Karl Rove, Lee Atwater,  and other Republican strategists’ main contribution to our electoral system is that facts don’t matter if you can just make voters “feel” the way you want them to. John Kerry, a decorated veteran was “Swiftboated” with a false story to take away an advantage he had over George W. Bush who spent his military service safe at home. Similarly they have attacked President Obama so much in spite of a list of real achievements that the difference in the way the world outside the United sees him has become so striking. The Canadian parliament’s “four more years” chant is just typical of the gulf in perception. I have often had to try to explain our politics to people outside the United States to whom we seem quite literally crazy. “Let me get this straight, you elected the Terminator governor of California?” or “a reality show host is really one of the two candidates for your presidency?” They find our politics inexplicable and more than a little terrifying.

I bring this up to discuss Donald Trump. In his closing address to the Republican National Convention time and time again he mentioned how people feel. They feel unsafe, they feel that the economy isn’t doing well, they feel that they are losing control of the country. Factually none of this is true but the Republicans have made that irrelevant. Trump is gaining followers by connecting to how so many feel without a plan to remedy it. I have just seen RNC speaker Antonio Sabato Jr. say in a clip on John Oliver’s show that he feels in his heart that Obama is a Muslim when all the facts argue against this belief. He believes it is true because he feels it so; no facts actually required. This is just the same as many Republicans feel that humans are not causing climate change, that arguing for white supremacy and singling out minority groups as being lesser are not racist, and that believing that there is institutional racism is racist. They feel that Donald Trump is the leader who can overcome things to make them “feel” better. Lawsuits and bankruptcies not withstanding they “feel” that he is a proven successful business manager, a no nonsense guy who gets things done. After all they have seen it on his “reality” television show.

Hillary, wonk that she is,  is falling right into Trump’s trap. She is trying to combat him with facts and plans, but these are clearly not the issue for millions of people. She is fighting as she always has thinking that her knowledge of the facts, her preparation, and her plans will show Trump up as the vacuous blowhard he is. The problem is that they won’t. Hillary is fighting this as a regular political campaign when both Trump and Bernie supporters keep telling her that it is not. She is trying to turn to the center to get the disaffected moderate Republicans, the political insiders like Debbie Wasserman Schmidt who play the political game down and dirty, and her own liberal supporters. I am like the moviegoer watching a horror movie and screaming “don’t go in that door,” when of course she can’t hear me. She is ignoring the vast majority of Bernie and Trump supporters who are saying that this is exactly what they don’t want. They want someone who speaks to their “feeling” of exclusion in the age of big money and insiders controlling the political process. As long as they characterize her as “more of the same,” she is in danger of losing this election. The DNC email scandal compounded by immediately hiring Congresswoman Schmidt for her campaign confirms what Trump is saying about her. Her choice of Kaine rather than a progressive person as here running mate is showing that she wants to appeal to the wrong group. I fear that being the anti-Trump will not be enough to win this election.

I have enough reservations about Hillary that her loss would not hurt except that it means Trump wins. That would be far worse for it emboldens those like David Duke to also run for office. It would put our foreign and domestic policy in the hands of someone who thinks (like a CEO) that what he says is how it should be; allies, Congress and separation of powers be damned. It will provide stupid simplistic answers (like a wall) to complex problems like immigration. It would put in office someone who has little feeling for how our political system works and the history of our country. Heaven help us if that happens.

As the left tears itself apart deciding whether to vote for Hillary or not, the real results of Bernie’s “revolution” are being lost. Bernie’s “revolution” is technically not a revolution at all. A revolution is a change in the form of government and no one, least of all Bernie, is suggesting that we ditch the presidency, the Congress or indeed the American system of government. He is instead talking about reforming it. In a sense Bernie’s “revolution” has already been a success so far because it has achieved three of its goals. First of all he has shown that political candidates can raise money in small donations from grassroots people rather than being dependent on the large donations and big donors. This is not to say that there haven’t been big donors as well, but the amount of money he has raised from small donors has been spectacular. Its second goal has been to articulate a vision of a different America and to have that vision incorporated into the Democratic party’s stated plan for America.  In that it has been admittedly only partially successful. The incorporation of a higher minimum wage into the Democratic platform and the possibility of a single payer healthcare plan and free public universities into Hillary’s campaign rhetoric are signs of this partial success. Finally the campaign has been successful by involving young people in progressive politics to a much greater extent than mainstream Democratic candidates have done in generations.

Now that Bernie has capitulated to Hillary the question of whether his “revolution” will continue has come to the forefront. It is more than whether Bernie supporters will vote for Hillary (although that is a pressing question) , but also whether those mobilized by his campaign will continue their political activity. Will the successes of his campaign continue or will they recede to become just a historical footnote? The first test will be whether they can turn the Congress and the Senate blue. Judging by the torrent of Democratic email and telephone campaign solicitations I get each week, the Democratic Congressional and Senate Campaign Committees are well oiled machines. The question becomes whether the money from small donors will dry up as the glamour and excitement of Bernie’s presidential campaign recedes. Can Bernie turn the flow of money to him into a flow of money into support of progressive congressional and senate candidates? Regardless of who wins the White House (please God do not let it be Trump) it is whether the Congress changes that will determine how successful the next president will be. Will more people with Bernie’s vision for America go to Congress? Will young people not only support these candidates but become these candidates either now or in the future?

The other question is whether further down-ticket the progressive tide can make any inroads in local elections. Except for those issues on which inaction was exactly what the buyers wanted (e.g. gun control, financial reform, and the role of money in politics,) those who bought politicians in the federal congress might want some of their money back. Most of the conservative congressmen and senators spent their time in fruitless efforts to repeal Obamacare, ultimately empty Benghazi hearings, and providing the gridlock to stymie Obama rather than advancing the conservative agenda. The most odious laws, those restricting voting,  government assistance, immigrants, women’s health, support of public education, and LGBT human rights, come from the statehouses and governors’ mansions. Progressives have made few inroads to these places and have allowed conservatives and the Tea Party to take control. Will Bernie’s “revolution” be able to generated the sustained interest to overcome the gerrymandering and voter apathy that have led to the current situation? Will more progressive candidates emerge to challenge at this local level?

Whether you vote for Hillary or not it becomes imperative that you vote for the progressive candidates down-ticket; not just this election cycle but in those to come. Bernie’s “revolution” as with all true change will be the result of of long-term, concerted effort and not the quick fix which so many want.

A line I read several weeks ago still haunts my thoughts. It said, “When the people are foolish, it means their leaders have failed them.” Demagogues like Trump and Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson in Britain have been successful because they advocate fake answers to the very real problems which the elites, both liberal and conservative, have ignored. As the 1% has improved its position at the expense of the 99%, the elites have done nothing but facilitate this. They are complicit in this “rape of the middle class” as Trump calls it and do not offer anything to combat it. Trump, Farage and Johnson play on this dissatisfaction among voters to offer lies and cockeyed schemes to correct it. An electorate desperate to get relief fall for their tactic of demonizing immigrants, non-whites and the poor. In Britain the demagogues are walking back the lies they told to sway the vote and revealing their true character. Their schemes will of course not help, but who else among the elite are addressing the people’s concerns? Bernie did, but he was a one trick pony who could attract the young, college educated, and parts of the middle and working classes, but could not rally enough of the people of color to prevail. Elizabeth Warren understands the problem but she has been battling a few of the symptoms not the cause.

My problem with Hillary has little to do with her character. She is probably no more untrustworthy or willing to eat at the trough of the 1% than most politicians and actually better than some. Most of the ill feeling towards her is the result of a decades-long a smear campaign directed against her. My problem with her has to do with the policy positions she takes. Right now she and Elizabeth Warren are calling out the lies, narcissism, foolish plans, and outright racism of Trump and his followers. However they offer few alternative solutions to the problems that have driven Trump’s and Bernie’s campaigns. Hillary supports the unfettered free trade that has led to a global capitalism that has cost the middle class jobs and a future. On foreign policy she is a warmongering hawk, now unfettered by the restraints Obama put upon her. She doesn’t have a clear plan on immigration or reforming capitalism to protect people from its worst excesses. She needs to change her focus.

The seats at the platform committee table that Bernie earned have not been able to sway the party in the direction it needs to go. As long as the liberal elite refuses to address the problems of the 99%, the demagogues will be able to use them to fuel their rise. Incidentally the “splinter parties” of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson do not address these problems either; they have other agendas. Anti-Hillary or anti-Trump votes for so-called “third parties”are just privileged voter masturbation. So is sitting this one out. It makes disaffected voters feel good but does nothing else positive. It is the privileged once again abandoning the people to their fate. I have already made it clear that I will hold my nose and vote for Hillary because Trump must be stopped. The future of the Democratic party, however, lies in the progressive direction that Bernie and Warren represent not the neo-liberal one that Hillary does. As long as the party stays as it is and ignores the problems of the electorate, demagogues will continue to rise and may eventually win as Brexit warns us. Maybe when this one is over we can stop playing defense and organize to play offense.

It is a strange year in presidential politics. Voters are so fed up with the way politics have been run that experience is sometimes seen as a detriment rather than an asset. Nevertheless if we look at the leading Republican candidates and their years holding elected office a pattern emerges. Ted Cruz U.S. Senator (5 years), Donald Trump (0 years), and trailing behind is the man with the most experience in elected office John Kasich.

The Democratic candidates have much more public service elected and otherwise than the Republican candidates. On the Democratic side  we have Bernie Sanders Mayor of Burlington (8) House of Representatives (16) Senate (9). Hillary Clinton Senate (8). She has also been first lady of Arkansas (11 years), FLOTUS (8 years), and Secretary of State for four years. Her pitch is that she has been in the arena for decades and has gotten things done. She has certainly done more for women’s rights and healthcare than all of the Republican candidates combined. Her “pragmatism” and “getting things done” has too often meant throwing the rights of black people under the bus. Michelle Alexander (the author of The New Jim Crow) has called her out on this. She has only recently come around on LBGT rights and marriage. Before this in earlier campaigns she was against them. Her “pragmatism” might appear to consist of what she thinks she needs to get elected. It is worth pointing out that Obama and Bernie also have opposed gay marriage in the past. Let us put cynicism about politicians aside for the moment and recognize that people can grow, learn, and change.

Whether their changes to care more about black or LGBT rights are just political or sincere, is it true that Hillary can “get things done” or that Bernie’s single payer health care system, taxes on the rich, free education at public universities etc. is just pie in the sky? Sanders actually has more experience in elected office and the Congress than Hillary. One might argue that he is more likely to know how to get things done in the Congress than she is. In all honesty neither can govern effectively or bring about change in Washington while the Congress remains the way it is currently composed. The story that is getting underplayed is the importance of the congressional elections. If Hillary’s “pragmatism” is about making deals with her opponents we are doomed. Obama has proven that you can no more reason with Tea Party politicians than you can reason with rabid dogs. The Republicans who did nothing or even voted against things that were originally Republican ideas simply because they were put forth by a black president, will do the same for a woman president. They are a group that prefers to promote grudges, ideological agendas, and prejudices rather than helping the country they were elected to serve.

That is one reason that voters are flocking to Trump: they are dissatisfied with politics and see him as an outsider who speaks plainly (on a middle school level according to the language experts) and is not beholden to Wall Street or corporate interests because he is rich himself. The fact that he is so narcissistic that he will pursue his own interests or those of his class startlingly does not sully his reputation as a “billionaire populist.”He does not have a consistent ideology as does Cruz. His plans are much more impractical than Bernie’s, poorly thought out and oversimplify complex problems. That appears to be exactly what his supporters want. Add in white supremacy and nostalgia for a nonexistent past, then shake.

I am not saying the Democratic nomination process has been determined, but if the campaign boils down to Hillary vs. Trump it is not only practical vs impractical but neoliberalism vs. proto-fascist hucksterism. I’m no fan of Hillary’s war mongering and support of the worst aspects of capitalism. I would much rather  live in the country that Bernie envisions.  Although the perception of being untrustworthy sticks to her like a bad odor, Politifact in reality rates her as telling the truth (or mostly the truth) as much as Bernie and far more often than Trump. Trump has more false statements or outright “pants of fire” lies than all of the other candidates.  Moreover the country of Trump is so abhorrent to me the necessity of stopping him outweighs the horror of voting for a neoliberal. I choose not to remain pure while the building burns down around me. I hope that all Bernie supporters will do likewise if he loses and that at least some of the Trump supporters come to their senses (although there seems to be little evidence of that.)

One of my hobbies is trying to reverse engineer what the Republicans think reality is like from their statements. What kind of world does Trump live in that he thinks he can say those things about Latino voters and still be elected? How can Jeb! Bush thinks he can say black voters want free stuff and persuade enough people to vote for him? Part of the answer is a belief in white supremacy. These mainstream white supremacists believe that members of other races all act alike (or most do so) and act in a way that demonstrates they are inferior to whites. Sometimes that superiority is restricted to whites of a certain class and sometimes it isn’t. Let’s examine those beliefs one at a time.  As President Obama said at the 2014 Washington correspondents dinner “As a general rule, things don’t like end well if the sentence starts, “Let me tell you something I know about the negro.”  You don’t really need to hear the rest of it.”  The generalization that all or even most of an ethnic group behaves, thinks, feels or reacts a certain way,  is a sure sign that one’s experience, class position, or ideology has prevented him from truly knowing enough such people. When someone says about anyone or anything that they are all alike, it usually means that they have not absorbed enough experiences of the thing to be able to differentiate them. Stereotypes are the common first way of understanding phenomena of which you have little experience. Maturity is expanding your knowledge of such phenomena so that you change your initial stereotype. Class or rigid ideologies can prevent some from maturing past their stereotypes of the world. It is creating a false reality instead of the actual reality in the way say a historical novel or movie creates a false reality of the past while still claiming authenticity.

The stereotyping itself would be bad reasoning enough, but the implicit (or sometimes explicit) inferiority attributed to others makes it worse. Trump’s statements imply that there are are more rapists and murderers among Latinos than among whites.  Jeb! implies that black people vote only to gain “free stuff” unlike whites who vote because of their “hopes and aspirations.” Any such assumptions are of course based on belief in the inherent criminality of other races or the “child-like” quality of other races which is satisfied with immediate gratification rather than long range planning. Hmm, where have we heard that before? Oh right from slaveholders, condescending bosses, and members of the upper class who propagated such white supremacy beliefs so strongly that lower class whites came to believe them even when it is to their detriment. Trump, Jeb! and others have found a way of encasing their racist beliefs in a rhetoric that in their minds and in their realities denies their racism.

Even more frightening is their belief that spouting such racially charged rhetoric will lead to their election to the White House.  They are convinced that such blunt speech will demonstrate that they have overcome the straitjacket of political correctness to provide straight talk that delivers uncomfortable truths. They believe that their message will hit home among those who believe as they do and that there are enough such voters to propel them into the presidency. Such people may believe they are not racist but realistic because the views expressed fit into their constructed reality. We will eventually see whether these candidates’ assessment of the American electorate is correct. I hope they are wrong.

I know I have posted about voting before, but recently I read the statistic that only 42% of eligible voters voted in the 2014 elections.  This is the lowest rate of any of the developed countries. Today I read posts on two Facebook friends’ (one white, one black) pages explaining why they are not going to vote because all of the candidates are assholes. Look, I understand that this may be true.  There are no angels here, but it is cynicism like this that is going to let one of these assholes be elected. There may not be angels, but there are better and worse candidates. To not vote is a sign of privilege.  The people who sit out for what they see as “principled” reasons are those who feel they won’t be affected by whoever is elected. For some people having one or the other of these candidates elected is going to be literally a matter of life and death: deportation of a beloved family member, food stamp benefits being cut, social security cuts, sending someone off to war, more wage inequality, or curtailment of women’s health rights. Those in power are counting on and have even engineered the non-voting of significant segments of our population. For some it is the basis of their power.

I admit that government shenanigans are enough to cause despair. The whole corrupt system seems impregnable, rigged for those with money, and comprised of people who do not see the realities around us. The revolution that changes this system will not only not be televised, it will not come.  We are going to be left with the system we have and if we don’t make that system work for us, for the common people, life is going to be much worse.  Saying that you are not going to vote is like the petulant kid who says he will go home if he can’t get what he wants. The game will go on and there still will be winners and losers.

Maybe it’s growing up when people marched, fought and died for the right to vote.  Maybe it’s just knowing that some people don’t want me to vote that arouses the contrarian in me. They are however going to have to pry that ballot from my cold dead hand to stop me. I will keep holding my nose and voting for the asshole who seems the best to me rather than allowing one of the other assholes to win. One has to fight with whatever one can. Please, everyone vote or stop complaining about getting the government you deserve but don’t want.