Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about protecting
Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who is
dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about
protecting Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who
is dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS.
Sen. Sanders reacted to Trump nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to run
HHS in a statement, “Donald Trump asked workers and seniors to vote for
him because he was the only Republican candidate who would not cut
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – programs that are of
life-and-death importance for millions of Americans.
Now, he has
nominated a person for secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom
Price, who has a long history of wanting to do exactly the opposite of
what Trump campaigned on. Rep. Price has a long history of wanting to
cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
What hypocrisy! Mr. Trump
needs to tell the American people that what he said during the campaign
were just lies, or else appoint an HHS secretary who will protect these
programs and do what Trump said he would do.”
Sanders is correct. There is no way that Trump would nominate a man
who is deeply committed to cutting Social Security and Medicare if he
had any intention of keeping the programs fully funded and in place. The
nomination of Rep. Price to HHS indicates that the Trump administration
is going to be targeting two programs that are beloved by the American
people.
Trump has signaled that he is about to make the one move that will
turn Bernie Sanders into an immediate and lifelong political enemy of
the incoming administration. Sen. Sanders will fight tooth and nail to
protect Social Security and Medicare.
Donald Trump is coming for the Social Security and Medicare of those
who voted for him.
Democrats tried to warn seniors that this would
happen if they voted for Trump, and it looks like all of their warnings
are about to come true.
Tom Price isn’t coming to HHS to save Social Security. Price is coming to destroy it.
Here’s a problem that may have slipped under your radar: The United States is in the midst of an epic 1.25 billion pound
cheese glut. Low world market prices, increased milk supplies and
inventories, and slower demand have pushed the country’s cheese surplus
to its highest level in 30 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
Blocks, crumbles and curds are sitting in cold storage stockpiles
around the nation; a mountain of cheese so large that every American
man, woman and child can eat an extra 3 pounds of cheese this year.
You might have noticed that the cost of dairy products has fallen across the board
at the supermarket, and while that’s good news for cheese lovers, dairy
farmers and producers have seen their revenues drop 35 percent over the
past two years. With more cheese than it knows what to do with, the
USDA decided to make two $20 million purchases of surplus cheese in
August and October and donated them to food banks. Critics say that the government is simply waving money—ahem, taxpayer funds—at the problem.
This handout abets large-scale dairy producers, who despite the glut, are on their way toward churning out a record 212 billion pounds
of milk this year. Michigan dairy farmer Carla Wardin told the Wall
Street Journal that she and her colleagues plan to deal with the
situation by “doing the same thing … you milk more cows.”
The problems don’t end there. Cheap dairy is not only bad for the health of
the environment (from methane-burping cows to water pollution), it’s
bad for public health. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
criticized the USDA and its decision-maker Tom Vilsack for effectively
dumping artery-clogging food products on poor people. “Please take a
moment to ask Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to reconsider the
USDA's plan to distribute the fatty cheese to programs that are already
struggling to provide participants healthful foods that fight disease,”
the group writes in an online petition.
Although cheese has some healthy properties such as bone-building calcium, cheese is loaded with fat and sodium, and even low-fat varieties
can contribute to “bad” cholesterol levels. And let’s face it, the way
we usually eat cheese is slapping it generously on top of pizza or
nachos, making it a delicious but unhealthy treat.
“Typical
cheeses are 70 percent fat and are among the foods highest in
cholesterol and sodium, exacerbating obesity, heart disease, and
diabetes," says PCRM. "Cheese is the number one source of saturated fat
in the American diet."
PCRM's petition concludes that
the USDA should help food banks and food assistance programs by
providing healthier fare such as fruits, vegetables, beans and whole
grains. The diabetes epidemic has risen in poor populations, and sending highly processed, high-fat cheese to food banks isn’t going to make things any better.
Manel Kappagoda, senior staff attorney and program director at ChangeLab Solutions, wrote in a 2014 article
that food banks are “a lifeline” for the 50 million Americans who live
in food-insecure households and lack access to affordable, nutritious
food."
Food pantries, she noted, are critical in
maintaining and improving the health of food-insecure Americans. For
this reason, many food banks across the country have implemented
nutrition standards that eliminate unhealthy products such as candy,
sugary drinks and other junk foods. Citing a survey from the Alameda
County Community Food Bank in San Francisco, Kappagoda said that
families and individuals who go to food banks don’t just want any
food—they want fresh produce, low-fat items and other healthy staples.
As
Kappagoda wrote, “to help improve the health of the people they serve,
food banks can’t just offer food—they must offer good food.”
Lorraine Chow is a freelance writer and reporter based in South Carolina.
The man in line to be the 45th President of the United States spent yesterday re-tweeting:
a) a 16 year old with absolutely no sense of logical thought
b) someone who posts things like this:
#IslamIsADeathCult #IslamIsTheProblem #BanMuslimsNotGuns #BanSharia #IslamIsCancer
#Muslims did not come to America to be Americans! WAKEUP!
in order to justify his position that he somehow was the victim of voter fraud in an election that he won electorally.
He then attacks a media outlet and claims he won the election in a
"landslide" despite the fact he received over 2 million less votes than
his opponent.
Finally, he decides to attack the pressing issue of flag burning and
says people who burn the flag ought to be imprisoned and stripped of
their US Citizenship.
The man is an mentally incompetent lunatic, pure and simple. And we're supposed to trust this person with our country?
I know there are some people who claim he's doing this all to
distract against other issues, that he's playing multi-dimensional
chess, but....no. He's not. He's essentially chucking checker pieces at
his opponent. That's as deep as he gets.
Forget politics for a moment. Forget policy. Throw that all out the
window for the time being--we can come back to all that if Pence gets
into power. Right now, this is a watershed moment in US history, and in a
very bad, dark way.
I've never be someone to be an alarmist. I've always tried to
maintain a calm, reasoned and rational outlook on things. After the
Supreme Court issued its ruling in 2000, I was pissed. I predicted we'd
go back to war with Iraq and I was proven right. And in 2004, I was
flabbergasted that we would re-elect Bush.
But throughout all of that, I
could clearly see four years down the road, what our next plan would be
for the next go-round. And God help me, but I'm not seeing that clearly
for 2020. I can hope we're still basically functional, but that's no
longer a given.
And that's absolutely terrifying.
The first few months of the Trump presidency will have its ups and
downs but won't feel too out of sorts. The problem will be when he faces
his first major crisis, and at some point he will face that major
crisis whatever it is. How he reacts will be everything, and I can't
trust him to react normally because he's not normal. Will he send us to
war? Will he attempt to expand his own powers? Will he crack down on
fundamental rights? Will he threaten to punish or imprison his
opponents? I can't believe I'm imagining any of this happening, but the
day after election day I woke up literally shaking for the first time in
my life and there's got to be a reason for that.
We cannot depend on this man to lead us. He's not right in the head
and I fear he's going to take the country to some very dark places
before we can right this ship again.
Donald
Trump schlepped across town on Tuesday to meet with the publisher of
The New York Times and some editors, columnists and reporters at the
paper.
As The Times reported, Trump actually seemed to soften some of his positions:
He
seemed to indicate that he wouldn’t seek to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
But he should never have said that he was going to do that in the first
place.
He
seemed to indicate that he wouldn’t encourage the military to use
torture. But he should never have said that he would do that in the
first place.
He said that he would have an “open mind” on climate change. But that should always have been his position.
You
don’t get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid after
exploiting that very radicalism to your advantage. Unrepentant
opportunism belies a staggering lack of character and caring that can’t
simply be vanquished from memory. You did real harm to this country and
many of its citizens, and I will never — never — forget that.
As I read the transcript and then listened to the audio, the slime factor was overwhelming.
After
a campaign of bashing The Times relentlessly, in the face of the actual
journalists, he tempered his whining with flattery.
At one point he said:
“I
just appreciate the meeting and I have great respect for The New York
Times. Tremendous respect.
It’s very special. Always has been very
special.”
He ended the meeting by saying:
“I will say, The Times is, it’s a great, great American jewel. A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along well.”
I
will say proudly and happily that I was not present at this meeting.
The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on
racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum
and social grace fills me with disgust, to the point of overflowing. Let
me tell you here where I stand on your “I hope we can all get along”
plea: Never.
You
are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything
— no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your
ambitions.
I
don’t believe you care much at all about this country or your party or
the American people. I believe that the only thing you care about is
self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Your strongest allegiance is to
your own cupidity.
I
also believe that much of your campaign was an act of psychological
projection, as we are now learning that many of the things you slammed
Clinton for are things of which you may actually be guilty.
You slammed Clinton for destroying emails, then Newsweek
reported last month that your companies “destroyed emails in defiance
of court orders.” You slammed Clinton and the Clinton Foundation for
paid speeches and conflicts of interest, then it turned out that, as BuzzFeed
reported, the Trump Foundation received a $150,000 donation in exchange
for your giving a 2015 speech made by video to a conference in Ukraine.
You slammed Clinton about conflicts of interest while she was secretary
of state, and now your possible conflicts of interest are popping up like mushrooms in a marsh.
You
are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will
not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is
silver.
I am not easily duped by dopes.
I
have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene
your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral
obligation to do so.
I’m
not trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather to speak up for
truth and honor and inclusion. This isn’t just about you, but also about
the moral compass of those who see you for who and what you are, and
know the darkness you herald is only held at bay by the lights of truth.
It’s
not that I don’t believe that people can change and grow. They can. But
real growth comes from the accepting of responsibility and repenting of
culpability. Expedient reversal isn’t growth; it’s gross.
So
let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform
because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my
withering gaze.
I’m
thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will
never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.
No,
Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to
the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national
fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to
meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.
I know this in my bones, and for that I am thankful.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 26, 2016, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along. Today's Paper|Subscribe
This
is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and
knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must
reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary,
subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in
Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here,
for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.
Under
slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in
America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction
of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost.
There are
“people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood
definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A
predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The
threat is frightening.
In order to
limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness
to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white
Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing,
and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and
(2) risking the appearance of cowardice.
Much as they may hate their
behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill
small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who
invite a white boy to pray.
Embarrassing as the obvious display of
cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to
start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as
such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black
children in the street.
To keep
alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck
their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny
themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their
guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are
running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely,
shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white
strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their
(better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push
black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the
frightened would do that. Right?
These
sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to
abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the
true horror of lost status.
It may
be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices
in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not
easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the
conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black
people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the
mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and
pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil
cause.
The comfort of being
“naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil
treatment, is hard to give up. The confidence that you will not be
watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in
high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness,
are greedily relished.
So scary are
the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans
have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates
violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so
much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees
tremble.
On Election Day, how
eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well
educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The
candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not
renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether
Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone
the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The
candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The
candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.
William
Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer.
In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class
Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that
would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness”
(once again), the family chooses murder.
The problem with many liberals is that they simply don't know when they should be outraged.
Since the disgusting and destructive presidential election, many pundits, conservative and liberal alike, have remarked that Donald Trump won the election "fair and square."
They
state it with tremendous authority, as if it's some unquestionable
tenet of any election discussion: "Well, we can't argue that he won it
fair and square." Even Bill Maher and David Axelrod agreed on this point
on Maher’s most recent show.
There's just one problem with this argument: It's nonsense.
Trump only won the election fair and square if you have no idea what either "fair" or "square" means.
This
is not simply liberal sour grapes, though I'm sure many Trump
supporters and self-defining "open-minded" liberals will characterize it
as such.
First off, once all of the votes are tabulated, it appears that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will beat Trump in the popular vote — the only vote that should count — by about 2 million votes.
Sadly,
none of these votes truly matter due to our ridiculous Electoral
College system, which we're the only country on Earth to employ.
Of
course, many Trump supporters will cry out against this by claiming
that Trump would've campaigned differently had it been the popular vote
that counted.
Maybe, but, obviously, Clinton would've done so as
well, and probably could've racked up even more votes in cities,
especially those in states that she didn't bother to campaign in because
the Electoral College gives such an inordinate advantage to rural
areas.
Generally, voter turnout tends to be considerably lower in
solidly Democratic or Republican-leaning bastions, such as New York and
California, where approximately 52.4 percent and 53.8 percent of
eligible voters turned out, respectively, or Texas (51.1 percent) and
Oklahoma (52.1 percent) (statistics from The Election Project).
More
competitive states like Florida (65.1 percent), Ohio (64.5 percent) and
New Hampshire (70.3 percent) tend to have much higher participation
rates — a definite argument against the Electoral College. (In fact, the
U.S. recently ranked 31st out of 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations when it came to voter participation.)
So
while Trump would've stood to garner more votes in conservative states
if the Electoral College didn't exist, given that Clinton's lead in big
blue states was often bigger than Trump's in big red states, the overall
likelihood is that a straight popular vote would've increased Clinton's
popular vote lead.
Even Trump himself has acknowledged that the
Electoral College makes no sense. In 2012, he called it a "disaster for a
democracy."
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
More recently, he told "60 Minutes" that he'd rather see a straight vote.
(Of
course, in typical Trump fashion, he followed that two days later with
praise for the very same institution, tweeting out, "The Electoral
College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the
smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!")
The
Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states,
including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!
No
one can seriously argue that the Electoral College is not a severely
anti-democratic hindrance and that it should be abolished.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
There's
little doubt that Clinton's popular vote tally would've been millions
more had it not been for several other factors: the Supreme Court's
ruling in Shelby v. Holder, which allowed 868 polling stations to close throughout the South; voter ID laws that are especially cumbersome to the poor; the purging of voter rolls based on cross-checking
and the elimination of convicts' voting rights, even after they've
served their time; WikiLeaks dumps; excessive voting lines intended to
suppress votes (in 2012, for instance, the average wait time
across Florida was 45 minutes); and the shenanigans of one James B.
Comey, FBI director. (Does anyone doubt that this last one alone was
enough to swing the election?)
Many liberals — in typical "blame
ourselves" fashion — have consistently repeated the notion that Clinton
lost because she didn't inspire enough people to come out and vote. And
there are indeed legitimate complaints to be logged in that regard.
After all, she's likely to finish with about 2 million or so less votes
than Obama did in 2012.
But how many votes would Obama have
received if he had been forced to contend with the FBI, WikiLeaks,
Russian hackers and a media set on promoting a nonsensical false
equivalency for the purpose of improving ratings?
The truth is
that our so-called democracy is more of pseudo-democracy, with
ridiculously gerrymandered districts, large-scale voter suppression
tactics, unequal representation, an Electoral College system that
disregards the popular will of the people, and fake news sources that
play to echo chambers and voter ignorance.
And although Trump
succeeded without it, the ability of rich donors and corporations to
pour money into elections should not be discounted either; nor should
the corruption caused by the close association of Congress and K Street —
both of which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others have rightfully decried.
Yes,
for all the things you can say about this election and our system in
general, the one thing you can't say is that it operates in a manner
which is "fair and square." Unless by "square" you mean that it squares
with the wishes of the Republican leadership.
The question then remains: What can be done?
I've
heard many liberals argue that nothing can be done — that the peaceful
transfer of power and the continuity of government are the most
important aspects of our democracy. But they're wrong. The most
important aspect of our democracy is the democracy part: the voting. And
if we don't protect that — if we don't fight for it — the rest isn't
worth much.
It now appears that change will not come through the
Supreme Court. And the prospect of passing a constitutional amendment to
fix the Electoral College and the other voting issues I've enumerated
is extremely unlikely without a wide-scale national movement. The same
is true for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
We
need that type of movement. We need protests. We need criticism. We
need emails and phone calls to members of Congress. We need a news media
that is responsible and that addresses these issues on a daily basis.
We need to show our dismay in a very public way.
Ordinarily — in
the past — I would've always had the greatest respect for the office of
the president.
Even presidents I did not agree with, I would've treated
with respect. I would've never, if in their presence, have considered
turning my back on them or not addressing them as "Mr. President."
But
that's exactly what I think we should now do. Any American who objects
not only to the things that Trump represents, but to the fact that our
democratic institutions have largely been undermined, should refuse to
show this president — and any president who does not win the popular
vote, for that matter — any respect. Because, while we must accept the
reality that he is in fact our president now, there is no rule that says
we must revere him.
That is how you make your voice heard.
This does not mean that you should not pay your taxes (which support our military) or that you should disobey the rule of law.
But
it does mean that you should turn your back on the president; that you
should refuse to stand when he enters a room; and that you should refuse
to call him "Mr. President."
It means that Democrats in
leadership should do everything they can to stop him from infringing on
the rights of our citizens, and that, in the Senate, they should refuse
to approve any Supreme Court justices and stop Republicans from getting
any of their projects passed — through protests, filibusters and other
procedural measures until election reform occurs.
It means that
members of the House should emulate their efforts of this past June and
engage in sit-ins and other demonstrations to bring Republicans to the
table.
Of course, such tactics would bear consequences. The
Democrats would be accused of undermining the very republic that they
seek to defend.
But it must be kept in mind that these types of
things have already been occurring. Our Congress is remarkably
inefficient, and Republicans have set plenty of precedent when it comes
to obstruction, making it a general policy to strike down or delay
practically every reasonable attempt at legislation and every
appointment attempted by President Obama, including refusing to take a
vote in the Senate on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, whom many
Republicans had previously praised.
Despite Republicans'
insistence that Trump should be given a chance, they never gave Obama
much of one, did they? Whatever he achieved, he achieved despite them,
not because of any real willingness to cooperate.
Still, in order
for such an effort to succeed, it would have to be supported by the
public — if not a majority, at least a vocal minority. Organize under
hashtags like #InaugurationProtest, but keep in mind that hashtags and
Facebook posts alone won't do it.
You need to show up.
We
need not only a massive protest on Inauguration Day, but regularly
scheduled protests outside of the White House and the Capitol. We need a
movement, not just the dressings of one. It was large-scale movements
that gave us women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Law and gay marriage.
We need to make our representatives hear the clarion call in no uncertain terms.
Maybe then they'll get the message that every vote should count and every person should count.
Rosenfeld
is an educator and historian who has done work for Scribner, Macmillan
and Newsweek and contributes frequently to The Hill. The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.
Climate change has been steadily shifting the planetary environment in myriad ways, from receding glaciers and melting sea ice to longer and more intense heat waves, droughts and storms. The changing environment has pushed many plant and animal species out of their normal habitats. And one dramatic effect is going to force humans to relocate: the…
A former reality TV star who bragged about sexually assaulting women, cheated hundreds of contractors and workers out of pay, insulted the family of a slain Muslim soldier, mocked a disabled reporter, sent out mean-girl tweets to a former beauty queen at 3 am like a psychotic ex-boyfriend, avoided paying
millions in tax obligations, and made a whole political career out of
resurrecting the racist birther movement with continuous assaults on
President Obama, has been elected president.
Donald J. Trump will soon have access to the nuclear launch codes and
the power to do the following terrifying things: nominate alt-right
judges to turn America back at least 50 years, fill his cabinet with
people as manifestly unqualified as he is to ravage the planet, crash
the economy, infringe on civil liberties, destroy reproductive rights,
repeal Obamacare, and scrap longtime alliances like NATO, allowing
Russia's dictatorial Putin to do as he pleases in the Middle East and
Ukraine.
If all of this sounds like grounds to nurse a bottle of
Jack with some Xanax in a dark corner, that's because it most certainly
is.
But the very same Republican Party that spent eight solid years
making President Obama's life a living hell, obstructing and blocking
everything he proposed under the sun all while hurling vile and racist
attacks on the man, well, suddenly wants the country to come together
and sing kumbaya and accept the electoral outcome. To that end,
Republicans have done everything to delegitimize the outbreak of
passionate protests taking place across the country in the wake of
Trump’s unexpected victory. While there have been a few reports of anti-Trump protesters engaging in violence, the demonstrations have remained largely peaceful.
And
a bit of bad behavior might be expected with any major protest,
especially after one of the most insane and contentious presidential
election in modern history, which featured Trump's frequent incitement
of his supporters to violence. Even before he was telling supporters
that the election would be "rigged" and they might want to arm
themselves, Trump had shown a willingness to tolerate violent resistance
when things did not go the way he wanted. Well before anyone had the
inkling that he might run for, let alone win the presidency, Trump
tweeted an invitation for resistance by any means necessary
following President Obama's reelection win in 2012: “We can't let this
happen,” he implored his army of Twitter followers. “We should march on
Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided.”
He
did not need to march on Washington, the recalcitrant Republican
Congress did it for him, vowing to obstruct every single action the
president attempted to take, refusing to hold hearings on his budget,
and hitting peak obstruction when they refused to meet with his Supreme
Court nominee. The American people be damned. They were not going to do
their jobs.
Outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman
Reince Priebus, now Trump's chief of staff, is one of the newly
converted, peace and democracy loving Republicans admonishing
anti-Trump protesters, while simultaneously claiming to love party
unity. The hypocrisy here is so strong it needs to come with a warning
label.
“I’m sure that the vast majority of people are just very
disappointed with the outcome of the election, so I’ll give them that,
and I’ll also say I understand the First Amendment of the Bill of
Rights," Priebus said. "But this election is over now. And we have a
president-elect who has done everything he can do over the last 48 hours
to say, ‘Let’s bring people together.’”
Priebus thinks 48 hours
is plenty of time. Never mind that Republican obstruction and disrespect
for President Obama endured eight long years. Not to mention the fact
that this plea comes from the committed public servant who put his
country in jeopardy when he assembled a task force to
ensure that President Obama's constitutionally mandated duty to
nominate a justice for the Supreme Court would be blocked at all costs.
But now that Priebus has landed the position of White House chief of staff, he's just in love with bipartisanship and finding common ground.
But
it's not just high-ranking Republican officials who are guilty of this
Olympic-level hypocrisy, some of the loudest voices in right-wing media
are whining about how unfair it all is as well. After spending the Bush
years serving as the state-sponsored media and hating on Americans upset
with unwarranted surveillance, a dishonest war and the destruction of
the environment, Fox News suddenly became a bastion of resistance and
opposition at all costs when President Obama got into office. Now that
their guy is in, it's time again to toe the administration line.
Cherry-picking protest movements is a regular Fox ploy. The network
blatantly promoted Tea Party protests and more recently armed takeovers
of federal lands, while showing utter contempt for anti-Trump protests,
which Fox has said features "losers without jobs" and "paid insurgents by the DNC."
Indeed,
those million-moron marches of pre-deplorables spewing treasonous (and
racist) hatred at President Obama not only received an infinite amount
of positive coverage from Fox News, but reporters for Fox out and out
supported them. Fox News' embedded reporter Griff Jenkins lavishly praised Tea
Party Express rallies in 2009, though he claimed he was "simply
reporting" on them. Reporting, cheerleading, what’s the difference? The
network vigorously promoted the
2010 Tea Party Express Tour, which featured a number of white
supremacists who openly called for armed insurrection. You know, people
just accepting an electoral outcome.
In short, after spending an entire year fanning the flames of hate and misogyny and inspiring his supporters to threaten armed insurrection if
he lost, Trump, Republican leaders and members of the right-wing media
suddenly think liberals should just get in line and fall in love with
their new president.
Where's Michele Bachmann to mispronounce chutzpah when you really need it?
Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) shifted away from the
overly positive talk of working with Donald Trump by promising to fight
Trump tooth and nail during an interview on ABC's This Week.
These
Trump appointments of extreme racists and religious bigots do not bode
well for any Americans who are not white and not Christian.
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
As this column confesses more than one wants to, it is a travesty
that the American people are so woefully ignorant and in many cases just
plain stupid. Of course no citizen wants to admit that their fellow
citizens are “thick,” but as a classical Cynic one calls it exactly as
they see it.
There is a misconception among some of the more cognitively
challenged in America, typically on the right, that what made America
exceptional was its predilection to interfere around the world and use
its military might to impose its will on people and nations; kind of
like what the incoming fascist administration promises.
However, what
really made America exceptional, and helped build America into a great
nation, was its policy of accepting any and all people, no matter where
they are from, or no matter what color they are, or no matter what
religion they observed into the country with a clear path toward
citizenship; that exclusively American exceptionalism is about to be
eradicated with a decidedly white supremacist administration chosen by a
minority of the people.
As a few Americans learned over the past few years, it is not just
the idea of foreigners who want to emigrate and live in America that
offends those who voted for Trump, they are offended that any non-white
and non-Christian person lives in ‘their’ America.
Subsequently, those white supremacists were crucial to electing a
swindler and television celebrity who is already building an
administration staffed with white supremacists; supremacists that polite
company refers to as “white nationalists.”
What that incoming administration means for a very significant
percentage of the American population is that this country is a couple
of months away from having a White House administration with a clear
agenda of specifically targeting about a third of the population to put
them in a place the majority of Trump voters demand; at the mercy of a
toxic white supremacist movement. As Ned Resnikoff noted, “The doctrine of the Trump administration will be white nationalism [supremacy].”
Many readers are already aware that to keep tabs on his
administration’s progress to racially and religiously cleanse America of
undesirables, Trump appointed white supremacist
and all-around malcontent Stephen Bannon as most senior adviser and
strategist. Some people may have heard that Bannon is being tapped to
begin spreading Trump’s white supremacy hate throughout the European
Union; more on that in another column. But Bannon is just an adviser and
strategist for Trump and although he has the happy fascist’s ear, the
real impending damage is going to come from the administration’s
appointees who will wield a dangerous amount of white power under the
guise of “governing.”
It is difficult to call to mind when in American history an incoming
administration not only campaigned on white supremacy, but immediately
upon winning began choosing avowed racists and religious bigots to serve
and advise; at least a third of the population should be absolutely
terrified.
As an aside, world leaders should also brace for some of
Trump’s white supremacy if confirmed Islamophobe Rudy Giuliani, also a blatant racist,
eventually becomes Secretary of State. He will be free to spread some
Trump and Fox News’ hatred around the globe through official government
and diplomatic channels.
Closer to home, people of color can look forward to institutionalized
white supremacy that will erase whatever Civil Rights gains they have
made over the decades when the federal criminal justice system is
administered by a man that was too racist
to serve as a federal judge and rejected by the Senate. If Jeff
Sessions (R-AL) does become attorney general, and there is every reason
to believe he will, it will signal the end of the Justice Department
enforcing Civil Rights laws or holding Republican states to account for
voting rights violations.
Sessions is notorious for claiming the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was “an intrusive piece of legislation;”
with Sessions running the Department of Justice, voting rights
violations will be celebrated, not prosecuted and it is hardly an
exaggeration based on his past statements.
In testimony before Congress in 1986, a prosecutor, J. Gerald Hebert said that Sessions agreed with another racist and federal judge that a white lawyer was “a disgrace to his race”
because he dared represent African American clients. Mr. Hebert also
testified that Sessions referred to the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (N.A.A.C.P.) as “un-American” for “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people.”
Remember, this was in 1986 and over two decades after passage of the
Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and 210 years after the “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Founding Fathers; it was also 118 years after ratification of the 14th Amendment
guaranteeing all citizens equal and civil rights. Any hope that any
person of color or a person of a non-Christian religion may have had
that the Department of Justice in a “white nationalist”
administration will fight for every American citizen’s
constitutionally-protected equal and civil rights likely took a major
hit with news that Trump wants Sessions as Attorney General.
Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser, Former Lt. Gen. Michael
Flynn, will be just as devastating to the Muslim community as Sessions
will people of color. According to Flynn, like many Republicans, in his
mind there is no distinction whatsoever between terror organizations
like ISIS and the Muslim religion. Flynn obviously subscribes to Trump’s
hateful campaign rhetoric that fearing and hating Muslims, even
American Muslims, is only logical since he claims that Muslims are
terrorists. He actually used Twitter to declare that “fear of Muslims is ‘RATIONAL’” and only left it to the reader’s imagination to go to the next step and believe that “hatred of Muslims is RATIONAL.”
Flynn also supported Trump’s “big deal” during the campaign that to defeat “radical Islam”
that it is vital that all politicians use that pejorative, radical
Islam, ad nauseam. Flynn also dared all leaders in the Middle East to renounce
their Islamic religion because in his mind that Abrahamic faith is
terrorism. Flynn took to Trump’s favorite means of communication,
Twitter, and wrote:
“In next 24 hours, I dare Arab & Persian world “leaders” to
step up to the plate and declare their Islamic ideology sick and must B
healed.”
One wonders how long it will take a cretin like Flynn to convince
Trump to issue an executive order demanding, not daring, all American
Muslims to “step up” and declare their Islamic faith sick, and
that it must be eradicated off the face of the planet. It is not out of
the realm of possibility either. It is still two months before the
fascist administration takes power and already there have been serious
discussions on implementing a national registry for Muslims and the precedent of internment camps to “make American great again;” or some such bovine excrement.
These first set of Trump appointments, or proposed appointments, does
not bode well for Americans who are not white and not Christian; the
Census Bureau regards
people from the Middle East and Northern Africa as part of the white
population, but they are predominately Muslims so they have plenty to
fear. What is clear is that Donald Trump is following through on his
white nationalist (supremacist) rhetoric he promised throughout the
campaign.
It is bad enough that a white supremacist (Bannon) and Muslim hater
(Flynn) will have Trump’s ear and advise him according to their
particular hate, but worse that the head of the Justice Department
cannot countenance that all Americans are guaranteed equal rights.
The
combination of two bigots advising an authoritarian with an attorney
general unwilling to enforce equal and civil rights laws will not make
America great again; it will make America a mirror image of the incoming
white supremacist administration and there is precious little anyone
can do to stop it.
You aren’t going to make any extra money under Donald Trump, so I
hope your racism, or your attempt to ignore it, keeps you warm at night.
OK,
we have all gotten the memo that it’s not cool or politically correct
to yell “I hate the blacks, I hate the Mexicans and I hate the Jews!”
But seriously, when was the last time the KKK celebrated a
presidential election? They’ve got a glowing picture of an airbrushed,
Photoshopped and digitally toned Donald on the homepage of their
website. He stands heroic under a presidential seal that reads “Trump’s
Race United My People.”
I can’t do much these days but sit back
and laugh as I watch the president-elect build an all-star cast of white
supremacists — Steve “Breitbart” Bannon, Teddy Cruz and Rudy Giuliani —
or at least, if they don’t like that label, a group of men who get
offended when they are called “racist,” but continue to cosign, commit
and endorse racist ideas and actions.
Trump and his team may not
be card-carrying Klan members, but they aren’t doing nearly enough to
reject that support, while providing the rhetoric that’s gassing the
hate-fueled fires spreading throughout the country. Schools all over, in
every corner of America, are reacting to this hate, as if they’ve been
suppressing it until this campaign gave them the heart to flex those
feelings. The problem is that this isn’t 1802 and you can’t just roll up
on black people and start attacking them.
There will be consequences,
and people on both sides will be hurt.
The real question is this:
What’s the point? What do these white working-class people we’ve heard
so much about really expect? Having a race-baiting president will not — I
repeat, will not — transform into any opportunities for
hard-working whites in America, just like the Obama candidacy didn’t
deliver any black person from the issues that African-Americans have
been facing since long before I was born.
A common theme that’s
being tossed around is that Trump’s election was the white working
class’ chance way to say “Fuck you!” to the political elites who forgot
about them, sucked up their factory jobs and left them out to dry. I
take issue with this for a number of reasons.
The first and most
obvious reason is this: How do you buck a system ruled by elites by
electing a billionaire who was born rich, employed the Mexicans he
blamed for taking jobs away and could never possibly understand someone
else’s struggle? Next, I don’t fully understand the term “hard-working
whites.” I come from the blackest community in one of the blackest
cities, and I don’t know how not to have 10 jobs. Everybody I
know has 10 jobs, even the infants. Black people, Asians and Mexicans
alike work their asses off, so why is the “hard-working white” class
even a voting bloc?
What’s sad is that these angry, hard-working
white people don’t understand that they saw more economic gains under
President Obama than they did under George W. Bush. Unemployment went
down across the board except among African-Americans—
the rate actually doubled for us — so those folks should be praising
Obama, not championing Trump or subscribing to all this alt-right B.S.
Then
there’s the myth of returning factory jobs. It’s not a real thing! And
trust me, I used to subscribe to the same ideas, all caught up in the
nostalgia of the old dudes from my neighborhood. My friend Al’s grandpa
used to park his Cadillac on Ashland Avenue, hop out and roll up on us
nine-year-olds like, “Finish high school, get a job at Bethlehem Steel
and your future is set!” He’d spin his Kangol around backwards, pull out
a fistful of dollars, give us each a couple and continue, “I made so
much money at the steel factory, my lady ain’t worked a day in her life!
I bought a house that I paid off and that shiny car right there! Yes
sir, life is good!”
Those jobs were long gone by the time we came
of age, at Bethlehem Steel and almost every place like it across the
country. They weren’t taken by Mexicans or sent overseas — industries
changed, new products were made and robots were invented that could do
the job of 10 men and work all night without complaining. Those
beautiful factory positions for uneducated hard-working whites (or
anybody else) aren’t coming back, and I don’t care what Trump says.
What’s even weirder is that we have created a generation of people
complaining about jobs that they have never had and will not see in
their lifetime — and again, for what?
We should be asking
ourselves what’s going to happen when the forgotten Trump supporters are
ignored by him. I challenge the Klansmen, the closet racists and the
rest of his supporters to look deeper into Trump’s life and his
business. Unlike you, he’s not committed to white, he’s committed to
green, and your financial situation will not change.
D. Watkins is the author of "The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America."
He has been published in Salon, New York Times, The Guardian and other
publications, and he is a frequent contributor on NPR, CNN and
elsewhere. He holds a master's in education from Johns Hopkins
University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of
Baltimore and teaches writing at Coppin State University. He was the
winner of Baltimore magazine's "Best Writer" award in 2015.
Like a Double Dose of Dubya: Donald Trump's Presidency Will Be Like the George W. Bush Disaster-Only Worse
In yet another post-election example of wish fulfillment, there are rumors circulating that president-elect Donald Trump won't actually stay in office all four years because he won't want to do the job. After Trump met with President Obama, we heard reports that he "seemed surprised" by the scope of the job. We have also heard that…
One of the best ways we can fight Trump right now is on the
battlefield of Medicare. I'm sure everyone remembers how angry and
stirred up Republican masses got at the idea of even one small change to
Medicare.
Throughout his campaign, Trump assured his adoring followers that
there would be no cuts to Medicare and Social Security. He tried to run
to the left of Clinton on it, saying he would save it and make it better
for everyone.
Those of us familiar with such empty promises knew that "make it
better" was code for cuts, but his followers were having no part of it.
Now is the time for battle, and the first battleground is going to be
Medicare.
As I write, Paul Ryan is drafting his legislation to privatize Medicare and cut benefits. The Republican Congress has promised they will shovel this legislation through using budget reconciliation as their goal.
To make it palatable for today's seniors, Ryan has also promised that
the current Medicare system will remain in place for people age 55 and
above. That's a terrible idea, as Jonathan Cohn explains:
If at the same time Republicans shrink Medicaid, those
seniors will suffer even more, since today the poorest seniors can use
the program to pay for whatever medical bills Medicare does not.
Ryan promises that the proposal would not affect seniors who are 55
or older, since the new system wouldn’t begin operating for 10 years. But
realistically the entire Medicare program would change once premium
support took effect ― private plans would almost certainly find ways to
pick off the healthiest seniors, for instance ― and, at best, the damage
would simply take longer to play out.
Ryan’s Medicare scheme includes one other element ― a
provision to raise the eligibility age gradually, so that seniors would
eventually enroll at 67, rather than 65. Particularly in a
world in which the Affordable Care Act no longer exists, 65 and
66 year olds searching for private coverage would find it harder to
obtain, more expensive and less generous than what they’d get from
Medicare today.
There are two things to keep in mind here.
First, our response must be swift and vocal. That
means that you must have the telephone numbers of your elected
representatives at hand and be prepared to call them and register your
opposition to any cuts to Medicare. No slacktivism. No online petitions.
In-person telephone calls to your representatives, personal visits, and
visible opposition.
Second, health policy is always complex. Always.
People don't understand it. One of the reasons Medicare is so popular is
because it's simpler than any private insurance plan. People pay a
payroll tax and when they're 65 they enroll in a Medicare plan that
covers most of their costs. They can buy a supplemental plan at low cost
to cover what traditional Medicare doesn't. It's simple, and it's
elegant, and it works. It's going to be up to us to keep this
message clear and plain everywhere. When we talk to people, when we post
on social media, and when we comment on blogs.
Do not let them use muddy terms and oversimplify their plans, like
they did with the Affordable Care Act. They are the ones slogging
through complex policy. Know your facts, be armed with them, and be
prepared to fire a volley at anyone lying about their plans.
Make no mistake. This is the battleground. Gear up for it. Forget the
distractions with outrageous claims and just stay focused on fighting.
If we fight, we will win.
A dear friend has a brother with Down Syndrome. This year, he voted for
the first time, and he couldn't have been more excited to push a button
for Hillary Clinton. After Clinton lost, my friend, his sister, asked
him how he was feeling. He said, "We're having meatloaf for dinner
tonight."
Goddamn, I want to have that response.
I've gotta be honest here, and feel free to call me a "pussy" or
whatever you need, but very early last Wednesday morning, around 1 a.m.,
when I knew that it was really, truly over (although we all pretty much
knew by 11 p.m.), something broke in me, to the point that I don't know
how to react. In case you haven't noticed, the last week around this
joint, it's been pretty messy and morose.
I have barely been able to watch any of the complicit news networks as
they recalibrate to the reality of a Donald Trump presidency. And when I
do, I hear things, as I did on Saturday, like a Trump supporter on a
CNN panel decrying the protests because they are chanting and marching
about "old news." That's right. The campaign wasn't 5 days over, but, as
far as this sycophantic slug was concerned, it may as well have been
years ago. "We need to look to the future," he explained.
So I watch briefly and I get pissed and then I just feel broken again.
Hell, it's better than the nausea I get, triggered by Trump's voice. I'm
guessing that it comes from the helplessness of the situation, the
feeling that we can't change this, along with the feeling that we did
this to ourselves. I knew the nation was racist and dumb. I just didn't
know how racist and how dumb. Now I do.
I have thought about how ridiculously wrong so many of us had been, we
who blog and pontificate and punditize, rudely or cleanly. And I was
especially angry at myself for not listening to an especially wise
person. That'd be me back in 2008,
when I said one reason that I was supporting Barack Obama over Clinton
was because "somewhere in some cellar in some Little Rock or DC mansion,
there's a machine that's been whirring its gears on low for the last
seven years that's getting greased up and ready to kick into full speed
once more, and it's aching to chew up Clinton, ready to get sticky with
her blood and bones, for once it's really chugging, that fucker needs to
be fed, ready to spew once again to willing, slavering media dogs who
lap up that anti-Clinton vomit like it's kibble from Walter Cronkite's
ass." I knew exactly what would happen. But I let myself think that it
wouldn't. And I don't blame Clinton. I blame pretty much everyone except
her.
Things are gonna be bad. I believe with the fervent faith of a crazed
minister awaiting the Rapture. A fight is coming. A big fucking fight,
possibly the worst in my lifetime, and I've faced down Operation Rescue,
angry cops in riot gear at anti-Iraq War protests, and a raging George
H.W. Bush supporter. I want to be part of that fight. But if I'm going
to be in fighting shape, I gotta tap out for a little while. I gotta get
my head straight and my voice and fists ready.
I'm not gonna do that spending the next couple of months writing
constantly, "Boy, Donald Trump sure is gonna suck" or "Boy, that cabinet
choice sure is gonna dick us all over." Because, really, we don't know
how bad it'll be and what he's gonna do until his tiny moisturized,
manicured orange hands are holding the reins of power. I know that it's
the privilege of whiteness and maleness that allows me to pretend I can
ignore the rise of the Trump-tatorship. But I want to be the best ally
to others that I can be.
So, after over 13 years of almost continuous daily blogging, I'm taking a leave of absence for a while.
I'm not going cold turkey. I will probably post every now and then if
something insane happens (although, c'mon, "insane" is relative at this
point) or if the mood strikes.
I'll definitely still be on Twitter. And I'll be piping up on Facebook, too.
Also, if someone would like me to write for their publication (c'mon, Guardian, you know you want me), I'll pop up there.
Oh, and as long as I'm pimping myself, I've got what I think is a
kick-ass new play, political and feminist as hell, if any professional
theatre or group is interested in checking it out. When there are public
readings, I'll let you know.
Before checking out and switching to a much lighter political diet, lemme leave you with a few thoughts:
1. I believe that the most patriotic thing that President Obama could do
would be to bypass the Senate and appoint Merrick Garland to the
Supreme Court.
2. The members of the Electoral College have a constitutional duty to
save us from someone like Trump. They would be derelict in that duty if
they let him take office.
3. If Clinton had won, the next 4-8 years would have been a nightmare of
impeachment hearings and endless investigations, all emails, all the
time. So that's one small blessing amid the conflagration.
4. Donald Trump is in this to enrich himself and his family. Whether or
not that's what he intended, it's what he will do because it's the only
thing he knows how to do: make himself richer on the backs of others.
5. Trump will do everything that he condemned Hillary Clinton for and
worse. And Republicans will give him a pass. This will be the most
enraging part of the next couple of months.
6. You should give money to organizations like the ACLU, Planned
Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, and others. You should make sure
you donate to local groups that are helping undocumented immigrants, the
homeless, the dis-empowered all around. And you should subscribe to
things like Mother Jones and give money to Talking Points Memo. They are the good guys. They'll need all the support they can get.
That's it. I may come running back here after a short hiatus. It's
entirely possible. Addition is like that. If not, I'll be back by
Inauguration Day in 2017, after this shit year has ended. We've got a
nation to save but, as they always tell you, you have to put your own
oxygen mask on before you can help others do the same.
I need to go wander in the desert for a while. I need to down peyote and
go on a spirit journey. I need to wantonly fuck wayward bikers and
lonely bartenders and rough waitresses and howl at the moon as we orgasm
in the dust.
And then I will come back, righteous rage restored, pieces back
together, ready to face down the motherfuckers who would break us all
again and again.
One of the things I have always faulted President Obama for is that,
when it comes to his domestic political enemies, he has sought to give
them the benefit of the doubt. Even when they greeted his outstretched
hand by waving their dicks at him, Barack Obama has told us for most of
his presidency that Republicans were honorable, rarely ever raking them
over the coals, rarely impugning their motives, rarely calling out the
motherfuckers for fucking their mothers. It has always been to his
detriment that he has tried so hard not to demonize demons.
Even now, as Donald Trump bumblefucks
his way through a bullshit transition into a sad, disastrous presidency
(that he will inevitably get richer from), Obama has avoided
confrontation. Now, you could say that Obama is such a decent man that
he can sit with the orange prick who provoked some of the most racist
responses to him and his family and try to teach that orange prick how
to not blow the joint up. And you can look at Trump's gracious response
to Obama and desperately seek some comfort in it, hoping that it
indicates that Trump is taking his new job seriously.
But you're being a fool. And so is President Obama in this case.
What we know about Donald Trump is that he will lie and lie and lie. He
will fart in your face and tell you it was a ghost. Breitbart will
report it as real. And his idiot hordes will insist that they saw that
flatulent specter. We also know that Trump will say whatever he thinks
his audience at the time wants to hear. He said almost exactly that at
some of his rallies, where the red hats replaced the brown shirts,
testing something on a crowd and when they didn't respond, trying
something else that got applause and cheers. That's his method: say
whatever the fuck people want to hear, agree to just about anything that
isn't legally binding (or that can't be overwhelmed by dickish
lawsuits), and then do whatever the fuck he wants, fuck you if you don't
like it. It's what he's doing right now by refilling the DC swamp with
sewer water instead of draining it. Take that, rubes. And they will.
Trump is playing Obama. As much as you think Obama is flattering Trump's
ego by respecting his election, Trump is using Obama's innate decency
to legitimize his ascendance. It's frustrating as hell because Obama ought to be smarter than this.
Oh, sure, yeah, you can say that this is Obama's patented 11 dimensional
chess game, that he's hoping all this attention will educate Trump and
that, as a result, Trump won't gut the Affordable Care Act and other
accomplishments of the last 8 years. Yeah, that ain't Trump. And any
hope that Republicans will stand up to Trump is pure fantasy. Think of
the most assholish thing they can do. Now multiply it by control of the
entire government.
What Obama can do in his last couple of months in office is push
Republicans into a confrontation.
The easiest one is the appointment of
Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court under the idea that the Senate's failure
to act is a kind of consent, a "we don't fuckin' care, do what you
want." It's like when a president refuses to act on a bill within ten
days while Congress is in session. It becomes a law, no? Presentment
clause, motherfuckers. Let's take it to the Supreme Court for a
decision.
Your Prankster Joe Biden memes are hilarious. But blowing up the GOP's
naked hijacking of the Supreme Court would be the ultimate joke to play
on these America-hating bastards.
When
he took office in 2001, George W. Bush inherited a healthy Republican
Party roughly at parity with its opposition. When he left office eight
years later, Bush had degraded his party’s image and taught a generation
of Americans to loathe the GOP, and members of that generation have
clung to their disgust through every election cycle since (though their
enthusiasm for showing up at the ballot box has waxed and waned).
Bush
was such a comprehensive political fiasco that his only saving grace, in
terms of the brand management of the Republican Party, was handing his
successor a financial crisis so deep it allowed Republicans in Congress
to run against his successor’s attempts to recover from it. The Bush
administration cratered because it was filled with hacks, ideologues,
and business cronies and led by a mental lightweight. Many people
believed that for the Republican Party to recover, it would have to
develop a governing class that grasped science and evidence.
It
is safe to say that this has not exactly transpired. The Trump
administration will make the last failed Republican presidency look like
an age of reason. The United States has never elected a president so
openly contemptuous of democratic norms. There’s no So You’ve Elected a Bullying, Racist, Authoritarian Swindler As President
pamphlet within easy reach. The loyal opposition faces an unusual
paradox. What will almost certainly be a catastrophe for the Republican
Party in the long run will also be a catastrophe for the United States
much sooner. The threat posed by Trump requires a massive counter-mobilization of people and resources with the dual tasks of
safeguarding the large-D Democratic Party and small-D democracy.
A letter to Trump from a first-grade student at Woodland School, Portola Valley, California.Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine
The immediate theater
of action will be in Washington, where the key political dynamic has
been identified by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. “We
worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” he
toldThe Atlantic
in 2011, referring generally to the agenda of Barack Obama and his
fellow Democrats in Congress. “Because we thought — correctly, I think —
that the only way the American people would know that a great debate
was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the
‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have
been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way
forward.”
Democrats in Congress have to understand this. Most people,
and especially low-information voters who decide elections, pay little
attention to legislative details. Bipartisanship tells them things are
going well. Partisan conflict tells them things are going badly.
McConnell filibustered the first bill that come up in 2009, a
conservation measure with broad bipartisan appeal that ultimately passed
with 77 votes.
The
second element of this dynamic is equally crucial: It is the governing
party that will be held accountable by the voters. Bipartisanship
suggests high presidential approval, which leads to more success for the
governing party in Congress and for the president’s reelection. Helping
the majority govern means helping the majority maintain power. As
McConnell said
in 2010, “The reward for playing team ball this year was the reversal
of the political environment and the possibility that we will have a
bigger team next year.” The conventional wisdom of the pre-Obama years,
that the minority would pay a price for obstruction, was precisely
backward. The minority party pays a price for bipartisanship.
This does not mean Democrats should ape destructive tactics
like shutting down the government or threatening default (which, in any
case, they have no opportunity to do without the majority in either
chamber of Congress). It does not even mean they should rule out all
cooperation. It means they should carefully weigh every policy
concession they can win, assuming that any present themselves, against
the enormous political price they will pay by getting it. A few policy
goals could meet this test. If Trump is somehow willing to abandon his
catastrophic plan to destroy the international climate accords and
unleash irreversible planetary catastrophe, or perhaps rethink his
party’s plan to deny access to medical care to millions of Americans too
poor or sick to afford it, the political sacrifice of offering
bipartisan cover to Trumpian moderation would be worthwhile.
In
the short run, this calculation is almost entirely theoretical. Trump’s
allies in Congress are prepared to collect on their devil’s bargain.
House Speaker Paul Ryan described the election as a “mandate” — a
curious term for an election in which his party will finish second in
the national vote — andRepublicans
will move with maximal haste on plans to cut taxes for the rich,
deregulate the financial industry, and cut social spending for the poor.
There is no other conceivable course of action: The Republican Party in
Washington has been organized over the last three decades as a machine
to redistribute resources upward. It has no other ideas and
automatically rejects any proposals with any other effect. The political
cost of waging class war for the rich will not deter them because it is their reason for existing.
Trump managed to pass himself off to many hard-pressed voters as an
enemy of concentrated wealth, but concentrated wealth mostly knew
better, which is why stock of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and
JPMorgan Chase swelled on the news of the incoming friendly
administration. Democrats in Congress must make it their task to expose
the contradiction Trump has heretofore concealed.
So should anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton. The day after the election, protesters swarmed the streets of major cities
shouting that Trump was “not my president.” Good for them. They were
not expressing the traditional postelection decorum, but then again,
many were simply describing reality: Trump has almost explicitly
promised not to be the president of large swaths of this country. His campaign
was rooted in his belief that Mexican-Americans and Muslim immigrants
cannot become real Americans. There can be purpose beyond catharsis to
theatrical expressions of alienation and anger. Just look at the tea
party.
Trump’s loyal opposition has a duty to respect the law. More than that — for all those who are wondering, everyone must hope he can avoid the worst. It might help Democrats regain power if Trump throws 20 million Americans off their insurance, dissolves NATO, or prosecutes Hillary Clinton,
but that is not an agenda to root for. Less horrible is better. At the
same time, Americans who did not support Trump have no obligation to
normalize his behavior. To the contrary: Upholding the dignity and value
of the presidency means refusing to treat the ascendancy of a Trump
into the office as normal. Trump is counting on a combination of media
weariness and Republican partisan solidarity to allow him to grind
governing norms to dust. Two days after the election, his attorney
reaffirmed his intention to have his children run his business even
while he serves as president — an arrangement creating limitless
opportunity for corruption, as his use of the presidency enriches his
brand and foreign leaders strike deals that curry personal favor.
Whatever
signs of normality he has given since Tuesday’s triumph are, thus far,
purely superficial. To submit to a world where we say the words President Trump without anger or laughter is to surrender our idea of what the office means.
A broader and even
more vital mission, one that should attract support far beyond the
Democratic Party, is to safeguard and expand space for political
dissent. American politics has regularly been stalked by authoritarian
figures, from Charles Coughlin to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace.
None of them has ever had command of a party with full control of
government. It is now within the realm of imagining that the United
States will come to resemble some sort of illiberal democracy or
quasi-democracy — Berlusconi’s Italy or, eventually, even Putin’s
Russia.
This
is no mere Trumpian personal idiosyncrasy. The GOP is absorbing the
ideological tendencies of other far-right nationalist parties. The
Nevada Republican Party chair raged at evening early-voting in Las
Vegas: “Last night, in Clark County, they kept a poll open till ten
o’clock at night so a certain group could vote … Yeah, you feel free
right now? Think this is a free or easy election?” Alabama’s Jeff
Sessions, Trump’s closest Senate ally, has railed against “a global
intellect — elites with their big money” and “George Soros and his
globalist crowd.” Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, who spoke at the
Cleveland convention and has been touted as a potential Homeland
Security secretary, tweeted
that anti-Trump protests “must be quelled.” A recent Pew survey asked
whether certain characteristics are important to maintaining a strong
democracy. Fewer than half of the Trump supporters surveyed agreed with
the statements “Those who lose elections recognize the legitimacy of the
winners” and “News organizations are free to criticize political
leaders.” Traditional Republicans in Washington will go along with all
this, provided Trump signs Paul Ryan’s fiscal agenda into law.
American
small-D democrats need to treat the election of Trump’s party in a way
not unlike how we respond to authoritarianism overseas. The nonprofit
sector has a long tradition of subsidizing institutions to safeguard
open discourse, human rights, labor rights, and ballot access. (Not
coincidentally, Soros has made enemies in the Putinsphere by doing
precisely this.) Trump’s government will probably set itself the task of
grinding down all these rights, from union organizing to civil-rights
enforcement to freedom from torture. Philanthropists should subsidize
legal defenses for journalists threatened by the tactic, embraced by
Trump and his ally Peter Thiel,
of bankrupting critics through exorbitant legal action. America already
has a nonprofit infrastructure devoted to safeguarding domestic civil,
human, and political rights, but it will have to scale up radically to
meet the threat of a Trumpist party in full command of the federal
government. Democracy will not disappear overnight, but it can be eroded
over time. The fight to defend it must be joined in full.
There
is one glimmer of — dare I say it — hope. Opposition parties tend to
suffer from a lack of charismatic, high-profile leaders. American
liberals enjoy the unusual good fortune of having the most popular
politician in America on their side in Barack Obama. Obama has floated plans to devote his postpresidency to mentoring young black men. This is both a worthy endeavor and no longer the most high-leverage use of his time.
Obama
very properly offered his deference to the validity of Trump’s election
(proving himself a more committed democrat than the president-elect,
who refused beforehand to bind himself to the outcome and who, in 2012,
took to Twitter on Election Night to call for revolution when it
momentarily seemed that Obama would win the Electoral College while
losing the popular vote). But the political-cultural norm of former
presidents’ steering clear of politics is not rooted in any particular
public interest. All recent living ex-presidents left office either
infirm, unpopular, or in some way disgraced. (A pardon scandal in his
final days, compounded by his sexual dalliance, created an especially
noxious odor around Bill Clinton.) There is no example of a young,
popular former president facing a successor committed to destroying all
of his work.
And
so the man who thought he was through with politics has, it turns out,
one more essential role left: Beginning next year, Obama needs to rally
the opposition, to community-organize his coalition, and to exploit his
celebrity to make the case for saving his legacy. His visibility alone
would serve a vital function. Trump’s election has sent a statement to
Americans and the world about the country’s identity. It has been
received viscerally, by bullies abusing minorities as well as by fearful
allies overseas. Obama is a powerful symbol of rationalism,
thoughtfulness, and pluralism — the ultimate anti-Trump, both
ideologically and symbolically. Women, religious minorities, immigrants
and prospective immigrants, transgender people, young Africans with
iPhones, the beat-down opposition in places like Russia and China, and
the people who bully all the preceding groups and more — the whole
planet, really — need reminding that Obama’s version of America has
prevailed before and will prevail again.
The night after the election.Photo: Andres Kudacki
And prevail we can.
The aftermath of every election plunges the losers into despair and
launches the victors into giddiness, and Trump’s shocking victory has
had an unusually distorting effect. American progressives are burdened
with a habit, stretching back decades, of handling political success
badly — taking power for granted, bemoaning compromised progress, and
collapsing into sectarian cannibalism.
Hillary Clinton suffered from the
same liberal ennui that bedeviled Al Gore in 2000, Hubert Humphrey in
1968, and Harry Truman in 1948. She suffered additionally from the
self-inflicted wounds of bad decisions regarding hired speeches and her
private email server, months of bruising attacks on her ethics from Bernie Sanders,
and a widespread sexism that made her ordinary shortcomings seem
sinister. Add to that a press corps that obsessed over her email lapse
and twin attacks by Russian intelligence and rogue, right-wing FBI
agents. It all culminated with the director of the FBI’s breaking all
precedent to float new insinuations of wrongdoing against
her ten days before the election, sealing her image as an untrustworthy
and even criminal figure. Polls taken at the end of the campaign
demonstrated that voters, astonishingly, believed that she was less
honest and trustworthy than her opponent — a man who is literally facing
trial for fraud.
Trump
will solve the Democrats’ voter-complacency problem for them. He may
also help them solve another problem: massive Republican gerrymandering.
The House map is redrawn every ten years, and Republicans had the good
fortune that the last redrawing followed their 2010 anti-Obama midterm
wave, allowing them to lock into place a map of districts designed to
virtually guarantee Republican control throughout the decade. Should
Democrats generate an effective response to Trump, an anti-incumbent
wave could allow the party to capture governorships in 2018 and
legislatures that year and in 2020. They would then be in a position to
create district maps that are more fair and democratic — and which, more
often then not, would turn more Democratic.
Remember:
When Trump showed the first signs of seriously challenging for the
nomination, the panicked Republican Establishment identified him as a
political calamity — a candidate who appealed to the party’s shrinking
white, non-college-educated base and alienated the minorities and
educated voters whose share of the electorate was growing. Its
calculations were off, but only to a degree. Trump drew every ounce out
of a shrinking coalition.
The
party Establishment was on track to wipe its hands of the foul nominee
after his expected defeat, clearing the way for fresh-faced,
conventionally right-wing figures like Ryan and Marco Rubio to rebuild
their party’s standing. The flip side of a president who will sign
Ryan’s agenda into law is that there will be no more oh-so-earnest Ryan
speeches apologizing from the bottom of his heart for the nominee’s
transgressions. Instead, a man who embodies hateful, misogynistic
bluster will define the party’s imprint in a lasting way. Tens of
millions of young voters, and children too young to vote, will grow up
associating the Republican Party with a man who embodies reactionary
hate against them.
The Trump stink will not wash away easily.
Notwithstanding
his ability to appear reasonable from time to time, Trump has character
traits that are consistent and long-standing. The postelection hope
that his lifelong childlike attention span, monumental ego, obsession
with dominance and vengeance, and greed verging on outright criminality
will abate in his eighth decade is fanciful. More so the notion that the
experience of enjoying electoral vindication against his critics, then
ascending to the most powerful position in the world, will curtail these
tendencies.
Trump’s election is one of the greatest disasters in American history.
It is worth recalling, however, that history is punctuated with
disasters, yet the country is in a better place now than it was a
half-century ago, and a better place than a half-century before that,
and so on. Despair is a counterproductive response. So is denial — an
easy temptation in the wake of the inevitable postelection pleasantries
and displays of respect needed to maintain the peaceful transfer of
power.
The proper response is steely resolve to wage the fight of our
lives.
*This article appears in the November 14, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
