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.       

Flynn and Taxes

Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, agreed with special counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, after it turned out that he had asked the ambassador on December 29, 2016 to, as CNBC reported, "refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day" while Barack Obama was still President.  Trump had opposed the sanctions and Flynn apparently was trying to tell Kislyak to stay calm and wait for the incoming administration to take charge and initiate a friendly relationship.

Even if you don't think Russian intervention caused Trump to win the Presidency - I think they intervened in the election but I don't think they were instrumental in Trump's victory -  Flynn has been under investigation for allegedly planning a kidnapping and a Turkish cleric living in exile in the U.S. and having him sent back to Turkey.  And if all that weren't mind-boggling enough, Trump has now tweeted that he fired Flynn for lying to the FBI about his meeting with Kislyak, suggesting that he knew all along that Flynn had lied when he asked then-FBI Director James Comey and was therefore trying to obstruct justice.  Then, of course, he later fired James Comey.

Trump could be forced out of office soon.  But as far as preventing him from doing irreparable damage to the country, it's already too late.

Because the Senate just passed its tax reform bill by a 51-49 margin. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to vote against it.  They got it through after last-minute revisions to the bill that, I understand, were written on the back of a Chinese takeout menu.  And even though the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill have to be worked out in a bicameral conference, no one thinks there'll be any problems with that.  And Trump, the chief instigator of tax reform, will proudly sign it before the first day of Kwanzaa and rhetorically ask black voters what they could possibly have to lose.

The final bill will likely eliminate state and local tax deductions and possibly also eliminate the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate and thus possibly eliminate . . . the Affordable Care Act.  The biggest benefits go to the wealthy, and the pressure on the deficit will mean cuts to public assistance and the sort of amenities that make a country worth living in.  

Because of procedural rules, there's nothing the Democrats could do to stop this bill, and to be fair, they didn't have the time or the ability to digest or even read the last-minute changes to it.  But the Democrats did a lame job in opposing it, concentrating more on the deficit than on the threat to domestic spending and, as a result, arguing against the tax bill on the basis of Republican talking points, which did the Democrats no favors.  They only tipped the scales to the GOP in the debate, and scale-tipping is something Hillary supporters know a thing or two about.   The pressure this tax law will put on expensive, Democratic-leaning states will short-circuit the progressive agenda and doom incoming New Jersey governor Phil Murphy to failure before he's even sworn in.

Thus, despite Democratic victories in  2017 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the party has gone back to going full Whig. 

On the bright side, now that tax reform is all but done, maybe Republicans, no longer needing Trump to pass their agenda, will go ahead and help remove him from office.

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 . . . 

Trumpcare - The Sequel

The Senate's Republican caucus finally came out with its secret health care bill, and it's almost as appalling as the House bill, if not more so.  It cuts back on Medicaid severely and then caps the growth of it in the interest of "saving" money and "saving" Medicaid for future generations, when in fact the cuts mean that one in five Medicaid recipients will be thrown off the rolls, including thirty million children. People with private insurance will be affected because the companies they buy coverage from will have the right to cut coverage for maternity care, mental health care, and even opioid addiction treatment.  Planned Parenthood will have its funding eliminated for only one year, with the apparent idea that it won't even last six months without federal aid.  Women's health care?  Finis!  And what will the savings from this bill be passed on to?  More infrastructure finding?  More funding for public education?  Job training?  Nope - tax breaks for the rich!

A lot of people are angry at the Republicans, but a good deal of anger should be directed at the Democrats for blowing it in the 2016 elections.  The Republican Party, now completely in charge of everything in Washington, is taking health insurance away from twenty-odd million Americans for the same reason they put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court - because they can.  And they're very gleeful in how they're going about it.  The Senate's heath care bill - which still has to be reconciled with the House bill - was released in time of a vote before the Independence Day recess but not so coincidentally put out after the last two of five special congressional elections held after Donald Trump was elected President were over, the GOP having won all five of them.  The message to Democrats and left-leaning independents is clear: We are in charge, we have the majority, you don't matter, and you will do what we tell you - so shut the f**k up!      

If there's any positive side to the current health care overhaul debate in Congress (and I'm grasping at straws here),  it's that at least two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have reservations about the defunding of Planned Parenthood, while GOP Senator Dean Heller of Nevada has already said he cannot support the bill in its current form because of the proposed Medicaid cuts.  Four more GOP senators - Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Ronald Johnson of Wisconsin - also have reservations about the bill, but only because it doesn't go far enough!   Donald Trump himself called the House bill "mean," but if the House bill is mean, than the Senate bill is meaner.

Democrats ought to just surrender - not on this one issue, not on this one battle, but on the whole damn war.  The party is too ineffective to even survive.  Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, should hold a press conference and announce that the Democrats are breaking up (and not because one of them is dating Yoko) and let a new party succeed it.  Democrats are not up to the task of opposing Trump in 2020.  While left-leaning political movements in European countries are enjoying a comeback, the Democrats remain hopelessly moribund - going full Whig.  A new liberal populist party is, as always, our only hope.  If we're ever going to get universal health insurance and all the other nice things in European countries that give American liberals a severe case of Euro envy, we have to form a new party, and we have to form it now.

(I know Martin O'Malley has called for his fellow Democrats to get their act together -"If we want to win again, we need to look voters in the eyes, and tell them, unapologetically, what and who our party stands for and why," he recently tweeted - but of course no one in the Democratic establishment listens to him. :-( )