million (to be paid by the network broadcasting it, to charity. Later he said he was joking about debating Bernie at all.) Yet there are also pieces stating that this is Trump's high point and that he's going down fast and hard in the near future (this is one among several which I selected partly for the title: Soon it will suck to be Donald Trump.)

But Trump's quick demise into inconsequential disgrace has been predicted before, including here.  It's hard to believe it won't happen, but everything about Trump and his success is hard to believe.  In fact it's impossible to believe.

But it's happening.  And several commentators--including Charles Blow at the NY Times-- warned that even if defeated, the Trump triumph to this point will have repercussions for years to come.  Or as Blow wrote: "He has given his Republican supporters permission to vocalize their anti-otherness rage, and that will not easily be undone. As a Louisiana boy experiencing a confounding sense of déjà vu, let me assure you: There is no way to un-cook the gumbo."

The Nevada Moment (with Update)

The events surrounding the Nevada state Democratic convention and the fallout from those events have roiled the party and may be a turning point in the relationship of Bernie Sanders and his supporters with the Democratic Party and its 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

The New York Times and Washington Post were among the news organizations reporting on violence and threats of violence by Bernie supporters over the Nevada convention, including harassing phone calls, abusive tweets and emails, and death threats to Democratic officials and, in one case, grandchildren.  All over a failed maneuver to change rules that might have resulted in Sanders gaining a total of two delegates.

The Post included facsimiles of one of the emails, and Senator Sanders first response, which included "Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals," but emphasized the party's perceived unfairness to his candidacy, and asserted that "Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense."

In the interim between the events and statement, editorials such as this one in the Sacramento Bee seized on the campaign's failure to immediately condemn the threats.  But the Sanders statement--seen as repeating a pro forma condemnation while defending itself with more vociferous charges against the party--was judged inadequate by national Democratic party leaders, and led to a wider examination of the direction of the Sanders campaign.

Observers and party leaders, somewhat worried about Sanders' attacks on Hillary directly damaging her general election campaign, and the prospect of a more bitter Sanders campaign--evidenced by Nevada--disillusioning Bernie supporters to the point that they wouldn't vote for her, or even vote for Trump, became much more concerned.  Sanders campaign statements did nothing to dissuade them.   The Post concluded: "All of it seems to have come to a head in recent days, as bitterness on both sides has boiled over and prompted new worries that a fractured party could lead to chaos at the national convention and harm Clinton’s chances against Trump in November. Two realities seem to be fueling it all: The nomination is, for all intents and purposes, out of Sanders’s reach yet his supporters are showing no signs of wanting to rally behind Clinton."

Also troubling was the growing impression that Sanders doesn't care if Democrats are divided and the White House is lost.  Folks are starting to remember that Sanders is not himself a Democrat, and may have no real loyalty beyond his own campaign.

This concern speaks to the dangerous aspect of the Sanders campaign: its tone.  In a column debunking the Sanders' campaign's persistent theme of being unfairly treated, Ed Kilgore quotes Josh Marshall, the dean of political bloggers: "For weeks I've thought and written that Sanders Camp Manager Jeff Weaver was the driver of toxicity in this race. But what I've heard in a series of conversations over recent weeks w/highly knowledgable people forced me to conclude that I had that wrong. It may be him too. But the burn it down attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in the statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself. Right from the top."

Is there less here than meets the eye, in the long run?  Maybe.  Rolling Stone contacted a number of people who made abusive calls and emails to Nevada party officials, and found that most of them weren't even there, simply followed events online and vented--and later regretted it.

Both the Nevada officials as well as the Sanders campaign may be adding self-serving spin to their assertions, and headlines suggesting that party unity for the general election campaign is spinning out of reach are obvious click bait.

But what is clearly happening is an erosion of support for Sanders in party leadership and among Democrats who have so far supported him, along with implied and direct statements that the goodwill Sanders has built with officials who are Democrats, including Democratic colleagues in the Senate, has limits that his campaign is butting up against.  If things aren't resolved immediately after the California primary at the latest,  a serious division may result.  Bernie Sanders may be having his moment, but the Nevada moment may well be the turning point in his political future.

Update 5/20: Jonathan Chiat's column today makes these points: The contentions of Bernie supporters that they were somehow cheated in Nevada are (according to neutral observers) entirely wrong.  Without even considering the likely effects of a GOP assault on Bernie, his lead over Hillary vs. Trump in some recent polls is illusory.  While he acknowledges that Sanders may have reasons for staying in the race, "given the overall stakes of his behavior, his decision is also maddeningly narcissistic... it is at least possible that Sanders is getting carried away in a messianic fervor that he will not walk away from readily. A recent New York Times story described numerous Sanders staffers as “disheartened” by the campaigns “near-obsession with perceived conspiracies on the part of Mrs. Clinton’s allies.”  In other words, an ego trip.

The Trump Fix

In this world of endless cravings for another instant online rush, Trump rules.  There's something Trumpian that's outrageous or weird in the news several times a day to feed the need, so everybody looks for their Trump fix.

But the fact that he's not just a reality TV and Twitter star but the candidate of a major political party for the office of President of the United States is something quite different, and has inspired some new diatribes that try to focus a little attention on the potential trouble we're in because of this.

Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker pulled no punches: Trump is a fascist:

"But his personality and his program belong exclusively to the same dark strain of modern politics: an incoherent program of national revenge led by a strongman; a contempt for parliamentary government and procedures; an insistence that the existing, democratically elected government, whether Léon Blum’s or Barack Obama’s, is in league with evil outsiders and has been secretly trying to undermine the nation; a hysterical militarism designed to no particular end than the sheer spectacle of strength; an equally hysterical sense of beleaguerment and victimization; and a supposed suspicion of big capitalism entirely reconciled to the worship of wealth and “success.” It is always alike, and always leads inexorably to the same place: failure, met not by self-correction but by an inflation of the original program of grievances, and so then on to catastrophe. The idea that it can be bounded in by honest conservatives in a Cabinet or restrained by normal constitutional limits is, to put it mildly, unsupported by history.

Hitler’s enablers in 1933—yes, we should go there, instantly and often, not to blacken our political opponents but as a reminder that evil happens insidiously, and most often with people on the same side telling each other, Well, he’s not so bad, not as bad as they are. We can control him. (Or, on the opposite side, I’d rather have a radical who will make the establishment miserable than a moderate who will make people think it can all be worked out.)"

Jonathan Chiat at New York a few days ago looked at the question of how Trump triumphed when the chattering classes were sure he couldn't.  He's not very polite in his conclusion: "Here’s the factor I think everybody missed: The Republican Party turns out to be filled with idiots. Far more of them than anybody expected....While it's impolite and politically counterproductive, if we want to accurately identify the analytic error that caused so many of us to dismiss Trump, we must return to the idiocy question. The particular idiocy involves both the party’s elites and its voters."

Chiat's description of Trump seems designed to blow away the media fog of bewildered 'objectivity' and conventional acceptance: Trump did not even seem to be an especially effective demagogue. He is not eloquent, not even in a homespun way. He stumbles on his phrases, repeats himself over and over, and his speeches consist of bragging and recitation of polling results so dull and digressive his audience often heads for the exits well before the conclusion...

Unlike Bachmann or Cain [previous GOP 'joke candidates'], Trump had an even weaker grasp on intro-level Republican dogma, instead ranting like a drunk on a bar stool (“Bomb the shit out of ISIS!”). In debates, rather than use the standard tactic of mouthing pabulum that sounded vaguely like a substantive response before pivoting to his preferred message, he dispensed with the pabulum altogether, relying instead on vague, repetitive bragging and grade-school-level personal insults of his opponents. He puts down his opponents’ beauty or their height, or simply smirks at them. His appeal operates not at a low intellectual level but at a sub-intellectual level."

Chiat has since added more fuel to Gopnik's points, though he prefers "authoritarian" to "fascist" terminology. Chiat's critique quoted above got criticized for not focusing on racism in Trump's supporters, and Chiat defended this by noting how many times previously he has identified this.  Gopnik writes: "To associate such ideas too mechanically with the rise of some specific economic anxiety is to give the movement and its leader a dignity and sympathy that they do not deserve."

So who is right, Chiat and Gopnik, or Andrew Sullivan?  Of course, they all are.  Sullivan is right that elites have largely ignored the true plight of white working class families, and Trump's appeal is based largely on a dangerous mix of anger unrestrained by intelligent analysis, racism, race-based nationalism, the substitution of vulgar show business for reality, and institutionalized stupidity.

Put Out the Bern

It's time for Bernie Sanders to end his campaign.  Barring assassination by a Trump fanatic or similar catastrophe, Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party for President.  Now that Trump is the Republican nominee, it's time for Sanders to stop attacking Clinton and thereby aiding Trump.

Sure, Bernie won the West Virginia primary on Tuesday.  But it's very likely he won it because Trump supporters voted for him.  A third of voters in the West Virgina Dem primary admitted they were going to vote for Trump in November, and most of those said they voted for Bernie.  That's more than enough for his winning margin, in a state that no Dem is going to carry in November.

The Trump voters understand what's going on, even if Bernie's don't.  Clinton is going to be the nominee, and everything that weakens her, strengthens Trump's chances.

Yes, Bernie is focusing on important issues.  But he's still attacking Clinton directly, aggressively and personally.  For all the good he's done in getting these issues aired, and showing how powerful they are with many voters, he's now doing even more damage to the chances of those issues actually being addressed.

I'm sorry to say, it looks to me that Bernie is on an ego trip right now.  All those crowds seem to have gotten to him.  He doesn't have a chance to win the nomination, and he has precious little in the way of a practical program to address the issues he raises.

Hillary is almost nobody's perfect, favorite or wholeheartedly supported candidate.  But she's all that stands between Trump and the nuclear arsenal.  And she's not that bad.  (This is apart from, but related to, my own view, which I think is widely shared.  I supported Barack Obama not only because his positions were closer to mine, but because I believed he'd be a better President than Hillary.  I can't say the same about Bernie.)

But the longer Bernie stays in and the louder he is in the process, the more he encourages fanatics like the few the Guardian found at a rally in Sacramento who said if Hillary is nominated they would vote for Trump.

The argument that a Trump victory would hasten the Bernie revolution is wrong.  I've already written about the lessons of the Nader campaign in 2000, which was partially responsible for George W. Bush.  Bush threw away trillions on a horrible war, attacked civil liberties, institutionalized torture, ruined the country's reputation around the world and sent the economy into the worst downturn since the Great Depression.  He hardly could have been worse.

But no "revolution" resulted.  Instead only through heroic effort over eight years did the Obama administration bring the country back from catastrophe.  While the far right took over Congress and prevented more progress--basically because people who opposed them didn't vote anywhere near their numbers.

Here's the problem with the Bernie revolution.  First, the kind of revolution that's most likely to happen would result in a dictatorship.  Second, there is no deep or wide support for overthrowing capitalism, which is the real revolution, and substituting something better.  Something better than the capitalism of today is probably essential to a better future.  But there's no consensus on this yet.  It's not going to happen in 2016.

Here's another problem with holding out for revolution: a lot of people are going to get hurt, and usually they are those with the least resources and in the weakest position, economically, socially, and in terms of health.  If you don't care about that, count me out.

That's also the problem with political purity--the Bern or Bust.  What could Nader people tell the parents of the young men and women killed and maimed in Iraq?  The people who suffered and even died because trillions of dollars of resources that President Gore might well have directed towards them wound up being squandered by President Bush?  What would they say to their grandchildren who will inherit a hot depleted planet, when some attempt 15 years ago might have made at least some difference?

If Bernie loyalists believe that wounding Hillary so that she loses will actually help Sanders become the Democratic party leader--it won't happen.  If he is blamed for Hillary's loss and whatever catastrophes Trump provides, he'll be lucky to be treated by Democrats in the Senate as well as Republican Senators are currently treating Ted Cruz.

President Obama talked about how real progress happens in his recent graduation address at Howard University.  Some excerpts:

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you've got to have a strategy.

And your plan better include voting -- not just some of the time, but all the time...So you got to vote all the time, not just when it’s cool, not just when it's time to elect a President, not just when you’re inspired. It's your duty.

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress."

Sure, protest is part of the process, and there are special cases when there's no compromise (like ending a war.)  But progress is mostly incremental. And it's about more than emotion, or projection.

Come down from your ego trip, Bernie.  Stop helping to elect Trump.