What Needs to Happen Now

The United States has taken a fundamental turn in its history of governing. It’s not the first time, but it is without precedent. We are no longer a Representative Democracy. The United States is now a Representative Autocracy.  For whatever reasons one may want to compile about how this came about, what was thrown into the soup; Biden (America’s Neville Chamberlain), a poorly chosen candidate, the lack of an effective narrative, and more, it is now the proverbial water over the dam. 

Whatever political Party (Republican or Democrat) or persuasion (Conservative, Centrist or Liberal) holds sway over the American people in the future; the Executive Branch of our Government (which includes the Military) will have significant, but not total control over the other two Branches. It is no longer "separate but equal".

This is not uncommon in the World, but the impact of the United States on other nations having or attempting democratic rule will be immense. The fall of the Ukrainian Government may be the first nail in the coffin. 

What’s left of our Representative Democracy sits atop a tripod. One leg is the Judicial Branch of Government, the second is free elections, and the third is a free media. We can expect to see all three legs chipped away over the coming years.  The goal will be to destroy public confidence in any one part. “Chipping” already started about 24 years ago. Now it likely will be accelerating. Any one of those legs fall…and the whole thing collapses. 

Like most things in history it will seem slow while we’re living in it, but looking back it will appear lighting fast. Think about Germany in the 1930s. Even the Jews living in it couldn’t see the end game. The United States is not 1930s Germany, but the similarities of the process cannot be ignored. Still, when things move slowly they are so easily ignored. 

What needs to happen, from the perspective of those who viewed a Trump victory as a severe turn to the Autocratic Right? We need a champion, and we need him now (note: I used the pronoun “him” because, tragically, this election struck a severe blow against the forces fighting against misogyny, worldwide. The likelihood that I won’t live long enough to see a woman President of the United States was only thing about this election that left me truly sad). 

Someone needs to announce their candidacy for President before Trump’s inauguration. Screw those who say our elections are too long. That ship has sailed. Those that oppose the Right Wing agenda, which will include the implementation of Project 2025, need a leader to rally around and who can begin to control the narrative...to defend each leg of that tripod. Someone needs to be there now, before the inevitable rise of J.D. Vance becomes unstoppable. 

If I were a king maker my first choice would be Cory Booker out of New Jersey. Perhaps even Chris Murphy from Connecticut. Regardless, it needs to be someone with the communication stature of a Barack Obama. 

The old failed leadership of the Democratic Party needs to go. The narcissism of people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that keeps them clinging to office needs to end. Joe Biden taught us that lesson.

It’s a new age for this Country. It’s time to make the best of it.

It's the Economy, Stupid??

When Bill Clinton in 1992 brought the phrase “It’s the Economy Stupid” into the American political lexicon, it did not win him the Presidency. In fact (yes, in fact) George H.W. Bush would have won in a landslide had Ross Perot not run as a third party candidate. The vast majority of the votes Perot received was taken from Bush and would not have gone to Clinton. 

The Bush Economy, recovering from the bumbling that took place in Reagan’s final years, was markedly improving. The Savings and Loan disaster that was born during Reagan had been well handled. His Economy didn’t sink him. After the first Gulf War he had one of the highest favorability ratings in the history of the US Presidency. 

Nixon, on the other hand, won re-election in 1974 with inflation that was off the charts (by today’s standards), real unemployment up, and a recessive growth rate (they called it Stagflation), not to mention an unpopular war. What was his secret sauce? 

What the Democrats in 2024 have somehow lost sight of (or maybe they never had sight of) is that it’s the narrative that makes the difference. Their guiding axiom should be “It’s the Narrative, Stupid”. The Republicans, the Conservative Media, and maybe even Trump himself (although incredibly ignorant of history is still intuitive) have long figured that out. I have cringed during every week of Kamala Harris’ campaign for their failure to address the economic narrative, her especially. 

For four years the Republican Christian Conservative narrative has been telling the Country that we have the worst economy in the history of mankind. They offer no specifics beyond, for example, the price of bacon (which is always in plentiful supply) and finding someone to interview who is in dire economic straits (when EVER is that person not hard to find). They ask the same question every four years (just as Democrats do) “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” 

What they are really asking is “Do you feel better off than you did four years ago"? They don’t want individuals to actually look at their life situations; they want them to listen to how bad their lives potentially are. If the economy was running great on all cylinders and you were living a life of plenty, but then you were told that an asteroid was soon to crash into Earth and destroy all life forms, how do you think that “feel” question would be answered ? 

Whenever I have heard Harris asked the question of why a majority of polled Americans think Trump would do better job on the American economy than her I listen slack jawed agape at the foolish response she gives. A question whose origin comes from years of people being told their lives are in the toilet, regardless of the trips they take, the concerts they go to, or the restaurants they eat at. She answers with comments about Trump’s inane ramblings or specifics regarding laws passed and contrary statistics. Bottom line: she and other Democrats surrender to the Republican narrative. 

How should she answer? Simple…and simple is the operative word. Simple in ways that people can feel they understand and have the potential of being remembered. 

Democrats should have focused on just three things: 

First, that the inflation that occurred in 2021 & 2022 did not just happen in the US, rather it occurred in every developed economy in the World as a direct result of the Pandemic, which began in the Trump Administration and took at least 10 million lives (more likely 20MM) worldwide. 

Second, these same Democrats under Biden brought down inflation faster than any other Country, without a recession, and now our economy is the envy of the World and the US Dollar is stronger than ever. We beat every other country and are number 1 (that’s right, use competitive sports analogies). 

Third, once Biden took over after a huge stock market drop under Trump, the Stock Market has hit new highs almost every month of the Biden Administration. (Why didn’t Kamala use that fact when Bret Baier asked her why people think the Nation is going in the wrong direction?  ‘Bret, what direction would they prefer?’) 

The Pandemic, competition, and the Stock Market are things even the simplest of people understand. And all of it can be fact checked.  It’s a narrative. Harris and the Democrats wouldn’t have had to bring up anything else. 

Frankly, I think all the Democrats should have just kept their mouths shut and let Pete Buttigieg do all the talking.

Learning to Hate a Good Man

For the first 6 years of the Obama Administration the Democrats held a majority in the US Senate. In that first year Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 76 years old. By the last year, and with a highly potential loss of Senate control projected by the Democrats, RBG was 82. She knew the nature of the Supreme Court, the far right conservative leanings of the majority, especially with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and her friend Antonin Scalia. 

She was in very poor health contracting colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, and coronary artery disease before or during Obama’s first 6 years. She was lobbied by Obama, the Democratic leadership, and incalculable numbers of the electorate to retire and let Obama nominate a center left judge. She wouldn’t do it. Why? 

She was not ambiguous. She wanted to carry out her duties for as long as she could. It is not unreasonable to assume she felt she could do a better job than any replacement. It is also quite reasonable to assume her desire to remain in office was more important to her than the future of the Nation. For example, her decision essentially caused the repeal of Roe v Wade to become reality. 

To say that RBG’s choices are analogous to Joe Biden’s is a given, only in Biden's case the consequences are far, far more dire. Just as with Ginsburg no one is saying that Biden has not performed his duties adequately. Those with even a modicum of intelligence and a willingness to open their eyes can argue that Biden, and the team around him, have done an excellent job of managing this monolithic ship of state we call America. Yet here we are. 

The moving essay in the New York Times by George Clooney encapsulates the dilemma those of us who are not neck deep in the MAGA cabal find ourselves in. At the beginning Clooney writes “I love Joe Biden.” He follows with all the tender accolades and advice that he might have said were he sitting across from Joe in a comfy library room. The problem is that Biden cannot hear him, except those words that outline his accomplishments. Like Ginsburg, he still sees himself more than capable in solving the issues of the next Presidency, the first one being the election. Amazingly and regrettably it appears Jill Biden is equally blind for reasons of her own. 

This flaw in Joe Biden - call it narcissism, call it ego, or call it dementia if you like – is not something to be admired, cushioned by his past. Certainly not with the risks we see impending. When we look at Trump’s behavior, his promises, the goals of his long time supporters to unravel our Democracy (think Project 2025), the sacking of Ukraine, and a super Conservative majority in the Supreme Court for decades, this intransigent position of Biden’s overshadows his entire career. In hindsight, I don’t think anyone lauded over the long, accomplished career of Captain Edward Smith after he sailed the Titanic into icy waters.

Joe Biden has been a good President, perhaps much better than good as history will decide. Still, I expected him for three years to announce that he was going to be a one-term President, a transitional President to a new generation, as he proclaimed in 2021. That appears clearly to not have been his intention. After all the primaries, I tuned into the “debate” apprehensive that my hopes he could carry off an election, and take his Party with him, were not just me being in denial. I learned I had to face the truth. 

Biden’s inability to respect the opinion of those around him and, by all accounts, a majority of the electorate irrevocably erases, at least in the near term, all the good a memory can provide. It draws into question not only his ability to get elected, but that of his Presidency as yet unfinished.  Frankly, I don’t want a President whose decisions can only be changed by the “Lord Almighty”. 

At this point I don’t like the 2024 Joe Biden, I don’t like him a bit. That’s a 180 for me from 2020. Now the question is can the Democratic Party and its leadership convince Biden to willingly free his delegates. Otherwise it's like taking a loved one, who has turned cognitively angry and belligerent, out of his home. There’s just sadness left, and sadness is the last thing the Democratic Party needs now.

Tell Us It Ain't So, Joe

Joe Biden has, with good justification, traded on personal integrity and, dare I say it regarding a politician, honesty. Not perfect, but not bad by Washington standards. On Friday after the first (and probably last) debate with D. Trump, he fired up his vocal cords at a small North Carolina rally of the faithful and proclaimed his honesty. “I know how to tell the truth” he forcefully read from a teleprompter to cheers and chants. But does he know the truth? If he doesn’t know it, how can he possibly tell it. 

His point was to draw contrast with Trump who, like any good clinical narcissist, has unabashedly concluded that anything that comes out of his mouth is truth. It doesn’t matter what. This works just fine for a mind-blowingly large number of Americans who view Trump as a symbolic bulwark, protecting them from a host of contrived Conservative fears. 

However, Biden wasn’t talking to the MAGA crowd then or at the Thursday night “debate”. Biden was talking to the rest of America, the part of America which will decide just what kind of direction this Country is heading.  At the “debate” Biden’s handlers were probably counting on Trump’s lies, mistruths, and hyperbole (among other bad behavior) to successfully move the needle in their candidate’s direction. The error of their judgment is frightening. 

Within the first 10 minutes of the face-off it didn’t matter what Trump said. He could have read and re-read Green Eggs and Ham. What Trump did say was no more informative (nor real) than if he had. At that point all I could see or hear was what I had been blindly hoping I would not see or hear: Biden is not just 81, he is an old 81. As this campaign deepens over the next 4 months this truth is not going to go away. 

Biden trying to exalt his record was meaningless, so was his trying to excoriate Trump’s record or lies. You can’t get to point ‘B’ bypassing point ‘A’ when point ‘A’ is physical and mental capability. His performance was indisputable and the reason for that performance was reality rearing its inescapable head. 

The spin makers began to throw out excuses even while the debate was in motion, like the alleged cold which seemed to magically disappear after the “debate”. Later they referenced Obama’s first debate in 2012 as analogous…oh please. Obama seemed flat because our expectations were so high. It wasn’t a disaster. Our expectations for Biden were nearly rock bottom but somehow he managed to slip beneath those. We were hoping for a President that could at least somewhat exceed low expectations, as he managed to do in his prepared remarks at the State of the Union. 

So what has happened in the days following this “debate”? Despite a deafening chorus of calls for him to release his delegates and drop from the race he expects us to ignore what we cannot un-see or un-hear, just as Trump expects with the regularity of a heartbeat. Only Biden does not inspire the number of voters, blind with naiveté and fear, that Trump does. We actually expect the truth from Joe, but if he doesn’t see it, we’re not going to get it. 

Biden’s delivery was not new. I started writing four years ago that if he was elected he needed to proclaim himself a one-term President (https://pennyfound.blogspot.com/2020/03/jill-biden-for-first-lady.html) . Instead he believes his truth that; he can campaign, win an election, and effectively govern for four strenuous years, exceeds the risks that a Trump Presidency creates…our senses be damned. 

This appears to be a watershed moment in American History; Representative Democracy vs. Representative Authoritarianism, the Supreme Court, Climate Change, International Relations, Woman’s rights, Ukraine, and wealth inequality et al, may all pivot on what truth Joe Biden is willing or able to see. It’s likely that he cannot be elected on only an anti-Trump vote. Enough non-MAGA voters have indicated they want someone to vote for. 

He cannot be replaced without his agreement. Like Narcissus, if Biden has looked in the water and can see only himself, it may be the one fatal commonality he has with Trump.

Already Broke

When reflecting on movies and television shows that have been part of my past, like many of us do from time to time, it is not hard for me to arrive at my number one choice. It is the series Breaking Bad, produced from 2008 through 2013. It had five seasons, six segments, and approximately 56 hours of viewing time. I don’t feel it a risky choice as I have encountered a number of ordinary individuals who have felt the same. 

It was superior on many levels of film production, none of which I want to discuss here…except one. It portrayed violence not as we commonly see it in movies and television, with high volume weaponry, extreme bloodletting, and gratuitous death.  In Breaking Bad the violence was so selective that its impact was magnified to the viewer, feeling like something possibly real. 

Here I want to describe one violent event that occurred in Season 5 and one that haunts me as I also reflect on the impact of this coming National election. 

The main character, Walter White, who runs a gamut back and forth between being a hero and anti-hero, is in need of methylamine, a raw material to be used in the production of Crystal Meth. He and others plan a theft from a stopped freight train in the middle of the day in the New Mexico desert. 

One of the others with him is a younger man named Todd (well played by Jesse Plemons) who belongs to a local crime family. He is simple minded and totally void of empathy. He doesn’t perceive acts of violence as violent because such events are uncomplicated means to an end. 

As Walter, Todd and the others are in the process of stealing the chemical, a young boy, maybe 9 or 10, comes upon them while riding his bicycle on a trail. Everything stops. The men and the boy stare at each other for a long couple of seconds. Then Todd, showing no expression and with the ease of flipping a light switch, pulls out his handgun and shoots the boy, killing him. Though all the others shout “NO” at the sound of the shot, Todd remained only baffled why any of them would protest his action. I wrenched when I watched the cold nature of that scene. 

The lack of empathy that Donald Trump publicly displays in his actions and in his character is obvious beyond question. Anyone who views Trump as another human being cannot avoid that conclusion. Those that see him primarily as a symbol and bulwark against “creeping liberalism” appear to have the ability to ignore what he says and what he does. Empathy be damned. 

Yet it is empathy, the ability to embrace the trials, sacrifices, and suffering of other people as if those experiences were your own, that direct us toward an ethical existence. 

When Donald Trump announced in 2016 that he could walk down the middle of 5^th Avenue and shoot someone and never lose a single voter I viewed that suggestion just as Trump wanted me to. I thought he believed the loyalty of his minions so great that he could perform a heinous crime without retribution from them. It similarly held true for those that love what he represents, that no crime could surpass the protection he might provide them. 

It was only when I thought about that scene in Breaking Bad , of someone able to kill with virtually no empathy that I realized my misjudgment. It wasn’t the imagined crime of him shooting someone that was so heinous; it was about the person to whom he was killing. What he was actually communicating, perhaps unconsciously, was that the person he was shooting was totally meaningless to him, a means to an end. 

He didn’t present a description of himself robbing a bank or vandalizing a work of art. He presented himself as someone without compassion or empathy, and his “people”, by his count, would also be unmoved.  He should have been considered totally believable. In a real sense, he did, in fact, shoot someone on 5^th Avenue. 

The inability to exhibit empathy is an integral part of those that aspire to authoritarian rule. Pick whatever crime against humanity history provides and at the forefront is someone who feels no empathy to many or all affected people. These “leaders” did not break bad, they came broken. The fears of their followers were the only emotions they needed. 

George, It's Not "1984"...It Was 1986

George Orwell wrote his dystopian novel “1984” in 1949, describing a country under total authoritarian control. He somehow concluded it made sense that 36 years was enough time for such a change to take place. With hindsight that speculation was, to say the least, rather aggressive. However, as we look back now at that period in the mid 1980s, a period where 63% of today’s Americans weren’t even alive, I believe the beginnings of what Orwell described was only off by a couple of years. 

An undetermined majority of Americans are baffled. They can’t understand how someone like Donald Trump can exist within our American culture, arguably, the oldest and strongest representative Democracy in the history of the world. 

They can hate him. They can hate his narcissism, his crass behavior, his checkered history, his ignorance, and his savagery, to name a few. This they understand. The conundrum is how, given these attributes, he instills devotion in so many ordinary people who are little different from themselves. In my world it is almost a constant source of discussion and bewilderment. I believe the hows and whys are just as elusive for those who support Trump as for those who despise him. 

The United States has been on a Liberal path since it began; albeit with a two steps forward one step back trajectory. With the acceleration of Social “Liberalism” in the 1960s and 70s, the political travesty of Vietnam, and recognizing slavery’s demonic offspring, racism, as officially and ethically wrong, there began the identification of individuals as Conservative or Liberal. Not necessarily what they believed in, but who they are. 

The Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater tried to create that identification for Conservatives in 1964, but failed miserably. Richard Nixon had more success with associating political parties with ideologies. His successful “Southern Strategy”, where he converted Southern Conservative Democrats to the Republican Party set the political foundation for what happened in the 1980s. The (liberal) Rockefeller Republicans slowly became extinct. Policy took a back seat to ideological identification. 

It was Ronald Reagan who built the final bridge to ideological separatism, although in his early years his actions were often bipartisan. His natural charisma and personal decency worked in his favor. However, it all changed dramatically in 1986 and practically no one could see it, no more than the general population could absorb the technological changes to communication that were about to take place. 

In 1949 Harry Truman’s FCC formalized and institutionalized a doctrine called “The Fairness Doctrine”. Coming out of World War II it was widely known and obvious that a necessary ingredient for authoritarian rule to take hold, as it did in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, was the total control of communication to the general population. Only in that way could a single ideological view propagandize without antagonists. The “Fairness Doctrine” restricted editorializing over public airways by requiring opposing views to be broadcast.  This was a no brainer given the horrors that occurred during the 1940s. 

In 1986 Ronald Reagan, by his authority, ended the 37 year old doctrine. A Democratic led, bipartisan bill was passed by Congress to make the Fairness Doctrine the law of land, but Reagan vetoed it. And that was that. In 1987 we got Rush Limbaugh on the air and the race to create and profit from a new kind of Conservatism took off. 

Ten years later Roger Ailes, a former pitch man for Reagan, would meet with Rupert Murdoch, a tabloid mogul, and show him how to turn television news into a dominant controlling medium and money making machine. He could do it by appealing to the groundwork of Limbaugh and his Conservative Talk Radio ilk. Thus Fox News was born. They began to rally huge numbers of single minded viewers and listeners with the use of the same critical tool…fear. 

Fear overwhelms Truth any moment of the day, any day of the week. Hitler knew that, so did Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh. Their first coo was to embrace Christian Nationalists, and the fears that drove them, as their own. 

The Republican Party slowly began to recognize which side of the bread was buttered, but it wasn’t until the high water mark of progressive Democratic politics, the election of Barack Obama, that the Republican Party threw in, lock stock and barrel with the demagoguery of Fox News and radical Right communication. This all happening as the world’s communication went universally digital. 

Identification with Conservatism became all about symbols. The Republican Party was no longer a party primarily about fiscal issues. It became laser focused on how to rein power away from the likes of Obama and do it with a motivated minority. The New Conservative Republican Party masterfully adopted or usurped symbols for their followers to identify with. Flags, phrases, music, or even words, like “patriot”, became part of the pitch for identification.  That Donald Trump walked into this New Conservatism should not be a surprise. Trump is virtually a symbol himself. 

Trump the image, the name Trump itself, and a variety of other symbols (such as MAGA) have come to represent images that Conservatives (especially “Christian Nationalists”) identify with. Those images represent the fear that binds the New Conservatism. The fear is that “Liberals”, the “Radical Left”, the “Deep State”, the “Culture Crisis”, or the “Woke Nation” (to name a few) are coming to take away their freedom, destroy their religion, kill their babies, steal their guns, reprogram their children, neuter the military, undermine law enforcement, install Communism, bankrupt their businesses, and tax them into poverty. 

They believe this because for over three decades they have been used by Conservative Media and, more recently, the Republican Party for financial gain and power. They have chosen to listen to nothing else. Why?. Because they could. It doesn’t matter what Trump says or what he does, his vitriol, or violations of the Truth. For a devotee to reject Trump would be to admit that their fears have been misplaced or that they are inviting Armageddon. Ironically, it might be considered a rejection of one's Christianity.

There is a weaker counter Left which continually advocates opposition, often with similar myopia. Think MSNBC. However, to succeed those opposed to the New Conservatism need to rally people to symbols that represent what they are for, symbols they don’t currently have. Obama was such a symbol, Biden is not.

This new drive toward Conservative Authoritarianism, founded in 1986, only seeks to rally the faithful around symbols that represent what they’re against…what they are so irrationally afraid of. It's not hard to see who benefits.

KEEP AMERICA FREE

This post is not a short manifesto on American rights or history. This post is about political rhetoric and how the Democratic Party has failed to solidify, in simple terms, just what the hell it is. 

The Conservative led Republican Party has been a master of rallying supporters around images. The use of flags and phrases capsulate for followers an identity of inclusion. They “belong” and can express their belonging in simple terms; Make America Great Again, MAGA, Don’t Tread On Me (including the Gadsden Flag), the name TRUMP, and the image of Trump himself. For the most part they have even usurped the American Flag itself as their symbol (rather ironic for a Party that bills itself as anti-government). 

None of this is new or unique. People, politicians, leaders, and governments have always used symbols or phrases to short cut or analogize, but more importantly to communicate and unify individuals into a common cause. The history and use of flags by modern man is a fascinating story unto itself. However, the Democratic Party seems to be void of this important human desire for symbolic union and inclusion. 

Sometimes popular individuals can represent themselves as a symbol (Trump e.g.). If the Democrats think they can make Biden their symbol…we’re in real trouble. That does not disparage the outstanding quality of his Presidency, only an image he cannot project. Yet that’s what it appears they’re doing. For a Party comprised of such diversity it’s frightening to consider. 

At least let there be a phrase. The word “Freedom” has not been totally usurped by the Republican Party (yet).  It is the word that historically we, as a nation, most closely aligned with Democracy. The obvious phrase then to use is KEEP AMERICA FREE. Think about it: 

Freedom of Choice (elections and abortion), Freedom from autocracy (democracy), Freedom from inequality (financial and social), Freedom from insecurity (gun control, social security, healthcare), Freedom from thought control (education, Free Press), Freedom from disrespect and threats (foreign policy), and Freedom from indecency (Trump) to name a few. I could write 50 stump speeches for Biden on this, but none of it would stick any better than butter on a light bulb if there isn’t a common phrase to encapsulate it all as a rallying call for a unified Party.

It also implies a warning (with the word "Keep") that such freedoms can be lost, and we are, in fact, currently in a battle to keep them.

The diversity of the Democratic Party demands something more than just fear of “Trump”. They need something to rally around which embraces that diversity in simple terms; KEEP AMERICA FREE…KEEP AMERICA FREE…KEEP AMERICA FREE.