NYCweboy

Spiritus DeSantis

Given that it's way to soon to start talking about 2024 (OFFICIALLY), now seems like a good time to get ahead of the game and nip some things before they take off. And Example A of that would be... Ron DeSantis.

David Frum, combining prescient and clueless, posted the "watch out for DeSantis" lookout piece in The Atlantic this week, and he's not wrong: DeSantis is surely positioning himself to be a serious contender for the next presidential run. What's missing from Frum's otherwise compelling examination is... any sense of why the DeSantis show may well not be ready for prime time.

It takes far braver souls than I to dive deeply into Florida's politics; the state's unique mix of stalwart seniors (it's the oldest state in the US), large Hispanic native and immigrant populations, snowbirds with a dream, and a huge helping of deep southern traditionalists makes for a wild mix to begin with, add in the laissez faire, gold coast approach to economic opportunities and almost anything goes. There's a "Florida Man" meme for a reason. But the state's tantalizing bundle of electoral votes and politics that sway in the damp ocean breeze make for a sense that, well, anything's possible.

Not everything is, though. DeSantis is third or fourth in a string of lackluster, what's in it for me Republican opportunists elected as Governor, a line that includes millionaire healthcare executive Rick Scott and Charlie "now I'm a Democrat" Crist, as well as Jeb "I married an immigrant" Bush. All have enjoyed unique, famous for the wrong reason reps as Chief Executive... and careers that don't end, necessarily, in spite of it. DeSantis more or less limped his way into the job, pulled up by either unexpected turnout (the nice version) or some sort of manipulation (the darker conspiracist view) when Trump won office. As a result - and given Trump's Palm Beach residency which solidified on his watch - DeSantis was, outside of maybe only Kristi Noem, the President's biggest Governor toady.

Democrats have been hurting in Florida, as those results show. Much hope was pinned on defeating DeSantis  since his campaigning was haphazard at best and his career leading up to his run decidedly muddled. But Desantis managed to eke out a razor thin win (30,000 of 8 million cast) over Andrew Gillum (who, subsequently, flamed out spectacularly himself), and he goes up again next year fairly secure to likely sail through. And that will be largely in spite of, not because of, a mixed record at best.

What sells DeSantis and what he surely will run on, is that Florida wasn't, at least by what we know, a pandemic disaster. Enormous crises favor the well connected and the vaguely authoritarian, and Desantis, though feckless, has both qualities in spades. He locked down nursing homes and senior care facilities early (and, it should be said, at least it appears, tightly). He tried to limit lockdowns, but benefitted from the fact that he didn't have to try that hard: tourism fell through the floor, and has not, so far, rebounded to anything like pre pandemic levels. And he left a lot of the hardest choices to more local authorities, meaning Mayors made most of the hardest choices about mask rules, beach closings and social distancing, day to day.

In terms of vaccinations, DeSantis also had 2 assets on his side - a large senior population that had to be first in line and the ear of Trump officials making the earliest allocation decisions. While news organizations - 60 Minutes most notably - tried to pin him down on favoritism to businesses that supported him, DeSantis used public/private partnerships to distribute vaccines because that's pretty much all the state has: weak central governance and resistance to government run programs means the state leans on outside providers often, for everything. Sure, some rich Floridians jumped the line and anyone with a connection in the state could easily schedule a shot... but he's not a vaccine skeptic and he's made a conscious decision that being the death governor would hurt his image, which is, at least, politically astute.

Still Florida is #3 in total cases, #4 in total deaths (per capita, it's outside the top 10 in both, but so is New York, which may say more about poor choices in less populated states). They are the state which led the huge summer spike, and saw the second huge spike in January after a holiday season where businesses were open and masks not well policed. Further, cases remain alarmingly high and rising, even with a reasonable 25% total vaccinated population. DeSantis has a Covid case to make... it's just not nearly as good as many would like to suggest, at least in terms of actual public health metrics. Economically, DeSantis may have a point. But that's hard to make atop a raft of current deaths.

No, what DeSantis is really selling to a frustrated and angry Trump crowd and a nervous GOP more generally is a kind of Trump Lite: he's much more disciplined, more politically savvy (which isn't saying much), but happy to lay on the code words and conspiracy rhetoric to prove his loyalty. Desperate Republicans are clearly terrified of alienating the Trumpists, even as they know that going full Trump won't win elections; the DeSantis theory would suggest that you can have some of the ugliness but tie it to a more traditional political narrative, an actual office holder with experience in Congress and running a state. And, honestly, they may be right. Or that person might be Kristi Noem.

Whatever the case, national democrats need to take the threat of DeSantis seriously, if not literally. The ill winds blowing around perpetual fratboy Matt Gaetz could just as easily rope in DeSantis (though as a Catholic with a TV trophy wife, a sex scandal seems unlikely), and that Publix money could, in itself, be the tip of plenty of campaign finance messiness... though "sleazy money" and "Florida" are usually hard to make into career killers. No, the simpler case is that, for all his message discipline thus far, DeSantis could easily find himself in a national race out of his depth and prone to missteps. Lots of people think they can manage the Trumpist crowd to their own ends, but don't have Trump's sheer mendacity or desperation to go wherever that road leads. DeSantis may have no shame, but he's prone to mess ups in public speaking and a tetchy demeanor that plays well on Fox but hasn't been tested outside of the local market.

Even with all that, the threat is that all the stink in the world may not be enough to stall DeSantis if he can turn his modest skills into a juggernaut of big money, right wing media support and a MAGA crowd to back it up. That presumes, of course, that Trump himself can be kept out of it (a big if, at least for now) and the MAGA crowd can be managed; I have my doubts on that as well. But still. DeSantis, from a Florida catbird seat, would start with a number of advantages, ones that could be crushing if no one starts, now, assembling the evidence against him. And while I think we are still a country that tolerates Florida, rather than embracing it... I don't want to stress test that theory more than is absolutely necessary. I've been on enough cruise ships, and seen enough Spring Break movies to know... there could very easily be more of them than of us. And I wouldn't just leave the prospect of President DeSantis to chance. 

We're Done Here

As if anyone needed more evidence, surely Donald Trump's foray into the science of "sunlight and disinfectant" as potential treatments for COVID 19 were proof enough of the problem he poses as President.

But last week's disaster is really the culmination of six weeks of lasting proof that Trump is more or less done proving he's simply too incompetent to continue as President.

I'm not saying "it's over" or even confidently asserting victory in November - that, despite their complacency, is the actual work the Biden team will have to do to get this thing wrapped up. What am I saying, though, is that we should all simply move on from engaging with the ridiculous discussion of whether Trump's presidency has been anything other than a disaster form start to finish.

One of the reasons I stepped away from blogging obsessively about Trump as President is that from Day 1, it was clear there just weren't enough synonyms for "incompetent." From his failure to staff up appropriately (dozens of White House roles and thousands of Executive Branch positions have simply gone unfilled), to the disastrous appointees he has had to repeatedly replace (More cabinet secretaries than there are in the heavens, the revolving door of "Communications Director"), Trump established in short order that he was not and would not be up to the task of being President.

It's a failure that covers every level, every standard, every notion of what it is to be President. His conspiracy theory obsessed, petty mindset meant that from the start he failed to provide the necessary (and customary) approach to politics of trying to work with both sides of the political divide. This stymied even reasonable suggestions that he could construct some worthwhile legislation (infrastructure week, how we miss you) to advance his own stated priorities. Instead he has exercised a ham handed, largely unsuccessful approach to do just what Republicans attacked Barack Obama for - ruling by executive fiat, trying to manhandle the regulatory state, and refusing to submit to even basic oversight.

And what domestic policy was there to speak of, anyway? His promised wall amounted to a small project of fence construction, a spot of refurbishment, and years of ill will as he attempted to seize miles of private property along the southern border (almost entirely unsuccessfully, and very likely striking the death blow for "government taking" libertarians have craved, but big business GOP interests, like builders, have opposed). While Trump has made a practical mess of immigration and set back environmental regulation by 30 years, these efforts have at best been scattershot, and have forged unlikely coalitions of opposition that could have lasting impact. While Trump drove through a horrendous tax package that eviscerated the corporate side of federal taxation, inaugurating a stock market bubble it took the pandemic to burst, the scorching deficits and laughable economic policies he produced have largely underlined that the "business acumen" he supposedly brought to bear as President was a dreadful stew of failure, financial idiocy and seventies era thinking that never worked to begin with.

Trump ignited so much passionate opposition and resistance to his plans and policies that the nation saw more dramatic protests in the space of weeks after his taking office that normally take years. Millions of women protested. Charlottesville blew up in ugly chants of racial and ethnic hatred. Thousands turned out at international airports to protest the draconian and misbegotten "Muslim ban." And in short order, thousands of neophyte activists, organizers and candidates had built a powerful new network of political strength that destroyed Republican control of the House of Representatives, returned Nancy Pelosi to her key role as Speaker, and up ended the political dominance of the GOP in numerous states as Governorships and state house dominance evaporated overnight.

On foreign policy, Trump's approach wasn't just quixotic: it was haphazard, incoherent and foolish. Trump lurched into conflicts with NATO that called into question the fundamental organizing principles of our entire postwar approach to diplomacy. His romancing of Putin and the Russian state was clearly motivated by venal self interest. His dalliance with North Korea and Kim Jong Un was dangerously shortsighted and irrelevant. And his middle eastern policies simply made no sense - a misunderstanding of nearly every geopolitical imperative of every actor in the region that left death, destruction and chaos in the wake of everything he touched.

Trump, of course, has no sense of personal responsibility, no moral compass and no shame. Trying to indict him on his failings doesn't just result in defensiveness it ignites a storm of invective and blame shifting that reflects childlike notions of behavior and comportment. Bullying. Childish name calling. A tyrant of the toy shop with literally no supervision, Trump would surely be a master of corruption and pillaging of his office, if only he knew how. From ham handed moves to personally profit from government largesse, misusing the pardon power to clearly thwart thorough investigations of previous acts, Trump would love to abuse power, but lacks the cleverness to even try to hide it. And while impeachment may not have resulted in removal from office, the stain of the process - never mind the desperate kitchen sink maneuvering to save him - will not only follow him, it may very well presage the implosion of the party that decided protecting him at all costs was safer than simply admitting the litany of errors that got him to the most powerful job in the land. At this point, the likely loss of his reelection effort may not simply be a rejection of him and his failings, but a broad based thumping that recasts the Senate majority and leaves the remaining GOP a shell of itself, incapable of ever reconstituting in its current form.

On top of all of this, then... comes a pandemic of unthinkable proportions that has upended nearly every aspect of every American's everyday life. It took a week to puncture Trump's economic bubble, a week more to destroy the international oil market, and six weeks of dithering to force a public health response to a crisis Trump treated, initially, as yet another political enemy he could simply slogan out of existence. No president is as uniquely unsuited to this disaster as Trump has been, and the failed response, every day, at every level, is testament to how completely he has managed every bit of federal executive power into meaninglessness. Plan? What plan? Tests? What tests? Thorough reporting and clearly measured progress? You must be joking. It's not that anyone could have predicted this (though some did) or that so many things were caught so underplanned and under prepared (clearly, they were). No, the "secret sauce" of American ingenuity has been that, often almost miraculously, our leaders rise to occasions where failure seemed the only option. Trump is, as much as anything, simply proof that we may well have run out of miracles. Because what we failed to appreciate is that it's not miracles. It's competence. And decency. And the capacity of all Americans to come together in difficult moments, knowing we can and should do what's right and what's best, inspired by the commitment of our leaders. Trump is, literally, none of that. 

And here we are. The noise making, perpetual generating anger machine of the right still wheezes along, making mountains out of molehills, trying to turn Tump shit into Shinola, but no amount of lipstick will dress up that pig. Americans - the people who exist as a nation built on an idea, not an identity - believe in the upbeat and the story of success. Failure is not an option. We tend to look away from failure, to try and ignore the stench of a thing as it collapses and dies. The final months of the GW Bush presidency (remember when he was the worst?) were an obvious exercise in "let's not even talk about how bad this has gotten" as we focused on the bright, shiny promise of the Obama to come. I suspect that, come this summer, that's the real story of the unwinding of Trump, even as a farce of MAGA hats and shrill complaints animates the public discourse. Don't engage, don't even start with them... look away. It may, like a train wreck, be hard to look away. But it's wrong to enjoy, too much, watching a thing as it dies.

There's no "I wonder if he can salvage this." At best/worst, Trump can maybe manhandle the whole process of elections in a pandemic to his advantage; I genuinely doubt that will work. Even if he tries, there's just no getting around it: what seemed unthinkable - whether "he can't be that bad" to "there's no way he'll win it" to "you can't really believe he's lying now" - has all been proven out. You can't say you don't know. You can't wonder if it will somehow be different. We can, yes, choose to have more of this. But i have to say... I think we're done here.

These Awful, Awful People

A little over 12 years ago, I started a modest effort at blogging, one that these days feels even more modest than when I began, with a brief, zig zaggy interlude of greater public prominence (as a Hillary supporter) than I ever expected. From there, it was mostly a slouch through the Obama years to... well, apparently, what's been happening is beyond words.

A loss for words: there are fewer, more apt phrases for the current state of affairs in politics (at least, ones that don't devolve quickly into foul words and cruel epithets... on both sides!). I'll admit, much of what's happened leaves me, usually, in stunned silence, or sadly mute. Or both. All the time, at every turn, this Presidency is exactly what it appears most to be: a compendium of lies and exaggerations, a chronicle of ineptitude and inexperience all overseen by a dangerous, criminal mix of lifelong self absorption and personal gratification.

More than anything, what most distresses me, in this time, is the exaltation of awfulness. Immoral, indecent behavior by awful people is excused or enshrined; the feeling that someone (or possibly everyone) involved is "getting away with it" is inescapable. And that's even when, occasionally, justice, or at least some small amount of common decency, suddenly appears to prevail.

Sometimes, the indecency just seems sad, or at least sadly comical - the grasping, greedy habits of various cabinet officials; the willingness of conservative politicians and Fox news habitues to surrender the last shreds of their independent thoughts and what remained of their moral character. In retrospect, the quick flameout of Tom Price, or the somewhat longer collapse of Scott Pruitt seem like welcome mercy killings compared to the extended damaging presences of Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos and others. It's easy to conflate the truly dangerous actions wrought by Jeff Sessions with the more cheerfully inept exercises of a Kirstjen Nielsen, but both are set to ruin lives in ways Carson or DeVos can't possibly hope to achieve. It's hard beating Skippy... but it's easier the more you try not to care.

Then there is the White House Inner Circle, a road map of enablers and hangers-on who long ago gave up even a shred of self awareness of the disaster around them. The colorful fabulations of Kellyanne Conway. The surly hateful approach to press relations embodied in Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The inert, impotent attempts at control by John Kelly, unmasking his own troubled prejudices. Those long slow burnouts are as remarkable, in their ways, as the way the Administration so quickly used up and spit out the likes of Hope Hicks, Omarosa, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer or the abusive Rob Porter. These are the moments we wonder whether Bill Shine or John Bolton and Larry Kudlow are the kind to collapse quickly... or if the moral decay and rotting values will take longer to fully destroy both their present and future.

As for the man himself - and the family that, still, surround him like a protective, but not really, cloak - what's left to say? Perhaps the proverbial - is it anything else - last straw was a President who literally excused the murder of a person, a fellow American, for the sake of a financial and strategic relationship with the cruel despot of a foreign power. No, not Putin or Kim Jong Un. Just the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the saving grace - as I do so often try to tease out something hopeful in the darkest of clouds - is that Trump is so much of who he is that he lays bare what America is, or at least can be: little more than the cruel acceptance of savagery and indecency for personal economic and political gain. This presidency is a test for us, for our nation, of just who we all are or want to be. To surrender to this lot - with their lax morals, self dealing, petty cruelties and endless vanities - is to give up on all that we can be. We are entirely capable of being better, more decent, kinder, more concerned for others. Or, we can try to hurt anyone we dislike with cruel words, terrible actions, and a refusal to step in.

So often, in these times, it's true... there are no words. There's no adjective dark enough, no adverb strong enough, to modify the descriptions of things happening on a daily, if not hourly basis. So much random cruelty, casual insensitivity, deliberate greed and grasping by so many of these awful, awful people. But we can't look away, and we can't just say nothing. We may never, entirely, be able to wash off the stench. But it's worse, isn't it, if we don't even try. Isn't it?

The May Way

Did Theresa May miscalculate her chances in an election when she called the UK General Election six weeks ago? Sure; it seems now she overestimated her appeal and that of her party, or at least underestimated the perception of Labour as unable to sell themselves better than the last go round. Probably more to the point, no one could have anticipated two horrific terror attacks in the two major cities of England - the Manchester bombing of an Arianna Grande concert, and a subsequent runaway van attack on London Bridge.

May is shaping up to be a complex presence in British leadership - people who don't like her or her policies, I think, underestimate how well her image of well dressed competence plays nationally and on the world stage. Yet she's presided, at best, over middling Tory governance - bobbling a problematic economy, health care woes in the NHS, tensions with immigrant communities and of course, the bumpy road to Brexit. That should, honestly, have led to even more of a drubbing for Tories than the fairly modest total loss of 12 seats, and something than other than a 5% gain in overall votes.

Though the election is being portrayed as a disaster for May, from a distance, I'd say wait and see. Sure, the internal tensions of the Conservative Party may want to punish her... but we got May because David Cameron flopped spectacularly on his own push for a No vote on Brexit, and it was in the temporal flux of replacing Cameron that it became abundantly clear that the Tories had a leadership bench problem. That problem, roughly a year later, isn't necessarily much better, and nothing shows that more thoroughly than the fact that about the only prominent alternative May faces is... Boris Johnson, one that will be hard for many to take seriously.

Moreover, as I said, May only lost 12 seats. Bad, sure, but it left her with a 57 seat plurality over Labour, and needing only a small number of seats to get a working majority, something she fairly easily accomplished adopting the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland - who are, yes, hardline conservatives with some extreme views, but as one might say, they'll do in a pinch. The election increased the total Tory share of the vote. And May was resoundingly successful in Scotland where the Conservatives were the main beneficiaries of the collapse of the Scottish National Party, the leaders of the Scot secessionist movement who had themselves soared into a major 3rd party role by fueling Labour's collapse - and the Brexit vote - as Labour lost dozens of seats last time. This time, they crawled back in Scotland, but still nowhere near their old dominance.

Indeed, the collapse of Scottish secession, paired with the death throes of UKIP, the anti immigrant hard right party that had driven the Brexit vote, are probably the real stories here, both signalling the end of hardline, dead-end revolts against the status quo. UKIP was never able to translate votes into seats, but their 10% decline in total votes was the biggest drop of Britain's major parties, just as the SNP was the largest single loss of seats. Together, they fueled the vote gains of both Labour and Conservatives, and Labour's total gain of 25+ seats, as well as offsetting the Tories losses to Labour in British urban areas.

Much has been made of the overall success of Jeremy Corbyn in growing and consolidating gains for Labour, and there's a lot of positive takeaways to be drawn; but Labour remained a fairly distant second, with no path to forming a government as a way to stop May. Much is being made of the youth vote and a Sanders-like hard left agenda. I tend to think pinning one's hopes to younger voters is illusory - we are in a phase of angry young voters who just want to be told what they want to hear (shades of their older right wing Uncles and Grandpas), and who don't like to contemplate the hard work of translating big ideas into workable policy. Corbyn, like Sanders, sold a dream of free college, public jobs and expanded supports for the poor, all laudable. All, likely, impossible to make real. Further, Corbyn is pretty much no one's idea of "tough on terrorism" and although he made some hay pushing for expanding police hiring, in the wake of the terror incidents, there was no move to him over May. For a population where terror threats are very real, perceptions of Labour as weak won't help.

What hurt May, though, was the links between Brexit, the hard right in Europe and Donald Trump. It surely hurt May that Trump kept inserting himself into the terror news in all the wrong ways, most of all in a needless fight with the popular Mayor of London. Nor did it help that May, as Home Secretary, was directly involved in decisions to identify and deal with terror threats. Yet, despite that, she still returns to Number 10. While liberals here and over in England mutter darkly about May doing hardline measures to attack terrorism, there's little left that's harder than what the UK already has and does with cameras and a more intrusive state. Calling this a "referendum on Trump" or some other rejection of conservatism is both obvious and inaccurate. May, more than anything, represents sticking to what they're already doing, because they don't know what else to do, and that, after all, won the day, if less enthusiastically than anyone might have thought.

And that, Brexit included, is why putting too much stock in the revolution or Labour's future prospects seems misplaced. May might go, but Conservatives remain in control regardless. Majorities voted for her approach to terror and her approach to Brexit (and, just remember too, Corbyn supported Brexit - that's part of how he replaced Ed Milliband). There was, and is, deep dissatisfaction with economic opportunity that yes, mirrors our own - and, interestingly, UKIP's deserting voters seem to have been a big part of the run to Labour, along with the young. More than before, the UK divides between depressed urban centers and smaller towns and countryside areas that don't want to abandon traditional notions. Both parties have a struggle to get past about 40% appeal - but Labour's additional headache is that concentrated voters in urban areas make it hard to get the spread needed that translates into dozens more seats in Parliament.

It also probably doesn't help that in some more upscale urban areas, the real gains were made by the Liberal Democrats, who bounced back, if mildly, from their own drubbing in the Brexit vote - Bath, Oxford and other areas showed gains, suggesting that the Lib Dems still attract the educated professionals Labour ought to be able to count on for themselves. That can't help. And like Sanders, I'm not convinced Corbyn represents a way to broaden out Labour's appeal beyond where he got it this time. Arguably, the deep losses Labour endured in the Brexit vote overstated the extent of discontent, and Corbyn has presided over a natural reassorting that returns Labour to its natural, but secondary, status. The road from here to majority status isn't actually clear.

The problem for May is governing in a way that shows she gets it - there needs to be some changes, some renewed sense of opportunity, some better assimilation and adaptation to the changed world of immigrants in the UK. One easy fix, after all, would be making Corbyn's call for expanded police into her own strategy. Grows jobs, addresses safety, shows a commitment to public service. Actually managing Brexit and translating the vague and frightening prospects still hanging over the UK and Europe into coherent policy would also help. My guess is May's better positioned to do this than many realize, even if, policy-wise, she's been thoroughly lackluster. Her way may be playing it overly safe - but the real lesson of the election, for now, is that, so far, she's the only game in town. Corbyn's successes may give him some heft, and May could get tossed. But the world she made - a world of Brexit, uncertain threats, and economic discomfort will still be there. No one, it seems, likes that world. And that's no answer at all.

Related articles

What is a hung parliament? And what would happen next after the election?

General Election 2017 results and maps: What time will we know the winner?

Theresa May: Britain needs my strong leadership more than ever

Jeremy Corbyn Calls for Theresa May to Resign Over Police Cuts (Video)

Manchester Arena Attack: After Blast 22 Dead And 59 Injured At Concert

Swamp Thing

This election just past reminds me of the faith I have in America; less so the faith I have in fellow Americans. It’s an amazing thing, this experiment in participatory democracy. It’s also amazing how we survive some pretty incredible mess ups and mistakes.

America is a nation whose greatest accomplishments are often happy (or unhappy) accidents. We praise ourselves for our wonderful qualities, while often trying to ignore the wreckage in our wake. We’re the nation that came together after a Civil War (try not to think about the senseless death and destruction), ended slavery (pay no attention to that area at the back of the lovely plantation where the people they owned were housed in shacks), and gave women the vote (but will not enshrine gender equality in an amendment to the Constitution). When we’re good, we’re admirable, and when we’re not… it’s a really complex problem that’s probably too difficult for society to fix.

Already the media and our success oriented mindset is rewriting the history of the election. After a bruising, brutal campaign by Donald Trump, who came down an escalator on day one and said Mexico was sending “rapists and murderers… and some, I assume, are good people;” spent the primaries humiliating one opponent after another; and held rallies week after week marked by derisive jeers, random violence, and calls for things like a ban on the entry of Muslims into the US…. after all that, we can now be told that the election was about “economic populism and a desire to clean up Washington.

“Drain the Swamp” became Trump’s rallying cry in the final weeks, a popular rallying call of the right before he locked onto it, though beyond the slogan it’s always been hard to say just what this drainage project is meant to accomplish. It seems primarily aimed at assuming corruption and unchecked illegality are the sole products of Democrats, hence complaints about misuse of union funds for political purposes, lobbying by liberal groups, the political activism of teachers. Questions about corporate money, lobbying by conservative favored groups, the influence of major right wing billionaire donors, the misbehavior of Republican lawmakers… that’s a little less of a problem.Trump did suggest, admirably, that he wouldn’t be “beholden to special interests” because he was “self funding” his campaign. He said this less after raising millions of dollars from traditional GOP sources, and he seems oblivious to the fact that “self funding” does not mean “paying your own corporate entities from your campaign’s coffers.” But hey, drain that swamp!

Time will tell just what “Drain the Swamp” amounts to; like pretty much all of the Donald’s campaign rhetoric, his line was a slogan in search of policy detail, a big “TK” where the specifics will eventually be. The same is generally true of the economic populism - there’s some vague plans to rewrite tax law, maybe take a stab at infrastructure spending, some theoretical talk of upending US trade policies… but Trump’s plans were thin and vague throughout the campaign, a cloud of shouts and bluster mainly aimed at telling people everything they wanted to hear. Maybe “he told us everything we wanted to hear” could be the real reason he won?

Oh, and he says he’ll “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Let’s come back to that later.

In the end, Trump’s victory can, I suppose be explained away as that mix of economic populism and swamp drainage. That is the upbeat side. The downbeat side is all that stuff Trump said about law and order and cleaning up the terror filled inner cities, the lines about Muslims and Hispanic immigrants, and black people, and various comments about women and their bodies and those who wound up in his sights for criticizing him in one way or another. That’s the hate that drove his campaign, that created the sea of white faces at his rallies, encouraged white supremacists and the “Alt Right” online, and led to those rowdy cries, jeers, and scattered violence. Is that all his voters saw? Did they see it at all? Or is that just what the horrified people who opposed him saw?

Our history is littered with moments of backlash, the moments when the white, native majority resoundingly restated their majority rule over the rest of us. It’s the string of events that led to the Civil War, it’s the way Reconstruction went from a hopeful reconciliation to a reemergence of of the worst ways of the South, it’s the way hopeful signs of integration early in the twentieth century led to Jim Crow… and how the progress of the sixties led to the right’s Southern Strategy, Nixon and ultimately Ronald Reagan. Since the Civil Rights Act, the most racist parts of the nativist white crowd have hidden themselves in the corners of the right wing, every so often reminding us that they can’t win it alone, but they can help win it. It’s easier when you’ve got a Donald Trump, who ran with the “Obama birth certificate” nonsense to gain a political foothold, and felt little compunction to steer clear of appeals to the worst impulses of working class white voters. Blame the other. Blame the brown people. Blame the immigrants, and the Muslims (and less loudly, blame the Jews). Blame the gays. Blame those uppity women.

It’s all a cloud now, a haze, a blur. And some Trump voters express, as self aware Republicans often do, amazement that now, suddenly, accusations of racism, misogyny and bigotry fly. A year and a half of a hate-filled, name-calling campaign… and no, it was all about economic populism. Drain the Swamp. We’re not racists. How could you think that? Why is Trump’s victory based, pretty much entirely, on the votes of rural, less educated whites, mostly older white men? How did less educated white women move from consideration of electing the first woman president to resounding support for a billionaire? Could it be, even remotely, that appealing to base racial prejudices and class resentments can be excused by a few swipes at sky high promises of economic rebirth?

The point isn’t that white voters, these voters, are racist; the point is, really, that this story is not new. Faced, often, with the hard economic challenges of rapid change, America’s native population has often moved to rein in the others - immigrants, Indians, blacks… whatever “other” is convenient. It’s not that “economic populism” didn’t drive this election… it’s that “economic populism” is cover for the very appeal of those race and class based resentments. We don’t like to think we’re bad actors. In our American history, most of us think we’re the good guys. And often, we’re nobody’s heroes, except our own. It’s actually a thing I love about our nation - our good intentions and our faith in ultimately getting it right. Hope is our birthright, greatness is our mantle. We’d be so good, if we could just stop being so very very bad.

So here’s to draining the swamp. Who knows what we’ll find? Maybe a business man with terrible personal and business ethics is just the man for this job. We’ll see. Maybe the swamp we need to drain isn’t in DC - maybe it’s the swamp of resentments, hatreds and anger we foist on each other. Just something to consider, while we rewrite our history yet again and find a convenient spot to put a happy ending on this thing, the story of our greatness so far.

Related articles

Donald Trump's Gettysburg Address: Sexual Assault Accusers 'Will be Sued After the Election is Over'

Maybe Now We Can Talk About Who Lost

Curiel and Curiouser

By the middle of last week, the polls were tied and nervous lefties were losing the will to live; by the end of last week, we were all reminded that Donald Trump's worst opponent may well be himself.

(And before we feel too good about that, let's remember that Hillary Clinton, too, may be her own worst enemy.)

Last week, though, Trump pretty much held all the cards: a solidified nomination process that was pretty much unstoppable, the evaporation of all but the barest wisps of resistance (largely because Republicans think dissent is vulgar, and thus for liberals), and even forcing the party's highest profile and brightest hope to bow down and kiss his ring. And how do you top that?

By going after the judge in your high profile federal fraud case. Naturally.

Going after Judge Gonzalo Curiel may well be the new definition of "fool's errand" but before we savor Mr. Trump's still smoking gun aimed at his own foot, let's consider that what Trump has done, as much as anything, is remind us of how we got to this terrible moment in Republican politics.

For years, conservatives have fought everything around diversity - indeed, it's been the hallmark of the transition of the South from Democrat to Republican - fighting Affirmative Action, efforts at integration, gay rights, the women's movement and so much more. Underlying all of this has been an argument that to try to diversify hurts "merit" - that the best educated, most qualified, experienced people will suffer. And by extension, they are probably white, and male.

Virtually nothing about this is borne out by evidence; if anything, years of efforts to make diversity happen have shown the opposite, over and over. Women take more seats in top classes and schools. Asian Americans test better than everyone else. Creativity thrives, ideas bloom, communities strengthen when diversity is embraced. The case for diversity is really rather obvious, and where diversity isn't, really, is where we continue to have problems.

Unless you look at this from the right.

I've watched - and felt - the befuddlement other lefties have when Trump trotted out his "Mexican heritage" argument against Curiel. It's a bizarre allegation, the idea that one's ethnic heritage or family's nations of origins, would drive one's worldview. It's led to both the defense of Curiel's citizenship (he was born in Indiana) and the expression of pride of those who share the identity - the latter being further proof that Trump's single mindedness in pushing Hispanics to oppose him as a matter of ethnic pride may both prove his point and be his undoing.

The thing is, conservatives do really see people as biased for "their people." They are simply waiting for that moment when they can say "aha!" when a black person identifies with the black experience, when gay people stand up for one another, when a woman supports another woman's point of view. It is, they suggest, embedded in our DNA - our tribe, our sense of belonging somewhere, to something.

And layered on top of this is the fallacy that impartiality and objectivity come with being white. 

At heart, this is the American dilemma, a nation of immigrants where every group is its own, but we are all American. It's inherent biases around race and class and assumptions about people and their motives that are really kind of sad and ugly and small. We are all prejudiced. We will all defend our own. This logic is also internally incoherent - if blacks, gays, women, hispanics revert to defending their own... then so do whites.  The Irish, the Italians, the Scots, the Swedes... are we not all from a clan? Do we not all, then, come home to our own?

The argument Trump is making against Curiel is one that's been used repeatedly in court appointments - against naming a "jewish seat" to the Supreme Court. Against Thurgood Marshall. Against Sonia Sotomayor. The fear of "prejudice to one's own" is a handy mask for the real prejudice here: the fear of difference, and the loss of white privilege.

In reality, conservatives can't have it both ways: you can't simultaneously argue that "properly impartial" judging is what you're after and, as Trump is doing here, complain that judges carry around biases based simply on their heritage and who they are. We can't, in fact, really have a society at all under those assumptions. What we have, at best, is trust. Trust that people will try their best to be impartial, to judge fairly, to see beyond themselves and their own range of life experience. Trump's case against "Mexican heritage" is the underlying truth behind years of conservative lip service to "faithful interpretation of the Constitution."  That's not what you're really concerned about if the only "faithful interpreters" are white. And most likely, male.

It's nice to see that Trump's appeal to these base prejudices is being seen mostly for what it is; I'd feel better if many lefty defenders moved past the "but he's from Indiana" defense of Curiel if only because we often pretend that papering over our histories and our different heritages and experiences makes us all the same. It doesn't. I rather like the sum of my Swedish and German ancestors, and my African American roots because that's pretty darn unique. And I celebrate the different perspectives that come from others as well. I am not afraid of people who don't have the same background as me - because that's mostly everyone else.

Of course Trump's vitriol and grab bag defensiveness has to be rejected - it's not who we are as Americans, and it's giving into the worst bullying impulses of a man who really fears going before a judge because almost any judge, no matter of what background, can see his guilt. But let's also admire the gift that Trump has given us and make a moment of it - a moment to reject, once and for all, the myth of superior white impartiality. That would make this trip down the rabbit hole something to actually feel better about, in the end.

Related articles

Peremptory Prejudice

Maybe Now We Can Talk About Who Lost

Hillary Clinton bashes Donald Trump for his statements about guns to NRA

Magnolia

Our Brand Is Bulls**t

Look, I think we've all tried avoidance... humor, anything. It wasn't until I said it again, out loud, yesterday, that I realized how surreal it is to even say: Donald Trump is a candidate for President of the United States. What is that? How does that even happen? Why are we even taking this seriously?

Ok, let's talk about Donald Trump.

Did I think Donald Trump would get this far? No; but to be fair - to myself, at least - I think we need a definition of "this far" that makes sense. I didn't think his run was entirely serious, so no, I thought he'd get bored or annoyed and walk out earlier. I didn't think he'd win the majority of Republican voters... and he hasn't. I didn't think he'd make any sort of potential winning candidate, never mind a successful winner in this fall's race... and so far, he's neither. So did I think he could win the GOP nomination? Well, sure, if he stuck it out. I just thought the GOP had more sense then to let it go that far. And maybe, they still do.

Let's remember that Trump is winning because the field of candidates on the right is awful. There were 17 awful people running (George Pataki! Dear God!), and even the relatively interesting ones - Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, arguably Rick Perry - came loaded with baggage that would have been a hard sell in the best scenario. And Republicans voters do seem to have a fascinating death wish - eviscerating, one after another, any hope of a coherent, thoughtful opponent to either Democrat this fall. And so, now you have one relatively sane alternative - John Kasich - who stands virtually no chance of winning anywhere that's left, and Ted Cruz vs. Donald Trump, a choice of frying pan or fire I'm glad I'll never have to make. So bad, it makes reviving Mitt Romney look good!

Mostly, though, this debacle has happened because Trump has found, and kept, a core of support that no other Republican can touch - the white working class voter, mostly male, whose anger and rejection of status quo has reached critical mass. At best, the GOP has been, since the nineties, a fragile coexistence of the very rich, the "values voter" of the religious right and those working class whites, attracted by a mix of let's be frank, coded messages about blaming others for their problems and a tough guy attitude about guns, war, and fighting the good fights. It was always a bad fit - the policies favored the rich, the religious right got taken for a ride as their issues lost one by one, and the working class  got hammered both by bad policy and by economic forces set in motion by those wealthy folks, many Republican, out for themselves and their own personal gain.

Lots of people find it hard to believe that someone with such a conspicuous wealthy lifestyle as Trump could be the salesman for what working men (and some women, but mostly men) want, but I think people miss that the lifestyle he celebrates - ostentatious and somewhat tasteless - is both what ordinary people think rich looks like and favors the aspirational. You may never get into the right schools, the right clubs, marry into the family of taste and class... but you could make some good money, buy a lot of nice things, and say the hell with the snobs. And Trump, really, has been all that, and more.

It's bullshit, but that's what Trump sells: bullshit. Real estate, except for maybe cars, is the home of the most pure sell: the selling of a dream, of hopes... and it favors a salesman who can, basically, lie like a good rug. Say whatever you have to say, but close the deal. Trump is a closer. And he's done it so long, it's beyond instinctive now: it's his air, what sustains him, what keeps it all afloat. Just keep slinging the bullshit. Somehow, it will all work out.

It would be nice to say that Trump's bullshit is finally coming back to haunt him, but I think that's wishful: the media loves a show, he knows it, and he has not stopped delivering since he jumped in to the race. No one organization, it seems, can keep up with the pace of his lies, his misstatements, his exaggerations, his obfuscations and reversals. They just keep coming. And nothing it seems, can thwart the feeling among a core of working class voters that, even with lies, even with policy proposals that can't possibly happen, he's still just what the country needs and the right man for the job.

This disconnect - the "I don't believe it, really, but I like his tough talk" - is part of his brand, too, really. He's the guy who has to sell the property when it isn't finished, the guy who has you walk the model apartment and sells you the idea. It's all caveats and hypotheticals, and you know it won't look like the brochure. But either you trust his sales job, or you don't. Many of us don't. But it's why those who do trust his pitch can say, "no he won't really build a wall. He'll just take on immigration. It's part of why Trump and Sanders are at least tangentially linked - Sanders too is offering a sales job of traditional revolutionary leftism, and he too, has fans who admit that his proposals may not be workable... but he's staked a position and you know what he really believes. Perhaps. I'd say it's more a question of one's tolerance for the bullshit. If you've never trusted the sales rep, well, I suspect you're one of the people turning down what either man is trying to sell.

And sometimes, really, what we can miss is that within Trump's bullshit are hard truths that some hate to admit and politics is meant to avoid. The job of selling is layering the bullshit on top of some, maybe only a few, real facts, facts that help your sell, but still facts. Trump has reversed pretty much every Republican by admitting carried interest is ridiculously unfair and should be ended. Lurking within his xenophobia on trade and immigration are acknowledgements both that offshore manufacturing is a hard reality and low wage immigrants make the economy go. He's critical of George W. Bush and his handling of Iraq and Afghanistan (even while sounding wildly xenophobic and anti-Muslim). And yes, he stepped across a generally accepted line by stating the obvious: if abortion is a crime, a woman who gets one is a criminal.

It was bullshit, his conversation with Matthews, just two guys who talk fast and tough, bullshitting each other, that lulled Trump into admitting the logical fallacy anti abortion forces like to sell - criminalize abortion, and arrest doctors, not women. It's not their fault, or it is their fault, but they're just dumb, or crazy, or who knows. Trump couldn't help himself - I suspect he just wanted to show Matthews that he was smart, too, that he wasn't some loudmouth with no smarts to back it up. And he went for it. 

Now. of course, Trump is selling more bullshit - he never said it, the question was confusing, he was misunderstood out of context, yada, yada, yada. In his wake, Trump has left people gasping at every new outrage, every beyond the pale moment. That, too, just adds to the show. Made you look! And you knew it was bullshit, but you still looked, you're still taking it seriously... and he's still humming along. People ask, does Trump even believe the bullshit - as if, somehow, his own rejection of it would tell you something. It's a search for something irrelevant - off of the sales floor, virtually any salesperson I've met is a tremendous cynic. It's hard to respect the people who fall for your lines. I keep telling people who wonder if Trump is "for real" that you're looking the wrong way - what we need to ask, and figure out is... why are the people supporting him buying what he's selling. And can you sell them something else?

Trump is the triumph of America's real skill - salesmanship. It's what we do, it's how our economy works, selling is who we are, right down to the American Dream. We're good at it - we lie to ourselves and we lie to the world and occasionally we have to admit we've lied, but usually just to sell something else, something more. We invented modern advertising, we perfected the hard sell. It's impossible to blame Trump for turning back on us the tools we use everyday to make this country run. He's selling, and no, not everyone is buying. But some people are, and the GOP has the hard choice of rejecting the sales pitch and turning off the fans and buyers, or seeing this sales pitch through to what will be, almost without a doubt, a complete debacle. Stopping this train, now, would require skills at outdoing Trump that so far, no one seems to have - maybe if we called the cast of Million Dollar Listing. But even they would tell us, you need something to offer as an alternative sell. And what Trump knows, deep down, is that the forces opposing him in the GOP are armed, mainly... with bullshit.

Related articles

Trump's Image Among Republicans Continues to Tilt Positive

The Republican Civil War Has Begun

What killed Marco Rubio's presidential dreams? His own botched attempts at immigration reform.

Mitt Romney Mocks Donald Trump's Foreign Wives

See That Chair? He Put It There.

President Obama is getting a little (and not enough, I'd say) flack for saying to a heckler at this week's Pride celebration in the White House, "you're in my house." The sentiment, while understandable, belies the fact that dissent is enshrined in our American culture, and it will come through the doors of even the President's house. Eartha Kitt, famously, angered Lady Bird Johnson by speaking forcefully about deaths in Vietnam at an otherwise non-political luncheon. Laura Bush had to cancel her planned program celebrating poets when those poets made clear they didn't support the invasion of Iraq.

But more pointedly, being President doesn't make the White House yours.

The President has walked this line throughout his term in office; there's a tension between the "great man" pose he rode into the office and the sense that he's more than a bit diffident about the glad-handing, everyman aspects of taking lofty ideas into practical application, never mind the tension of disagreement and dissent. He seems aloof, even cold. He comes off as high handed at times - he's managed, more than once, to annoy congressional leaders because he seems to have no sustained relationships that he can leverage to achieve his own policy goals. He lectures, rather than attempting to persuade.

I don't think all of this makes the President terrible, just human, and flawed. He's a smart man. He's able to see the big picture. He'e clear-eyed about what need to happens to make progress. I think he's less thrilled with people who don't see what he sees. And he's not exactly patient about waiting for others to catch up. I'm also not entirely sure it gives him a real feel for the struggles of people, say, in poverty. Or the emotional pain of a man whose lover has to be deported (the point of the Pride protestor). Feelings, emotionality... these things get in the way of clear eyed assessments. It's hard to fake the caring side (just as it's also hard to pretend to be smart).

Oddly, that's why I think the Supreme Court had little choice today but to uphold the Obamacare subsidies. And that, really is where the President may be more accurately firm in saying "not in my house."

The Affordable Care Act made provisions for each state to operate a health insurance exchange, as a way to give individuals, the self employed, unemployed, or small business workers the opportunity to buy insurance as a group. The "individual market" had been one of the worst features of the insurance market for healthcare, where premiums were expensive and policies were often terrible, providing little coverage with high deductibles. While the exchanges have issues, and policies still have some fairly high deductibles, the exchanges combined with tax subsidies for low wage workers have enabled any more people to obtain insurance.

It was the subsidies that brought the case to the Court; a small group of (questionable) plaintiffs claimed the required purchase on the exchange was onerous, and that the subsidies were illegal because they should only apply to state exchanges and not the federal exchange, based on one clause in the mammoth law. For months, since the case was taken up by the Supreme Court, there was speculation that an adverse ruling would "destroy Obamacare." Doomsday scenarios were predicted. Panic in the streets. Dogs and cats living together. You get the picture.

Calmer heads - me included - have quietly pointed out the obvious: the lawsuit made no sense. If a state fails to operate an exchange - as many Republican led states chose - then the federal exchange operates as the state's exchange, and the subsidy is for the same purpose. That, in essence, is what John Roberts said today. And it's basically the same thing the President said, in his calm, definitive way when asked about it a month ago. He also said the Supreme Court should never have taken the case. That's accurate too, though, as always, he appeared somewhat high handed in saying it.

Conservative hatred of the President has everything to do with his calm sense of certainty. "Arrogant" is their first descriptive term about him, and it has, of course, everything to do with race, though that too just makes them angrier. "It's not because he's black" they fume, and at best we can't know. But it sure seems that having this black man be so smart and so right so often really annoys them.

The President came out today for a "victory lap" speech in the Rose Garden that again made his point: I was right, this thing is working, and opponents should just get used to it. It's my house. See that chair? I put it there. It may not be the "kinder, gentler" way of expressing it, but that is not the President we have. If anything, this is the notion of a Presidency that conservatives have favored more than the left: tough, no nonsense, certain of his mind and his actions. Which may explain why so much of the loathing the President gets from the right seems so, well, childish - it's the tantrums of overfed kids who can't get more dessert. Because daddy said so, that's why. Conservatives have replaced their strongest suit - a clear eyed, almost cold, assessment of human nature and the facts - with the appeal of emotions and feel good slogans. And liberals, God love us, have gone in the other weird direction - a party of clear eyed realists using data to support the feel good policies of helping the less fortunate. Because we love them, and everybody.

More than most lefties, conservatives need the kick in the head of taking in the view of the world that doesn't agree with their every whim: they've been blind sided by Mitt Romney's loss, by the unpopularity of endless war, and now by yet another decision that says more health care available to more people is better. And liberals, while embracing the President's forcefulness in standing up for his policies, might want to look around that house and ask, did we really need a chair? and does it really need to be just, well, there? It's our house, really. And it's ok to redecorate. No matter what daddy says.

Related articles

SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare

What if the White House Wins the Next Supreme Court Obamacare Case?

President Obama speaks on latest Obamacare victory

ObamaCare Omen?

Obama's White House Heckler Unveiled

VIDEO: Obama heckled at LGBT reception

Oh Fer The Love Of God!

I always say (to myself, anyway) you wait long enough... and there will surely be something to blog about. 

Sure enough, I decide to wait until the end of Easter/Passover vacation to get started again... and there you go.

Google's decision to run a graphic for the birthday of Cesar Chavez on Easter should really be no big deal - though I have to admit, I was a little surprised, until I realized they were the same day. Easter was a busy day this year - I'm now on Facebook, and two other FB friends (or as I used to say, friends) also had birthdays on Easter. And it was Easter. And Passover.... and a bunch of other stuff, which was kind of sad.

Anyway, I don't think it's surprising, exactly, that the conservative right went nuts over the linking of Chavez to Easter - or, more hilariously, that they mistook Cesar Chavez for Hugo Chavez, the recently deceased leader of Venezuela, which made them all the angrier. I mean, as they say, we do all look alike, especially when the last names are similar. 

In the wake of Republicans trying to rebuild a relationship with Latin Americans, though, this farce is basically example A of why most of these efforts are doomed. Too often and for too long, the right wing's predictable responses to even the mildest discussions of liberal figures - Cesar's hardly worth the controversy, and let's face it, Hugo's dead - is screaming outrage. And the outrage just seems misplaced - and in the case of Venezuela, awfully late now that the real question is whether Venezuela will simply fall apart in the wakr of his (er, Hugo's) death.

But the enmity for the Chavezes and all they represent - the union building, poverty work and immigration friendly politics of Cesar; or the communistic approach to governing Venezuela more in favor of the downtrodden - is what's really going to keep conservatism, and by extension the GOP, from going wide. There's just got to be something about Hispanic culture and politics that conservatives have to figure out how to support and present positively, or it's just, don't bother. This story is already over.

And it's not as though liberals are going to care deeply about whether Republicans get this right or not - frankly, at this point, the left's view of the right's Hispanic outreach is just that, as farce. The guys who want double edged barbed wire along the Mexican border, whose most extreme elements would actually try to round up "illegals" in every corner of the country and deport them, whose last Presidential candidate attracted about 30% of the Latin vote - these guys are not people we take seriously as any sort of threat. Have at it guys, because at the rate you're going, we'll get Hispanic support for the Democrats up to or near the 90+% numberws we enjoy with African Americans. Not even trying.

Of course, beyond the gloating, all of this is depressing. It's depressing to hear the shrill rhetoric opposed to anything that might make life even sort of slightly better for people on the edges of society, be they migrant farmworkers or the poorest citizens of a third world country. It's disheartening to see people you might otherwise at least respect as thoughtful opponents descend into the absurd anger and shrieking of the fringiest conservative elements, or even at a minimum, simply draw a line, any line, about rhetoric that goes too far. When Don Young of Alaska, a member of House leadership, blithely refers to "wetbacks" with little more than "oh, gee" from other Republicans, that's the kind of thing that shows what the right accepts in its senior leadership. For God's sake, this isn't hard.

But then that's Easter in the land of politics: dressing things up, trying to put a kindly face on the oldest of stories (I've always preferred the Potestant version, which sems to focus on the white light and the post-rising Good News rather than the more Catholic-seeming obsession with the pain and suffering He felt on the cross), candy coating the bad stuff so we won't maybe notice. The same week of all these Hispanic fumbles, the right is practically in seizures as (several) lifetimes of antigay rhetoric don't add up to a hill of beans fighting marriage equality, the battle they can lose now, or lose later. By Sunday, even Catholic priests in America were scrambling to find the right words to try and evince some sort of caring for gay people, even while condeming homosexuality and absolutey trying to rule marriage off limits. The contortions were breathtaking, the mixed messages were head scratchingly confused. We - the angry gay radicals of near limitless power, thank you John Roberts - have apparently managed, if nothing else, to turn "homophobia" into such a dirty word that conservatives almost universally flinch as they try to expalin opposing unions for people they really, really... well, we don't hate them, we just think they should settle for second best... or something. Really... breathtaking.

It's a weird Easter this year - it came too early, the weather's too weird for it, all of these crazy controversies and a new Pope who seems, genuinely, to believe that "poverty" and "humility" are not just nice words but a better, more honest way, to approach one's duties as a Priest. No cars, furs, or penthouse papal apartments? Good lord, now what?

It's a weird Easter, in some weird zone between secular and religious, where liberal theology and social justice apparently won the war while no one was looking. A moment when the Christian, decent things we can all pretty much sign on to - treating each other decently, caring for those less fortunate, helping those in actual need - seem to trump the less pleasing notions of doing for ourselves, getting what's mine, and judging others with a critical eye. It's an Easter big enough for the death of Christ, the birthday of the man who stood for farm workers, and even my friend the married gay minister. And that's pretty good... for the love of God.

Related articles

It's Cesar Chavez, You Idiots! Not Hugo!

Google angers Christian right by honouring socialist at Easter - Hamilton Spectator

The Change We Cannot Make

Six or so years ago, I started a blog; partly out of a passion to write, and partly because, I realized soon after starting it, I was immensely frustrated by the politics of the early 2000s.

At the time I wasn't alone, and a whole world of blogging grew and thrived and started the wave of change that, I'm convinced, eventually swept Barack Obama into the White House. 

Six years later, life is different, politics is different, and my passion for writing... drifted. This year I largely sat out the election, and blogging - both thoroughly disenchanted with the politics of right now, and pursuing some personal ambitions.

In any case, I'm glad I waited. Now, I feel like I have something to say. Again.

For months - probably close to a year - I've been gamely predicting to anyone who'd listen that Barack Obama would, most likely, be reelected by a grim electorate who, while clearly not impressed with his first term, saw little alternative. When Mitt Romney steamrolled his way to the GOP nomination, I calmly told family and friends that America would not elect him President.

Yeah, I feel pretty vindicated, but that's not really my point.

Mitt Romney was a bad bet that Republicans made whose loss confirmed political ideas I've been trumpeting for months, if not years: that Republicans have deep internal issues that must be addressed to grow and thrive, that anger alone cannot win an election of make a movement, and that both Mormonism and a pronounced inability to seem genuine or sincere wrecked Romney well before the debates. I feel particularly heartened that the dark witch's brew of undiscussed racial bias and deep personal hatred for Obama of many conservatives led to nothing but failure. And I remain amazed about how months of obvious indications of Romney's unfitness - the "47 percent" remarks, the lack of any common touch, the ham-handed inability to note any comprehension of the problems ordinary people face - still left so many with some sense that Romney could win this. He couldn't. He never could.

More obviously, though, this election is yet further confirmation, as if we needed it, that the Presidency of George W. Bush and the worst tendencies of the conservative movement have combined to create a Republican Party on a slow path to complete failure. Virtually everything about this election underlines that reality: