Tag: democratic party

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you missed Part I with the first four takeaways, please click here. Meanwhile, on to the final two.

 

  1. The Media Needs to Put Trump Under the Same Microscope

So quick to microanalyze every gaffe and instance of slow reaction on the part of Biden, the media now has to look just as carefully at the other old white guy (only 3-1/2 years younger than Biden). Since the debate, prominent media have harped over and over again on Biden’s fitness for office while giving far less attention to Trump’s far worse fitness level. This is something we can change with pressure! Every time you hear about a verified Trump non-lucid moment, every time you discover another one of his authoritarian policy proposals—if you don’t see it covered in the mainstream media you read, write to them and ask why they aren’t covering this important story.

First, let’s look at Trump’s public persona. Then his record as President. And third, his really scary policy plans.

Trump as a Campaigner

  • For starters, Trump also mixes up names. If it’s fair to talk about Biden confusing one person for another, it’s also fair to point out Trump’s repeated instances.
  • Trump has so much difficulty staying awake that he fell asleep repeatedly during the trial that could put him in prison for years. And the man who frequently derided Biden as “Sleepy Joe” may have also fallen asleep during his own Republican National Convention. I watched the video. It sure looked to me that he was sleeping, and it wasn’t during the prayer (as some have claimed). It was actually while the woman speaking was heaping praises on him.
  • Trump’s speeches mix rambling incoherence, total falsehoods, and bloodthirsty claims that he will wreak vengeance and retribution on his numerous enemies. As recently as his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention a few days ago, he was still spewing the proven lie that the 2020 election was stolen—probably because he hates being the loser that he is—a lie that’s been debunked over and over even in the courtrooms of Trump-appointed judges. And even though it made him a laughingstock when he first said it, he returned during his convention speech to his admiration for the fictional villain Hannibal Lecter.
  • Speaking of lies…Trump is a pathological liar on a scale exponentially beyond any other politician I’ve ever heard of. Just during his four years in the Oval Office, Trump was caught in more than 30,000 lies—that’s an average of 21 untruths every day he was in office.

 

Trump’s Record in Office

 

What Trump Wants to Do if He Gets Elected

If you’ve heard accusations that Trump and the Republicans want to bring back fascism, this is what they’re talking about. Here’s a tiny fraction of the antidemocratic policies they’ve proposed:

Over and over, Trump has made it alarmingly clear. He wants to be “a dictator on Day 1.” He wants to roll back the clock on progress in dozens of areas: climate, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights (including reproductive freedom), rights of people of color, of labor, of protestors. He has called for massive deportations of up to 15 million immigrants and mass detention of activists. He has called for Israel to “finish the problem,” implying he’s in favor of Israel exterminating Gaza. And with significant help from more than 100 former Trump administration employees, the Heritage Foundation has released 887 pages of repressive legislative proposals in a document called Project 2025. Trump has tried to pretend he doesn’t know anything about it, because he knows it’s going to be hugely unpopular. He’s been plugging the “kinder, gentler” version adopted as a platform by the Republicans and written with his active involvement—but make no mistake, Project 2025 will be his blueprint if he gets into office again. In fact, Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance wrote a gushing foreword to Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts’ new book. And let’s not forget Trump’s constant cries for revenge and retribution and his open desire to illegally use the military to quash domestic protests.

 

  1. The Democrats Actually Manage to Unite

It’s not a surprise that the sitting vice president of a successful administration is the front-runner. But the immediate unity around her candidacy is a delightful shock. Before Biden’s withdrawal on Sunday, July 21, most pundits I read expected a brutal, damaging struggle for the nomination. But somehow, the party often labeled a “circular firing squad” managed to pull it together and instantly rally around a single candidate. It took her only ONE DAY to gain pledges from 2668 delegates—way more than the 1976 that clinches the nomination. By Monday, July 22, she also already gained the endorsements of Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund, eight major unions. Of 47 Democratic US Senators, 212 Democrats in the US House, and 23 Democratic Governors, 42, 186, and 23, respectively, have endorsed her, along with most state party chairs. Fundraising is also record-setting, with over 888,000 individual small donors collectively donating $81 million while megadonors threw in $150 million more, bringing the total to $231 million just one day into her campaign.

A July 1 story on NPR named seven potential Democratic presidential candidates: Harris, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, and J.B. Pritzker. When NPR updated the story Monday, Newsome, Moore, Buttigieg and Shapiro had already endorsed Harris. Later yesterday, Whitmer and Pritzker joined the chorus.

The unexpected unity is a feather in the caps of both Biden and Harris, could motivate disaffected votes unexcited by Biden, and could help to provide a comfortable margin of victory in November—which is absolutely necessary considering Trump already tried to steal one election.

 

  1. What Does this Mean for the Democrats and the 2024 Election?

With all this, I think Biden stepping down can provide some big opportunities for the Democrats. They have a chance to re-engage the progressives they lost over Gaza, push for meaningful gun safety after Trump himself was almost killed by a sniper, push for the same kind of scrutiny of Trump that Biden suffered through, and leave the party in strong, capable, younger hands. Let’s show them we have their backs.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Ethics in Government, Mindset, Politics, privacy, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition politics newsletter (which I read daily) quoted a reader who suggested that Democrats label the Republican platform for 2022 as “The Big Steal.” Here is his suggestion, with edits and additions by me:

Vote Republican, and you vote for the “Big Steal”:

Your Social Security will be stolen.

Your Medicare will be stolen.

Your prescription drugs will be stolen.

Your affordable health care will be stolen.

Your right to privacy will be stolen.

Your control over reproductive choices will be stolen.

Your voting rights will be stolen.

Your right to elect leaders will be stolen.

Our democracy will be stolen.

It’s not perfect, but you get the idea. Iterations are endless. Republicans want to take things away (The Big Steal), including personal liberties and equal protection under law. Democrats want to provide Americans the things they need to lead safe, healthy, productive lives—including personal liberties and equal protection under the law. Somewhere in there is a winning message.

Republicans doing The Big Steal is half of the messaging. Yes, absolutely, we need to show that corrupt and greedy party for what it is. But we also need another half, maybe call it The Big Payoff. And the second part will subdivide into two as well.

The first part will be what the Democrats have actively accomplished. They have created jobs in a terrible economy. They have restored us leadership in the world sphere. They have taken some action to mitigate climate change. They have stood up for integrity of the political process and showed that insurrections and coup attempts will not be tolerated here. They have supported Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric war. And they have restored dignity and mission to a corrupt and twisted executive branch.

The second part is the wish list: things Biden and the Democrats tried to do but were blocked by filibusters, judicial opinions, or just plain refusal to cooperate from the Republican side. This would include Build Back Better, protecting the right to vote, protecting women’s right to control their own bodies, meaningful progress on the biggest issues like climate change and immigration reform, and of course, the right of regulatory bodies to regulate. Not only have Republican judges forced the CDC–which stands for, let us remind them, Centers for Disease Control–to give up protecting the public in transit facilities, but other decisions will threaten such rights as environmental protection and labor protection, using that very bad precedent to attack EPA and OSHA. Let’s also talk about the right not to be sitting next to someone who is carrying a concealed weapon. The right to love and marry whom you choose as long as they are above the age of consent. Etc, etc, etc

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The man who lived in The White House from January 2017 to January 2021 took the US from respected world leader to banana republic serving the whims of an incompetent would-be dictator in an alarmingly short time. We are fortunate to have a new leader who is doing his best—though not enough—to undo the damage, and who steadies our foreign and domestic policy at a time when the need for leadership is clear.

But even though DT is out of power despite every crazy attempt to maintain it, his numerous judicial appointments gave the crazies a scary degree of control that persists today.

Which seems to mean that reproductive rights, environmental protections, the right to be protected from contagious lethal diseases, and the right to vote have had big portions chiseled away, while the rights to carry and use firearms, to infiltrate others’ airspace, and the right of corporations to fund candidates and dictate favorable terms have been enshrined.

While DT’s government made up new and undid longstanding laws and regulations with no regard for precedent or separation of powers, Biden’s attempts to return to normalcy, curtail the pandemic, and govern effectively keep getting shot down by—you guessed it—the appointees of his predecessor.

These judges and Justices invent new legal doctrine out of whole cloth, undermining more than two centuries of settled law, and using truly bizarre reasoning to uphold a “new normal” where skin color, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and religion are once again grounds to be discriminated against.

At the Supreme Court level, they often (far more often than in the recent past) use a procedural workaround known as “the shadow docket,” which often results in rushed, unsigned decisions with little or no written documentation of the rationale. This was used to implement both the MPP and Texas abortion decisions of right-wing District Judges, explained just below along with some other examples:

  • Early in his term, Biden kept campaign promise to end the MPP Remain in Mexico program—one of several policy pieces that inflicted massive violations of human rights (and international law) in his predecessor’s immigration policy of deliberate cruelty. MPP (and several other immigration changes instituted under DT) put thousands of people at grave risk of kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of the cartels they were fleeing.  Even though the policy, developed by the notorious xenophobe Stephen Miller, undid generations of settled procedure without any plausible justification, A DT-appointed judge forced the Biden administration to reinstate this horrible program.
  • Texas’s criminalization of assistance to or performing an abortion and deputization of any citizen to file for redress is so blatantly against the constitution that even right-wing anti-abortionists like this conservative anti-abortion lawyer are screaming “no”—as did Chief Justice Roberts (no friend of the reproductive rights movement).
  • Just this week, another DT-appointed district judge overturned the CDC’s public transportation mask mandate, drastically increasing the risk of COVID spreading when people are next to each other in tightly enclosed spaces for hours at a time. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle is one of many DT-appointed judges (along with Supreme Court Justice Barrett) whose confirmation was rushed through with many other nominations in the closing days of his administration; she was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m getting on a plane again for a while—and I flew five round-trips since April 2021 when my vaccine took full effect. By what spurious reasoning do you take away the right of the Centers for Disease Control to control disease? Some lawyer should rapidly organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought tickets with the understanding that they would be protected by a mask requirement in airports, bus and train terminals, and on the planes, trains, and buses.

Of course, this attack on US law started before Biden. As an example, after two previous attempts were overturned by various courts, the Supreme Court upheld version 3 of DT’s Muslim travel ban. And we all know about SCOTUS’s horrible pre-Biden decisions to block the recount of the Florida presidential results in 2000 (which gave us eight years of a dubiously elected president who was the worst in history until 2017)…to allow corporate donors to trample individual rights in decisions like Citizens United…

Whatever happened to “the land of the free” and “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?

 

Is there anything we can do about this?

Yes. Before I start suggesting things, I need to state that I am not a fan of the Democratic Party, have a long history of supporting electoral reforms that would reduce both Democratic and Republican Party power (like ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan administration of elections), and have written many letters, posts, and articles criticizing the current system. Nevertheless…

The first step is to win enough elections—whether for School Board or Senator—to wrest control of every possible office from the right-wing conspiracy theorists, January 6 conspirators, climate change deniers, bigots who see themselves as legitimized by a Republican Party no longer willing to confront evil and punishing the handful of its members who are still willing to go out on a limb and do the right thing. While I wish we had a viable alternative, under the two-party system, our choice in most races must to support Democrats.

I will not personally give money to a Party that continues to enable the right-wingers—from 11 Democrats voting to confirm Clarence Thomas despite highly credible accusations of sexual harassment to the Party allowing its two most conservative Senators to control the agenda and sabotage so many of the best things Biden has tried to do.

But I do give money to groups like Movement Voter Project that funds progressive grassroots groups to influence elections in swing districts—and reminds politicians who of the promises that got MVP to support them. That creates a progressive sphere of influence in ways normally reserved for powerful corporate donors and wealthy individual contributors in the 1%.

The second step is to reject any nominee endorsed by the Federalist Society, which according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a 2019 speech, openly attacks the gains made in the last 100 years on a host of issues including labor, environment, civil rights, and more, and not only supplied DT’s pick lists but trained the nominees on how to get through the hearings.

The third step is to consider major reforms like changing the judicial nomination process (perhaps through a non-partisan commission), ending lifetime appointments, and forcing the Supreme Court to apply the same Code of Ethics to itself that other courts require. This will be much more successful if we have accomplished step one.

The fourth step scares me and I wish we had a better alternative. This could come back to bite, and bite hard. But the judiciary has been running roughshod over the rights of average citizens, and especially those with less privilege.

So, reluctantly, we need to consider expanding the Supreme Court. We have to remember that the appointments of three of the six current conservative Justices (Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) were confirmed by brute force with narrow majorities, and that Obama’s nomination of current Attorney General Merrick Garland was denied by brute force—McConnell refused to even hold a hearing and 17 Republican Senators supported him in public statements.

I said at the time and still say that Obama should have pushed back, saying that failure to hold a hearing by a certain date would constitute approval. Thomas and Kavanaugh defended themselves very poorly against credible claims of sexual harassment (Thomas) and sexual assault (Kavanaugh). Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020, less than two weeks before the November 3 election—but for these same Senators, March to November, 2016, was too close between nomination and the election.

How little constitutional basis there was to deny the hearing was proven in 2020 when that same McConnell rushed the Barrett nomination through, ignoring his own precedent and her extreme inexperience in the appellate courts, and the Republican hypocrites (who had said in 2016 they’d do the same thing if a Republican president nominated in the last year) reversed themselves and voted her in. Susan Collins was the only Republican voting nay, while Graham, Rubio, and the others who’d spoken out against final-year nominations completely ignored their own earlier comments.

In other words, the Republicans have not earned their 6-3 SCOTUS majority. The consequences of their cheating their way to a majority will be felt for decades unless we find a way to stop them. If we can limit their power through steps 1-3, maybe this “nuclear option” is unnecessary. But given this Court’s avid willingness to throw away settled law, undermine both the legislative and executive branches, and not even bother to justify their decisions with written opinions, I’m expecting we will have to move on this.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I recognize the political difficulties of impeaching with a hostile Senate. Until the Republicans–as they did when Nixon was president–find their outrage, impeachment will fail in the Senate, and removal for incompetence under the 25th Amendment will fail in the Cabinet.

However, what the mainstream Dems continue to ignore is the political cost of NOT impeaching–and the political opportunities in calling out the GOP hypocrisy.

Marching to Impeach the 45th President
Marching to Impeach the 45th President

Yes, I know: the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton came back to bite the Republicans, hard. But the situation with Bill Clinton is not analogous, because Clinton’s trial was caught up in lying about one incident that had nothing to do with the way he governed, and the whole country knew it was a railroading. This does not excuse Clinton’s consistently icky behavior nor his lying about it–and if the Republicans had been smarter, they would have gone after stuff like the pay-to-play scandal that involved donations to the Clinton’s foundation. That really was a corrupt and impeachable offense. Lying about Lewinsky seems pretty tame by comparison.

But all of those moral guardians who were so quick to impeach back then are strangely silent about a man who stole the election, lied at least 9451 times since taking office (as of April 3, 2019), reeks of financial corruption, has been accused by 20-some women of sexual misbehavior (let’s remember that Clinton’s Lewinsky lie was about a CONSENSUAL act, although the original impeachment investigation that turned up that story came out of allegations of harassment that deserved a full investigation), has no idea how to govern, engages in hate speech constantly, has destroyed important ally relationships, and oh, yes, colluded with at least one foreign government.

How the Democrats Can Capture the Conversation

The Democrats have a moment to seize. This is our time to hammer home the idea that a crooked, venal, incompetent president in service to foreign powers and big corporations has no right to be in office, and the Separation of Powers principle gives Congress a moral obligation to enforce our right to a better government.

Just as Republicans were so quick to pillory Hillary Clinton for using private email servers (just as her Republican AND Democratic predecessors did), beating this message into our heads until it became part of the culture, so the Democrats must make reining in the runaway criminal in the White House part of the culture. And, considering that several key members of the current administration have also used private email servers–and, unlike Hillary, they can’t plead ignorance or precedent–hold these same Republicans accountable for their sudden strange silence when it’s a Republican who gets caught,

John Bonifaz and others have identified at least 10 different categories of impeachable offenses. Any one of these would justify starting impeachment proceedings. All 10 at once make it imperative.

The Democrats have to follow through on that moral obligation. Their messaging needs to focus on such talking points as:

  • The threat to our democracy, to our very Republic, from a president who is beholden not to the American people but to his corporate pals (Koch Brothers in particular) and foreign governments–not just Russia, but Saudi Arabia and Israel, at least, plus cozying up to dictators in places like North Korea and the Philippines.
  • The sheer magnitude of corruption oozing from DT and many of his past and present cabinet members, unprecedented even in the “swamp” of Washington
  • The scary parallels between DT’s patterns of speech and action (including his un-American demand for unquestioned loyalty, attacks on the judiciary/press/racial, religious, and cultural minorities, threats of violence, to name just a few) and the dictators who have risen as our enemies: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein–and thus, our patriotic duty to remove this man from power before he turns the country into a fascist dictatorship (interestingly, in researching these connections, I came across DT’s repeated passionate defense of Saddam and Libyan strongman Kadhafi during the 2016 campaign)–much as he has continued to defend other of dictators, including Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un, among others.
  • The wisdom of our Founding Fathers in spelling out a process to determine whether a president has acted illegally, and removing that president from office if found guilty, right in the Constitution
  • Their responsibility and duty as members of Congress to the American people to protect us from these numerous criminal behaviors by upholding the Constitution

This could build on the momentum of 2018 and give people reasons to vote FOR Democrats, rather than simply against DT or Republicans in general. This is the sort of issue that can turn someone into a lifetime supporter.

Consequences of Failing to Act

OK, those are the positive motivators. Now, let’s look at the baggage Democrats will carry if they continue to let DT get away with the rampant criminality and incompetence:

  • Far too many progressives will sit out the 2020 election, feeling that the Democrats are just “Republican Lite.” (Yes, I’m intentionally using the low-calorie, low-substance advertising non-word, instead of “Light”.)
  • Democrats lose the moral high ground and lose momentum, maybe even find themselves facing a serious third-party challenge that would culminate in DT’s re-election (since we don’t have Ranked-Choice Voting in national elections in the US). This would likely hand DT a majority in the house again and set progressive politics back years, even as the climate clock is ticking.
  • The message to the Republicans will be “we don’t care enough to engage you over these crimes. Go and do whatever evil you want.”
  • Especially if re-elected, DT will be emboldened to do even more criminal acts, encourage even more race and ethnic divisiveness, stock the courts with even more extremist judges, roll back environmental and human rights protections even faster,  follow the footsteps of those dictators even more closely.

The message the Democrats must put forth is that we do care, we will hold him accountable, and we will keep the promises we made to represent everyone in the district. To get there, we progressives need to create a scenario where the Democrats see both the need to remove DT, hold him accountable for both his criminal behavior and his disastrous policies, and undo as much as possible of his anti-life, Profit Uber Alles legacy–and see the consequences to their careers and their party, as well as to the Constitution and the governed, if they fail to act.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

As progressives and liberals breathe a big sigh of relief this morning after racking up victories in yesterday’s election, my Facebook feed is full of chatter about how the Democratic Party is not dead after all, though it’s still very ill.

I responded to one such post thusly:

Curable. Inject backbone 3x/day until they run candidates who stand for the people, give them the support to win, and stop backing down at the first hint of disagreement. Dems should have learned this lesson in 1988 from the disastrous Dukakis campaign. I kept waiting [after George HW Bush kept repeatedly accusing him of being a liberal] for Dukakis to say, “Yes, George, I’m a liberal. Liberals brought us the 8-hour day vs. 10 or 12 hours. Liberals protect the rights of people of all colors and gender identities. Liberals fight for the planet so we can all live healthy lives. Why aren’t YOU a liberal, George?” I think he’d have won with that approach. Instead, he kept doing this horrible, “Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a liberal” crap.

Yup. That time, as so many times, the Dems slunk away with their tails between their legs to count their losses and blame it on not being centrist or rightist enough. And they still seem to believe that rot.

When ordinary people can’t easily tell the Democrats from the Republicans by their positions, the Republicans will win, because being a true  Republican is more convincing than being Republican-lite. But being a true Democrat who is seen as standing for the people (rare thing!) generates far more excitement than being a true Republican and a toady to Wall Street and the ideology that puts money ahead of people, rights of the already privileged above rights of ordinary people, and voter suppression ahead of real democracy.

Despite his centrism, Obama was able to portray himself as a man of the people and generate that excitement. And he won, twice.

Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton never got this, despite pressure from the Left in the form of mass defections to Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, and Bernie Sanders. Sanders was able to move Hillary and the party platform well to the left, but she was unconvincing. And even when Sanders beat her by 13 points in the Wisconsin primary, she still took the state for granted (never campaigned there in the general election).

The lack of candidates with actual spine and the ability to energize the masses will continue to be a problem until the Dems remember their working-class roots. When they run charismatic progressives in places where the ballots are counted fairly and the populace is not prevented from voting, they tend to win. We get the Cory Bookers, the Barack Obamas, the Elizabeth Warrens.

When they run nonentities, they lose, even in my own very liberal state of Massachusetts. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign to keep Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat Democratic, and it went to Scott Brown. But then along came Elizabeth Warren, and boom! Brown ran a nasty campaign, Warren portrayed herself as a people’s champion on economic issues, and she won. And she has kept her promise, expanding it as one of the most pubic opponents of the current regime.

For the most part, the Dems’ lack willingness to take bold positions. Worse, they also lack the spine to challenge Republican-initiated disruption of the electoral process—which is the Democratic Party’s hospital bed, and could become the party’s grave. After narrowly stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, the party didn’t fix the plague of voter suppression in 2009 when it had the chance. And thus the election was stolen again in 2016.

The new governor-elect in Virginia is a centrist who probably won largely on the basis of being far less bad than his openly Trumpist opponent—and because Virginia went back to paper ballots, which cannot be so easily hijacked as electronic-only votes (unlike the recent Congressional race in Georgia, for example). How much stronger the victory if there had been a candidate who truly engaged the populace?

A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.
A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.

Today is not only the morning after the election. It’s also the one-year anniversary of the theft of our democracy in the 2016 election. While some of the loss is because Clinton was uninspiring, tainted with scandal, and vulnerable to accusations of her loyalty to Wall Street, at least as much was the result of a failed constitutional process that allows candidates with fewer votes to win, big-time voter suppression of likely-Democratic voters, probable fiddling with the results in electronic-only ballot areas, the interference of a foreign government, and other factors that seem to add up to a big fat case of fraud.

I will commemorate this disaster at an impeachment rally in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts, at noon on the corner of Amity and Pleasant Streets. Hope to see you there!Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Six (almost seven) months after the election, and 200 days into the disaster of Trumpian government, Democrats still want to blame it all on the Russians, or on their new hero and recent villain James Comey.

Those are real factors. But the Democrats are not blameless. The soullessness of the Democratic party had a lot to do with DT’s victory despite losing the popular vote.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face off. Screenshot from CBS News.
The two candidates debate

Consider these influences on the outcome—and note that the Democrats could have easily fixed items 1 through 6 in 2009 when memories of GWB’s failures were strong and they had a clear mandate for change. They also own full responsibility for items 7-10 in 2016. So of these baker’s dozen factors, only three were external forces:

  1. Republican purges of the voter list and discarding of likely-Democratic ballots, including 90,000+ likely-Democratic voters in Florida in 2000 (and 350,000 in Ohio in 2004—read this very thorough analysis by none other than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.).
  2. Hackable voting machines lacking traceable paper ballots (#1 and 2 alone are probably the biggest two factors in the two GWB victories).
  3. Gerrymandering.
  4. Special-interest lobbying and campaign funding, creating a system that works against real change—and should have been replaced years ago by meaningful public funding across all parties receiving 5 percent or more.
  5. Failure to institute ranked-choice voting, so that a third-party vote or a vote for your top choice in the primary is not a spoiler that helps elect your least favorite candidate (DT would have never even been the candidate if the Republicans had used this in their primaries; one DT voter in my family told me he was her “seventeenth choice” among 17 Republican candidates).
  6. And yes, the electoral college that disenfranchised a majority of voters twice in the last five elections.
  7. Messaging: if you’re not following the issues closely, would you rather stand strong and “Make America Great Again” or blubber out a wimpy, incoherent “I’m With Her”?
  8. In 2016, Obama refused to force the issue on Merrick Garland, not only losing the seat to an ultra-rightist but setting an absolutely terrible precedent that he, a constitutional law scholar, could have certainly seen coming. To progressives, that was (among other things) a message that the Democratic Party was not even willing to support itself and the constitution, so why bother?
  9. Also in 2016, even though Hillary would have probably gotten the nomination honestly, the double-dealing and shenanigans against the Bernie campaign gave some people—maybe enough to upset the election—reasons to stay home on November 8.
  10. Worse, nobody on her campaign seemed to notice that her primary victories were heavily tilted toward the Deep South, where it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t going to win in November–and they took the midwest for granted. Hillary made exactly zero trips to Wisconsin between nomination and election day, even though Bernie cleaned her clock in the primary by 13 points. These folks were hard-hit by the recession and they watched Obama bail out the banks and Wall Street while doing precious little for underwater working-class homeowners. This was not a victory strategy. It was only because DT was so disgusting that it was even close in states like that.
  11. Russian interference, and we may never know what really went on.
  12. Comey’s “October Surprise” last-minute disclosure of more suspicion around Hillary’s emails
  13. Fake news. Lots of it.

This is not a comprehensive list; I could easily list another dozen factors. Here’s the reality: we will never know exactly which factors shifted the results; probably each contributed a little bit to DTs razor-thin, non-popular-vote victory.

But we do know that nine items on this list were avoidable or fixable. And despite the worst presidency in the history of the US, they still don’t understand what they need to do to fix things.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

There’s one Democratic Party candidate for Congress whose annoying emails just pushed me over the edge. But the Democratic Party is routinely guilty of this, and I’ve gotten off many of the lists of their various front groups. And probably, so are the Republicans (I’m not on their lists).

As I moved a full 100 emails received in the past month from this candidate’s organization or the Democratic Party on behalf of this candidate, I noted once again the in-your-face headlines. Here are just some of the examples from just the past week, in the order I received them (spacing, emoticons, and capitalization in the originals):

  • Special Election RUINED
  • TERRIFYING prediction
  • this just got WORSE (Paul Ryan)
  • ? Paul Ryan = FURIOUS ?
  • please, please, PLEASE
  • HUGE mistake
  • No!!!!!!!
  • R U I N E D

I’m a copywriter. I know what this candidate’s team is doing, and why. I know which hot buttons they are trying to push. But just as too much of the finest food still gives you a bellyache, too much hot-button-pushing makes the mechanism seize up. I’ve received 14 separate messages since Sunday morning (I’m writing this on Tuesday morning). It feels like marketing by assault rifle.

My response mechanism seized up. I put them on the not-giving-any-more-money list and unsubscribed. The form asked for a reason, and here’s what I wrote:

I don’t like your constant-crisis approach. I just deleted 100 emails from you all screaming at me, most unopened. I’m really sick of “the Republicans are out to get us, send us money again.” And also sick of “we’re on the verge of victory, send us more money.” I wish [Candidate name] well and hope he wins, but I want the Dems and especially [Candidate name] to market to me via intelligence and not fear. I am a marketer and have run successful campaigns.

Can’ we be better than this? I want candidates who will tell me what they will do FOR their district and their country, and not just that a powerful opponent hates them.

A citizen votes. Photo by Kristen Price.
A citizen votes. Photo by Kristen Price.

Remember: you are in someone’s email box because of the recipient’s good graces. Don’t abuse the relationship or overstay your welcome. If you annoy, you don’t get read, and eventually, you lose a subscriber. You could even find yourself blacklisted for spam.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , ,

Here’s the opening paragraph from the Associated Press report on yesterday’s Wisconsin primaries:

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Republican Ted Cruz stormed to a commanding victory in Wisconsin Tuesday, denting front-runner Donald Trump’s chances of capturing the GOP nomination before the party’s convention. Democrat Bernie Sanders triumphed over Hillary Clinton but still faces a mathematically difficult path to the White House.

This is entirely too consistent with a long-running pattern in the mainstream media: anything that gets in the way of a Donald Trump nomination is heralded, even though the mainstream Republican Party loathes Ted Cruz—and I and many other progressives find his brand of religious extremism as much of a threat as Trump’s racism and misogyny. I’m sure they would rally much more happily around Kasich, if he could only get non-Ohioans to vote for him.

A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.
A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.

Yet the mainstream media continue to trivialize Sanders’ victories—in 7 of the last 8 contests—and talk about how difficult it will be for him to overcome Clinton’s delegate lead.

A more honest reportage would note that Trump and Cruz have swung wildly back and forth, neither emerging as a clear victor, and both wildly unpopular with mainstream voters.

It would also note these key differences in the Democratic race:

  • Sanders has been remarkably consistent on issues for his entire adult life, going back to his days marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King; Clinton has changed positions frequently (moving left under pressure from Sanders in her rejection of the TPP trade partnership, embrace of same-sex marriage, and energy issues—even outflanking him from the left on guns
  • Much of Clinton’s delegate strength is in “superdelegates” pledged to her, but not bound to her; this same group switched to Obama in ’08 and will switch again if Sanders enters the convention with a commanding lead among elected delegates, because they don’t want to give away the presidency to the scary and fractious Republicans
  • The mainstream media continually says that Clinton does better with black voters and urban areas. Yet, some of the most highly urbanized and ethnically diverse states have gone for Sanders, especially Michigan, where a “close race” turned out to be huge for Sanders—and my own diverse, urbanized state of Massachusetts was a virtual tie (as were Iowa and several others)
  • Clinton has consistently benefited from early voting, gaining tallied votes while Sanders gets his campaign warmed up, while same-day voters in several states have overwhelmingly supported Sanders; Daily Kos calls this “Hillary’s Surge Protector.”
  • Clinton’s greatest strength has been in the conservative South—but those states aren’t likely to go blue in November; in likely Democratic states, Sanders has an enormous edge

So hey, AP, hey, New York Times [“Mr. Sanders’s win is so surprising that it’s hard to know what to make of it. Are we learning, for the first time, of a big latent advantage in the Rust Belt? Was it a fluke?”], hey, Washington Post [“Bernie Sanders may be drawing thousands of people to his rallies and raising millions of dollars online, but increasingly he’s also having to make the case that his campaign isn’t a lost cause.”], and hey, CNN [“Trump remains the Republican presidential front-runner, but he didn’t clean up on Saturday…Sanders still a thorn in Clinton’s side”]

—how about if you use the same standards to judge Sanders’ rapid ascent against Clinton as you to for the anyone-but-Trump pushback that has given legs to the Cruz campaign?

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa
Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa

A petition crossed my desk this morning that called for President Obama to unilaterally ban oil exports. Here’s the text:

With the crude oil export ban lifted, oil companies will be pushing to speed the export of fracked crude oil and ramp up production, and we’ll be fighting every step of the way to prevent it. The budget deal preserves a straightforward way to do so: President Obama can declare a national emergency and prohibit exports.

In rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama acknowledged the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. In his final year in office, he can still build a positive climate legacy if he prohibits oil exports under the new law and ends new auctions of publicly owned oil, gas, and coal on federal lands as hundreds of environmental organizations and community leaders have petitioned him to do.

I totally agree that oil exports will be a big step backward in the struggle to stave off catastrophic climate change. But not with this method! I not only won’t sign, I’ll work against it, as I’m dong by writing this blog.

I don’t think they’ve thought through the implications here.

This budget deal was a hard-fought compromise where both sides had to give a lot to get anything through. To stab that agreement in the back while the ink is barely dry would be to put a stake through the heart of bipartisan government. It would be, quite frankly, a betrayal. And I would call it unethical.

And the Republicans would not forget, and not let anybody else forget. If you think they beat the drums on Benghazi or Hillary’s email issue, you “ain’t heard nothing yet.” NOTHING that would require Republican cooperation would be passed again, for decades. As we enter into the 2016 campaign, the mantra would be “you can’t trust the Democrats; they betrayed us and they will betray us again.” And this time, they’d be correct.

I’m guessing the consequences would include 12 to 20 years of Republican presidents with veto-proof Congressional majorities. No, thank you! I don’t want to hand them the ability to wreck everything we’ve worked for during the 250 years of our country’s history.

So what can we do instead? So glad you asked. Here are a three ideas (among many other possibilities):

  • Start a massive lobbying campaign aimed at Republicans in Congress. Let them feel big pressure from their own constituents, telling them that climate change is a deal-breaker issue for you at election time, reminding them that the US pledged to make serious climate change progress at COP21 (the Paris climate accord signed earlier this month) and that fossil fuel exports—incompatible with that commitment—are not acceptable. Use the argument that the US needs to be seen internationally as a government that keeps its promises and honors its commitments if we want other countries to work with us. Add a national pressure campaign at the top GOP legislators, those in positions of great power within their own party. Push the Republicans to introduce a ban on fossil fuel exports as if it were their idea. If the Democrats can run with Obamacare, which was based on Republican proposals in the 1990s, why can’t the Republicans steal Democrats’ issues?
  • Turn to the business community for binding pledges NOT to participate in fossil fuel exports. If necessary, pick one company at a time to threaten with boycotts and shareholder resolutions. Organize stock divestment campaigns and large public demonstrations in front of the corporate offices, not just of the targeted company but of any of the “players” if they move forward.  Get a few smaller players to move before going after ExxonMobil.

    Use the stick of negative pressure, but also the carrot of what they could do with that investment money that would build their reputation and their profits while avoiding all this unpleasant controversy. Have meetings with their executives to strategize better ideas.

    Big corporations hate to be seen as enemies of the people and don’t like being in the center of controversy; they’re also risk-averse.

  • (This is probably the hardest one.) Create an international pressure campaign on many fronts: Get foreign governments pledging they won’t accept US oil, gas, and coal. Get the United Nations to pass legislation making fossil fuel exports a crime against humanity. Start international boycotts and pressure campaigns against participating companies. This would not be easy to organize and might also have unintended consequences. The US is an importer of fossil fuels, so this would apply what Naomi Klein calls “the shock doctrine” to the US, forcing a mad and potentially destabilizing scramble to convert a much greater share of the US economy to renewables, and fast. So let’s start with the first two ;-).

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics, poverty, privacy, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is a rare occurrence: Three of my heroes made separate local appearances this week—two from the generation older than me, and one from the generation that follows me.

George McGovern
George McGovern, 89, former Senator, Democratic nominee for President in 1972, and stalwart of the ’70s-era peace movement spoke Saturday to support his new book, What It Means To Be A Democrat, to bring attention to hunger causes—and to support Rep. James McGovern’s (no relation) re-election campaign. (I’m looking forward to having the younger McGovern, one of the most progressive voices in Congress, represent me; our town just got moved into his district.)

Born in 1956, I was too young to cast my vote for McGovern in 1972—but not too young to campaign for him, which I did. I also met the candidate at a campaign rally in the north Bronx (NYC) neighborhood where I was living (not a place that typically attracted national political figures). He impressed me with his decency, although not his speaking skills (charisma was not one of his big qualities). Listening to him on a local radio station this week, I was glad he’s become a better speaker—and glad, too, that he’s still willing to buck the system and oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq…stand for positivity and discourse in politics…and be a voice for the voiceless whose safety net continues to be slashed by both parties.

McGovern, the elder, is a reminder of the days when the Democratic Party actually supported democratic values of peace, an anti-poverty agenda, and civil liberties—values that seem hard-to-find in today’s party, where the Dennis Kuciniches and Barbara Lees, Alan Graysons, and James McGoverns of the world are a tiny isolated minority at the far-left edge of a party filled with “centrists” who are less willing to back a progressive agenda than Richard Nixon was during his presidency. How can you take seriously a party that claims to be progressive and lets people like Ben Nelson and Steny Hoyer define it?

Where are the towering figures like Barbara Jordan, Birch Bayh, Bela Abzug, Shirley Chisolm, Tom Harkin, James Abourezk and so many others—all of whom served with George McGovern in Congress? Where is even a figure like Lyndon Johnson, able to grow past his southern segregationist heritage and shepherd through a series of civil rights bills? These were Democrats who were not afraid to speak their mind, not afraid to fight for justice, and willing to do what they could to steer the US toward a better path. They didn’t turn tail and start mumbling apologies any time someone called them a liberal as if it were some kind of curse word instead of a badge of honor—a disgraceful path embraced by Michael Dukakis during his 1988 Presidential run, and by far too many Democrats since.

Daniel Ellsberg
Another of my pantheon of childhood heroes, Daniel Ellsberg, 80, spoke on a panel of whistleblowers Thursday evening at Mt.Holyoke College. Ellsberg risked life in prison to release the Pentagon Papers, a massive set of documents that utterly discredited any plausible justification for the Vietnam war.

Ellsberg didn’t go to prison, though—because the government’s case was dismissed after it was discovered that the feds had way overstepped their bounds in investigating him. Unfortunately, under laws championed by and passed under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, what they did to him would be legal today. That is a travesty, and part of what I mean when I say the Democrats have abandoned a progressive agenda. Despite whistleblower protection laws and even payment passed since the 1970s, the government is not nice when the whistleblowers go after government fraud. Whistleblowers still risk severe punishment (just look at Bradley Manning).

If you ask me, those who expose corruption at great personal risk are heroes, not criminals.

Rachel Maddow
Local weekend resident Rachel Maddow speaks tonight, also at Mount Holyoke. Maddow, who turns 39 tomorrow, has been a refreshing progressive, articulate, and intelligent voice in a generally desolate mainstream-media landscape. I’ve been a fan of hers since she made her radio debut as a morning-show newscaster on WRNX here in the Valley.

It’s great that there are people like Maddow to catch the torch as my generation, and my parents’ generation, starts passing it. We need more like her.

[Disclosure: I was not able to attend any of the events in person. This post is based on hearing McGovern and Ellsberg in separate appearances on Bill Newman’s radio show on WHMP, and on coverage in the Northampton, MA newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.]Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail