I've gotten a little behind on blog posting, which isn't unusual if you've got a schedule as highly programmed as mine is. I'd hoped to write about a number of topics tonight but, well ... it isn't going to happen, unfortunately. So I'm going to catch up starting this weekend, which means that you should bookmark this post and come back to it next Monday, when I will have edited it with a few observations on a number of topics.
Thanks for reading, hang in there, and believe as I do that better days lie ahead for all of us.
UPDATE:
Well, it's a few days later, I'm better rested, there's been a break in the action (as they sometimes say in sportscasts), so I can now talk about ... well, what I wanted to talk about.
Which, to start off with, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshperson Congresswoman from New York who, IMHO, is the most exciting thing to happen in Democratic politics in decades. Yes, perhaps even more exciting than Barack Obama, notwithstanding the essential American history he made by being elected. I say that because a lot of Obama's supporters made the assumption that, because he was both African-American and a Democrat, he would be the strongly progressive leader that the U.S. had not had since the 1960s. Unfortunately, many of those supporters did not pay enough attention to Obama's Senate career, because, as measured in votes and public statements, Obama was not quite the flaming progressive that some wanted him to be. (Neither is Bernie Sanders, but that's a blog post for another time.) So Obama's presidency was similarly characterized by policies and speeches that only partially fulfilled his progressive promise. And this, in turn, led to disenchantment, the rise of Tea Party politics (and a Tea Party Congress), and the failure to get a "third term" by way of Hillary Clinton, whose failure to break the glass ceiling led to the crass basement of D***** T****'s presidency.
But that's precisely why Ocasio-Cortez is so exciting. Not a billionaire wanna-be, who thinks the presidency is merely another reality show. Not a "centrist Democrat" who lives to surrender the accomplishments of the past, inch by inch, for the sake of looking "reasonable" to the MSM and other practitioners of "bothsiderism." But also not a pie-in-the-sky idealist who can't articulate her ideas or develop them into practical applications. And, perhaps best of all, not a Caspar Milquetoast with no idea of how to defend herself from the slings and arrows of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
To begin with, there's the fact of her election itself. She won her seat in a heavily Democratic district in a heavily Republican state, so her victory in the general election is not all that surprising. It's what she did in the primary that was absolutely amazing: knocking off Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic House Caucus. She did it with grass-roots financing that was enough against Crowley's corporate fundraising, and with a message that spoke to the aspirations of people on the increasingly broken streets, and not in the increasingly plush boardrooms. Absolutely no one in the chattering classes saw this coming, which should show you how little they know in the first place.
Moreover, and more importantly, she did it with a message that she has already taken beyond campaign rhetoric, turning it in a well-though-out plan that cuts across the needs of the American people but also unites them in a slogan that is as forward-looking as it is historically resonant: a "Green New Deal." Through this plan, which you can read more about here, Ocasio-Cortez proposes to link the fundamental goal of the Democratic Party--economic security for all--to meeting the challenge of combating climate change. It represents the kind of thinking and messaging that have been absent for far too long from American politics.
And this is a case where both the message, and the messenger, are terrifying the living daylights out of the conservative commentariat. Perhaps even more delightfully, they are reducing their already minimal verbal skills to babble.
Take, for example, this attempt in the New York Post to "explain" Ocasio-Cortez' appeal. It starts out by saying that it has nothing to do with her demographics, but ends up saying--wait for it--that it's all about her demographics! Along the way, the piece takes the predictable pot-shots at her allegedly zany, loony-left ideas, the ones that are supposed to turn us into Russia at the end of "Dr. Zhivago," but with worse music and cinematography.
That's the line of debate they've taken over at Fox News on the subject of AOC, as she's come to be known. Blah blah blah Communist, blah blah blah Venezuela, blah blah blah un-American. A funny thing happens, though, when they get into the details and discover that the Devil has them by the tale. For all of the specifics of AOC's political advocacy, astonishingly, turn out to be things the American people actually want! Even more astonishingly, her proposed method of doing so, by asking the rich to be just a teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeny less rich, is also something they want. So, the more Fox News attempts to discredit her, the more they actually help her to make her point.
It even reaches the point at which they do so directly. Way to go, Tucker Carlson; I didn't think you had it in you. Perhaps, in time, they'll just come out and admit that the country AOC wants to turn us into is not Russia or Venezuela, but something more like Sweden.
But that may take a little while. AOC's white-male-winger detractors have largely attempted to go to war with her by way of social media. A mistake of epic proportions. AOC is of the generation that grew up on social media, and has regularly schooled her detractors when they make the pathetic attempt to play her game against her. Even when they dug up a supposedly "embarrassing" video of her dancing, she turned it around on them and made them whine about how she and her supporters were picking on them.
You can see the video in question here, along with a discussion of why conservative men seem to have such an obsession about her dance moves. Basically, the piece argues that their fear of AOC is rooted in their fear of her ideas, and the way those ideas challenge their basic assumptions about pretty much everything. That may be true but, as their failure to take her out through the video illustrates, what they're really afraid of is someone who has the integrity to be herself, not a package put together by consultants. People who are filled with fear have no game against someone who is fearless.
The only sadness I can find in AOC's political rise is the offense that certain people in the Democratic Party, of all places, seem to take to it. Obviously, when someone takes out an entrenched political power like Crowley, it stirs up a great deal of resentment among "Establishment" Democrats for whom the capital E seems to be more important than the capital D. Exhibit A for the prosecution: the not-so-honorable Joe Lieberman, former Democratic (later "Independent Democratic") Senator, enabler of the Bush-Cheney war machine, and endorser of the Republican presidential ticket in 2008. After AOC's primary victory, Lieberman described her ideas as "far out of the mainstream" and urged voters to support Crowley on a third-party ticket. Then there's Exhibit B: the unnamed Democrat from another state who recently urged New York Democrats to "primary" AOC in 2020 in favor of some unnamed individuals who had been in line for Crowley's seat.
A couple of questions here. First, why didn't any of these unnamed individuals decide to take on Crowley previously? No one was stopping them, apparently, but themselves and perhaps whatever retribution from Crowley. In any event, those people, if they have any political standing at all, should now that power isn't given to people who merely stand in line; it is given to people who step up and show that they have the ability to take it and make something of it. AOC did exactly that.
As for Lieberman, what can I say? The kindest, gentlest thing I can say to my fellow Jew is that he suffers from the same fear of leadership that afflicted the aforementioned unnamed individuals. He could have been Vice President in a Gore Administration that could have forestalled both 9/11 and the growing impact of climate change. Instead, he deemed it more important in the 2000 campaign to play footsie with Dick Cheney and the Republican efforts to block the Florida recount. Dayenu, Joe. Dayenu.
And yet, there is something sadder still than either Lieberman or anonymous Democrats. It's Baby Boomers (and yes, I am one), the generation that promised everyone it was going to be the biggest change agent in the history of the Republic, lecturing AOC and her fellow millennials about how to conduct themselves in politics. Case in point: Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the TV series "The West Wing," about a prototypical liberal Democratic presidency, headed by no less a liberal actor than Martin Sheen, who played Robert Kennedy in "The Missiles of October." One would think that someone like Sorkin would rejoice in the emergence of a new generation of leaders, one that could take the limited fulfillment of progressive ideas by Boomers and build something even better on top of them. Instead, we get grumpy lectures like this one, in which Sorkin laments the lack of "gravitas" among the new crop of Democrats in Congress, and wishes that its members would "stop acting like young people."
I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that comment. If he meant that they shouldn't be enthusiastic, bold, and even a bit pushy about expressing themselves, then he should remember a time when our generation, his and mine, were subject to some of the same criticisms. Somehow, it didn't stop us from doing some real good, and I suspect the same will be true of those who follow us. Frankly, it's depressing to listen to Sorkin in this instance and realize how "square" even a Boomer can be in middle-age.
For my part, I especially appreciate the fact that AOC's success thus far (knock on wood, pu! pu! pu!) is an affirmation of my thesis about modern politics: that it is not so much "local" as it is generational. AOC comes from a generation whose perspective on politics isn't summed up by Ronald Reagan standing at a lectern and asking people if they are better off now than they were four years ago. The generation of which AOC is a part has never know what it was like to be "better off" in the sense that Reagan meant. That generation has never known what it was like for Boomers like Sorkin and me to grow up in a world surrounded by a prosperity we ultimately came to take for granted. That generation has never had the luxury of assuming that their lives would be more comfortable than the lives of their parents. That generation has never been systemically patted on the head and constantly told how wonderful it is. Indeed, if anything, the followers of Reagan have largely dismissed that generation as a bunch of whiners who aren't spending enough to line the pockets of the 1 percent as quickly as possible.
Well, guess what? They aren't "spending enough" because they are not being paid a living wage that reflects their worth. And that, in turn, is happening largely because of 40 years of policies that promised wealth that would "trickle down," like crumbs from a feast to undeserving peasants. Instead, the wealth that the "peasants" created got sucked upward, higher and higher, until only a handful of people can reach it.
AOC and the people she's helping to bring to the table have figured it out. It's time to overturn the table, and replace it with one that has a seat for everybody.
I'm proud to say that I'm rooting hard for her to succeed. If she does, we all do.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Sunday, January 20, 2019
It May Make Sense For The Democrats To Counter T****'s Offer
I want to make this as clear at the outset as I can. I loathe D***** T****. I loathe him personally and presidentially. What he has done to his family and business associates is tragic; what he has done to the highest office in our land and its institutional standing around the globe is nothing short of an utter disaster.
And, in every aspect of his life over the past two years of his misbegotten Administration, he has violated so many legal standards that his impeachment and subsequent prosecution as a private citizen should have been a foregone conclusion months ago. As Bill Maher observed recently, if T**** isn't impeached, where is the bar set for impeachment of an American President? If Bill Clinton can be impeached for the constitutional equivalent of jaywalking (and I make no excuses for his misdeeds), while Trump can threaten with apparent impunity to circumvent constitutional processes in order to get the border wall most of us oppose, is partisanship the only place at which to set it.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I find the idea of doing business with T**** to be as loathsome as the man himself. I find the thought of reaching any sort of "compromise" with him to be wholly repellent. And that does not even begin to touch on the fact that reaching a "deal" with T**** does not prevent him from subsequently redefining that "deal" on his own terms. As Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it months ago, negotiating with T**** is like negotiating with Jell-O.
In spite of all of this, and only because I think that T**** may have accidentally created a loophole for doing so the other day, I think that it may at long last be as possible as it is absolutely necessary to reach a deal with the devil regarding the crisis at our border with Mexico.
Not the crisis that he imagines, the one in which hordes of "bad hombres" in Mad Max-style vehicles are racing across the desert filled with smugglers, pimps, and terrorists.
I'm talking about the crisis he has single-handedly created.
I'm talking about the families that have been incarcerated in border camps under inhuman conditions that have led to the death of innocent children.
I'm talking about the other families that have been attacked or otherwise forced to return to the countries they have been forced to abandon out of fear for their lives
I'm talking about the vast majority of undocumented aliens within our borders, the vast majority of whom came in under entirely lawful circumstances, but who have been trapped here by their inability to navigate an immigration system starved not just for enforcement resources, but for the basic administrative resources needed to process and approve visa applications.
And, perhaps worst of all in some respects, I'm talking about the new wave of investigations designer to "determine" whether naturalized citizens, many of them pillars of their community, should truly have been naturalized--a kangaroo-court process in which even the smallest infraction can destroy lives that were built based on a good-faith belief in what we used to call the American Dream.
Then, of course, there's the crisis on top of that crisis--the now-three-week old partial shutdown of the federal government that has deprived 800,000-plus employees, contractors, and their families of any sense of economic security, and that threatens the still-fragile ten-year Obama economic recovery, already threatened by the Republicans' debt-busting tax bill from last year.
Let's call the shutdown exactly what it and all the ones before it are: blackmail. They should not even be legal. They violate every principle upon which this nation was founded. They are a form of political warfare engaged in by politicians who do not even recognize their political opponents as sharing a nation with them.
They are criminal in every sense of the word. And every law enforcement professional will tell you that to cave in to blackmail is simply to invite more of it, without end. I agree with that advice wholeheartedly.
So, why might I be willing to make an exception here. Is it solely because of the severity of the combined border-shutdown crisis?
No.
It's also because T****, whose tyranny is as inept as it is cruel, may have really put his foot in it the other day.
He made a speech from the White House in which he announced that, in an "effort" to end the shutdown, he would send a bill to Congress which provides for temporary extensions of already temporary protections for certain classes of endangered immigrants, in return for the funding he has requested to begin construction of a permanent wall across our border with Mexico.
The temporary nature of the extensions make them utterly worthless to the populations they would allegedly protect. But that's not important in this case. What is important is the fact that T**** took this opportunity to redefine the word "wall" in this context as follows:
And so, there it is, Chuck, Nancy, and friends. You fought the battle against the sea-to-sea physical wall and won. You're no longer being blackmailed anymore. You can effectively declare victory.
And not only can you declare it, you can define it as well. So, how should you do that?\
By rejecting T****'s so-called concessions, and proposing an alternative that is more than fair. Instead of the fig leaf of making temporary protections slightly less temporary, why not do something as, shall we say, permanent as the now-redefined "wall"?
Why not take the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate by a more-than-two-thirds vote, and never got a vote in the House of Representatives, and make that the concession for getting the "wall"? After all, the only reason it never got a vote in the House is not because it wouldn't have passed. It would definitely have done so, and with a majority as bipartisan as the one in the Senate. The only reason that vote never took places is that the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, didn't want to lose a vote of no-confidence within his own badly divided caucus. Thus, thousands of jobs, and lives, were effectively destroyed because John Boehner wanted to keep his job.
But, now we have the perfect opportunity to rectify what went wrong in 2013, and give T**** what he wants to give to his most die-hard supporters. True, the devil would literally be in the details. The non-sea-to-sea nature of the "wall" would somehow have to be set in legislative stone. And provisions would have to be added to address the harms that have been done to immigrant populations during the past two years. But there's no reason that either of these steps can't be taken, especially if the larger goal is to gain a long-term resolution of the immigration issue in our nation.
The question, in the end, is whether that is something the Republicans truly want. On the strength of the last two years, there's not a lot of reason to think that it is. On a policy forefront, they're the party of tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judges. Everything else is just a series of wedge issues to maintain their power, not a series of problems that affect all of us and need to be solved.
Indeed, Mitch McCONnell, who has resisted efforts to end the shutdown until the Democrats and T**** come to an agreement, now is eager to rush T****'s new proposal to a Senate vote even though the Democrats haven't agreed to it. That, to McCONnell, is the point. Let the Democrats stop it with a filibuster, and then point the finger of shutdown blame on them. Real compromises have to hurt both sides a little; the current Senate majority leader only wants them to hurt the other side.
So, yes, the congressional Democrats have an opening. But they have a Senate roadblock looming in its face. What do they do?
In truth, they have no choice. They need to protect their constituencies, and they need to protect themselves politically. They have to take the opening that T**** has given them, and make the most of it. They have to fight like hell against the political "wall" that McCONnell has built up over the past decade, to do what they can to break it down, end the shutdown, put federal workers back to work, and ensure the continuation of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.
What they can't do, and, thankfully, don't seem willing to do, is to make a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. As a former federal and state employee, I know what that means to those who are currently out of work and facing an uncertain financial future. I lived at times from paycheck to paycheck during those years, and I lack no ability to feel the pain that these employees, contractors, and families are feeling. One outcome of all of this, once and for all, must be to take shutdowns off the table once and for all, to end the nightmare of partisan blackmail. A law must be enacted to require automatic short-term continuing resolutions that at least ensure paychecks to those who have every right to expect them. Sadly, I think the enactment of that law will require a saner President, as well as a Congress more willing to pass laws for reasons other than self-interest.
But, in spite of the pain of those who depend upon federal employment for a living, and in spite of the even greater pain that immigrants and their families are also experiencing, the Democrats have no choice but to stand firm. My advice to them, with regard to T****'s latest offer: proceed with caution. See if he is serious about something less than a sea-to-sea wall. See if he is willing to accept the enactment of what was a clearly popular solution to America's immigration needs. See if he is willing, in the process, to help clean up the disgrace he's created at the Rio Grande.
If he is willing, then do business with him.
If he is not, and the T****-created crisis has to go on, then it must go on.
With a determination to aid the victims when it is finally over.
And with an equally strong determination to punish the perpetrators at the polls in 2020.
And, in every aspect of his life over the past two years of his misbegotten Administration, he has violated so many legal standards that his impeachment and subsequent prosecution as a private citizen should have been a foregone conclusion months ago. As Bill Maher observed recently, if T**** isn't impeached, where is the bar set for impeachment of an American President? If Bill Clinton can be impeached for the constitutional equivalent of jaywalking (and I make no excuses for his misdeeds), while Trump can threaten with apparent impunity to circumvent constitutional processes in order to get the border wall most of us oppose, is partisanship the only place at which to set it.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I find the idea of doing business with T**** to be as loathsome as the man himself. I find the thought of reaching any sort of "compromise" with him to be wholly repellent. And that does not even begin to touch on the fact that reaching a "deal" with T**** does not prevent him from subsequently redefining that "deal" on his own terms. As Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it months ago, negotiating with T**** is like negotiating with Jell-O.
In spite of all of this, and only because I think that T**** may have accidentally created a loophole for doing so the other day, I think that it may at long last be as possible as it is absolutely necessary to reach a deal with the devil regarding the crisis at our border with Mexico.
Not the crisis that he imagines, the one in which hordes of "bad hombres" in Mad Max-style vehicles are racing across the desert filled with smugglers, pimps, and terrorists.
I'm talking about the crisis he has single-handedly created.
I'm talking about the families that have been incarcerated in border camps under inhuman conditions that have led to the death of innocent children.
I'm talking about the other families that have been attacked or otherwise forced to return to the countries they have been forced to abandon out of fear for their lives
I'm talking about the vast majority of undocumented aliens within our borders, the vast majority of whom came in under entirely lawful circumstances, but who have been trapped here by their inability to navigate an immigration system starved not just for enforcement resources, but for the basic administrative resources needed to process and approve visa applications.
And, perhaps worst of all in some respects, I'm talking about the new wave of investigations designer to "determine" whether naturalized citizens, many of them pillars of their community, should truly have been naturalized--a kangaroo-court process in which even the smallest infraction can destroy lives that were built based on a good-faith belief in what we used to call the American Dream.
Then, of course, there's the crisis on top of that crisis--the now-three-week old partial shutdown of the federal government that has deprived 800,000-plus employees, contractors, and their families of any sense of economic security, and that threatens the still-fragile ten-year Obama economic recovery, already threatened by the Republicans' debt-busting tax bill from last year.
Let's call the shutdown exactly what it and all the ones before it are: blackmail. They should not even be legal. They violate every principle upon which this nation was founded. They are a form of political warfare engaged in by politicians who do not even recognize their political opponents as sharing a nation with them.
They are criminal in every sense of the word. And every law enforcement professional will tell you that to cave in to blackmail is simply to invite more of it, without end. I agree with that advice wholeheartedly.
So, why might I be willing to make an exception here. Is it solely because of the severity of the combined border-shutdown crisis?
No.
It's also because T****, whose tyranny is as inept as it is cruel, may have really put his foot in it the other day.
He made a speech from the White House in which he announced that, in an "effort" to end the shutdown, he would send a bill to Congress which provides for temporary extensions of already temporary protections for certain classes of endangered immigrants, in return for the funding he has requested to begin construction of a permanent wall across our border with Mexico.
The temporary nature of the extensions make them utterly worthless to the populations they would allegedly protect. But that's not important in this case. What is important is the fact that T**** took this opportunity to redefine the word "wall" in this context as follows:
This is not a 2,000 mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high priority locations.Emphasis added. And I added it because that is precisely the nature of the Democrats' objection in the first place. And T**** has, for all practical purposes, made it go away.
And so, there it is, Chuck, Nancy, and friends. You fought the battle against the sea-to-sea physical wall and won. You're no longer being blackmailed anymore. You can effectively declare victory.
And not only can you declare it, you can define it as well. So, how should you do that?\
By rejecting T****'s so-called concessions, and proposing an alternative that is more than fair. Instead of the fig leaf of making temporary protections slightly less temporary, why not do something as, shall we say, permanent as the now-redefined "wall"?
Why not take the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate by a more-than-two-thirds vote, and never got a vote in the House of Representatives, and make that the concession for getting the "wall"? After all, the only reason it never got a vote in the House is not because it wouldn't have passed. It would definitely have done so, and with a majority as bipartisan as the one in the Senate. The only reason that vote never took places is that the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, didn't want to lose a vote of no-confidence within his own badly divided caucus. Thus, thousands of jobs, and lives, were effectively destroyed because John Boehner wanted to keep his job.
But, now we have the perfect opportunity to rectify what went wrong in 2013, and give T**** what he wants to give to his most die-hard supporters. True, the devil would literally be in the details. The non-sea-to-sea nature of the "wall" would somehow have to be set in legislative stone. And provisions would have to be added to address the harms that have been done to immigrant populations during the past two years. But there's no reason that either of these steps can't be taken, especially if the larger goal is to gain a long-term resolution of the immigration issue in our nation.
The question, in the end, is whether that is something the Republicans truly want. On the strength of the last two years, there's not a lot of reason to think that it is. On a policy forefront, they're the party of tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judges. Everything else is just a series of wedge issues to maintain their power, not a series of problems that affect all of us and need to be solved.
Indeed, Mitch McCONnell, who has resisted efforts to end the shutdown until the Democrats and T**** come to an agreement, now is eager to rush T****'s new proposal to a Senate vote even though the Democrats haven't agreed to it. That, to McCONnell, is the point. Let the Democrats stop it with a filibuster, and then point the finger of shutdown blame on them. Real compromises have to hurt both sides a little; the current Senate majority leader only wants them to hurt the other side.
So, yes, the congressional Democrats have an opening. But they have a Senate roadblock looming in its face. What do they do?
In truth, they have no choice. They need to protect their constituencies, and they need to protect themselves politically. They have to take the opening that T**** has given them, and make the most of it. They have to fight like hell against the political "wall" that McCONnell has built up over the past decade, to do what they can to break it down, end the shutdown, put federal workers back to work, and ensure the continuation of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.
What they can't do, and, thankfully, don't seem willing to do, is to make a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. As a former federal and state employee, I know what that means to those who are currently out of work and facing an uncertain financial future. I lived at times from paycheck to paycheck during those years, and I lack no ability to feel the pain that these employees, contractors, and families are feeling. One outcome of all of this, once and for all, must be to take shutdowns off the table once and for all, to end the nightmare of partisan blackmail. A law must be enacted to require automatic short-term continuing resolutions that at least ensure paychecks to those who have every right to expect them. Sadly, I think the enactment of that law will require a saner President, as well as a Congress more willing to pass laws for reasons other than self-interest.
But, in spite of the pain of those who depend upon federal employment for a living, and in spite of the even greater pain that immigrants and their families are also experiencing, the Democrats have no choice but to stand firm. My advice to them, with regard to T****'s latest offer: proceed with caution. See if he is serious about something less than a sea-to-sea wall. See if he is willing to accept the enactment of what was a clearly popular solution to America's immigration needs. See if he is willing, in the process, to help clean up the disgrace he's created at the Rio Grande.
If he is willing, then do business with him.
If he is not, and the T****-created crisis has to go on, then it must go on.
With a determination to aid the victims when it is finally over.
And with an equally strong determination to punish the perpetrators at the polls in 2020.
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