OH, BOY

OH, BOY

I was wrong.  

I never thought the country would vote for a candidate who called Mexicans rapists, bragged about grabbing women's genitals, mocked the disabled, for years supported the birther fraud, had no policies he could explain in any coherent fashion, is narcissistic and probably clinically ill at some level, and is not at all prepared to be President.

We are in big trouble.  

For proof, see second paragraph.  

The argument from Trump's supporters is that he is not the racist, sexist, inarticulate charlatan I think he is.  The problem with that argument is that the evidence for these realities comes from Trump's own mouth and behavior.  Earnest supporters of the Donald nevertheless assert the contrary, saying the problem with people like me is that I take Trump "literally but not seriously" while they take him "seriously but not literally."  

That's cute.  

Now all of Trump is reduced to a metaphor. 

Still, however, I am perplexed. 

Because . . . 

I cannot, for the life of me, conjure in my mind the metaphorical meaning of "grab[bing]" women "by the pussy."

The pundits are having a field day.  All of them are doing apologetic cartwheels as they fess up to missing the possibility that His Hairness could actually win.  As with all things "punditry," however, these should be taken with a large grain of salt.  Clinton won the popular vote and lost all the states she was predicted to win -- Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan (perhaps; the final vote is not yet in), and Wisconsin -- by small margins.  She even lost some states she was predicted to lose -- Arizona, Georgia, Texas -- by smaller margins than would normally have been the case had past been prologue. The pundit notion that Hillary was thus a uniquely flawed candidate is a bit over the top.

So is the notion that Bernie . . .  or Elizabeth Warren . . . or Joe Biden . . . 

Would have won.

All would have been painted as out of touch and unacceptable in the 24/7 negative campaign that was Trump's.  

To be painfully honest, going negative is what Trump does best. Always has been.  He learned it at the feet of Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's doppelganger in the 1950s who made lying with a straight face a habit until Donald Trump turned it into an art form.

So Bernie would have been painted as a Communist,  Warren as an unvarnished Harvard professor who never created a job in her life, and Biden as . . . well . . . Biden -- an over-the-top. loose-lipped, forever politician (remember, Biden was elected to the Senate when he was 29 and has literally been a politician for more or less his entire adult life).  

And, oh, by the way, lunch-bucket Joe also  lives in a mansion in Wilmington, so the Scranton working-class-roots thing would have been a bit too much as well.

None of this would have been fair.  Bernie is not a Communist; Warren is a courageous and informed policy wonk whose programs, especially those involving oversight of Wall Street, would actually work; and Biden is authentic.

But none of that would have mattered to our President-elect, the Tweeter-in-Chief.

Where to from here?

Though -- in light of my track record this year --  I shouldn't, I will venture some predictions.  

The first is that all those white, working class voters in the rust belt are about to be very disappointed.  

Bernie had a program for them.  It involved something on the order of an FDR-like New Deal where government spending created jobs in places from which they have fled, and big-ticket expenses like health care and education were paid for publicly.  

That's not what Trump will do because that is not what the institutional party he now controls will deliver for him.  

They will cut taxes, eliminate Obamacare, repeal Dodd-Frank, and tell you the free market will take care of the rest.  

But they will be  wrong.  

We have seen this movie once before.  

Health savings accounts cannot fund medical care for poor people who have no paychecks or for the shrinking and struggling middle class living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Wall Street unregulated is Wall Street run amok,  at the end of which one is delivered into a financial meltdown tantamount to a depression.  And tax cuts from Washington do not create jobs in Flint.  They didn't during the last Administration in which the GOP controlled the House, Senate and Presidency, and they won't in this one either.

Now, auto-industry bail outs, like the one Obama created at the beginning of his Presidency when Chrysler, Ford and GM were on their heels and about to die, do create jobs in Flint.

But Trump and his fellow-travelers were against that legislation and presumably still are.

The second is that the trade deals that exist won't be repealed and the one on offer (TPP) may still pass.  

The fact of the matter is that free trade significantly increases our nation's wealth.  The problem with free trade is that the wealth created is very unevenly distributed.  Were, however, free trade to end, the economic pie would shrink, dramatically,  and the GOP Trump now runs won't give him the votes to do that.  Instead, the new administration will tinker at the edges, bringing more claims under the deals to try to stop currency manipulation or dumping.  In other words, on free trade, the Trump administration will pretty much do what would have been done in . . . a Hillary Administration.

The third is that there are now a host of national security experts who are very afraid.  

This I know for a fact,  from sources I cannot disclose.  

Trump is dangerously uninformed and misinformed on issues of national security and needs to be set straight fast.  Putin is not an ally.  The middle east will not move forward if American troops are used to try to create the peaceful order only the people living there can create.  Water-boarding didn't stop acts of terrorism in the past, won't do so in the future, and is a crime.

The good news is that Trump spent 90 minutes with Obama yesterday, a meeting that no doubt amounted in large part to a polite tutorial on the subject of national security.  The other good news is that all the "Never Trump" DC policy mavens who swore they would not help him are now coming back because they think they have a patriotic duty to stop a potential train wreck.  The bad news is that the President-elect is that wreck.

The fourth is that the Supreme Court is lost to the right-wing if Trump gets to pick three Justices and  actually appoints the people he says he will.  

All of them -- and I mean "all" -- will overturn Roe v. Wade (and the right to gay marriage, if they get a chance), and radically shrink the federal government's ability to pass regulatory legislation founded on the Constitution's commerce clause.  A friend yesterday predicted that this latter reality means an end to the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. 

That remains to be seen.  

But it is worth noting that the kind of federal role right-wing jurists envision is basically the role the federal government had in the 19th century.  That role is pre-gay rights, pre-abortion rights,   pre-civil rights and pre-New Deal.  

Or -- to put it bluntly -- a world you and I . . . 

Will not recognize.

Trump's supporters will say that my parade of horribles either will not be that horrible or will not happen.  They'll assert that Trump is a pragmatist, a businessman, a fellow used to getting things done.  

That, however, is not what I see at first pass.

What I see  is a guy totally enamored of himself with a penchant for holding grudges and skewering rivals by whatever means, foul or fair, will work.  To that mind-set is  married a character loyal only to those who never waver in their support.  

His core advisers consist of his kids, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the three GOP amigos (Rudy, Christie and Newt), and (maybe) Mike Pence.  I am not convinced any of them can tell him "No" and make it stick, and of the pols in the room, all are destroyers, not builders. Rudy and Christie come at destruction from the vantage point of prosecutors with sharp elbows and pols who shut down bridges, Pence from the vantage point of a right-wing talk radio industry (where his political career began) that demeans much more than it informs, and Newt from his early days in the House where he used the politics of personal destruction to end the Democratic Party's control of that body.  In these advisers, Trump has found soul-mates.

For some, Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election last Tuesday.  She lost it in 1787 when guys in wigs created an anomalous (and anti-democratic) institution called the Electoral College that in two of the last five Presidential elections has awarded the office to the popular vote loser. The country is seriously and significantly divided.  Anti-Trump street protests have already erupted in dozens of cities. There are enormous questions concerning the President-elect's temperament, competence and good faith.  His "victory" is hardly a mandate.

A humble administration in these circumstances would govern non-aggressively, strive mightily for bi-partisanship, and delete the twitter account. 

Unfortunately, these folks are not that humble.

I was wrong about this election once before. 

I hope I am wrong again.

C'MON AMERICA

C'MON AMERICA

You're not really serious, right?

You're not about to elect a pathological liar, transparent sexist, more or less confessed racist, and inattentive charlatan to the Presidency.

You don't want an authoritarian con-man in the White House.

You'll reject the notion that being Commander-in-Chief is a position suitable for anyone with a part-time attention span and full-blown narcissism.

You don't want a President who will out-source the job to anyone who praises him because he hasn't a clue about policy and no desire to learn.

You've had it with a campaign from a GOP nominee which in truth has amounted to nothing but insult.

You understand that Presidential elections are not won by exhibitions of bad taste, adolescent immaturity writ large, and a foul mouth.

You get it that we don't want a thug in the White House,  or even a non-thug who encourages the thugs among us.

You understand that the history of this great country does not guarantee its survival in the wake of a fascist ascension, that the blood shed on battlefields throughout the world is not honored if we give away our country to a fool who brags about assaulting women, punching dissenters, disparaging foreigners, and playing us all for chumps.

You understand that you are tired of the sheer boredom of him, and of all his nonsense . . . and meanness . . . and utter lack of empathy or fellow-feeling.

You think that being President is not about how rich you are, or the amount you inherited (or were loaned), or the number of concrete edifices adorned with the forever (and often faux) boast of your name.

You understand that quips are not policies, that ad hominems are not arguments, and that the ad nauseaum repetition of promised victory, the path to which is never explained because (i) he can't explain it and (ii) it doesn't exist, is just a canard hiding the absence of any real campaign.

You know that being smart is not a crime, that being polite is not merely "politically correct," that those who disagree with you cannot automatically be deemed "corrupt,"  and that winning is about a lot more than promoting yourself and running down everyone else.

You don't want  a President who stiffs the little guy because he can and then calls it good business, or one who stiffs the taxman and calls himself smart and the rest of us, by implication, dumb.

You know that women are not numbers, assault is not sexy, immigrants are not criminals, and athletes in locker rooms are not pigs at a troth.

You understand that this complex and challenging world cannot afford the four years of neglect his election would guarantee.

Finally, you understand that the two people running this year are not remotely comparable; that the both of them are not "equally bad"; that  she is a smart, competent professional, flawed in some respects but possessed of enormous intelligence, fortitude and good faith; and that he, on the other hand, is an unmitigated disaster in waiting, ego and id and apparently nothing else, and not remotely qualified for the job he would have us give him.

And now, America, that you understand all of this . . .

Do the right thing.  

She has a name.  

Hillary.

BLAMING THE VICTIM

BLAMING THE VICTIM

In the wake of disclosures in which he bragged about "moving" on a married woman like a "bitch" and grabbing women's genitals, Donald Trump spent this past weekend in his two favorite places.

One was the 60th floor Fifth Avenue penthouse in New York City that he calls home.  Where he was holed up on Saturday and part of Sunday, surrounded by advisers and the faux city-scape used for his middle of the night "apology" on Facebook.  The other was . . .

The gutter.

Where he spent most of Sunday.

We have never had a candidate like Trump. Or, if we have, they have kept it very-well hidden.  Years ago, when I was a kid, Seven-Up ran ads calling itself the "un-cola."  Trump is the un-candidate.

Un-embarrassable, un-repentant and un-moored.

After somewhere in the neighborhood of anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours consulting his brain trust of Rudy, Bannon, Christie, Conway and The Kids, he decided that his implied if not explicit confession to sexual assault in 2005 was mere "locker room talk" for which he has now apologized and must be forgiven.  As Republican after Republican finally abandoned the sinking ship that is his Presidential campaign, and as his own running mate called to inform him that he had to fly solo on this one, Trump dusted off  the right-wing's old playbook and decided the only way to staunch the bleeding was to parade Bill Clinton's victims to a watching world before and during Sunday night's Presidential debate, the claim being that Hillary's decades-old defense of Bill now absolves The Donald of his own recent and present sins.

This is a new role for Hillary.  She apparently can be turned into a forgiveness machine, some sort of priestess without portfolio, bearing the power to absolve perfect strangers of their sexual transgressions on account of the fact that she once absolved Bill of his.

Trump, of course, didn't put it quite this way.  In his telling, his sins are forgiven because Hillary attacked Bill's ostensible "victims" and because his mere words are not in the same category as the former President's supposed acts.  Of course, those "acts" (as well as the claim that Trump is guilty of mere "words") are more assumed than proven, especially the heinous claim that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick thirty eight years ago. The only two people who know tell categorically different stories; there is no physical evidence that could corroborate the claim; no case was brought all those years ago; and Starr did not include those claims in his impeachment referral (though he shared his uncorroborated evidence with the House of Representatives).  This does not mean Broaddrick is wrong, nor do the same lacuna in the cases of Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey make them wrong . But it does not make them right either.

And whether they are one or the other really has nothing to do with Hillary, who is the only Clinton now running for President.

Broaddrick asserts Hillary was effectively a participant in Bill's acts because Hillary thanked Broaddrick for helping Bill shortly after the attack, a  thank you Broaddrick claims came with a look and a tone that scared her into silence.  This too, however, is impossible to verify and, in any case, implausibly assumes that Bill Clinton confessed to his wife, not just that he was a cheater, but much, much more as well.  And with Willey and Jones, there were no specific attacks on these women from Hillary Clinton.  In fact, the closest one can come to a Hillary defense that may be out of bounds is her now famous claims that Monica Lewinsky was a "narcissistic loony toon" and Gennifer Flowers a failed cabaret singer, both of which fall short of the sort of "slut-shaming" victims justifiably abhor and society now condemns.

As I watched last night's debate, I actually felt sympathy for Hillary Clinton.

The reality here is that Hillary defended her husband without knowing the truth.  He wasn't just lying to the rest of the world.   He was lying to her as well.  She was more (or as much) a victim than (or as) an enabler, and psychologists will tell you that even if she fell into the category of enabler, sweeping suspicion under the rug the way the spouse or children of alcoholics fashion survival out of denial, that does not make her less a victim.

It makes her human.

Something apparently lacking in Donald Trump.

Trump's charade last night was appalling.  He took people who are hurting and turned them into props designed to shield him from the consequences of his own sexism.  On Saturday, in that middle of the night Facebook post, he supposedly apologized for saying that, as a "star," he could "grab" women "by the p**y."   By Sunday, however, that apology had been turned into a farce, reducing his comments first to mere locker room banter and then to claims that  they were somehow less offensive given another female victim's sometimes false defenses of her husband's bad conduct.  

Meanwhile, Trump himself has been accused of raping a thirteen year old and sexually assaulting Jill Harth, a one-time girl-friend, both would be victims who Broaddrick, Willey and Jones presumably believe if they are sincere in asserting that their own claims must be taken as true.  The difference, of course, is that Harth and the thirteen year old are making rape and sexual assault  claims against someone who actually is running for President.  Broaddrick, Willey and Jones are not.

All of this is par for Trump's course.

The essence of Trump is that his failures are always someone else's fault. Calling women fat slobs or pigs is Rosie O'Donnell's fault. Being called out on this conduct at the first GOP primary debate is Megyn Kelly's fault. And now, even the conduct he described to Billy Bush in the Access Hollywood tapes is someone else's fault. 

Look closely at what he said. The run up is as important as the jarring use of the p-word: "You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.  It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star,they let you do it.You can do anything."

"They let you do it."

The trope is as old as time. It's her fault.

Ten years ago, it was the fault of the women at the pageants or on the set. They let him do it.

Last night, in the twisted world Trump inhabits, his perversion was turned into the fault of . . .

The woman running against him for President.

WORSE THAN NIXON

WORSE THAN NIXON

In the annals of American history, one President stands alone in his infamy.

That President is Richard M. Nixon.

Of the forty-four men to become President of the United States, only Nixon has resigned.  Among that same group of men, it is also clear that only he, upon being impeached, would have been removed after a Senate trial.  In fact, he resigned only after the House Judiciary Committee had sent a bi-partisan bill of impeachment to the full House.  Republican leaders in the the House and Senate -- Arizona's Rep. John Rhodes and Sen. Barry Goldwater and Pennsylvania Sen. Hugh Scott  -- then marched to the White House to tell their Republican President that the gig was up. 

The good news is that Nixon was unique in his ignominy.

The bad news is that, if Donald Trump becomes President, things will be worse.

Nixon's "high crimes," the standard required for impeachment and removal, are well-known.  He covered-up the break-in, burglary and bugging of the offices of his political adversary, the Democratic Party. His cover-up was explicit and fully endorsed.  Within days of the arrest of the burglars, the White House tapes show him instructing the CIA to have the FBI stop its investigation on the trumped-up ground that its continuation would impede national security, and promising to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush-money for those arrested. 

In July 1972, at the time Nixon committed his crimes, he was about to be re-nominated for President, and the Democrats were about to nominate South Dakota's Sen. George McGovern.  

McGovern favored American withdrawal from Vietnam, amnesty for draft evaders, a close to 40% cut in defense spending, and a de facto guaranteed annual income. He would become the most liberal nominee ever put up by the Democrats.  Consequently, he was Nixon's dream opponent --  an unwashed leftie whose supporters were at war with a mainstream America comfortable at that time with neither acid, amnesty nor abortion, the three-word sobriquet hung around McGovern's neck. 

Watergate, therefore,  was an act of unmitigated self-destruction.

Volumes of ink have been spilled attempting to explain Nixon's behavior.  He has been deemed paranoid, irredeemably dishonest, and at times unhinged.  In fact, though he may have been all of these at one point or another, his flaws were much more quotidian.  His lying was selective, his obsessions particularized.  As President, he had governed largely from the center, annoying conservatives not as much as liberals, the latter of whom by 1969 could not stomach any more (let alone four more) years of Vietnam, but a lot nevertheless. In fact, his creation of the EPA and OSHA and his endorsement of wage and price controls and the Family Assistance Plan (which would have guaranteed an income to all)  sent conservatives off the deep end.  And as a politician, he no doubt thought that what he was covering-up in the summer of '72 was nothing other than what his opponents had been doing for years.  

About this, of course, he was wrong.  

But not so wrong as to be deemed crazy.

Politics was dirtier then.

So, Nixon deserved what he got.  But withal, he was and remains a recognizable political entity.

Not so Trump.

Trump does not lie about a few things or select things.  He lies about more than most things.  Fact-checkers at PolitiFact have rated 69% of his statements as either false, mostly false, or "pant-on-fire" false. Unlike Nixon, Trump's narcissism knows no bounds.  His only apparent requirement (from anyone) is adulation.  Nixon obsessed about his enemies in general and the Kennedys in particular.  Trump obsesses about himself and condemns anyone who either refuses to join in the obsession or says anything at odds with its self-congratulatory assertions of personal triumph, unparalleled intelligence or sexual prowess. Nixon was stuck in some sort fear that Ivy Leaguers never respected his intelligence.  

Trump is just stuck . . .

At about age 13.

Despite his flaws, Nixon also was a student of policy.  He was at home in the world of legislative mark-ups, in-depth briefs, and give and take with  Henry Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, two of the many Ivy League intellectuals who actually worked for him. Trump has the attention span of a gnat and is at home with Steven Bannon, the alt-right take down artist adept at put-downs and put-ups.  To his credit, Nixon actually ended segregated schooling in the south and enforced the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.  Trump, on the other hand, was catapulted onto the national scene via the racist lie that Obama was born in Kenya, a lie Trump continued to tell until just last week.

Nixon turned out to be a crook.

Trump will turn out to be a lot worse.  

On foreign policy, which Trump somehow thinks is his strength in this election, the comparison is even deadlier.  Nixon spearheaded detente with the Soviet Union and the opening to Red China.  The opening was a product of strategic design.  He and Kissinger wanted to send a message to the Soviets that their monopoly on bi-lateralism with the Chinese was over.  And it worked.  After the Chinese thaw, Nixon began to negotiate SALT II (the second Strategic Arms Limitations Talks). President Ford achieved a significant breakthrough in those talks in 1974, and President Carter signed the SALT II agreement in 1979.  Though never ratified by the Senate, both the Carter and Reagan Administrations abided by it,  and ultimately President Reagan did his dance with Gorbachev that later brought the Cold War to an end.

Now, compare Trump.

On the one hand, he begins his negotiations with insult.  Exhibit A -- Mexicans are rapists.  On the other, he praises the autocracy that has emerged in Russian under Vladimir Putin.  Nixon is turning over in his grave (in fact, on this point, so is Reagan).  Were he going one on one with Putin, the last thing Nixon would do is give Putin leverage.

But that is exactly what Trump has done (and the reason Putin likes him).

Trump alienates NATO allies by turning American's unconditional defense against any Russian incursion into a defense conditioned on the payment of back dues, a move that simultaneously emboldens Putin into believing America will turn a blind eye to any designs he has on the Baltics and ultimately end the sanctions designed to reverse his seizure of Crimea.

Similarly, Trump weakens the leverage inherent in America's nuclear superiority by announcing that, maybe, the Japanese and South Koreans should go nuclear to defend themselves from North Korea, on the one hand watering down America's guarantee to defend Japan and South Korea and on the other endorsing nuclear proliferation in a world that needs to move in the opposite direction.

This is not strategy.

It is stupidity.

Trump constantly supports his absurdities with the line that he doesn't want "to show his hand" in any subsequent negotiations.  But in his all-the-world's-a-real-estate-deal that only he can close, he isn't holding his cards; he's just proving he has no idea what is in the deck or how to use it.  Nixon didn't weaken NATO before he went to China or negotiated with Brezhnev.  He didn't open relationships with China by insulting the Chinese.

And then, of course, there is Trump's temperament.  Solipsistic, mercurial, bombastic and totally unfit to be anywhere near the nuclear codes.  The list of seasoned foreign policy operatives opposing him grows by the day.  And that list is replete with Republicans, ranging from Brent Scowcroft and Robert Gates to numerous officials who served in the Reagan and both Bush Administrations, all of whom believe Trump does not have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief.

The verdict is in.  Trump has all of Nixon's flaw and none of his talents.

It did not seem possible in 1974.  But with Donald Trump as President, we would in truth have someone . . .

Worse than Nixon.

THINKING

THINKING

I am tired of pollsters asking me what I think.

And I am tired of them asking you what you think.

We all need to stop thinking about what we are thinking.   We need to just . . .

Think.

This week's post-Labor Day, now-is-the-real-start-of the-campaign news is that Hillary and His Tweetness are starting to get pretty close in the polls.  No matter that Clinton still has a 75% plus chance of winning when all the relevant data is analyzed.  No matter that the Donald literally has to run the table on close to all of the eleven states in play to have any chance of winning.  No matter that he is close to losing in Texas, which hasn't voted for a Democrat for President in forty years.   No matter that Trump still refuses to disclose his tax returns . . . or his medical history . . . or, for that matter, any policies beyond those he can squeeze into 140 characters.  Indeed, no matter that, regardless of what he says, anything coming out of Trump's mouth has the half life of a mayfly.

We are now told the race is close.

This is also the new conventional wisdom.  Writ large, Trump's disaster of a Republican convention and Hillary's eight point bounce in the wake of her own has now supposedly  evaporated into the hair-splitter that campaign professionals always predicted.   Trump can do no wrong great enough to disqualify himself and Hillary can make no mistake  small enough to be ignored.  Neither is loved so both must be equally hated.

Hence the current cynical stalemate all the polls are selling us.

Are you buyin' it?

I -- decidedly -- am not.

Roughly 126.8 million Americans cast ballots in the 2012 Presidential election.  In the 2008 election, that number was 129.4 million and in the 2004 election it was 121 million.  If any of those numbers accurately predict the 2016 turnout, more than 60 million people -- and a lot more if the 2008 or 2012 turnout numbers apply -- will have to vote for Trump for him to win.  And a good chunk of those votes will have to come from non-white, Hispanic, female and college educated white male voters, all of whom Trump is now losing by large margins, in places like Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Colorado, where in all places he is currently behind.

That is not going to happen. 

So, what explains the current this-is-too-close-call narrative?

Here's my answer.

First, we have become so enamored of polls that we no longer understand they are just snapshots, and wildly divergent snapshots at that.  The real data driven wonks who accurately predict these things (think Nate Silver) long ago told us not to be taken in by any single poll.  They warned of outliers (polls consistently biased in one direction or the other), and constantly reminded us that the Presidential election is really fifty separate contests, making national polls pretty useless when it comes to predicting results (just ask Al Gore).  Polls fluctuate.  Turnout models can be wrong, as was the case with all the polls that predicted a Romney victory in 2012.  And these fluctuations and underlying models matter.  

If the notion that millions -- perhaps more than ten million -- of your neighbors changed their minds between August and now, and not once but twice, strikes you as strange, that is nevertheless what the polls are telling us.  These people went from liking Trump enough to get him close to Clinton, to hating him enough for her to be thinking landslide, to now liking him enough once again so as to once again make it close.  If this is the case, this race will not be decided by whoever wins the undecideds.  It will be decided by whoever wins the indecisive.

But I'm not convinced people are really that indecisive.  Maybe they're just tired of being asked about it so much and are just playin' with the pollsters.

Second, the political reporting class really cannot analyze anything other than the horse race.  Their collective expertise on issues of policy is embarrassingly shallow.  They simple do not have the ability to talk about the relative worth of each candidate's actual policies.  

Here's a good example.  Trump's economic policy is to cut income taxes and corporate taxes  (without touching Social Security or Medicare), as well as unspecified regulations in general, and repeal Dodd-Frank, all ostensibly in order to generate jobs. He would also impose high tariffs on imported goods from countries he thinks got the better of us on trade deals, and deport undocumented workers. Clinton's is to increase the minimum wage, cut middle class taxes, fund an infrastructure bank, pre-school and national R & D (principally on scientific research), and strengthen unions.  She would also retain Dodd-Frank and re-jigger the capital gains tax rate so that long term (but not short term) gains got preferential treatment.  The latter policy is intended to help change Wall Street's time horizon and wean it off its addiction to short term financial fixes designed to goose quarterly share prices. 

To evaluate either set of policies, journalists would have to analyze whether those policies would generate the fiscal stimulus needed to put money in people's pockets and boost demand.   This type of analysis is complicated and dry.  It has none of the excitement of shifting polls, His Hairness' latest insult, Hillary's meandering accounts of her emails, or Bill's sex life.

In my opinion, any fair evaluation would make it a no contest. Trump's approach will either weaken or at the very least not strengthen demand because it will raise the deficit, kill the ability of the government to fund infrastructure spending, put money in the pockets of the rich (who won't spend it) and corporations (who will hoard it, as they do now, waiting for a rebound in consumer demand that won't happen). It will not put cash in the pockets of the middle and lower classes (who need it and will spend it). Hillary's approach, on the other hand,  would increase short-term demand, albeit slowly depending on how fast the infrastructure bank and R & D is funded and the minimum wage hike comes on line; and it would increase long term demand assuming labor law reforms that actually boost the power and membership rolls of unions. The proper criticism of her approach is that it is still weak tea (or not enough immediate tea); the proper criticism of Trump's is that it is no tea at all.

Third, and for the same reason they focus on the horse  race, the media is in love with a "both of them are equally hated" narrative. Part of this love affair is due to the fact that it's true -- Hillary and Trump are the two most disliked candidates for President in polling history.  The problem, however, is that one of them will be President.  It would therefore be nice if the media were able to distinguish between the reasons each of them is disliked and provide something other than either the false equivalence that characterizes much reporting (as in the both of them are equally bad) or the grading-on-a-curve now being applied to Trump.

This last problem is critical.  As Paul Krugman pointed out in his Sunday column  in The New York Times, the media is doing to Clinton and Trump what it  did to Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 . Clinton's mistakes are being magnified beyond reason and Trump's ineptness is being forgiven with abandon. 

This has to stop.  

The Clinton Foundation was not some pay to play adjunct of the State Department while Hillary ran Foggy Bottom. To the contrary, it has a stellar record of providing much needed medical and other assistance to some of the most impoverished parts of the world and has been given high marks for transparency and efficiency by all  the charity watch-dog groups.  Moreover, if helping Bill Clinton cure AIDS or malaria in Africa was perceived as the requirement for a ticket to see Secretary Clinton, I'm not particularly clear on why that was such a bad thing.  Similarly, Hillary's private email server was not remotely a crime, nor was it designed to allow her to avoid the need to archive her public records. The latter problem bedevils even today's government servers as we attempt to get our hands around the complex task of saving and archiving virtual data.

Similarly, Trump's demonstrated lack of knowledge about large swaths of policy and his penchant for lying and insult whenever he is challenged does not evaporate if he behaves for the next two months as his handlers (or, more likely, his kids) finally dog-house his inner beast. Put simply, Trump's demonstrated racism and sexism, along with his thin-skinned bullying that often appears to border on the psychotic and in any event simply shields enormous gaps in knowledge and attention to policy detail, has already disqualified him from getting anywhere near the nuclear codes.  And silence for the next two months will not etch-a-sketch away that disqualifying past.

Where to from here?

That's simple.

Hang up when the pollsters call.  Stop telling them whether you're still thinking, or what you're now thinking, or what you will be thinking about thinking in the two months ahead.

Just think.  

It will have the desired outcome.   Your eventual vote will not be the product of an ennui brought on by prognosticators telling you how bad the choices are.  Or the product of an ignorance brought on by a drumbeat of false equivalence.  Or even the product of a desperation born of the desire that it just be over.

It won't be any of this.

Instead, it'll  be . . .

Thoughtful.

TURNING THEM OFF

TURNING THEM OFF

I am angry.  

For four days, I have barely turned on the television.  I've caught snippets of the speeches from the Republican National Convention -- Chris Christie encouraging delegates to "lock her up"; Rudy Giuliani blaming blacks for the death of cops; countless walk-ons claiming Hillary Clinton was responsible for the death of our ambassador and others in Benghazi; Melania plagiarizing Michelle.

But every time I tried to focus, the screen went blank.  

I am, by reputation and long practice, what many would call a political junkie.  Not the sort of political junkie who makes his living at it -- like the pundits and all those politicians who keep getting re-elected each year.  But at one point I wanted to be one of them. Only the voters saved me. In 1992 I ran for Congress and lost.  

In 1993, I met Bruce Babbitt -- then Secretary of the Interior in the first Clinton Administration -- at a fundraiser in upstate New York.  A photographer was following him. I told him about that run for Congress  and asked if he'd take a picture with me.  He said "Sure." And just before the camera was about to click, he whispered in my ear . . .

"You still have the virus."

I know he was right.

Because a year later, I ran again.

And lost again.

The addiction, however, was still there.  From 1996 to 2001, I served on the New York State Democratic Committee and for a couple of years was even one of the vice-chairs of the party.   In 2000, I pulled an all-nighter waiting for the networks to decide who won the Presidency. As we all know now, they couldn't.  Throughout this period,  I helped other people run. And when it came to the political conventions, I was all in.

Much to the chagrin of my family, I spent a week during the summer of 2004 screaming at the Republicans maligning John Kerry.  They were in New York City at their convention.  I was on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. 

On vacation.  

But that didn't matter.  For me, at convention time, it was gavel-to-gavel.

Until this year.  

And this GOP convention.

Cleveland was gavel-to-gavel bile.  Sheer hatred.  Packaged in paranoia.  The "Melania loves Michelle" kerfluffle was a respite, an unforced time-out from the otherwise steady diet of lies . . .

Served up by a retinue of C-list speakers . . .

To an audience that had more in common with a lynch mob than a nominating convention. 

Trump is their strong-man in waiting.  He has no ideas, just loud- mouthed pronouncements.  And I mean it when I say "loud"; he spent most of his seventy-seven minute "speech" last night . . .

Shouting.

He is an an out-sized ego married to a lazy brain.   He pretends his opponents have brought us to the brink of catastophes that do not exist -- impugning illegal immigrants as the criminals they are not; asserting ISIS was brought to you by Clinton when its true parents were the neo-cons and  Bush II; claiming the number of cops killed has risen when over the last four decades it has been steadily declining; making the same claim about homicides generally; and even asserting that a professional like FBI Director James Comey is corrupt because he refused to indict someone who did not commit a crime.

By force of will, he then claims these made-up problems will disappear with his ascension to the Presidency. He tells you this will happen "fast," but he never tells you how.   Or, if he does, the means are either things that won't happen (the "wall"), haven't worked (the "tax cut" or combat troops  in Iraq), are truly dangerous (the effective renunciation of NATO),  or are  . . .

Just plain crazy.

Falling into this last category was the ludicrous offer -- reported during the GOP Convention this week --  that, in an effort to induce Gov. Kasich to accept the Vice-Presidential nomination, Trump -- through his son, Donald, Jr.-- told Kasich that Trump would make him the most powerful Vice-President in history by giving him absolute authority over all domestic and foreign policy.

In other words, before he even assumed the office, Trump wanted to out-source the Presidency to his running mate.

No wonder critics think he's more interested in getting the job than he is in actually doing it.

These people -- Trump, Christie, Rudy, the assorted hangers-on,  and the audience of lunatic-fringers --  have no judgment, no perspective.  They cannot distinguish what is critical from what is important, what is important from what is advisory, what is advisory from what is secondary, and what is secondary from what is irrelevant.  They do not separate fact from fiction.  They lie with impunity.

And they think the rest of us are going to stay-tuned for the continuing show.

Not me.

I just turned it off.

And on election day this November, so will the country.

We are not the fools they take us to be.

WHEN "WILL IT WORK" BECOMES A SUBSTITUTE FOR "IS IT RIGHT"

WHEN "WILL IT WORK" BECOMES A SUBSTITUTE FOR "IS IT RIGHT"

It's almost impossible to get a handle on what is going on.

For the past twenty-four hours, the media buzz has been all about Donald Trump's racism.  The proximate cause for this outburst was Trump's repeated claim that the Indiana-born judge in the faux Trump University civil case has an inherent conflict of interest because of his Mexican heritage. This has taken Muhammad Ali's death and Hillary Clinton's presumptive nomination and placed these stories, if not off the front page, then decidedly below the fold.

Erstwhile GOP supporters (or, as they now call themselves, those in the party who intend to "vote" for him) have claimed that Trump's attack on Judge Curiel was "completely unacceptable" (Newt Gingrich), "flat out wrong" (John Kasich), and  "absolutely unacceptable" (Sen. Susan Collins of Maine).  House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump's claim a "textbook . . . racist comment."  And South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who won't endorse Trump but has of late at least cozied up to him,  said those who have endorsed Trump should now "rescind" their support.

For a number of reasons,  however, I  don't get it.

To begin, anyone surprised to discover that Donald Trump is a racist wins this year's Captain Renault award.

Renault, for all of you young enough not to know, was the Vichy police chief in the film-version of French Morocco's Casablanca who, on enforcing his Nazi superior's order that Rick's be closed immediately, told Humphrey Bogart that he was "shocked" to discover gambling going on in the Cabaret. Within seconds of this announcement, Renault pockets his evening's "winnings."

Roughly the same thing is going on now with Trump.

The Donald has run a racist campaign from the get-go.  Whether he was calling Mexicans rapists, or banning non-citizen Muslims from entering the country, or feigning ignorance of David Duke's white supremacy, or eating Taco bowls in service to a self-proclaimed love of Hispanics, or pointing out his "African-American" at a recent rally, the campaign's central trope has been overtly racist. The birther-in-chief who questioned Obama's nativity was appealing to all those out-of-work blue and not-so-blue collars quite certain that the cause of their demise was not Wall Street . . . or corporate greed . . .  or the lack of any fiscal policy worthy of the name, but rather was on account of . . .

Them.

Where "them" was always some group whose identity "they" either could not change  (nationality, race, country of origin) or were ostensibly free to choose without adverse consequence (religion).

The notion that Trump has only now crossed some unacceptable line is a farce.

He crossed that line long ago.  

In fact, he began his whole campaign on the wrong side of it.

The elites cannot have it both ways.  They cannot endorse or say they will "vote" for Trump on the one hand but condemn his racism on the other.  The former cancels out the latter and turns any pretense of disapproval into hypocritical word salad.  

The same, moreover, is true of the media.  On today's edition of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski said that any Republican endorsing Trump in light of his attack on Judge Curiel would be forever "stained."  As a guest on the show, the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson echoed both those comments and  his own in an op-ed published the day before.  In that op-ed, Robinson  warned "GOP leaders" that those "who choose 'party unity' over principle should know that there is no way back; when you embrace Trump, you make a decision that will stay with you forever." 

Both of them are right.  

But both of them are also late to the game.  

Why the delay?

As part of her analysis this morning, Brzezinski also said that Trump's comments on the judge were different from his Mexicans-as-rapists and ban-all-Muslims assertions earlier in the year.   The latter, she said, worked; in other words, they helped Trump win the primaries and the nomination. Brzezinski, however, contended that the attack on Judge Curiel "will not work."

And therein, I think, hangs the tale.

The answer, as it were, to the riddle of Trump's endurance.

Too many pundits and politicians, for too long, asked "will it work" either before or instead of "is it right."  And as long as it worked, the sheer depravity of Trump was either ignored or tabled.

This is dangerous.  My guess is that Trump will not win the general election and that, when all is said and done, we will have dodged the ethical and utterly insane bullet that is the Donald.  I am willing to speculate that the coming general election campaign will render him toothless and his elite supporters spineless.  

Nonetheless, because Hillary is not loved,  and Trump is for good reason actually hated, the distance from here to there will give mud-slinging new meaning.  And, at the end of the day,  our frustrated electorate will heap even more negative ratings on the political class.

It didn't, however, have to be this way.

The elites could have rejected Trump long ago.

They could have stood for something other than themselves.

This week we celebrate the life of a boxer  willing to go to jail because he wouldn't go to war.  

Muhammad Ali did not ask himself or his advisers what would work. Had he done so, the answer would have been obvious -- enlist; you are the heavyweight champion of the world; you will be sent to some safe haven, called upon to build up troop morale, and then sent home when your time is up. Robbed of his livelihood at precisely the time his gifts were supreme, he still chose conscience over accommodation.

Lots of  Republican office holders will be at Ali's funeral in Louisville this Friday, mourning his loss and singing his praises.  

That's fine.  

But when they go home . . .  

They need to start following his example.