So, What's a Dem to Do?

Last time I argued against letting outside radicals come in and tear the Democratic party apart in the name of unity. After all, they don't know jack about governance and the examples of full up socialism here in the Americas back that up. Extremists regimes end up corrupt. Alt-right is proving that right now with our own government.

But doing nothing won't work. We played by all the rules, took the high road, went high when they went low, showed them hard data, pointing out the issues and hatred on the other side, provided (on Hillary's part) reams of data on exactly what she wanted to do on a whole myriad of issues. And lost (though there were definitely some dark forces involved in that: the embrace of the Sanders' campaign of GOP and Russian misinformation, Russian misinformation bots throughout the campaign, the media gleefully pounding on perceived or trivial issues with Hillary while sexual molestation and criminal fraud were shrugged off on the Trump side, and, of course, Comey's poorly explained torpedoing of one campaign while silently deep in investigation of the other).

There are other factors outside the Dems and Hillary's control that were likely factors that don't get much play by pundits or the populace: name recognition (which is an amazingly big factor in voting and Trump made his name big among people who aren't politically savvy long before this election), the tendency of the dissatisfied populace to change leadership at least every eight years (even if they're better off than they were - they're rarely as well off as they'd like to be), and the fact that Hillary was (and the alt-left won't like this) one of the most left leaning candidates for president we ever had and far leftists don't do well in Presidential elections, per available data.

What the Dems are talking about includes courting the racists and sexists of this country (tossing aside the championship of civil rights) in the interest of winning (which I talked about last time), and rehashing the mistakes Hillary made: not going to enough states at the end, not a good enough ground game, not having a good message on economic issues, not having a catchy simple way of explaining the answers to complex problems (Apparently "Stronger Together" isn't unifying enough for some people).

But the truth is, none of this is really enough. Even with the dark forces in play, this election would have been something of a squeaker even though it should have been a landslide. The WORST they could come up with Hillary was that she used poor judgment setting up her server, but had an exemplary record of public service, including several key achievements like ChIPS, support for disabled students in schools, her acclaimed work as Secretary of State cleaning up after W, and a surprisingly transparent charity credited with helping people around the world. Trump was active in suits involving fraud, racketeering, and child rape, had a history of bankruptcy and destroying small businesses by not paying them, and bragged about assaulting women.  That's not even counting the ugly, hateful, malicious rhetoric of his campaign. Unless you were painfully naive, a Republican who wanted a free hand to rape and pillage the country for other wealthy bastards, or you wanted any possible excuse to not to vote for a woman, this was a no brainer. But, for someone who wasn't with him ideologically, there was no excuse, whether Hillary came to hold a rally in your town or someone came to knock on your door and beg you to vote for her pretty please.

People still bring up the email, and that shouldn't have even lasted through a 24 hour news cycle instead of being pounded daily for a year and a half.  It certainly shouldn't have been a factor that weighed anything next to what Trump stood for and his past. And I know that's true because Trump and half his staff do exactly the same thing now and the news on it didn't even make a 24 hours news cycle (nor should it) considering the heinous streak of horrible things they've done since coming into power. Which were entirely predictable.


Because tearing apart Hillary and the campaign again isn't going to address the problem. That was a solid campaign swimming upstream against a media onslaught of epic proportions and much of what people said she didn't say, she did say, in detail and at length. The problem was, no one was listening. Well, those of us staunchly behind her were listening, but we had to search it out between all the attack pieces.


I wish you folks could hear how it sounds from my perspective. Before you explain how it's not sexism, kindly find the footage where Bernie, who lost fair and square to Hillary by a huge margin by every metric, came on television and went painstakingly through every one of his missteps.


I saw this in 2008. Even though she had a MUCH closer loss with Obama, I heard for years a long litany of all her campaign failures. When McCain lost, other than his idiotic choice for VP, I didn't hear news and Republicans going on and on about his many failings that brought this to happen, even though they considered (and I saw this on actual campaign posters) Obama the anti-Christ. Maybe if he'd lost, they'd have done the same thing with him.

Hillary, unlike every other loser in the history of politics, will go into great detail again (and apologize) for her missteps because she knows that's a step required for her and her alone. She will acknowledge them just as she acknowledged mistakes during the campaign (and no one else did). And she'll be hounded for them forever anyway, because anything less than perfection must be castigated until the end of time, no matter how abjectly she acknowledges them or detailed her own analysis.

And not one other person will look closely at all the other missteps or take responsibility for them. All so we can pretend that the simplest Occam's razor answer isn't true, that as racist as this country is, it's even more sexist.

Bottom line, not just the right but the left was played, too. And, until we can convince us, the voters, not to be so easily played, until we can convince liberal voters that the rules have to be the same for everyone, the standards the same, not one set for the right and one for us or for blacks or for women (don't get me started on the brouhaha on President Obama's speeches - I wouldn't begrudge him if he'd demanded his weight in gold from the country as several for all the ugliness we put him through while he worked his heart out for us), we will lose over and over again.

Let me put it another way, even if you voted for her, if you're analyzing and the first and last answer to everything wrong has to do with some flaw in Clinton, step back and ask yourself, would you do the same, put 100% of the blame on another candidate the same way? If you're saying, "How dare she do anything less than take 100% of the blame for Trump being in the White House, I'll never respect her again," you've got more sexism in you than you thought.

We already know the conservatives will treat her differently because she's a woman. If you are using a different yardstick for Hillary Clinton than anyone else, it's sexist. And, if it's just as true on the left, that is probably the real problem.  But, by joining with them to flay Hillary again, we're reinforcing their wrong thinking, not correcting it. And we have to correct it, because the key to winning isn't to look like the other side but to note why we're different.


One reason the conservatives have so much power right now is that they've dominated the narrative. They first told us Hillary (and Obama) were the evil communists among their own adherents while feeding stories to leftist outlets that they were both closet Republicans indistinguishable from the Republicans (no matter how that was belied by facts). But the majority that put Obama in the White House, the majority that voted for Hillary, the tens of millions that believed in them, didn't scream about it. The screaming has been done by the extremists, such that Dem contenders in the midterms didn't embrace the good work that Obama was doing, but disavowed it (thereby losing and making Congress red), by not standing forward and shouting their love of Hillary (instead going into secret groups where they wouldn't be attacked). They aren't the ones who lost the election, but they seem to be the only ones doing the soul searching, wondering what they could do better.

What they need to do is educate those who are smugly proud of not voting or their third party vote or even voting for Trump while turning around and blaming Hillary (and company) for Trump's actions. That's the kind of nonsense that must be fought against. That's the narrative we need to kill right here and right now. Probably can't do it for the deeply red folks, but there are a lot of other people who are going to be facing some real appreciable harm who need to listen if they want the situation to get better. If you didn't vote for Hillary and you're bitching about Trump, you need to do some soul searching because YOU are a big part of the problem. And thinking the Dems need to change to fix it ain't the answer, because they aren't the problem. They voted for the answer. You didn't.

But what can the Democrats do? Well, you're doing it. You're reminding the Republican reps out there that you're watching and you hate what they're doing. Wish I could say that will stop 'em--it won't; they don't care what we think and they haven't for some time--but it does hearten the Dems. We need to back and support the Dems that are working for us. They did a great job trimming the worst of Trump's proposals for the budget and holding firm on that. They were staunch against the AHCA. Some of the Democratic Reps have offered to come to the town halls the Republicans are afraid to hold. That's a brilliant idea. Let the voters know who is really throwing them under the bus, who is standing for their rights and who isn't.

We need to change the narrative. Facts matter. Reality matters. People matter. The rules need to be the same for everyone or they are meaningless. We need to call out lies and keep calling them out. We need to mock the insane proposals as the garbage they are. We have to be noisy and scream that we're not going to be attacked without standing our ground, that we're proud of the people, often maligned and dismissed, who have been fighting for us for the past half century. We need to be the noisy majority and make the media do better, make the narrative truthful again.

We need to use that to build a better, smarter, less gullible electorate. In my opinion, that's the only way we win.

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How to Destroy the Democratic Party and the Country

I know, I know, I was supposed to write more of these but I was unexpectedly sucked into more book stuff and then ended up in the hospital...well, you know how it can go. And I was all psyched, gonna write something that isn't politics.

Well, so much for that.

There's been a big debate, when people aren't going on and on and on about how horrible Hillary is, even in the face of the monstrosity we have in the White House, about how to "fix" the DNC. What can we do after this calamity?

Here's my short answer: Don't fix it. That's not what's broken. Well, it wasn't.

Could use a bit more spine, of course, but that plays into why it's struggling so much now while the GOP is circling the drain. This should be when the DNC has it made. Unfortunately, we're so convinced we suck that we're going to throw away what makes us great out of fear. That's stupid. I need a state-sized hand to smack this country a couple times. Snap you out of it.

Now, here's my long answer: What the hell is wrong with you people? The biggest problem the DNC and people who are sympathetic to the DNC have is that they've been told no one agrees with them, so they are constantly second-guessing themselves. Too often, they are unwilling to make a stand in case it upsets some group of voters because, if they're not in power, they can't get anything done (especially with the current state of the GOP). That's whacked thinking of course, but slightly less whacked than the alt-left and the alt-right/now mainstream GOP which has been told everyone agrees with them (and they believe it) and think they walk on water because that's insane. These folks think they can do anything and it won't come back to bite 'em in the butt, that they can espouse any horrific notion and there will never be repercussions. They believe their own lunacy. They forgot they were even lying.

There are a couple things everyone who isn't currently part of the Trumpian mind meld (and I use the term "mind" loosely) or part of the Sanders mind meld keep forgetting.

For the past 60-70 years, all the good governance, all the recovery from fiascoes and blatant government corruption, all the sound economic policies and civil rights, all the improvements that so many have had in the past seventy years have had Democratic fingerprints all over it, even some of what happened on a Republican president's watch. All the unnecessary wars, the slicing back of safety nets, the fiscal irresponsibility, the deregulation, the environmental looting, that's GOP.

The Republican party hasn't had a clue how to govern in decades, which is why their presidents do so much damage but not as much as they might because they rarely have had a Republican Congress at the same time, and they've made their total inability to accomplish anything but catastrophe a point of pride. They not only willingly but gleefully picked up the ugly mantle of bigotry when the Dems (who had it first) began to realize how totally unsavory it was. They wear it unabashedly while telling us that bigotry doesn't even exist and probably never did.

Part of the Dem's good governance--and this is important--is that they never forgot the Republicans were part of the citizenry, too. That they looked at the big picture, were willing to wheel back their wants and wishes at times, accept half a loaf, often finding out the half a loaf was too much at once and adjusting. They LEARNED. The DNC wasn't just about winning, it was making the country greater, more inclusive, better for everyone and they would have gotten a lot further on that if they hadn't spent so much of their time cleaning up after GOP messes and, honestly, trying to make it work with difficult people who kept saying the opposite of the truth as if that could make it reality.

Someone's got to be the grownup in the room, got to do the grunt work, and make the sacrifices required for making this country function. And, more and more as decades progress, that was falling into the hands of solely the Dems instead of being something at least a few Republicans were trying.

What about the communists and stuff, the independents? I'll get there. The alt left has a bit in here, too, but it's not what you think it is and it's got nothing to do with governance.

Now, since the GOP was busy forgetting anything they might ever have known about leadership, they had nothing to do but line their pockets by passing out favors (and, yes, there are Dems guilty of this, too, and--gasp!--independents, but for blatant self-serving corruption, the GOP are masters. They don't even pretend they're not profiting off their legislation anymore) and figure out how to win. Because that's all they got. And winning, it turns out, is much easier than governance because no (self) sacrifice is required, no truth, no accountability, no thought. It's all about emotional manipulation and, since they've got the evangelicals in their fold now, they know just how to manipulate with hatred and fear, rage, all the things that have led to the ugliest chapters in human history. It works because emotional responses turn off thinking (literally) and outrage (for real events or false) becomes the catalyst to convince people to constantly subvert their own best interests.

Is it doomed if we don't stop it? Absolutely. And they'll take a lot of good people with them. The damage could go from years of recovery to total annihilation, and not just because our Trumpian toddler wants to play with the big red button. No way, unchecked, this ends in a pretty way. It never has.

So, Bernie's and other alt-left icons are the answer, right? I mean, obviously, he knows how to counter the GOP's winning strategy and can bring brightness and light into all the dark recesses of the DNC. Ugh, I just threw up a little in my mouth. Where's that state-sized hand again? We need another smack.

The alt-left is not without its uses. Historically, here and there, they have pointed out abuses no one notices and stirred up outrage that prods the DNC and other to stand up and address.  But occasional screaming is not the same damn thing as governance.

The LAST damn thing the DNC needs is to hand over the controls to ANOTHER group that's never had ANY experience governing (except in several Latin American countries riddled with poverty, violence, and corruption). Or assume a man who couldn't even win a contest among lefties can win over a whole country of everyones, even using the same tactics as the GOP (which he did). And still lost. He's not even good at it. Oh, sure, he tried the divisiveness and the "us vs. them" rhetoric, the hate-the-rich mantra, then moved on to the smear the one with governance experience by insisting that there's nothing worse for the country than knowledge and experience. That was quite the logical fallacy. And he failed conclusively so that everyone knew it (but him and his most rabid followers).

Now, personally, I'd love to forget about Bernie. Not only has he lost all relevance sometime in April, but he's a never been, rather than a has-been, and knows diddly poo about leading because, if he did, he wouldn't be tearing the DNC apart under the guise of "unity." But, sometimes, even someone not worth one's time says something that just can't go unchallenged, and this is especially so now that the DNC has (idiotically) embraced them as their messiah: tossing away civil rights as if it's something we can pick up later, no problem, once the "real" problems are dealt with.

That's total horseshit. Not just because those civil rights for immigrants, Muslims (and Jews, too), blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, women, LGBTQ, disabled people, the elderly, are all on the chopping block while Bernie whines about corruption, though they are, but also because this is what separates us from everyone else. Not just the GOP. If the DNC decides, "Oh, we're not going to even try on this stuff now. We'll get back to it," there will be nothing to stop the wholesale dismantling of more than a half-century of hard-won progress because there is no one else defending it, no one else standing up for it, no one else who gives a shit.

As soon as you make the human rights of any citizen of this nation negotiable, something we can live without, no one is safe. As soon as you take away a woman's autonomy over her own body, she is less than human, not even able to decide her own life. As soon as you tell a black man, "Suck it up, the new minimum wage (which will never happen) will help you, too," without any cognizance that he can't get a good education without improvements, will find himself in jail on trumped up charges, or otherwise marginalized from the potential he might otherwise have had, you have become complacent that he'll never be treated as a full human being, deserving human decency

And that's the thing. Bigotry isn't just cruel and mean-spirited. It's STUPID.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it. It's STUPID. You can't marginalize half and more of your population without the country, as a whole, suffering for it. That potential, the minds and ideas and breakthroughs and culture and classics and everything that will never come to pass make the world that much darker. For what? So some fat cat somewhere can get a second yacht?

Stupid. Bad governance.

And suicide for the DNC because, right now, the blocks that come out, year after year to help them in the voting booth are women and minorities. Not because the Dems have always given them all they want, but because they'll at least try, because everything different between now and when "colored only" was a common sign, happened because the Dems fought for it.

If the Dems tell them, "Hey, you're really not worth it," not only will these still-marginalized people have no one to protect them, but the Dems will have lost the people who were most loyal to them.

And we'll have deserved it.

This whole notion is so illogical and asinine, so utterly self-destructive, it stinks to high heaven of GOP anti-logic and manipulation. I don't know about you but I'm sick to death of being manipulated by the stupid party. So, DNC, stop it. It's embarrassing.

So, what do we do?

Guess that will have to do with the next post.

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