Tag: democrats

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, Environment, language, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Science, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I often find myself disagreeing with, disappointed in, and even demonstrating against President Biden’s policies.

And yet, assuming he’s the candidate in November, he will get my vote. I admit he might not if the US had adopted ranked-choice voting. But until it does, a vote for any third-party candidate is a vote for the main opponent of your preferred candidate. More importantly, I believe that the bad things Biden has done have been part of his own effort—sometimes accurate and sometimes off-base—to leave the world  better than he found it. He is, fundamentally, a good person, And despite never having a majority in both houses of Congress, he’s done quite a bit of good as president:

  • Shepherding a phenomenal economic turnaround, the best post-COVID economy in the world, and creating or recovering hundreds of thousands more jobs
  • Replacing skepticism with science on topics ranging from global climate change to the safety of COVID vaccines
  • Restoring US leadership on the world stage after it was torn to shreds by his predecessor
  • Supporting labor, the middle class, the poor, and the disenfranchised—and doing his best to hold big corporations and the super-rich accountable for dong their part
  • Championing the right to vote—and the right to have that vote properly counted

As I write this BEFORE the first primaries and caucuses, that opponent is likely to be the orange-haired former president. Yeah, the guy who is facing more than 90 felony counts, who has bragged about a history of sexual abuse (and been accused of many others and found liable in one he didn’t admit to). The serial liar who was caught in 30,000 false statements just during his four-year presidency. The narcissist who thinks rules and laws don’t apply to him. The person who stacked the Supreme Court with people who have undermined the values shared by most US citizens, overturned longstanding legal precedents, and for the first time in modern history, stripped away the rights of whole classes of people.

And, let’s not forget, the man who has promised that if he is elected, he will focus not on governance, not on the economy, not on human rights—but on revenge against his perceived enemies, active harassment of people who might be a different color, ethnicity, political philosophy or religion, and who repeatedly uses language straight out of Hitler.

Yesterday, Christmas 2023, both men issued Christmas messages. Robert Hubbell devoted his daily newsletter to these messages—and their contrasts couldn’t be more stark. Biden spoke of unity, teamwork, kindness, and hope. But DT used his bully pulpit to wish that those he perceives as “EVIL and SICK…THUGS” (which includes the military and those who favor electric cars) “ROT IN HELL” (capitalization is his).

Please make sure you’re registered to vote. That your friends know why you will vote for Biden. And that the records of these two men while in office leave no choice.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Copywriting, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Don’t the Republicans ever get tired of their own shameless hypocrisy? A lot of the rest of us are sure tired of it. It’s time for the Dems to focus their messaging on why the Party of Never-if-a-Democrat-proposed-it is no friend of the people.

I offer these as a gift to the Democratic Party, its candidates, and its supporters.

  • Why do Republicans support socializing the costs of billionaires’ mistakes and misdeeds while privatizing their profits? Why should working folks have to pay to clean up their mess when billionaires don’t even pay taxes on much of their wealth?
  • Why do we pay so much more for health care, for university education, for prescription drugs, for so much else–and get less for our money than most other countries? Why did Republicans hold all three branches of government and come up with nothing to address these crises?
  • If we want to free the world of power-mad dictators and thugs like Putin, we need TRUE energy independence from renewable sources like solar, wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–so Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries can’t push us around because of our dependence on fossil fuel. That’s also our way out of the carbon crisis.
  • If you want to halt fuel-cost-related inflation, ditto. That will lead to better health outcomes, too.
  • Green energy will continue to create good, well-paying jobs right here in the US–and by the way Biden has presided over the longest steady growth in employment since 1939.
  • If expulsions of immigrants at the border due to fear of COVID–which are against both international law and human decency–aren’t warranted for Ukrainians, there’s no justification for their use to keep Black and Brown people out. Don’t accede to Republicans’ racist demands to hold COVID prevention/protection/treatment funding hostage to keep this cruel, illegal, and discriminatory policy in place.
  • Stop defending domestic terrorists! January 6 was an attempted coup, an attempt to blow up our democracy. Even Republican Secretaries of State admit that the 2020 election was the most fraud-free in history and that Biden won honestly (something we can’t say with certainty about Trump in 2016, since the Republicans blocked recounts in three crucial swing states). And yet you refuse to discipline even the most blatant seditionists in your ranks! Doesn’t democracy mean anything to you anymore?
  • Why are you, the party that claims to believe in freedom, passing laws that take “cancel culture” to levels approaching those of early Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia? How dare you make it a crime to teach or read honest history! How dare you try to suppress the speech rights of whole classes of people! How dare you try to roll back women’s reproductive rights, the right of people of color to vote, and the right to live without fearing violence because of who you are, what way you worship, or what you look like? Stop trying to grasp at your fading power OVER others and focus on your power TO do good in the world (hint: oppressing others is not doing good in the world)
  • Why was it OK to refuse to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland because nine months before the election was “too close to the election”–while Barrett was rushed through just weeks before?
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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Everyone should read this article on why Democrats should abandon wimpy centrism
Everyone should read this article on why Democrats should abandon wimpy centrism. The link is in the first paragraph of the post.

Here’s an essay I wish I had written: Why do Democrats love limp dishrag centrism?, by Ryan Cooper. It eloquently expresses a lot of things I’ve been saying for a long time. Spend a few minutes reading it, then please come back here for some deeper context and a longer, more historical perspective. The link will open a new tab, so this one will still be up on a computer screen (not true from a phone, but you should have a Back arrow)

Consider these tidbits:

  1. The last non-incumbent Democrat who won the presidency as an obvious centrist without a third-party candidate siphoning off significant votes from the Republicans was Jimmy Carter; the one before was John F. Kennedy. Bill
    Clinton had help from the third-party campaign of H. Ross Perot. Obama ran on a platform of “Hope and Change” that looked pretty progressive if you didn’t look too closely. LBJ was already an incumbent in 1964, and withdrew his bid in 1968 in the face of progressive challenges from Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Centrists Carter (running for re-election in 1980), Mondale (1984), and Dukakis  (1988) lost honestly. Gore (2000), Kerry (2004), and Hillary Clinton (2016) chose not to seriously contest highly suspicious election results.
  2. Bernie Sanders, an open progressive, won 23 primaries against Hillary Clinton, a centrist. In the swing states, where a person’s vote actually matters, he took Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, and New Hampshire–while her primary strength included many die-hard Republican states she had little or no chance of winning in the general election. Yet she took even swing states for granted, not even bothering to make a single appearance in Wisconsin between being nominated and the general election despite losing the primary by an astonishing 13.5 points. In Michigan, her campaign again took the state for granted and refused to respond to field organizers’ urgent calls for help–foregoing on-the-ground canvassing and lit drops as well as any significant TV advertising presence. As Cooper notes, she was clueless about the impact of Obama’s economic policies (bail out the banks, but hang working-class homeowners facing foreclosure out to dry) on working families in Rust Belt states. Sanders’ call for change was replaced by a sense of entitlement embodied in that “dishrag” slogan “I’m with her.” And Obama’s failure to show how he was helping working-class families even when Gallup named good jobs the number one issue in the 2012 Presidential election definitely hurt the Hillary campaign; she was seen as an out-of-touch Washington elitist.
  3. It is true that the only progressive nominated in my lifetime to head the ticket of a major party, George McGovern, was badly defeated. However, there were a number of factors besides his agenda: He threw his running mate under the bus after saying he’d stand behind him “1000 percent.” He was an incredibly uncharismatic campaigner (at age 15, I witnessed one of his pathetic rallies). And he couldn’t count on his greatest constituency–antiwar youth–because 18-to-20 year olds didn’t get the right to vote until 1971. And, just like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders in more recent years, he got basically no support–let’s state the truth: active hostility–from the Democratic Party establishment. As that same NPR piece that reported on McGovern’s VP fiasco notes,

The post-election reforms instituted by Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) made sure that, starting in 1972, delegates would be decided in primaries, not backroom deals, and that primaries — not smoke-filled rooms — would determine the nominee. The fact that McGovern, a strong opponent of the war, would win the nomination — helping, along the way, to curtail the power of such longtime Democratic leaders/bosses like Daley — was one reason why many in the Democratic Old Guard refused to unite behind their presidential candidate.

Interestingly, that same NPR link also shows that people respect and support candidates who actually have the guts to stand up and fight. In response to a reader question lower on the page, writer Ken Rudin points out that only one of the 126 Democrats who voted against the Iraq war in 2002 lost that November. I know that in my own district, I felt that his vote against the war was important enough that I voted for Richie Neal for the first and only time. My town has since been moved to an adjoining district, but I’m actively supporting and advising Neal’s progressive opponent, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud.

The Democrats need to realize that they are sabotaging themselves when the sabotage progressive candidates and refuse to fight against the continuous Republican encroachments. They need to stand up and fight back when the Mitch McConnells of this country undermine the people’s agenda. They need to give active support to candidates who inspire, and can win. The same old same old doesn’t cut it anymore. Cooper’s “dishrag centrists” won’t win a majority in Congress, and those elected won’t be a force for change. They need to recognize that even many of the votes for DT were votes for change, and that they could harness that momentum for a progressive agenda.

Poll after poll shows that like the rest of the world, America wants things like good jobs with good benefits, affordable healthcare and education, and a clean environment. Yet so many elected Democrats are too timid to go after these things–even though European citizens have enjoyed them for decades. And that’s why centrist Democrats keep losing elections. It reminds me of the way Michael Dukakis let George H.W. Bush back him into the corner by refusing to defend his liberal credentials (I’m still proud of this piece I wrote a year and a half ago).

It’s time to change that. Run good candidates. Take back the House and maybe the Senate. Push the people’s agenda. Call out the Republican traitors, saboteurs, and liars; oppose them at every turn. And run someone who has skills, experiences, AND an agenda to lead the ticket in 2020. Fighting the slide toward fascism is not enough. The Dems must be for a positive agenda as well as against their opponent’s agenda. This a point even made in this New York Times “report” on DT’s hypothetical 2020 re-election. While the author’s intent was to warn against a slate that’s too progressive, to me the message to the Democrats is not that at all, but to make sure that any progressive slate has a powerful agenda that helps ordinary people.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

As early as March 9, 2017, former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich has been making a consistent case for impeachment, laying out five different legal grounds to impeach DT.

Andrew Johnson impeachment trial, 1860s (via Wikipedia)
Andrew Johnson impeachment trial, 1860s (via Wikipedia)

I’ve got a few to add to his list.

  1. Let’s not forget that the GOP considered lying an impeachable offense and stated proceedings against Bill Clinton on those grounds. DT lies constantly. It’s one thing he’s consistent about. The Washington Post documented more than 2000 in his first year in office.
  2. Then there’s slander and libel, other things he’s consistent about. Every time he called one of his opponents adjectives like “Lyin'” or “Crooked,” that is actionable—slander if spoken, libel if written. Every time he smears entire classes of people, from those with disabilities to Mexicans to Muslims to, most recently, people from Haiti and Africa, he commits defamation anew.
  3. There’s his own admission that he’s a serial sexual predator, an admission that corroborates the accounts of at least 20 accusers (having multiple accusers of sexual assault is something he has in common with Mr. Clinton, of whom I’m not a great fan). And his subsequent behavior: first apology, then, despite a tape and a previous acknowledgement, denial that he even said it.
  4. There’s his open racism and discrimination against many protected groups, which is a violation of the oath he took to uphold laws that include the Americans with Disabilities Act and the various civil rights and free association laws. This has been a hallmark of his entire public career, and even earlier when he first went to work for his father—a man so known for his discriminatory renting policies that Fred T.’s tenant Woody Guthrie wrote songs condemning his landlord’s racism.

And then there’s the general question of DT competence, and whether we need to work a removal under the 25th Amendment (probably a good deal easier than impeachment). I consider him a sociopath and I worry that he and North Korea’s equally sociopathic Kim will get into a nuclear pissing contest. Oh yes, and the irregularities around voter disenfranchisement and ballot counting probably contain the seeds of impeachable offenses too.

Of course, I recognize the near-impossibility of winning a vote to impeach when both houses are controlled by people willing to accept the devil if the devil is a Republican. And I agree the prospect of a Pence presidency is scary. He’s smarter, far more stable, and well to the right of DT, plus he understands the game of politics.

But these are NOT reasons not to go forward. There comes a time when you have to say, “this behavior is unacceptable.” Otherwise we are a 3rd-rate banana republic with a strongman dictator—and the laughingstock/”scaringstock” of the world.

We said it to Nixon, who was far less appalling (and we got him out). We should have said it to George W. when he started a war against people who were not our enemy and destabilized the entire Middle East while also waging war on the freedom of Americans at home. We said it to Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica, which had no impact on policy and just reinforced that he’s not a great human being.

I also believe that if DT is impeached, Pence will have limited ability to do harm. Among several possible scenarios:

  1. Pence will go down with DT because DT takes him down
  2. Pence will be implicated by others and not take power
  3. He will assume the presidency but be seen as “damaged goods” and a lightweight, a short-term straw man like Gerald Ford, not worth giving much attention to
  4. Pence will be much more circumspect, recognizing that his power has limits. A far worse scenario would be Pence becoming president after DT dies in office, and then he would not be in any way limited by the fate of his predecessor.

Finally, impeachment allows the Dems to differentiate themselves, which they’re not very good at outside the Northeast and Left Coast. By moving impeachment forward, quixotic though that is while the GOP has their majority, they take a stand in favor of decency, in favor of inclusivity, in favor of good government, and against corruption, “otherism,” crony politics, and all the rest—all of which can become campaign issues both this year and in 2020.

In other words, though it will fail in 2018, the impeachment attempt is an opportunity for the Democrats to show themselves as a party of principle, as a party willing to take risks, and as something considerably different from today’s Republican Party (a party that Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and even Reagan would not be welcome in today).

And they need this cloak of respectability. The Democrats’ hands were not clean in the 2016 election. There is clear evidence that the party actively sabotaged the Bernie Sanders campaign and the progressive movement throughout the 2016 campaign, as well as pay-to-play shenanigans that sure sound like corruption to me. Note that the above link predates the late-in-the-campaign reports that made national news.

Needless to say, these kinds of behavior cause a great deal of skepticism about the virtue of supporting Democrats. Thus, mainstream Dems have to do something to win back the youth vote, the progressive vote, and those who just plain don’t like corruption and were left with no candidate they could support in November, 2016.

When Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer say impeachment is not an option to pursue, the implicit messages to these folks include “Democrats are like Republicans but with but a nice veneer of soft fur so it won’t hurt quite so much”, “Blatant corruption and lawbreaking are OK with me”, and “the Democratic Party doesn’t really stand for the ideals on which this country was founded and will do nothing to protect them.” And the youth, the progressives, and those who believe in good government will once again stay home, and this vile creature will (perhaps honestly this time) win a second term.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , ,

It is less than six months until the US elections for President, House of Representatives,and one-third of the Senate.

A year ago, seeing the level of hate and vitriol against Obama from the ultra-right, and the paralysis of government, I was pretty convinced that the Republicans would win easily. Now, however, I think Obama will prevail, at least if the votes are counted accurately and the voters are allowed to vote (both of them BIG ifs, in the wake of anti-vote legislation and the near-unanimous adoption of vote-counting techniques that are entirely too easy to rig, as we saw in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004).

What’s changed?

  • The other candidates have been making very cogent arguments against Romney; the Republicans have given Obama plenty of ammunition.
  • Romney himself is the most clueless major-party US presidential candidate I can remember, constantly putting his foot in his mouth, constantly shifting positions, and failing to convince pretty much anybody of his sincerity, his integrity, his ability to relate to common people, or even his basic competence. It’s almost as if he were coached by Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin.
  • The Occupy (a/k/a 99%) movement has focused long-overdue attention on class issues, while Romney has cheerfully embraced his fellow one-percenters.
  • The Republican Party as a whole, with Romney’s open support, has made it clear that their tent is not big enough to hold unemployed people, Latinos, women’s reproductive rights supporters, gays and lesbians, or students—or even moderate Republicans (just ask Senator Richard Lugar). Obama has opened his arms to these constituencies. If the Democrats can get all those folks to show up and vote, they win.
  • It is painfully obvious that Washington’s political gridlock is the Republican Party’s doing. They’ve been dubbed “the party of no” for good reason. People are sick and tired of the constant obstructionism and of the specifically stated goal of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “Our top political priority is to deny President Obama a second term.” Not exactly an appropriate priority for a country still struggling with a deep recession, two major and several minor wars, crises in healthcare and education, and all the rest.
  • Nobody likes a bunch of name-calling whining bullies. Instead of proposing actual solutions to our country’s problems, the Republicans have race-baited, religion-baited, called him a socialist (for goodness sake—Richard Nixon has a more progressive record!) and a Muslim, and all the rest of the ridiculous Big Lie nonsense.
  • While Obama’s accomplishments are smaller in number and far more centrist than they need to be, he can point to some real strides: The economy is better, Osama Bin Laden is neutralized, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell s justifiably buried, two terrific Supreme Court Justices have been appointed (we need one more to replace one of the four on the extreme right), and something vaguely resembling healthcare reform actually got passed, where every other president since FDR failed.
  • The right cannot attack Obama on the places he’s most vulnerable: personal liberty, an absurd faith in nuclear power, failure to keep his promises on renewable energy, and an inability to get us out of all these wars—because Obama’s positions on all these issues pretty much are the Republican positions.
  • And finally, even if they totally forgot to do the necessary organizing to pass his agenda, Obama’s campaign knows a whole lot about social media and community organizing. This provided the edge in 2008, and could do so again if the Dems can convince young voters especially that they haven’t sold them out, and that the kind of change they voted for in ’08 may be difficult to achieve, but it would be impossible under Romney.

Still, the Democrats cannot and should not take victory for granted, and they have to make sure to pick up seats in Congress as well.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

The thing Obama and the Democrats don’t seem to understand is that the ublic would have their back if they knew the facts. And thus, the Democrats need to articulate the facts: clearly, concisely (a challenge, I know), and consistently.

They would not have to give in at all on issues like Medicare, matching debt reduction with spending reduction dollar-for-dollar, and refusing all new revenue if they would put it out to the American people the way Lou Dubose did in the little-read but much-respected Washington Spectator of July 15. You can read the article here, if you happen to subscribe to that wonderful little newsletter.

So let me summarize some of Dubose’s points:

  • Under George W. Bush, the government raised the debt ceiling eight times—something that had not had to be done in the last three years of the Clinton administration, because Clinton turned the Reagan/George H.W. Bush deficits into a surplus.
  • George W. Bush’s first tax cut cost the government $1.3 trillion in lost revenue. His second tax cut added another $350 billion to the deficit. And his Medicare prescription bill (wildly considered a giveaway to the pharmaceutical giants) was an unfunded mandate of more than $600 billion.
  • These huge additions to the deficit don’t even count the enormous cost of our illegal and very expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; according to the National Priorities Project, the cost of these two wars is more than $1221 trillion as I write this, and escalating rapidly every second. You can actually watch the numbers jump at its Cost of War website.

Dubose quotes economist Chad’s Stone’ testimony at a Jont Economic Committee hearing June 21:

The economic downturn, tax cuts enacted under President Bush, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

The tax cuts alone, Stone concludes, represent 6 percent of GDP right now—but if they are not reversed, public debt will be an unimaginable 95 percent of GDP by 2019—not a legacy we want to saddle our children with.

So if I were Obama or Pelosi or Reid, or any Democrat who wants to win his or her next election, I’d be out there every day, telling the press and the public:

  • Spending cuts on programs for the poor and on economic stimulus measures like energy conservation programs make no sense when you’re trying to bring the country out of a big recession
  • Bush and the Republicans squandered the surplus on wars and tax cuts; that was a failed strategy and now it’s time to do it differently
  • The poor and middle class have already sacrificed far more than their share, including the shriveling of their investments, while billionaires and huge corporations have done very well of late
  • Public servants are actually paid far less than they would get for jobs with similar levels of responsibility in the private sector; they are dedicated teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., who keep society functioning, and who deserve to be treated better than to be the whipping boys for government spending zealots
  • If you want to look at spending cuts, look at the military—that’s a lace with a lot more fat to cut
  • A one-sided set of demands with no room for negotiation is not a compromise, and is not acceptable.
  • Revenue growth has to be part of any deficit discussion
  • These deficits are of the GOP’s own making, as is the financial crisis that resulted from combining the big tax cuts with nearly complete lack of oversight under Bush—doing it again won’t solve the problem
  • We need good, clean jobs to rebuld the econmy, and the way to get them is through a Marshall Plan-style effort to get us off carbon and nuclear and into safe energy and deep conservation (I’ve written about this several times; see, for instance, my blog posts “Where is the LEFT Challenge to Obama?” and “Why the Democrats Lost: Failure to Be Bold”)

Etcetera.

In short, the Dems (and I’ve said this before) have to get much better at framing and messaging. They should study George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. They need to understand that politics is about marketing, and the reason they lose so often is because they don’t have a clue about marketing. And they need to identify Republicans as the bad guys concerning why the American people have NOT gotten so much of the “Change” mantra that got Obama elected. Otherwise, he will deserve to lose next year.

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By Posted on Posted in language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Considering their enormous and deep understanding of marketing during the campaign, it’s hard to understand why the Obama administration is so bad at marketing itself as a governing force. Obama’s advisors need to take some lessons from George W. Bush. He was a terrible president, but he was extremely skilled at marketing himself and his accomplishments—and all my years observing politics, I’ve never before seen a team that was as good at staying on message. Better even than Reagan, if you ask me.

With just over a month left before the election, it’s time for the Democrats to go deep and hard on their marketing: to create a message that will resonate with the American people and cut the floor out from under the Republicans.

If I were running the national Democratic Senate and House campaign committees, I’d do it like this:
You voted for “Yes We Can”—But the Republicans Gave You “No We Won’t”

Two years ago, you, the American people, voted for change. You said it was long past time to focus the economy on Main Street…to get out of the illegal and unwinnable Iraq war…to begin once again to stop behaving like a “rogue state” and take our place among nations as the most powerful and inspirational democracy in the world…to once and for all rein in runaway corporate power and massive environmental devastation.

We’ve done a lot in the short time we’ve had to reverse the disastrous policies of the Bush administration. Here’s a list of 91 different things the Obama administration has accomplished.

But most of those 91 accomplishments didn’t require approval by Congress. The Republicans have decided, as a bloc, to vote against almost anything we propose—even if they proposed it first. If it comes from the Democrats, they vote no, end of story. How much more progress would we have made without their tantrumy-two-year-old behavior? How much better shape would the economy and our carbon footprint be in—if, for instance, the green Jobs package hadn’t been so watered down?

You didn’t vote for “No We Won’t” in 2008. You voted for “Yes We Can! Vote Democratic and get the change you wanted all along.

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