We Bought Into a Moment . . .

We bought into a moment.

That's what the late David Carr of the New York Times famously wrote in 2011 about the moment that the press called the 2008 presidential election for Barack Obama.  We thought, while celebrating the news, that a freer, fairer, more progressive era had come to America with the election of the first black President.  

Then, one month into Obama's Presidency, Rick Santelli of CNBC spoiled everything with his call for a Chicago Tea Party from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in an obvious temper tantrum over efforts in Washington to save the nation from the aftermath of the financial crisis. A bunch of rabid bigots, looking for excuse to unload their racism against Obama, took that as an opportunity to found the right-wing Tea Party movement.  By the time Carr had written that we had bought into a moment, the moment was long gone.  The hope for a second New Deal was dashed by independents refusing to support it, the Republicans had decimated the Democratic House majority in the 2010 midterms, they took control of numerous states, and the Democratic agenda - which included paid maternity leave, codifying Roe v. Wade, building high-speed passenger rail - was in tatters.

But at least we got the Affordable Care Act passed!

Big f**king deal.

As the 2010s began, supply-side economics - which liberals has once thought was finally consigned to the dustbin of history - was reinstated, and the incredible organizing movement that got Obama elected in the first place fell apart.  And except for Bernie Sanders - who, needless to say, never became President - no one has been able to rebuild it.  (The less said about the random and incoherent Occupy Wall Street movement, the better.) And by the way, Obama continued the so-called War on Terror, which resolved nothing.   

It seems that all those of us who want a better America and are willing to work for it have always bought into a moment over and over and over, when we think we finally have the leader of the movement we need to make this country a freer and fairer place.  But politics, naivete, and a general misunderstanding of how things work in These States and how strong suspicions are of "nice things" such as public medical insurance or strict firearms regulation always retard progress. I bought into the moment of Bill Clinton's election to the Presidency in 1992 as a turning point for the country that suggested that better days were ahead.  Instead, we got Newt Gingrich.  Sometimes outside forces rotted in American vices - like violence - disillusioned those who bought into the moment of Robert Kennedy's unity speech in the aftermath of, ironically, Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968, only for him to be cut down by an assassin's bullet two months after.  How about when Americans bought into the moments of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, only to see them undermined and gutted many years later?    

Many of us bought into another moment when Barack Obama passed to the torch to Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention . . . the first black U.S, President passing the torch to the woman who would become the first female U.S. President. 

And remember how resplendent Hillary Clinton looked in her white pantsuit, symbolizing the suffragette movement of a hundred years earlier, signaling a new era of diversity, equity and inclusion? 

People who backed Bernie Sanders and those of us who were in with Martin O'Malley from the day he announced his 2016 presidential bid (talk about buying into a moment) knew better.  We knew that Hillary was everything Obama was not - egotistical, entitled, politically insular, and personally smug.  There was no way she could win the Presidency without acknowledging the dissatisfaction with the whole American system and trying to reach out to voters in the American heartland.  And, she didn't.

On Election Night 2016, Hillbots holding a "victory" party in the Javits Convention Center in New York City were hoping to symbolically shatter the ceiling of the glass building and bought into a moment that never came.  And Hillary, after conceding to her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, called President Obama and tearfully declared, "I am so, so sorry."

Yeah, you can stuff your sorries in a sack, Madam! 😬

So instead of Hillary, we got a racist and misogynistic presidential administration that favored using military force to crack down on civil rights demonstrators and urban crime waves, as well as appointing federal judges and Supreme Court justices that spurred the end of Roe v. Wade.  And even with that administration out of office, further erosions on freedom - including book bans, anti-black education curricula, and  a rise in anti-Semitism, have persisted.  And, we might not only get that administration back, we might get it back for good.  Or for bad.  Or for worse. 

I'm only voting for Joe Biden or two reasons - because I think he's been a good President, and because I want to stop Donald J. Trump.  But I'm through with buying into moments.  America is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.  We are not Denmark.  Neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren nor anyone else can change that.  But if Trump gets back in, we can and will be Nazi Germany.   

Inauguration Day 2025 is one year from today.  Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

Barack Obama, Party Pooper

A lot of people, noting President Biden's impressive record in the past quarter decade and change, think the Democratic Party is on the mend and Donald Trump's desperate attempt to avoid prison will finally destroy the Republican Party.  Don't you believe it.

Not only does Trump have the consistent message and die-hard base to win back the White House in a squeaker presidential election in 2024, the Democratic Party remains emaciated and gutless when it comes to fighting for the voters that should be but are not part of their base.  And we can blame Barack Obama for that.

WHAT?  Some of you have obviously elected not to read on, but for those of you who are sticking with me, here's the very inconvenient truth.  Obama did nothing to build up the Democratic Party while he was President of the United States.  He farmed out that duty to establishmentarian Democrats who, as is typical with elitists in any party, thought they knew it all.  The 2016 election proved they most certainly did not, and if the Democrats aren't careful, the 2024 presidential election will prove the same.

When Obama took office in 2009, Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean had spent four years working on a fifty-state strategy to cultivate and expanded the Democratic Party in every state in the Union, which Democratic insiders dismissed as a waste of time and money.  Obama, who had won the Presidency in 2008 without Texas or Utah (but did win Indiana and North Carolina, two states no Democratic presidential nominee has won since then, which was clearly evidence that Dean's strategy was working), seemed to agree, as he decided not to give Dean another four-year term as DNC chairman.  Obama gave the job to incumbent Virginia governor (now U.S. Senator) Tim Kaine, who agreed with Obama that reaching out to the opposition to find consensus and concentrating on swing voters was far more effective than trying to expand, say, the South Carolina Democratic Party beyond its largely black constituency into white communities.  Kaine was given full autonomy while Obama chose to remain above politics and concentrate on being a President for all for the people, even the ones who had voted for his Republican opponent John McCain.

Obama's decision was a disaster.  The Republicans had no desire to work with Obama.  Indeed, they had already settled on a plan of obstruction and reached out to the Tea Party movement that purported to be concerned with economic issues but also were concerned about social issues, like the need to end abortion and the desire to put a white man back in the Oval Office again.  Meanwhile, Kaine failed to capitalize on Obama's presidential campaign apparatus Organizing For America to keep the Obama base of women, minorities, blue-collar voters, and young people engaged at a time when the economy still had not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and Democrats, enjoying huge majorities in Congress, were quickly blamed for what was still going wrong.  And so the Democrats lost big time in the 2010 midterm elections, allowing Republicans to vigorously gerrymander state legislative and U.S. House districts as a result of 2010 being a census year.  Kaine was replaced as DNC chair by U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, whose own cluelessness and cravenness you already know about.  Needless to say, Obama left her to her own devices - and she continued the policy of concentrating on swing voters, though consensus with the GOP was clearly out of the question.  And, she readied the party for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2016 by scaring off potential challengers to Hillary and punishing those who dared to challenge Hillary.    

The result?  When Obama came into office in 2009, the Democrats had a 257-178 majority in the House and a 60-40 majority in the Senate. At the start of 2017, when Obama left office, Republicans controlled the House 241-194 and and the Senate 54-46.  In the states, Democrats went in that eight-year period from 59 percent of state legislatures to 31 percent; and from having 29 governors to 16.  Republicans had won governorships in Democratic states like New Jersey and Massachusetts but Democrats could not win governorships in Republican states like Utah or Mississippi.  When Obama entered office in 2009, pundits were talking about a new multiracial Democratic base rising and the Republican party looked to be on the wane as they had been in the 1930s and 1940s.  James Carville was even talking about a new Democratic era in American politics similar to the one that began in 1932 and petered out by 1980.  Fast forward to 2017, and Donald Trump became President with strong Republican majorities while pundits were asking if the Democrats even mattered.  It was a rhetorical question; of course the Democrats didn't matter.

Since then, the Democrats have bounced back, having retaken the Senate and won the House twice since 2016.  And Joe Biden won back the Presidency in 2020 with a clear popular majority, however much Trump tries to deny it.  But the Democrats are still in bad shape overall.  Republicans have not only taken back the House, they've strengthened their hold so much in states such as Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio that the Democratic parties in those states no longer have a need for full-time secretaries and clerks.  Democratic campaign committee chairs still refuse to give money to Democratic candidates in GOP-leaning states even when they have a shot at winning, for fear of throwing good money after bad, and the decision not to invest in races they think they'll lose means that they do lose.

So why should we still blame Obama for the current state of the Democratic Party?  Mainly for this reason - their bench is devoid of any possible party leaders at a time when most Democratic leaders have one foot in the grave.  Democrats who were rising stars in the 2010s and could have been big players today instead lost key races never to try for office again.  I don't need to tell you again that Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway, once considered to have a brilliant future in Democratic politics, quit politics after losing a U.S. Senate election and a gubernatorial election and was a hasbeen before he was fifty years old.  Florida Democrats once considered the future of the party in that state lost bids for the governorship so much that the party kept recycling ex-Republican ex-governor Charlie Crist as a fallback until Ron DeSantis buried him in a 22-point landslide.  A new generation of Democrats who could have provided new leadership in Washington and the state capitals are now answers to trivia questions because the party in the 2010s didn't get the leadership they needed from Obama.  

Given all of that, is it any wonder that there are no Democratic presdiential possiblities ready for prime time and the party has to renominate President Biden, now 80 years old, over the lack of desire among American voters to see him serve a second term and cross their fingers?  Biden was elected President not so much because people were for him but because they were against Trump.  With Biden's support among Democrats much softer than Trump's rock-solid base of support in the GOP, of course Trump could be the first President since Grover Cleveland to win a second nonconsecutive term.  Only, unlike Cleveland, Trump wouldn't leave office after another four years.  Top Democrats still cling to the hope that, after his one term and the January 6 insurrection, there's no way Trump can possibly win another presidential term.  They forget that they thought there was no way Trump could win a first term in 2016. 

You know, there's a reason DNC chairs not named Tim or Debbie by their mothers have complained that they're nothing but clerks when a Democrat is President - it's because Democratic Presidents not named Barack by their mothers have always taken a hands-on approach to building the party.  They listen to the working-class and middle-class voters and the women and minorities that sustain them.  They formulate policies designed to help those voters.  They constantly engage with them.  Joe Biden has done all of that in his Presidency, but after a decade or so of neglect by Obama, and after disappointing results for Democrats in congressional elections in 2022 that they should have won, especially in the House (*cough cough*, New York State, *cough cough*), the Democratic Party may be so damaged by Obama's hands-off attitude that maybe nothing can strengthen the party now. 

Barack Obama at Sixty

I don't think I can do justice to assessing former President Barack Obama's importance to America as he celebrates his sixtieth birthday today. Commentators with a literary superiority that I can never hope to attain, like Peniel Joseph, are better at that.  And, in fact, I think this one sentence from Joseph's essay about Obama on CNN's Web site sums it up: "Barack Obama's enduring power is his ability to allow us to imagine ourselves as a better country, society and people."

Obama's political legacy is problematic to assess, since most of it got wiped out by Donald Trump and President Biden is currently spending a lot of time trying to rebuild it.  But his cultural legacy is much easier to define, and Joseph's comment allows us to recall how Obama, as President and as an elder statesman, holds a mirror up to us and enables us to see what we Americans could be as opposed to what we have been and what we are. America was able to see itself as a decent country because of the grace, tolerance, and prudence Obama displayed as President, and he continues to project that sense of decency in his post-presidential work in trying to lift people up and make people more aware of the challenges we face.   Good thing, since America was not the decent country we imagine - nay, fantasize - ourselves being in not just Trump's time in the White House but in the seventeen months between Donald Trump's announcement of his presidential candidacy and the day he "upset" Hillary Clinton.  (And by the way, that upset was no surprise to those of us who knew that giving Hillary the Democratic presidential nomination was a big mistake.)  The 2016 campaign brought to the fore not just our political divisions but our cultural tribalism and our social vulgarity, and Obama's wisdom was the only thing that held us together . . . until January 20, 2017.

Four years, one pandemic, one insurrection and several voting-registration laws later, we need Obama's wisdom and guidance more than ever because, as someone who broke barriers and set new standards for American greatness (sorry, MAGA guys) even while continuing to speak out for brotherhood and social justice, Barack Obama is still an important contributor to our national discourse.

Bipartisanship At Its Best

When the polio vaccine came out in the mid-fifties, many people were suspicious about its safety until Elvis Presley volunteered to be vaccinated on live television - and he did get vaccinated, on Ed Sullivan's variety show.  It sent a powerful message - if the world's most revered rock and roll star didn't have a problem with the polio vaccine, no one else should either. The result? Millions of people got vaccinated and polio was all but eradicated.

Now we have COVID-19, and new vaccines that can end the pandemic are slowly coming out, yet only a bare majority of Americans have confidence in their safety.  NBC News' Brian Williams has suggested that a revered pop-culture figure like Elvis ought to take the COVID vaccine to show how effective it is.  The sad fact, though, is that there is no revered pop-culture figure like Elvis, our popular culture being just as fragmented as our politics.

Think about it.  If Beyoncé gets the vaccine on live TV, folks in the so-called red states will think that white liberals and minorities trust the government too much, and they won't get it.  If a country singer like Brad Paisley or Kenny Chesney gets the vaccine on live TV, folks in the so-called blue states will think that country-loving Trump supporters are politicizing the vaccine, and they won't get it.  And if Maroon 5's Adam Levine gets the vaccine - on "The Voice" - no one will get it, because Adam Levine is a blooming idiot!

And if the guys in the rock band Greta Van Fleet volunteer to get the vaccine on live TV, people will react by saying, "Greta Van Fleet? Who the hell is she?"  (The sad truth is, current rockers are even more irrelevant than classic rockers.)

Also, there's no one TV show that everyone watches in this 500-channel universe.

So who would be willing to get the COVID vaccine on live television once it becomes available for people under 80?

How about three of our four living ex-Presidents?

Bill Clinton, George Walker Bush, and Barack Obama have all volunteered to get the COVID vaccine on live television as soon as it's available in order to prove its safety and effectiveness and encourage the rest of us to get it.  It's a true bipartisan effort.  It's also a significant one, because they represent all sides of the political and cultural spectrum, and as (until January 20, 2021) the only living Republican ex-President, Bush has a special role here.  As President, he instigated a blueprint for a national strategy to plan for a pandemic back in 2005 - a strategy Trump ignored.  I wouldn't be surprised if the three ex-Presidents got their wives to take the vaccine on live TV - especially Michelle Obama, because everyone loves Michelle Obama.

Look, we have to do something to get people to take the vaccine, because this is the only way to end the pandemic and get back to normal by at least this time next year. Otherwise, we'll have to keep walking into banks looking like we're about to rob them.  We'll have to continue staying six feet apart from each other.  And we'll have to keep washing our hands twenty times a day until our skin cracks open from all that excessive washing.  Small businesses will keep going under, we won't be able to gather for parties,  we'll have to keep wiping down groceries, we won't have any more concerts (or whatever passes for concerts in popular "music" these days), and we'll all have to learn how to use Zoom to see our relatives - and after trying Zoom, I gave up on it because it was so complicated.  Come on, people - do you really want to live like this for the rest of your lives?  As for me, I don't need any ex-Presidents to encourage me to get the vaccine. Give it to me, already!  As soon as it's ready, I'll take it! I'll be first in line!  I want my life back! This year was going to be one of my best ever because of all the things I had planned to do in 2020, and it ended up being my absolute worst year ever!  I'm sure it was your worst year ever, too.  So come on, everyone - what do you have to lose?

The one thing that could seal the deal for the COVID vaccine is if Joe Biden takes it too once he's President.  The one thing that could ruin efforts to get people to take it is if Trump takes it - because Trump is the reason a lot of people don't trust the vaccine.

I'm only sorry that Elvis - who would have been 86 this coming January - isn't around to take it.

Sanders. Warren. No.

There will be no progressive revival in 2020.

Let me repeat that - there will be no progressive revival in 2020!

Which means that neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren will be President.

Deal with it.

And why do I say all of this? Because now is not the time for a progressive revival.  As someone who in 2016 did in fact support a Democratic presidential candidate who ran to the left of the eventual Democratic nominee (though Martin O'Malley was not liberal enough to satisfy Bernie bros), I don't like to admit this, but the simple fact is this. In 2016, after eight years of Barack Obama's accomplishments, we were in a moment to move forward and go farther under a more liberal Chief Executive, but that moment has long since passed.  Because in 2016, Democrats played it safe with a centrist nominee in Hillary Clinton, and Trump, who promised sweeping change - ironically, a selling point for Sanders' own 2016 campaign - won the Presidency.  Since then, Trump has not only erased Obama's accomplishments, he's violated all of the norms that existed in Washington long before Obama came along.  In short, Trump has taken the country too far back from where we were in 2016 for us to simply pick up where we left off then.

Even if we were in a position to go far left at this time, we're too exhausted by Trump's governance to move ahead.  Now more than ever, we need moderation.  Universal medical insurance and taxing the rich will have to wait, as well several other progressive pipedreams - even modernizing Amtrak, a pet policy of Joe Biden (and myself).  We need to get back to where we were in 2016 before we can move on to the bigger, better and greater things Sanders and Warren talk about, and it will take at least four years for us to get back to where we were.  And it won't be easy.  

The Presidency, you might recall, changed parties in 1920, from Democrat Woodrow Wilson to Republican Warren Harding, after a tumultuous period that left Americans exhausted (which included a world war).  "Back to normalcy" was the winning slogan in 1920, and it's going to be the winning slogan in 2020.  

As for Bernie and Liz, well, they'll at least still have their Senate seats.

Ten Years Gone - No, Wasted!

Remember ten years ago today, when Barack Obama was elected President?  Remember when we were n the cusp of a golden age?  Remember when we were at the dawn of a positive, enlightening era?  Neither can I.  Because almost as soon as Obama took office, it was back to business as usual.  Then it got worse - Citizens United, the Tea Party, the rise of voter suppression and cuts to social programs an amenities, the return of climate-change denial (marginal risk of severe thunderstorms in the New York area - in November! - this Election Day) and a bunch of centrist weenies in the Democratic Party who lost the House, the Senate, governorships, and then gave us Hillary Clinton, the last brick in the road to hell taken by Donald J. Trump.

So what went wrong?  Obama couldn't coordinate his Organizing For America's abilities to get Democratic voters activated and engaged with the Democratic National Committee's abilities to . . . to . . .to . . ..  Well, I don't know what the Democratic National Committee has the ability to do, except write off blue-collar voters and rig the primary vote for its preferred presidential candidate (the latter ability failed them in 2008, when Hillary first ran).  And that golden age?  Last time I checked, there are no high-speed passenger rail lines, no universal health coverage, no sensible gun laws, no sensible auto fuel-economy standards, no support for the arts, none of that stuff.   And ten years to the day after we elected our first black President, the Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, who is also the Georgia Secretary of State, is investigating an unsubstantiated charge of the state Democratic Party trying to hack the state voter registration database to thwart the election of the nation's first black female governor.

Dear Democrats:  This is your last chance to get it right.  If you screw up this time, you are going . . . to Whig . . . out.  And no one will miss you.

And in a hundred years,  it won't matter who the first black President was.       

Barack Obama? Is That You?

Have you ever wondered what happened to Barack Obama? Well, the forty-fourth President of the United States is back.

The former President, who turned 57 this past Saturday, announced that he and his wife Michelle are endorsing 81 Democratic candidates for congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative elections, with more endorsements to come.  It's part of Obama's efforts to help the Democrats regain power nationwide.  Two of those candidates are in my home state of New Jersey - Andy Kim (no, not that guy who sang "Rock Me Gently" in the seventies) for the state's Third U.S. House District and Tom Malinowski for its Seventh U.S. House District.  No endorsement for Mikie Sherrill in my district, the Eleventh, just yet.

So why is Obama doing all this?  Because he says that, in the past decade, the Democrats lost far too many elective offices, including governorships and control of federal and state legislatures, to the Republicans, and they have to start winning these offices back if they have any chance of surviving going forward.

Hmm . . . it's too bad Obama was never in a position to do anything about this before!

And what Obama has said sounds suspiciously like what another Democrat who had hoped to succeed him as President has been saying for about nine months now. This other Democrat has been doing something about it for those nine months and counting  - and he's already done more than what Obama did for his party in eight years!

And here he is!            

Martin O'Malley has been toiling in obscurity - obscurity created by a media establishment that doesn't give a twit about him - helping Democrats win state and local elections (mostly special elections) through his Win Back Your State PAC.  The fanfare he has failed to get will likely be compensated by the numerous endorsements from the state and local Democratic officials he helps get elected this year and next should he run for President in 2020.  Obama isn't doing anything now that O'Malley hasn't already done.

O'Malley was always charitable toward President Obama (who apparently wants former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick to run for President in 2020) during Obama's two terms, saying that he couldn't solve every problem in America because he was merely the President, not a magician.  But Obama was a magician - he made the Democratic Party disappear!  And party chairs Tim Kaine and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were his apprentices.   

I'm glad Obama is helping people like O'Malley rebuild the Democratic Party.  But with Donald Trump having reversed every policy initiative Obama instigated, the sad truth is that Obama's legacy is a smaller Democratic Party with a thousand fewer elective offices - death by a thousand cuts.  Before 2017, no President had left office with his party in such a sorry state since Millard Fillmore left office in 1853.

Millard Fillmore, of course, was the last Whig President.     

Blowing Smoke

The Trump administration has gone ahead with its plan to roll back gas mileage standards that would have set corporate average fuel economy standards at 54.5 miles per gallon and set them to stay frozen at 2020 levels - 37 miles a gallon - well into 2026, after Trump is out of office (unless he nullifies the Twenty-Second Amendment).

And get this.  It's because they say old cars can kill you.

The White House and its stooges in the Environmental Destruction Agency and the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration argue that increased fuel economy standards would make newer cars more expensive and force people to driver older vehicles with fewer safety features. Hence, more fatalities in older cars.

You know, I would accepted the old argument that higher fuel economy standards would have led to people driving smaller cars and that small cars are not as safe as big cars and SUVs.  I wouldn't have agreed with it, but I would have accepted it.  But this irrational rationalization that Trump offers is so ludicrous that you don't need safety experts to refute it (though they have).

And here's another spectacularly dumb argument against the old standards.  The Trump administration is afraid that higher fuel economy standards would allow motorists to drive more, because they would buy less gas, and therefore cause more tailpipe emissions as a result of more driving.

So never mind that the lower standards would lead to more gasoline being refined and used - because more people would buy gas-guzzling vehicles.

Neither of these arguments - I won't even dignify the argument that the reduction in greenhouse gases would be too negligible to make a difference in combating climate change -  address the real issue.  Automakers will be able to sell more large vehicles with the proposed Trump standards, and that means bigger profit margins. As Henry Ford II once said, big cars mean big bucks and small cars mean small bucks.  The Trump administration can argue that the old rules, initiated under President Obama, impedes consumer choice by making gas-guzzling SUVs more unfeasible, but the truth is that two SUVs are sold for every traditional car not out of any real demand for SUVs but because of effective marketing of gas-guzzling truck-based passenger vehicles and lack if incentive to make more efficient vehicles. The Obama rules would have set the auto industry on a more sustainable course and encouraged both automakers and consumers to embrace sensible cars.  Like electric cars, which the Trump White House has no desire to promote.

Oh yeah,  the cost of meeting the Obama standards would be higher for domestic automakers than for the foreign automakers who have to design cars for customers back home who have to spend the equivalent of eight U.S. dollars a gallon on gasoline.  Because Toyota and Volkswagen already know how to make more fuel-efficient cars. They've been doing it for years.  So has Ford, in fact, in Europe and even here in America to some extent - but of course Ford's North American lineup will soon be devoid of small cars and traditional sedans (I talked about this before).  

Ironically, the automakers had been preparing to meet the tougher Obama standards and are more than happy to meet them.   

Meanwhile, Trump wants to take away California's waiver for tougher fuel economy standards despite ample evidence that the state's climate - which is being choked right now by wildfires - is vulnerable to more gasoline consumption and the tailpipe emissions that it produces. Governor Jerry Brown has vowed to keep the standards in place and fight the White House in court to preserve the Obama standards.  Eighteen states and the District of Columbia are joining in that suit.  This isn't over yet.

I'd better not get used to seeing any new mini-car models at auto showrooms, though. 

You know what's missing from this discussion on how to reduce auto tailpipe emissions?  Mass transit, of course! 

Legacy Lost?

Donald Trump appears to have done what he set out to do - completely erase Barack Obama's legacy from the annals of history as sure as the Harding and Coolidge administrations erased that of Woodrow Wilson.

First up: health care!  Insisting that the payment of money to private health insurers to subsidize insurance plans for poor people under the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, Trump ended those payments and also allowed health plans to be sold across state lines without being subject to regulation.  The result?  Costs will go up for people who can least afford it, and a lot of people will be screwed.

Also: the Iran nuclear deal!  Trump decertified that Iran is living up to the deal, even though the deal has worked at preventing Iran from getting a bomb.  He wants to tie it with efforts to stop Iran from funding terrorist groups - a different issue - and his attempt to unravel a plan that would keep the Iranians at bay for several years has angered our European ex-allies (you think they'll be with us in solidarity after this?), destroyed American credibility, and pleased the paranoid Israeli right wing - including the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees any effort at peace in the Middle East as threat to his nation.  Trump has indicated that he wants to fix parts of the deal, such as the part that allows the Iranians to test ballistic missiles, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has indicated that the U.S. hopes to use leverage in from decertifying the deal, but the Europeans have made it clear that renegotiation is, well, non-negotiable.  Congress can pass on re-imposing sanctions against Iran that would undermine the deal, but Trump could just as easily pull out altogether.

Why are Americans so hung up about making a deal with Iran, even if it keeps the mullahs from nuking anyone?  Two words - "hostage crisis."  The 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis is something we just can't let go of after thirty-six years.

So Obama's legacy is kaput?  Not entirely.  There's still one remaining piece of his legacy - Donald Trump.  By neglecting the need to build up the Democratic Party and placing at the helm of the Democratic National Committee the insufferable Debbie Wasserman Schultz - who tired to satisfy her lust for power by trying to satisfy the lust of the Clintons to get their power back - he paved the way a Republican comeback and, ultimately, for Trump.

Yes, he was the first black President.  But he may also be the last Democratic President - much like Millard Fillmore was the last Whig President.

Putin It There

Now it can be told.

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his rubles on Donald Trump to win the American presidential election of 2016, then he had his toadies ensure Trump's victory. Russian hackers, under orders from Putin, deliberately spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election to, if not defeat her (because who knew that was going to happen?) damage her upon her entry in to the White House. This apparently included the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails.  President Obama knew all about it, and it was so sensitive to national security that he even communicated with only four people in the government about the issue to keep it top secret, but he was reluctant to do much about it out of fear that he would be seen as politicizing a security issue to persuade voters to support Hillary.  In other words, he didn't want to be seen as "tipping the scales."

Gee, where would we ever get an idea that a Democrat would do something dirty like that?

Oh, right . . .

Be that as it may, there's a huge difference between a primary election and a general election, so if Obama had come flat out and said that the Russians were deliberately trying to elevate Trump at Hillary's expense, I think we would have understood.  Some of us would still have voted for Jill Stein, but we would have understood.  Instead, the Obama administration failed to take tougher action against Russia, and now here we are.  If Obama had taken tougher action and if Hillary had still been defeated, at least Obama could have said he tried.  At least one Republican was outraged by this news.  "The Obama Administration," this Republican said in a tweet, "knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia.  [They] did nothing about it. WHY?"

The Republican's name?  Donald J. Trump.

Ouch!

And yes, I'm still mad at the Democrats for promoting Hillary, especially after Hillary promoted Trump in the primary season because she thought she could beat him.  And I'm still mad that the Democrats discouraged prospective Democratic presidential candidates from running for the party's nomination in 2016 and punished those who did, leaving Hillary with a left-leaning independent with no chance of winning the nomination of a political party he does not in fact belong to as her only viable opponent in the primaries.                      

(Pointless aside I couldn't resist including here: The other day, I was cycling through traffic when I came alongside at a stoplight an SUV with a Hillary Clinton sticker and a Bernie Sanders sticker on the back bumper.  I spat in front of the SUV.  Not on the SUV, just on the street in front of the SUV.  Why?  Because the back bumper didn't have a Martin O'Malley sticker on it.)   

Trump Sí, Cuba No

Donald Trump has reversed yet another Obama policy - thus time, Obama's audacious effort at improving relations with Cuba.  Trump has decided to restrict business deals with the the Cuban Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, which handles a great deal of the Cuban economy, and also individual tourist travel to Cuba from the United States.  This means no American investment in Cuba, which hurts the Cuban people Trump says he's trying to free from their repressive government, and not the repressive government in question.  It also means fewer tourist dollars spent in Cuba; Americans can still travel there, but in pre-arranged tour groups that are virtually impossible to sign on to.  

Cuban rum and cigars can still be brought back to the United States - assuming you have the chance to purchase any - and diplomatic relations established by Obama will not be cut.  So what if there's no ambassador there?

The people who oppose this freeze Trump has put on thawing U.S.-Cuba relations are just about everyone on the planet, especially Cuban-Americans under fifty not named Marco Rubio.  But older Cuban-American residents in Miami and right-wing Republicans are clearly pleased, including, I'm sure, Steve Bannon, because Trump kept his promises.  After all ,the governorship of Florida and a U.S. Senate seat from Florida are up in 2018.  

The joke is that Trump placed new restrictions on travel to and business with Cuba because he doesn't have any real estate deals there, but there's a more sinister reason for why he's doing this.   He's doing it because he gets to undo yet another Obama initiative.  The Paris agreement, health care, now this - it's all part of the Republican agenda to not just reverse Obama's policies but to eradicate any proof that Obama's Presidency even existed.  It's like the trick used by Joseph Stalin in the old Soviet Union, that of eradicating any proof that a political enemy even walked the face of this earth because of his crime against the state.  Barack Obama's existence is being eradicated for the high crime of being President while . . . black.  

Obama has mostly stayed out of the limelight because he, like George Walker Bush before him, believes he owes his successor his silence.  Ironically, Trump is silencing the echoes of Obama's Presidency.  The CIA is probably plotting not to kill Cuban leader Raul Castro but to convince him that the improvement of U.S-Cuba relations with a black American President was all a dream . . . all . . . a . . . dream.

Cigar? 

Farewell, Barack Obama

I've gotten so tied up in bashing Donald Trump and wringing my hands over him that I forgot to say goodbye to and thank the man he's succeeded as President.  

After eight years as President of the United States, Barack Obama leaves behind a cleanly run government with a strong record of accomplishment - a booming stock market, more jobs, and strides toward environmental protection, as well as a dead bin Laden and a thriving auto industry.  His foreign policy reduced our war footing while tying to avoid another conflict (though he had to send troops back to Iraq to go after the Islamic State), and he re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba.  He did the best job he could and I thank him for that.

However - and there's always a "however" on this blog - he was not the transformative President he sought to be.  Many of his accomplishments were done at the stroke of a pen on executive orders that Trump will reverse with pen strokes of his own.  Some of what he did accomplish through the Democratic Congress of his first two years - especially the Affordable Care Act - will likely be repealed by the Republican Congress, just as much of President Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom program was torn out from the roots ("We have torn Wilsonianism out by the roots" - U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge I [R-MA]) once President Warren Harding and a Republican Congress took over in 1921.  Obama's high-speed rail initiative is dead, and so may be Amtrak.  And despite his best efforts to revitalize the Democratic Party, the Democrats today are on the edge of extinction.  Need I remind you of the up and coming Democrats who, during Obama's two terms, ran for office, lost badly, and then disappeared?  Hmm?  Transformative Presidents don't leave their parties in worse shape than the shape they found them in.

Trump continues the conservative era Reagan began in 1981, and he may be the Republican President who ends it.  We thought one of the two Bushes would bring the Republican era to an end, but in each case they left Republican rank-and-file wanting more of a move to the right and the Democratic establishment, especially the Clinton cadre, tried to counter Reaganism by going to the center.  Obama could never have ended a dominant era of Republicanism like Franklin Roosevelt did, if only because the times are different and the circumstances prevented him from offering a second New Deal or even a second Fair Deal (Harry Truman's domestic policy).  Trump will be a catalyst for a progressive comeback in 2020 if only because he'll make Tea Party reactionary policy so unpalatable it will doom the Republicans to oblivion.

Just like the Democrats have been so doomed.  Time to form a new progressive party.   

A Tale of Two Presidents

President Barack Obama gave his farewell address to the nation this past Tuesday, and apart from the unorthodox and somewhat mushy setting - giving it before an audience of 18,000 in a convention  center in Chicago instead of from the Oval Office in the White House - it was an exemplary speech.

He reminded the American people that democracy is not something you just participate in every two or four years and urged people to get politically involved in between.  He very skillfully touted his biggest achievements while acknowledging what remains to be done, and he defended the rights of immigrants and the grievances of racial minorities while reminding everyone that many if not most white males are likely to be alienated not by racism but by the enormous amount of economic change they cannot comprehend, as well as incomprehensible cultural change (nice to see that he noticed all the rock radio stations that have gone off the air lately! ;-) ).  But most of all, he urged Americans on different sides of the political and cultural debates to get out of their respective bubbles, listen to news and opinions that don't conform to their own world views, and engage with their opponents live in and person as opposed to trading insults on the Internet.

The speech, which included gratitude for his wife, his daughters, and Vice President Joe Biden, was very classy indeed.

And then there's this guy.

Donald Trump spent his first press conference in nearly six months defending both himself against charges of bizarre sexual activities in a Moscow hotel room that President Obama and his wife had slept in and defending his plans to put his business in a trust upon assuming the Presidency on Friday.  (He also declared that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, though he only did so after almost everyone else did.)  As it turned out, defending himself against accusations of sexual perversity, which the Kremlin was thought to have evidence of for possible extortion purposes, was the easy part.  His plans to put his businesses in a trust held by his sons without actually selling them was universally panned by a bipartisan array of legal experts as being insufficient, and this move only raised more questions than it answered. Since Trump's real estate business earns foreign money, and since Trump would still own it, he would technically benefit from foreign revenue, which is unconstitutional.  Well, that's the layman's' explanation of it.  The bottom line is that Trump could violate the Constitution and open himself to possible impeachment.

But he likely won't be convicted, because then we'd get this guy!

Worry. Worry a lot.

Because the decline of rock radio is the least of our problems.

Supreme Hypocrisy

So let me see if I have this straight . . .

Mitch McConnell wouldn't allow any Senate hearings for any Supreme Court nominee President Obama offered up to replace Antonin Scalia, and now that Donald Trump gets to fill the Court vacancy that Obama should have filled, McConnell doesn't want the Democrats to block a Trump nominee because it is their constitutional duty to respect a presidential nominee to the High Court.

So why didn't McConnell extend the same courtesy to Obama when he nominated Merrick Garland?  Oh, that's right - the Kentucky Republican said it would be inappropriate for a Supreme Court nominee to be submitted in a presidential election year in which the sitting President was a lame duck, and that it would be better to let the people indicate through the election which presidential candidate they wanted to see choose justices for the Court. 

The people chose Hillary Clinton.

Which means she would probably have renewed the Garland appointment, so even though Trump won the electoral vote, why not just confirm Garland?

Because McConnell talks out of both sides of his tiny mouth. 

Besides, he's happy.  His wife got another Cabinet post.

Maybe that's why he doesn't want to slow Trump's Cabinet nominations for Senate confirmation . . ..

RIP ACA

The Affordable Care Act is dead.

On Wednesday, incoming Vice President Mike Pence met with his onetime Republican U.S. House colleagues to prepare for repealing the law known as Obamacare, and they're trying to get a head start on defunding and scrapping it in an expeditious matter.  They're hoping to put it on a repeal-and-delay timetable, in which they officially repeal the Affordable Care Act and set up a period for the Republicans to come up with an alternative.

Which will likely be a return to the way things were in 2009.

And don't think the Democrats will be able to stop them, either; the Republicans plan to push the repeal through in a Senate-filibuster-proof budget resolution, which is, ironically, how the Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

At least one Republican in Washington, as well as with some Republican governors, is fearful that this move could lead millions of  people in limbo and without health insurance.  U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has demanded that his party come up with a health care plan of its own before scrapping the current law.  "We need to think through how we do this, and it's a huge mistake for Republicans if they do not vote for replacement on the same day as we vote for repeal," he said.

He's unlikely to get any support from any fellow Republicans, except maybe Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).

Meanwhile, President Obama, with only a few days left to go in office, held a pity party to buck up Democrats in Congress to urge them fight the Republican onslaught on his signature legislation, even though they're outvoted.  The biggest Obamacare proponent in the Senate is Democratic leader Charles Schumer (NY), who famously attributed the Democratic loss of the Senate in 2014 to the party paying too much attention on - you guessed it - health care.

Ironically, Obamacare was based on Republican market reform ideas from the nineties.  The Democratic proposal of the time - Medicare for all - never got anywhere, and it certainly won't get anywhere in this Congress, as Paul Ryan is working on a new program - Medicare for no one.  

Yeah, Obamacare is as good as gone.  And don't start threatening to move to Great Britain, boys and girls, because the British National Health Service is slowly being done away with too.   

Funny how what took the Tories in the U.K. seventy years to do, the Republicans are going to be able to do in a few short months.

Clearing the Air

The two biggest polluters on this planet we call ours, the United States and China, formally agreed to adopt the Paris Agreement negotiated in late 2015 to keep the increase in the average global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  The United States has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 28 percent below levels of emissions produced in 2005. The deal also hopes to provide $100 billion a year between 2016 and 2020 in financing to help developing countries meet their gas reduction goals.  As soon as the deal takes effect, nations that have ratified it have to wait for at least three years to leave it.

Unfortunately, climate-change denier Donald Trump is gaining in the presidential election polls and a presidential term is four years.  

Despite Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, despite the drought in California and some of the worst flooding in Louisiana in decades, despite the receding beaches in Miami, congressional Republicans still don't believe climate change is real and Trump is happy to please them by promising to commit the country to producing more coal.  President Obama knows this and has framed the deal as an executive agreement rather than as a treaty because he knew the Senate would never ratify it as a treaty.  But if the deal goes into effect before the year is out, that means a President Trump would be able to take the U.S. out of the deal by the end of 2019.  If you thought the United States was the skunk of the world under Ronald Reagan of George Walker Bush, wait'll the Donald takes over; you ain't seen nothing yet!

The one thing that gives me hope is that efforts to combat climate change are going full tilt boogie all over the world, including this country, as more energy producers are turning away from coal and more toward cleaner fuels like natural gas, as well as wind power.  Even if Trump gets into the White House, there's no stopping the tide of history.  And when the tide of the ocean floods his own properties, maybe then the Donald will come around.

On the other hand, maybe he'll eat the loss and build condos in a melted Greenland. :-O :-(              

Exits

Two exits made the news. The first was that Rick Santorum ended is candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, effectively conceding the prize to Mitt Romney, who only has Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul left to ignore. With polls showing him losing in the presidential primary in his home state of Pennsylvania, Santorum decided to get out now and preserve his prospects for a future run in 2016 or 2020 rather than risk a repeat of the repudiation Pennsylvania voters gave him when he lost his Senate seat to Robert Casey, Jr. in 2006 by an eighteen-point margin. With Romney now the de facto Republican nominee, President Obama can now focus on how to, as Democrats always do, lose to most losable candidate the Republicans can possibly put up. No, I'm not confident in an Obama victory, largely because the economy hasn't fully rebounded, the European debt crisis could still affect us, and Romney likely has an array of slogans and sound bites to distract voters from the issues.

In fact, Republican economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin is convinced that Obama's endorsement of an unpassable bill to tax millionaires and billionaires at the same rate their own employees pay - the so-called "Buffett rule," after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who's appalled that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary - is politically motivated. (Really, Doug?) Holtz-Eakin is also certain that the Buffett rule wouldn't even make a dent in helping to balance the budget. He even thinks Obama's support of it will even hurt Obama in the election - because despite Obama's characterization of the Buffett rule as an act of fairness, Holtz-Eakin says independent voters are interested in jobs . . . and are not interested in fairness.

There's your take-away: Douglas Holtz-Eakin (who has opposed each and every one of Obama's economic initiatives) thinks independent voters are self-interested heartless bastards.

Meanwhile, George Zimmerman, the likely killer of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, has made an exit of his own even as his legal team made an exit from defending him. After Zimmerman contacted the special prosecutor in the case - something he ought not to have done - he pretty much disappeared, causing his lawyers to resign from the case in part because of their inability to communicate with him. Never arrested, he's now likely anywhere but Florida, laying low out of fear.

Zimmerman's ability to avoid arrest by claiming self-defense under Florida's "stand your ground law" - one of thirty such state laws in the nation and the kind of bill pushed nationwide in state legislatures by the reactionary American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - may be the reason why so many major corporations are deserting ALEC. They got in bed with that right-wing group to promote their business-friendly agenda, and they're dissociating themselves from ALEC now that it's become apparent that ALEC's support of "stand your ground" gun laws like the one in Florida presents a public relations problem.

How To Precede?

President Obama is losing his battle with the Supreme Court before it's even ruled on his landmark health care legislation, and he started off on the wrong foot in his mouth this past Monday when he suggested that a declaration of the law as unconstitutional would be breaking precedent. "I would just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law," he said. Well, this is a good example."

During his speech Tuesday to the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, after it became apparent that Obama had somehow forgotten about the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison case that invalidated a law affecting the judiciary that was passed by a democratically elected Congress, setting such a precedent of declaring laws unconstitutional, the President attempted to clarify his remarks. He did so in a statement full of long pauses, suggesting that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli isn't the only one in Washington who has trouble making a verbally coherent legal case:

"The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it. But it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly-elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this."

He seemed to suggest that the Court should always hold back every time Congress passes a law that's constitutionally dubious, and some took his ongoing remarks as an attempt to intimidate the justices into upholding the law. White House press secretary Jay Carney had to clarify the clarification.

"It's the reverse of intimidation," Carney insisted. "He's simply making an observation about precedent and the fact that he expects the court to adhere to that precedent." But as Carla Johnson of the Associated Press pointed out, an overturning of the health are law, while it would be unusual, would "not be unprecedented, even under the very narrow terms Obama and [Carney] later attached to his comments."

In short, the White House hasn't explained anything about the standard of judicial precedent after three attempts in as many days.

If President Obama - a constitutional law professor - can't articulate an understanding of the role of precedent at the Supreme Court, how does he expect the rest of us to understand it? 

Supply-Side Over Substance

President Obama spoke to a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors yesterday, calling the budget plan advocated by Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin a regressive budget plan that would punish the poor and middle class with deep spending cuts in programs like Medicare while rewarding the wealthy with tax breaks. He called this revised version of supply -side economics "thinly veiled social Darwinism" and a "Trojan horse" ("It was really a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate" - Reagan budget director David Stockman on supply-side economics, 1981) that made the Contract With America look like the New Deal, and he even added that some of the domestic policies of George Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon would seem too liberal to the current crop of Republicans in Washington.

In response, Ryan attacked Obama for failing to lead on the debt and deficit issue, insisted that eliminating loopholes would ensure tax fairness, and accused the President of trying to make him and other Republicans look like Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Sorry, progressives, Ryan won that debate.

How, you may ask? Because Obama dealt with specifics and with references to history, while Ryan resorted to name calling, empty mantras, and pop-culture references. Style over substance.

I couldn't help but notice how reporters from National Public Radio and the Associated Press had to explain in their respective dispatches from the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention just exactly what the New Deal and the Contract With America were. They obviously didn't think their audiences were smart enough to already know. Okay, the New Deal was nearly eighty years ago, but come on, certainly there are plenty of Americans who still ought to remember the conservative 1994 Contract With America brought forward by then-House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich in the midterm elections that year. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Newt's still alive, even if he's politically toast. Also, terms like "Trojan horse" and "social Darwinism" are well beyond the comprehension of the average American.

And invoking Nixon won't work for Obama. Older voters who may have voted for Nixon pretend not to have supported him, and young people, especially young Republicans like Ryan - who was two years old at the time of the Watergate break-in - don't remember the 37th U.S. President so well (if at all). Which is why Ryan's pithy Saturday morning cartoon villain reference - Saturday morning cartoons were a big deal to Ryan, myself, and most Americans who had a childhood in the seventies - is more effective. Younger people who generally don't give a twit about Medicare are less likely to recall Dick Nixon and more likely to recall Dick Dastardly.

Of course, there's always the chance that, once young people start looking at the Ryan plan, they'll realize that the Republicans are a lot like those same Saturday morning cartoon villains - clownish, dangerous, and eager to take over the world.

Inflexibility

Remember just last week when Mitt Romney was ridiculed in the press last week for his anger over President Obama's remark to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, inadvertently caught on an open microphone, that he could be "flexible" over nuclear weapons after the U.S. elections because Russia isn't considered an enemy anymore? Not so fast, buster! Other Republicans - and outgoing Independent-Democratic senator Joe Lieberman - have sided with Romney.  They still consider Russia to be a highly suspicious power, what with the aid the Russians have given Iran and their support of Syria . . . and, you know, some of the former Soviet republics and former Warsaw Pact countries (including, ironically, Poland) still don't trust them. House Speaker John Boehner angrily demanded an explanation for President Obama upon the President's return from Korea for his remarks to Medvedev. Obama has insisted that he only meant that he could negotiate over nuclear arms in better faith once election-year politics were no longer complicating the issue, and of course the Republicans are not buying that explanation. They think he wants to sell out America.

Meanwhile, psychologists who make a living writing books that try to explain why inflexible people destroy themselves will have their hands full trying to explain Keith Olbermann. The clown prince of liberal punditry was just fired from Al Gore's Current TV channel, and not because no one was watching Olbermann's "Countdown" - because no one watches anything on Current TV. Olbermann was fired for breach of contract, along with - among other things - failing to show up for work refusing to help promote the network, and also having less of a say in which shows preceded or followed his own. Geez, even Charlie Sheen never complained about what came before or after "Two and a Half Men" on CBS.

Disagreements between Olbermann and Current TV over coverage of the Iowa caucuses pretty much set the events in motion that led to Olbermann's dismissal. His own inflexibility was not the result of politics, national or office, but his own self-righteous arrogance. It has also resulted in Olbermann re-entering the job market for only a year or so after his similar prima-donna antics at MSNBC got him fired from that network, but with much fewer prospects than before.

Eliot Spitzer, late of CNN - possibly the only cable channel with lower ratings than Current's - has replaced Olbermann.

This growing inflexibility among both politicians and the media figures who cover them is why we have an insufficient health care law, why we have an ideologically charged Supreme Court, and why that same Court is likely to overturn that same law in June.