Like Death

Trump said something about the Democratic response to his State of the Union address that I actually agree with.  No, not the part about them being treasonous, or  the part about them being un-American.  It was the part when he said their response - where they sat on their hands and looked forlorn as he spoke and as Republicans cheered - was "like death."

It was like death.  That's because the Democratic Party is once again dying.  They ended the holidays on the verge of a huge wave in the midterms that would sweep them back into the majority in the House and possibly the Senate. They go into Mardi Gras as the clueless, spineless bench-warmers they've always been.  The Democrats have offered neither a strong rebuttal to the Trump tax law nor an alternative tax program that can appeal to middle-class and working-class voters. So, while the Koch brothers - who are planning to pour millions of dollars in to the 2018 midterms - are making a fortune off the new tax law (on top of the fortune they already have), ordinary people who are only getting a few hundred dollars from the tax system think it's wonderful and are applauding the GOP.  Support for the tax law has almost doubled in the polls.         

And the Democrats - especially Chuck Schumer - thought they could appeal to voters by shutting down the government over an issue like immigration, which they could have used as leverage against Trump while still keeping the government open?  Come on, do you think President Martin O'Malley would have let that happen?

The Democrats can't even come up with a unifying message; while Joe Kennedy III was offering up that lame promise of a "better deal" in an otherwise well-received response to Trump's State of the Union, three other Democrats - and Bernie Sanders - offered up rebuttals based on different perspectives, revealing just how faction ridden the party is.  

The recent volatility in the stock market has caused Trump some embarrassment and has made him look bad after bragging about the record highs of late, but he's hardly been humbled.  And as long as he keeps the investors and Republican donors happy, the GOP will happily tolerate his worst excesses.  Democrats don't tolerate him, but they won't win back either house of Congress in November by saying what they won't do; they have to let people know what they will do.  It's too bad that no one as had a clue of what the Democratic agenda for all of this entire century.  The Democrats should be glad it's only 2018.       

Taxation Without Representation

The Republicans just passed a budget resolution in the U.S. Senate that more or less gives its blessing to the fiscal 2018 budget supported by the House - which, by the way, makes domestic-spending cuts in just about . . . everything.  The House is now ready to pass its own resolution.

Oh, yeah, a Senate budget resolution is normally standard procedure, but this resolution now clears the way for Congress to consider tax reform - without any room for the Democrats to stop it.  See, not only do Republicans have a commanding majority in the House, but the Senate resolution enables the Senate Republican caucus to push tax reform through without the ability of the Democratic minority to slow or filibuster the effort.  In other words, Democratic lawmakers and their constituents will have absolutely no say in whether or not tax reform should happen now, and Democratic efforts to mitigate it will be voted down by the majority.  Taxation without representation.

Hold on.  It gets worse.  The passage of tax reform - which could occur as early as March - will motivate Republican voters to come out in droves for the next congressional midterm elections, like they always do, but the Democrats now have to go back to their voters and explain why they couldn't prevent the Republicans from freezing them out of the tax reform debate.  Oh yeah, and this will likely depress Democratic turnout in the midterms (and it's always despressed) while making it impossible for the party to cultivate more Democratic voters and reach out to independents.

So Democrats will likely lose the midterms in November 2018.  And so I once again recall historian David Jacobs' appraisal of the Whigs after they lost the 1852 presidential election to Franklin Pierce - they "were so bewildered and demoralized by his election that they disintegrated."  

You Haven't Resisted Nothin!'

I recently saw this wonderful video that contextualized Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothin'" - originally written as an anti-Nixon song - as an attack on Donald Trump, interweaving the original record and Trump's own words about black Americans with several black people singing "Donald Trump, you haven't done nothin.'"

But if Wonder's song fits Trump perfectly, it also fits the Democratic elitists who claim to "resist" him.

A good deal of the so-called  resistance against Trump is a bunch of mostly disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters and establishment Democrats who helped Trump win in the first place by not nominating someone other than Hillary for President.  How many times do I have to remind you all that Hillary promoted Trump when she as a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries because she knew she'd get the nomination and she had a feeling that she'd lose against John Kasich or Marco Rubio if the Republicans nominated either one of them?  How many times do I have to point out that her candidacy was based on family entitlement and gender identity politics and not on connecting with angry voters in the heartland who lost their jobs?  I recently saw Fareed Zakaria's CNN special on how Trump was elected, and Zakaria explained that the Democrats had become the party of white-collar professionals who lost touch with everyday people and ignored the warning signs that middle-class and working-class people were with both parties and how Trump cut through all that and exploited that anger.  The Democrats helped realize this nightmare by not fighting with fire with fire and not nominating someone who talked about jobs and the middle class and could take on Trump on those same issues.  They nominated Hillary instead. And these elitist Democrats are going to resist Trump?

They haven't resisted diddly-squat.  As PBS's Jeff Greenfield pointed out, they haven't stopped Trump from dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, placing Neil Gorsuch and other young right-wingers on the federal bench for lifetime appointments, or pursuing racist law-enforcement policies.  All they did was get steamrolled.  What have they stopped?  What?  Repeal of Obamacare?  The Democrats didn't stop that; the Republicans did by trying to do it.  Which is why I'm sick and tired of hearing a bunch of white bourgeois Democratic elitists who think that hanging out with pop stars is the same as connecting with the common people say that they'll make right out of wrong.  

And by the way, the party's Clinton wing is already trying to figure out how to anoint one of their own (the identity of said Clintonite to be determined) as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee in waiting.  Democrats, you're going the way of the Whigs, and you brought this nightmare on yourself.

Why must you go on saying you'll fight . . . to take what's wrong and make it right?  'Cause if you really want to hear my views . . . you haven't resisted nothin'!  

Sing along with me! Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  Oh, wo ho, Whigging out!  (Sing it loud and for the people!)  Say, Whigging out! Oh, wo ho, Whigging out! Oh, wo ho, Whigging out . . . 

New GOP Reign of Terror

It didn't take long for Republicans to politicize the attempted act of terror Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard a Delta Air Lines plane on Christmas Day, even though it was due to a foreign security failure and it was stopped by the passengers, and even though President Obama - vacationing in Hawaii - has expressed anger over the warnings about Abdulmutallab that could have been heeded. One Republican congressman from Michigan is using this to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign for next year in his home state, former Vice President Dick Cheney said that it showed how clueless President Obama is about the fight against terror, and some Republicans have voiced dislike of the fact that Abdulmutallab is being held and given his rights as any criminal suspect and that Obama is on vacation.

The Democrats could point out that Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" was similarly treated by the Bush administration in 2001, while Bush was on vacation during the Christmas season in his home state of Texas, and that Republicans hadn't objected. Except for Representative Eric Massa (D-NY), they have so far chosen not to. True, the White House did put out a blistering counteroffensive against Cheney's remarks - but in the form of a press release that took too long to read.

The Democrats try to act fair and civilized, even though American politics is neither of those things, and it never ceases to amaze me how the party demonstrates a chronic inability to play hardball, and as a result, its base has been getting sold down the river for thirty years. And the Republicans haven't made America any safer or stronger. Some Democrats apparently believe that the Republicans' past rhetoric speaks for itself and, so, they don't need to dignify the Republicans with a comment. Yes, the Republicans' past record speaks loudly, but the Republicans' present rhetoric speaks louder.

Not that the Democrats are given any fair shake by the media. One pundit actually said that Obama can't point to Bush's vacation during the shoe bombing attempt as an act of hypocrisy because Bush was vacationing in Texas - considered a part of "the real America" - while Hawaii seems foreign and exotic, even though it's been a state for fifty years. Well, it had been a foreign country at one time and it's a state in which non-Hispanic whites are the minority, not like Texas.

Oops! Correction: Texas was an independent republic between 1836 and 1845, and non-Hispanic whites slipped into minority status sometime between 2000 and 2004.

Well, Hawaii is certainly not a state that conservatives feel comfortable in - fancy food, exotic art, large concentrations of Asian-Americans . . . just ask Sarah Palin. No right-winger would be caught there.

Except Rush Limbaugh, who has been vacationing there this past week and suffered chest pains that required him to go to the hospital.

Wonder if he was hanging out on the beach with Obama?