Category: Politics

Having already gone over the real issues with supporting Hillary Clinton, I now turn to the presumptive (and he is nothing if not presumptive) Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

But what else can I say about Trump that hasn’t already been said? What new can I say that will not get me investigated by the Secret Service?

Well- as it turns out, Trump started the month of June with only $1.3 million in campaign cash.   He is apparently so desperate for funds that his family has taken to requesting donations from British and Icelandic politicians, apparently not realizing that soliciting campaign funds from foreigners is slightly illegal.   Trump is touting this bare-bones approach as part of a campaign strategy that has been working through the primaries, and says that he will rely on the Republican National Committee chests for national campaign money, even though a national party in a presidential election usually relies on the presidential nominee and their name recognition to raise funds for the “down-ballot” candidates in other races.

Basically, the Republicans led themselves to believe that Donald Trump and his “TEN BILLION DOLLARS” would be able to cover the costs of a national campaign, and having found out that he has a campaign chest in proportion to his hand size, they are now forced to hold the bag for Trump’s overleveraged and underfunded project.   Like many of his other creditors.  In short, they are starting to realize that Trump will do to their party what he did to Atlantic City.

 

However, Republicans can’t just admit this, because Trump’s predatory approach to business, like his brazen racism and sexism, is simply a bold embrace of a policy that more tactful and professional Republican politicians have been trying to foist on America by stealth for decades. And if they were to admit that strip-mining an institution until it has nothing left of value is a bad thing to do to their party, they might also have to admit that it is also destructive to both capitalism and government.

But the other reason that Republicans can’t get rid of Trump is that he DID win most of the primaries fair and square, and that’s largely because of that very brazen quality. He’s attracted a following through the old axiom “never apologize, never explain.” Trump’s fans like the fact that he fights for what he believes in, even when Trump himself doesn’t seem clear on what that is. “Trump’s honest!” they say. “He’s not afraid to be politically incorrect! He’s AUTHENTIC!!”

Oh yes, because nothing says authenticity like a circus-peanut tan that never quite reaches your eyelids.

But when the virtue of honesty is conflated with the vice of rudeness – often by a political class who have good reason to fear honesty – the result is that anyone who wishes to sell rudeness can do so by calling it honesty. And thus a population deprived of the virtue will embrace the vice.  It’s like living in the most antiseptic circumstances and then finally being exposed to filth, and your immune system has no experience with it.

Other politicians, especially in the GOP, had tried a similar posture, but they were always limited by a human frailty called “shame.” For instance, Chris Christie had developed a certain level of popularity as Republican Governor of New Jersey by taking positions against conservative orthodoxy and also mixing it up with reporters who disagreed with him. Unfortunately as an elected governor, he was placed in the awkward position of having to govern, and this is the part where he fell down. Nevertheless he decided to run for president even at a point when “Bridgegate” and other domestic issues were bringing his popularity to new lows. Going into the New Hampshire primary, Christie’s campaign had been in a slump, and to revive media attention, he decided to take his East Coast Insult Comic persona and kick it up a notch. Sensing weakness in Marco Rubio, he decided to call him a “bubble boy” who couldn’t take criticism or withstand debate. This turned out to be the case, given that in the New Hampshire debate, Christie accused Rubio of repeating the same speech over and over and Rubio responded with the same talking point he’d used on another question. Unfortunately while this targeting did send Rubio to fifth place in New Hampshire, Christie placed sixth.

But while Christie decided to exit the race after this, Rubio pledged to hang on until the Florida primary. In a late February debate, Rubio picked up on Trump’s sensitivity at being called a “short-fingered vulgarian” long ago in Spy magazine.  This scored him points with the media but allowed Trump to complain that Rubio “hit my hands” and made it rather clear on the debate stage that referring to his hand size was a phallic metaphor. Rubio escalated by making further such references including the implication of Trump’s small “size” and of his nervousness. Not only did this mean he was competing at Trump’s level (something Rubio later admitted he was not comfortable with), Trump escalated further by doing a speech that referred to Rubio’s reaching for a water bottle during a State of the Union response, where at one point the use of the bottle became an even more phallic metaphor. And then Trump won Florida, and Rubio had to drop out.

In the 1960s, both the Who and American Jimi Hendrix were making a name for themselves in Britain but had not yet made it big in the US. They both appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop festival in California. At the time, the Who made their stage reputation from “auto-destruction” or smashing their instruments on stage. They had to flip a coin with The Jimi Hendrix Experience to see who would do their show first, and the Who won. After the Who set, the Jimi Hendrix set ended with Hendrix picking his guitar with his teeth, playing it behind his back, and then not just breaking the guitar but first pouring lighter fluid on it, setting it on fire and beckoning the flames like he was summoning a pagan god, before finally grabbing it by the strap, smashing it around and throwing the scraps into the audience. And one of the Who roadies looked at Who guitarist Pete Townsend and said, “Pete, he’s stealing your act.”

And Pete said, “He’s not just stealing my act, he’s DOING my act.”

Perhaps that explains why Chris Christie not only suspended his presidential campaign but has ever since followed Trump around with a truly bitchified look on his face.   This is a man who has learned to walk in the steps of the true Master. Donald Trump did not invent the concept of the belligerent asshole politician. He merely perfected it.

The real impact of Trump’s candidacy will be in the long term effects on the culture, just as with any true trailblazer. Your dad or granddad might have been able to say, “I was at Monterey when I saw Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire.” Or, “I was in Detroit when I saw Iggy Pop crowdsurf for the first time.” This generation will be able to say, “I was watching TV when I saw Donald Trump accuse Megyn Kelly of being on the rag.”

Years after Hendrix’ death, he is still considered the greatest rock guitarist of all time. He practically built his own genre, and his influence extends even beyond that genre. Nowadays every song you hear on the radio is some teen-idol or EDM neo-disco shit, and yet half of those songs still have wild-ass guitar solos on the bridge even when they aren’t really needed, and nobody thinks anything of it because we’re all basically living in the house that Hendrix built. And so it will be with Trump.

Twenty years from now, college kids will be in the student union building, as some presidential candidate takes questions at a press conference while simultaneously fucking his mistress live on national TV, and the kids will look at the screen, and go, “Eh. It’s been done.”

 

 

 

 

In the wake of his mishandling of public relations after the Orlando massacre, presidential candidate Donald Trump has finally started to slump in the polls, although he was still only 6 points behind Hillary Clinton.  One reason Clinton isn’t pulling further away is because of her own negatives (which I’ve already discussed). However the reason Trump retains such polling as he does is the same reason the Republicans can’t just get rid of him: He represents a certain voter base that seems as resistant to empirical evidence as the Inquisitors who tried Galileo. “Trump will never get Mexico to pay for a wall.” “Yes he will.” “The Wall didn’t work for East Germany.” “Yes it will.” “We can’t balance the budget by defaulting on our debt.” “I don’t care.”

“Two plus two makes four.” “I don’t care.” “Gravity does not make things fall up.” “I don’t care.” “The sun does not rise in the west.” “Sez you, commie.”

When these people reject any argument against Trump, what some of them are saying, consciously or not, is, “My life sucks, and it will never get any better. I am too old and too poor to retrain for a decent-paying job, assuming there are any left in my town. And the only power I still have is the chance to force everyone else to live in the existential hellhole that I am now trapped in for the rest of my life.”

According to the government figures for April 2016, the US economy added fewer jobs than expected as the job market approached “full employment” even as the GDP figures showed that the economy grew by only 0.5 percent, its lowest rate in two years. What isn’t being mentioned in the low unemployment is figure is part of why the economy is still so sluggish: the near-employment figure doesn’t count those formerly employed people who have just flat out stopped looking for work.  According to a recent survey cited in a CNBC article, overall 43 percent of the jobless told pollsters that they had given up looking for work. “There was one optimistic sign in the survey” according to the article: 22 percent of those who reported being unemployed was because they quit their last job, up from a score of 15 percent in 2015, which supposedly is “a trend economists generally equate with a more mobile labor force.” But then the same survey said that more than half of those polled had not had a job interview since 2014, which may indicate that anybody who quits a job in this economy must hate it that much.

Of course the reason things have been stuck where they are is that businesses refuse to raise real wages, citing “the economy” and weak demand, blanking out the fact that demand is weak because no one has any disposable income.

The reason Walmart is such a great business model for this economy is due to a similar kind of circular logic: Walmart keeps their wages low, in order to keep their prices low, so that the kind of people who work at shitty jobs like Walmart HAVE to shop at Walmart cause that’s the only place they can afford to buy stuff.

Generally, I describe myself as right-wing and capitalist as opposed to left-wing and socialist, because I think the Right has a better grasp of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Which isn’t to say they don’t have their blind spots.

For instance, conservatives and libertarians mostly think that we shouldn’t make the welfare system too “cushy” because that will de-incentivize work since at some level you could get a better standard of living without working. But that policy has two issues: One, given the “Puritan work ethic” of this country, it’s very unlikely that we ever will have a comprehensive welfare state on the level of an EU country, at least not with our current political class. And two, given that fact, the gradual desertion of the workforce is not so much because the benefits of welfare are so great, but because the benefits of work are so meager. Put another way, if you’re going to be just scraping by whether you have a job or not, you might as well be just scraping by with plenty of free time on the government dole as opposed to just scraping by while busting your ass over 40 hours a week.

For my part, one of my last jobs was working in a call center for ten dollars an hour, doing a outsourcer campaign in support of a major insurer that offered Medicare Advantage policies, and I was one of the people who took calls from customers and pharmacies investigating why a drug claim wasn’t paid, or whether the policy was in effect, or some such. And at least once a day, sometimes once an hour, I’d have to tell some senior citizen that their claim didn’t run through because (rarely) the policy wasn’t even in effect due to a mistake on someone’s end, or more commonly because they were still in the deductible, or they were in the “donut hole”, or whatever, and that’s why the prescription that cost $30 last month cost almost $300 this month. And I’d have to hear them wailing and panicking, going, “How do you expect me to pay for this? Ooh, just you WAIT til you get to be my age! You don’t know what it’s LIKE to live on a fixed income! I have 800 dollars a month, to cover food, and rent, and utilities, and now you’re telling me I have to pay 300 of that every month for the rest of the year, just to get the medicine that I need to LIVE? Where am I supposed to FIND all this money???”

And I would have to listen to this, and I would think to myself, “Lady, I am half your age, with a full-time job, and I have the exact same problems.”

 

 

Not even after voting starts June 7^th, the press is saying that Hillary Clinton  (after votes in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands) has achieved a delegate majority for the Democratic presidential nomination (with party ‘superdelegates’). Nevertheless challenger Bernie Sanders still says he is going to take the fight to the convention. Meanwhile all of Donald Trump’s opponents for the Republican nomination have bowed out, giving the appearance of a united party and a lead in some polls before the conventions, as the “inevitable” Clinton is still finding it hard to close the deal in her own ranks.

This was of course also an issue for Clinton in her 2008 primary race against other candidates including the eventual winner, Barack Obama. Then it was assessed as a factor of “likeability.” But with only Sanders as a serious challenger in her party and Trump not only lacking Clinton’s experience but being that much more actively repulsive, Hillary is not being embraced. She is in fact considered almost as untrustworthy as Donald Trump. Historically, Trump’s unfavorable numbers in polls are higher than those of any other presidential candidate since polls were taken. That’s the good news for Clinton. The bad news is that Trump is the only one who exceeds her historical unfavorables.

Is it because she’s a woman? How did she get elected to the Senate then? How do Elizabeth Warren, Diane Feinstein or other women get elected? Is it because of the Republican Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy ™? Well, riddle me this: In the almost eight years since Barack Obama became President, the Republicans have not repealed the Affordable Care Act. They have not banned abortion. They have actually managed to create more sympathy for gay and trans rights than existed eight years ago. How is it that making Clinton seem untrustworthy is the ONLY thing they’ve managed to do right? Unless they’re not the ones who made her seem untrustworthy.

It is true that Clinton’s June 2^nd speech showed some welcome signs of life, in that she ridiculed her presumptive Republican opponent Donald Trump simply by reading his actual quotes and daring her audience to take them seriously. But up until that point she was not really responding publicly to her presumptive general election opponent, even to the degree that Sanders was. And again, even though Trump is that much more deliberately offensive, Clinton still doesn’t seem “likeable.” On the whole she doesn’t respond quickly to criticism. Actually, she maneuvers as well as an oil tanker.  The real issue with this is that she has become a magnet for negative publicity which is exacerbated by a defensive attitude.

For instance, the matter of her “damn emails.” While Clinton and her defenders say her use of a private email server was not unprecedented for the office, Madeline Albright and Condolezza Rice did not use email at all. Secretary of State Colin Powell did use a personal email account, he did not have it on a private server. Moreover, Albright, Powell and Rice, along with current SoS John Kerry cooperated with the Inspector General investigation and the Clinton staff did not.

It has been postulated by some that Clinton’s obsession with secrecy is because of being burned by the press and on the right wing by these issues and others such as the Whitewater real estate investigation, but it begs the question of whether she would have gotten in Dutch with the press (if not partisan Republicans) if she hadn’t been so secretive in the first place.

In any case, objections to the Clintons from the Right are of decades’ vintage, and there has been plenty of time to go over them, and most people who aren’t conservative dittoheads have dismissed them. But these days the most strenuous objections to Hillary Clinton are from the Left. The last time she ran in 2008, most Democrats had no objection to Mr. And Mrs. Clinton; they thought Bill was a great President and Hillary was a great Senator. They just thought Senator Obama had more to offer as a presidential candidate. But this year people are not objecting to Benghazi, or Vince Foster. The attacks on Hillary Clinton are coming from leftists offering critique of the last eight years of economic policy in comparison to the Clinton’s Administration’s push of NAFTA and its results on the American and international economies. In short, they’re a good deal more relevant to the average person than what the National Enquirer or Sean Hannity thinks of Hillary Clinton or her husband. And again, Clinton’s sense of optics is flawed: She is no more willing to reveal what she said in her speeches to Goldman Sachs than Trump is willing to reveal his full tax returns. (And if liberals say no one can prove a quid pro quo in her case, why do they support campaign-finance laws to begin with?)

It’s in this context that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders became Clinton’s primary challenger after Clinton’s political machine pushed away almost all other competition. He was able to hold on because of word-of-mouth and an Internet presence that allowed him to fund his campaign with many small-scale contributions, thus negating the need for the big-money sources that Clinton’s prospective opponents (and most Republicans) would have otherwise relied on – and incidentally undermining Sanders’ own thesis that you can’t get anything done in politics because of billionaire contributors. In any case, Sanders didn’t lose because of the “billionaire class.” He didn’t even lose because the system is rigged. It IS, but that’s not why he lost. Hillary Clinton was already on track to get the nomination with a majority of delegates not counting superdelegates, because she’d won more states, and by enough of a proportional margin, than Bernie did. And that’s because however compelling the leftist argument is in this economy, Sanders IS a socialist, and thus a materialist, and even on the Left, public concerns are not entirely economic. Hillary Clinton managed to regain her support in the black community and the South from 2008, and even if Sanders had been better able to address black concerns, he hadn’t done the legwork over years that the Clintons have in each of the state Democratic parties. And frankly, that’s because Sanders wasn’t a Democrat until this election, because like Trump, he rationalized that taking over a major party for a presidential race would make things a lot easier than running for president without one.

Which is why the Democratic Party’s engineering of the Nevada state convention on May 14 was both remarkable and unnecessary.

Among other things, they asked to hold a voice vote to approve changes in the rules without much of the audience having a hardcopy to review the rules. (I was at the Clark County convention the previous month where the Democrats tried the same thing, claiming that they didn’t print enough booklets for everyone as part of a ‘green’ initiative to save paper). Voice votes were held and then approved by the chairwoman on behalf of Clinton’s team despite the results by volume being rather dubious. Eventually after over ten hours of such manipulation, the chairwoman summarily ruled Clinton as the winner and left behind a screen of hotel security.  The thing is, even if Sanders supporters had won Nevada for their candidate, it would have been a net difference of four delegates (a Clinton lead of 278 delegates as opposed to 282, as of May 14).

Given that, it should not just be alarming that party officials were so obviously on one side, but that they were so determined to engineer a result when the outcome was already decided in their favor, almost as though there was a need to rub it in. That in itself doesn’t mean fixing the desired result was Clinton’s idea or Clinton’s order. But again, these shenanigans paralleled similar tactics in the Clark County Democratic Convention in the previous month, although with far less media attention, and that, on top of a lack of polling places in Arizona that Democrats were conveniently able to blame on Republican state officials, (since apparently they had no problems with the state election boards before) meant there was already a negative perception brewing that Clinton either saw no need to address or had no ability to de-escalate.

The convention is of a piece with the email issue, and the real estate issue, and everything else that liberals seem to think shouldn’t be a factor in making Clinton untrustworthy. Hillary Clinton is a control freak who needs to eliminate all outside random factors while having a dangerous tendency to make unforced errors that create more problems for her than the actions of others.

Up until fairly recently, I didn’t believe the theory that Sanders voters would get so sour-grapes that they would actually vote for Trump in November. After the Nevada convention, I’m not so sure. There’s no point in aligning with the Democratic Party if you’re a “progressive” who wants change when it’s pretty damn clear that the Clinton-centered Democratic National Committee doesn’t want progress and doesn’t want change.

On May 13, on Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill featured left-wing journalist Jeremy Scahill, who said that Clinton was the candidate of “empire” and the candidate of regime change, and thus not that much of an alternative to Trump. Maher asked Scahill, “You really hate Hillary, don’t you?” Scahill basically said that wasn’t the case, but I mean, Maher was saying that like it was a bad thing. Not liking Clinton is not something you have to apologize for. You could ask me, “You really hate gonorrhea, don’t you?” And I’d say, “Well, yeah… doesn’t everybody?”

I mean yes, gonorrhea is something that you could survive and get under control, as opposed to sticking your dick in a glowing green drum of radioactive waste, which is what voting for Trump would be, but that still doesn’t mean you WANT to get gonorrhea. And if I’m being told that the healthiest option for me REQUIRES contracting gonorrhea, then you shouldn’t be surprised that so many people, especially this year, want to join a third party, because the logic of “you HAVE to vote for the lesser evil” is the downward spiral that got us to where we are now. Now as to whether a third party vote is a good idea really depends on circumstances (I intend to elaborate on this in future posts) but make no mistake: The fact that things have been allowed to get to this point means THEY WILL get worse. Next election cycle, the Democrats will try to front David Petraeus as the “sensible moderate” candidate while the Republicans nominate the Bearded Lady, Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, or Sid from the Rob Zombie movies. Whatever, just as long as they’re anti-abortion.

And there’s the problem. Hillary’s best selling points are that she is a more experienced candidate who represents the sensible establishment position. But the reason Trump ate the Republican Party and Sanders almost snuck up on Hillary is because after eight years of Obama, (however much better he is in comparison to McCain and Romney) there’s no more hope and people have no more change in their pockets. Obama won because people were sick of the old way of doing things, and now they’re that much sicker. Trump is running as the opposite of the establishment mentality and Clinton is running as the representative of it. And it’s going to be that much more of a problem because of who she is. Obama at least has some ability to think outside the box. Whereas Hillary Clinton not only doesn’t think outside the box, she practically is the box.

A few days ago I participated in an online discussion elsewhere, and someone’s friend said she thought that Hillary might lose this election. I said, “I don’t think she’ll lose, but certainly not for lack of trying.”