Category Archives: Random Blogging

The Trump Cabal–God Help Us All

Yesterday, facing massive opposition, Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary withdrew. But that was a minor victory; most of his ill-equipped nominees have been confirmed.

The most accurate one-liner about  the sorry lot that Donald Trump has assembled to run–or destroy– some of the nation’s most important agencies was by a Facebook poster who said he’d seen better cabinets at IKEA.

A more sober–and sobering–analysis has been made by a retired jurist and lifelong Republican, in a scathing guest column titled “It’s Time to Impeach Trump.”

The leader of the band of Mad Hatters occupying the White House has already insulted allied world leaders, issued illegal and badly written orders, impugned a “so-called” judge appointed by his own party, and appointed the least-qualified cabinet ever. The first secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson. Trump appointed a big-oil executive with close ties to Russia. The first treasury secretary was Alexander Hamilton. Trump appointed a former Goldman Sachs exec who got rich foreclosing on homeowners. The national security advisor lasted 24 days.

It isn’t just the Cabinet. People given important roles in Trump’s White House are even more troubling, to put it mildly. Steve Bannon is the most high-profile example of the white supremacist cabal surrounding Trump, but he’s hardly the only one: 

[Sebastian] Gorka’s name and views appear to have a higher profile among experts on Islamophobia than in the counterterrorism community.

Engy Abdelkalder, adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, noted that like Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, Gorka has ties to anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.

“He has frequently appeared on Gaffney’s radio program to further such fears and misconceptions about Islam and Muslims,” Abdelkalder told TPM in an email. “And what makes him particularly pernicious is his academic credentials and now, prestigious political appointment, extend an appearance of legitimacy to anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice.”

Then there’s newly visible Steve Miller, described thusly by a story in the Grio:

If there was any question as to whether Donald Trump is running a white supremacist, authoritarian White House, Stephen Miller should erase all doubt.

Yes, Trump has more than one scary in-house Nazi adviser named Steve. We all knew about Steve Bannon, the white nationalist senior adviser who came to Washington via Breitbart with ideas about making America white again. Now there’s Stephen Miller, who is only 31 and on top of the world as the White House policy adviser behind Trump’s Muslim ban.

Given his incendiary remarks on last Sunday news shows, the subsequent media revelations about his background aren’t surprising, although the details are definitely chilling.

In high school, this angry little man complained about Cinco de Mayo celebrations, Spanish language announcements, an LGBTQ student club and a visit from a Muslim leader, as Univision reported. When Miller ran for class president, he was reportedly booed off the stage by 4,000 students. In his high school yearbook, he wrote: “There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”

When Miller attended college at Duke University, his racial hatred continued. Miller was affiliated with extremists such as neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer, white nationalist Jared Taylor and Islamophobic activist David Horowitz. Further, as Politico reported, Miller said that multiculturalism undermines American culture. He accused black students of racial paranoia. Although a practicing Jew, he decried the “War on Christmas.” He even went after professors who were registered Democrats, and hated Maya Angelou, calling her a “a leftist” full of “racial paranoia” and opposing her coming to campus for a keynote speech.

Miller later became a press secretary for Rep. Michelle Bachman and communications director for Sen. Jeff Sessions. During the 2016 campaign, Miller warmed up the crowds at the racially charged and violent Trump rallies. Now, he is writing Trump’s executive orders and speeches, including the Muslim ban and an inauguration speech laced with Nazi and antisemitic overtones.

Birds of a feather….

Judge Painter got it right.

We must admit we have elected a president who has immediately proved himself to be a grifter, a pathological liar, a mean-spirited bully and dangerous to American values. This not-ready-for-prime-time show is too dangerous to continue. America is at stake.

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Why Good Republicans Should Vote Democratic in 2018

When I left the GOP in 2000, John Keeler, an eminently thoughtful and civil legislator, asked me what I thought it would take to keep people like me–not just reliable Republican voters, but active  and involved party workers–from leaving. I responded that I would have remained a Republican had the party continued to be the party I’d originally joined–my version of a refrain that I have often heard in the years since, “I didn’t leave the GOP, it left me.”

When I run into people I worked with in the Hudnut Administration, or on campaign committees supporting Republicans like Bill Hudnut and Dick Lugar, the conversation often turns to bewildered “what the hell happened” commiserations. My students (who appear to have overwhelming animus for today’s GOP and its priorities) find it hard to believe that the party wasn’t always a refuge for anti-woman, anti-minority, anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-government know-nothings.

One consequence of Trump’s election has been a vast increase in political activism by previously unengaged citizens of all ages. And that participation–not to mention demographic data showing a rapidly graying GOP and a young, diverse and growing Democratic party that did not bode well for the future electoral prospects of the Grand Old Party even before Trump– is not a good sign for Republicans.

Right now, the GOP is dominated by a relatively small group of white, elderly political and religious fundamentalists. If it weren’t for highly successful gerrymandering and the Electoral College, the GOP would already have been consigned to permanent minority status.

That wouldn’t be good for America. America needs two responsible, adult parties.

Here is the choice faced by “real” Republicans– the ones who still believe in facts and evidence, in compromise and bipartisanship, in working toward the public good–those who recognize that the last election was not a fight between candidates with contending policy preferences , but an atypical and dangerous departure from democratic norms.

Those Republicans can continue to vote, however reluctantly, for any candidate with an “R” beside the name, and (assuming the country survives Trump/Pence) watch with dismay as the radical cult that is now the GOP dwindles into inconsequence. Or those rational, good-government Republicans can take the party back, and grow it by returning it to its roots in the socially tolerant and fiscally conservative “big tent” politics that have been displaced by the zealots, alt-right bigots and assorted “true believers.”

In order to do that, however–in order to reassert control by the adults–the current iteration of the GOP has to be defeated. If the party is to be resurrected, its faithful voters in those bright-red gerrymandered “safe” districts are the only ones who can do it. They have to declare “enough,” and the only way to do that is by voting Democratic in 2018 and then picking up the pieces, restoring sanity and–quite possibly–saving the two-party system.

If the Trump/Pence/Bannon administration continues on its current course, if enough reasonable Republicans are sufficiently embarrassed and repelled by Mitch McConnell’s appalling behavior in the Senate and by the GOP’s “lunatic caucus” in the House, it might actually happen. (But then, I’ve always been an optimist….)

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The Power of the Gerrymander

Members of Indiana’s General Assembly will soon vote on an anti-Gerrymandering measure introduced by Jerry Torr, a “good government” Republican. The odds are that with a bit of a push, it will pass the Indiana House; but absent some really effective citizen lobbying, it isn’t likely to make it through the Senate, and that’s a real shame.

If readers of this blog need motivation to participate in that citizen lobbying effort, let me point to an important column by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, in which he connects the multiple dangers posed by Donald Trump directly to successful GOP gerrymandering. (The emphasis in the following excerpt is mine.)

In a less polarized partisan environment Trump never would have been elected and, if he had, might already be looking at possible impeachment. I think the greatest single explanation of Trump is that his politics profoundly galvanized a minority of the electorate and only a minority of the electorate. Almost everyone who wasn’t galvanized was repulsed. But once he had secured the GOP nomination with that minority, the power of partisan polarization kicked in to lock into place perhaps the next 15% to 20% of the electorate which otherwise would never have supported him. The fact that partisan identification proved stronger than that repulsion is the key reason many, including myself, wrongly discounted Trump’s ability to win. As long as Trump remains “us” to Republican voters I see little reason to think anything we can imagine will shake that very high level of support he gets from self-identified Republicans. That likely means that, among other things, no matter how unpopular Trump gets, Republican lawmakers will continue to support him because the chances of ending their careers is greater in a GOP primary than in a general election.

As I have repeatedly argued, the creation of “safe” seats for either party via partisan redistricting means that the real election occurs in that party’s primary. The people who vote in primary elections are primarily the “party faithful,” and they come overwhelmingly from the party’s fringe. Democratic voters in primaries are demonstrably to the left of the party as a whole, and Republican primary voters are even further to the right of the average Republican.

My Facebook page has been filled with criticisms of the U.S. House and Senate Republicans who have gone meekly along with the seriously disturbed person who occupies the Oval Office. (I can’t bring myself to attach the word “President” to this embarrassing buffoon.) What happened to their patriotism, their cojones? The answer is simple: the gerrymandering that makes them vulnerable to defeat if they cross the crazies of their own party has neutered them.

Gerrymandering is the reason that otherwise reasonable politicians consistently put partisan loyalties above the common good.

It would be nice if a few of them exhibited some integrity, and if Trump continues to threaten democratic norms and fundamental American interests, perhaps some of them will “grow a pair”– especially those getting ready to retire or otherwise leave office, who will not face another election.

The rest of them are caught between self-interest (which requires that they avoid offending the party’s fringe) and (for those that have them) their consciences.

Welcome to the world that gerrymandering has wrought…..

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What Comes After Darkness

Yesterday, my wonderful daughter-in-law sent me this You Tube speech by a young woman, an American Sikh lawyer, that–as she predicted–blew me away.

It appears to have been taped at a “Moral Monday” gathering, and it is eloquent and obviously heartfelt.

It’s short–under six minutes–and I urge you to watch it all the way to the end.

The message–the “takeaway”–is profound: darkness can be terrifying. It can signal death, the end of something, a descent into chaos and despair. Or it can be, as she points out, the darkness of the womb, the darkness that precedes a birth and a new beginning.

And as she points out, and every woman who has ever given birth knows, when you are giving birth you do two things: you breathe, and you push.

This lovely young woman reminds us that it’s up to all of us to breathe and push–to use this very dark period America is experiencing as a prelude to birthing a renewal of community, of civic participation and courage, of human connection and commitment to leaving a better, brighter world to our children.

Or we can shrug our collective shoulders and cede control to the looters and influence-peddlers who are currently (and shamelessly) treating American government as their piggy-bank and the rest of us their obedient stooges.

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Activism Engine is Live!

I don’t usually clog your inboxes with “extra” posts, but I’m making an exception.

As many of you recall, I posted a few weeks ago about a tool my son was creating to make activism simpler. He is a web developer, and his goal was to help people who wanted to make a difference but were neither “tech savvy” nor previously politically involved.

If you missed those posts, they are here and here.

Just to remind you, on the site you can search for issues of concern at either the state or national level, in one of three ways: you can look for pending legislation, you can see what sorts of direct actions–meetings, rallies, petitions, marches, etc.–are upcoming, and you can find a list of organizations working on those issues. You can then take action on items–you can call your lawmakers, you can send emails, join or contribute to an organization, attend events…the list goes on.

And you can track all of your activity and impact on a myActivism dashboard.

What is really cool is that you can call up a current list of every elected official who represents you– from the President on down to City Councillor– with clickable phone numbers and email links to directly contact them.

And it’s all really intuitive and SIMPLE to use. Visit and see!

For the next couple of weeks, my son will be “beta testing” the site in Indiana–people who have signed up (nearly 300 so far) will use the site and let him know if they encounter bugs or problems. When he’s confident the site is working as intended, it will be rolled out nationally.

If we are going to resist what I am beginning to call the “Trump coup,” we need involvement by every good citizen who is disheartened and/or terrified by what is happening in and to our country. This tool makes that involvement much simpler and easier.

I hope you will use it, and share it widely! And if you are politically or civically engaged, I hope you will sign up to provide information about pending bills and actions. Without that “on the ground” information, the site won’t do what it is designed to do.

Activism Engine is live!

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