Category Archives: Random Blogging

Is It All Palin’s Fault?

My brother-in-law, a life-long and pretty conservative Republican, recently commented that Trump’s primary victory reminded him of an old saying. Paraphrasing, it went something like this: the man who knows, and knows he knows, can be trusted; the man who doesn’t know, and knows he doesn’t know, can be trusted; but the man who doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know is dangerous, and cannot be trusted.

The Donald, of course, doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. If anyone had any doubts, his suggestion that he would “negotiate” the nation’s debt with creditors, and “do a deal” in which they would take less than they’re owed, should put those doubts to rest. (Among the multiple things he clearly “doesn’t know” that he “doesn’t know” are the importance of America’s creditworthiness to global fiscal stability, and the inconvenient fact that the majority of the nation’s creditors are its own citizens–including, importantly, those depending on Social Security.)

In the wake of the Indiana primary and Trump’s emergence as the GOP nominee-apparent,  the internet has been inundated with “analysis” and theories about how this happened, who’s to blame, and of course, “what the hell happens now.”

So far, one of my favorite (albeit dubious) theories lays the blame with Sarah Palin–or more accurately, with John McCain, who elevated the Wasilla Wacko to national prominence.

In this view, the damage Palin wreaked was in getting Republicans to lower their standards for what a vice-president or a president ought to be. Suddenly, what one writer called a “meaningful and valuable norm” no longer controlled public opinion.  Palin was embarrassingly unqualified for the job, but she was endorsed by McCain and establishment Republicans–and the result was that the bar was lowered so far that for a number of Republican voters, Donald Trump was no longer unthinkable.

I’m sure there are as many theories as there are pundits. Americans who are appalled at the prospect of electing someone so manifestly unprepared and unsuited for the Presidency are trying to make sense of it all (and in most cases, looking for someone–anyone–to blame).

There’s lots of blame to go around, of course. But while we are trying to make sense of the crazy situation in which we find ourselves, we’d better spend the time between now and November doing whatever it takes to ensure that voters understand the difference between voting for the winner of American Idol and the person who will be occupying the Oval Office.

We may or may not be enthusiastic about our other choices–but there are degrees of unthinkable, distasteful and very, very dangerous.

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Tupperware Trump

Oh, Donald. Tacky, tacky, tacky…..

We’ve all become familiar with the various kinds of pyramid schemes operating in the U.S. Most aren’t as monumental as the Bernie Madoff ponzi-scheme variety, and some even sell arguably useful products, but they all share certain characteristics: they’re based on recruiting an increasing number of “investors,” and typically, those new recruits pay a sum of money to join the “program” and become a distributor of a product or service. They’re told they’ll make money based on the number of new recruits they bring in. The basic idea is that the higher up on the pyramid you are, the more money you’ll make.

In reality, what happens is that only the originators of the pyramid scheme make money and the rest lose theirs when the pyramid scheme collapses.

Evidently, in-between bankruptcies, bottled water and steaks, Donald Trump engaged in a pyramid scheme to sell a “diet product” to the desperate/credulous:

The company’s flagship product was called the PrivaTest, which supposedly relies upon a mail-in urine test to determine one’s individual nutritional needs and create a custom vitamin formula (about $140 for the test; $70 per month for the vitamins; $100 to retest every 6 months).

From a scientific viewpoint, urine tests do not provide a legitimate basis for recommending that people take dietary supplements. Moreover, even if they could, the nutrients in the so-called customized formulas can be obtained far more inexpensively in retail stores. The Trump Network also acquired a weight loss program called The Silhouette Solution, which consisted of a book promising to lose the weight you want and have the silhouette you choose, which was included in the starter weight loss kit, all for a whopping $1,325. The package was marketed as “a complete eight-week program that contains everything you need to achieve your short and long term weight loss goals.” In it, they send you eight weeks worth of low-calorie food….

But it gets better….you could also purchase the $400 “business kit” and market the product to your friends and family, ala Tupperware. Trump sold Privatest and the Silhouette Solution in 2012 to a company called Bioceutica, LLC., apparently due to concerns about liability. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on Trump’s claim that his involvement with Ideal Health merely allowed them to use his name for marketing purposes and that he was not involved in the company’s operations.

But statements by him and other company representatives — as well as a plethora of marketing materials circulating online — often gave the impression of a partnership that was certain to lift thousands of people into prosperity. In fact, within a few years, the company fell on hard times, leaving some salespeople in tough financial straits. It ultimately was acquired by another firm.

But when Trump joined forces with Ideal Health, he was enthusiastic about its future.

“When I did ‘The Apprentice,’ it was a long shot. This is not a long shot,” Trump told a Trump Network convention of at least 5,000 people in Miami in 2009, his face projected onto a giant screen. “This is going to be something that’s really amazing.”

Yep. Amazing. You’ll be thin and rich.

And this is the charlatan who’s going to “Make America Great.”

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What Winning Looks Like

Bernie Sanders won’t be the Democratic nominee. But he’s winning something more important.

Ed Brayton has the best–and most succinct–analysis of the challenge faced by Bernie Democrats. Over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, he writes:  

It’s time for Sanders fans — and again, I’m one of them — to shift their focus from winning the presidency to building a real movement to accomplish his primary goal, which is to get the influence of big money out of our political process as much as possible. So what does that entail?

First, it means supporting Hillary Clinton in the general election. What is it that is currently preventing us from passing any meaningful legislation to limit the influence of big money? The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. If the Republicans win, any hope of adding a liberal justice to the Supreme Court that could help overturn that ruling dies for at least the next generation, maybe more. On the other hand, a Democratic president gets to replace Scalia and there would then be a liberal majority on the court and overturning that ruling becomes entirely plausible. Bernie voters who refuse to vote for Clinton, even if they have to hold their nose to do it, will be cutting off their nose to spite their face and dramatically reducing the chances of achieving Bernie’s top policy priority.

Second, it means building up an organization that can recruit, train and fund candidates who share Bernie’s vision of not only reducing the influence of big money, but also favors stronger regulation of big business — the very thing that the outsized influence of their money seeks to prevent. Overturning Citizens United is just the first step. The second step has to be electing people to Congress who will vote for serious campaign finance reform, not the weak sauce that was McCain-Feingold. This requires money, organization, and professionals who know how to run campaigns and how tothink strategically in politics.

You can rage all you want about how unfair the system is, but that rage doesn’t actually change anything if you can’t translate it into effective legislative action. So yeah, Bernie is going to lose the Democratic nomination. That doesn’t mean he’s going to lose the larger battle. Winning that battle is up to his supporters and those who share his vision, but if all you’re going to do is kick and scream and cry about dark conspiracies, you won’t achieve a damn thing. So if you want Bernie to win something more important than the White House, get your heads out of the clouds and get to work.

Bottom line: Sanders faces a challenge. He cannot win the Democratic nomination. Will he do a reprise of the disastrous Nader “If not me, no-one” ego trip–a position that gave the U.S. eight years of George W. Bush and a vastly more dangerous world, or will he be willing to spend the time and political capital to lead the Democratic party to a more progressive place?

I think he has signaled his willingness to do the latter, because I think he cares about the issues he has raised more than his own importance. At a campaign rally in Oregon, he said

“We need to plant the flag of progressive politics in every state in this country.”

Echoing Howard Dean from an earlier campaign, Sanders also insisted that the Democratic Party as a whole must forge a 50-state strategy focused on restoring civic vibrancy and fueling meaningful outcomes on the key issues people care about.

“The Democratic Party has to reach a fundamental conclusion: Are we on the side working people or big money interests? Do we stand with the elderly, the children, and the sick and the poor, or do we stand with Wall Street speculators and the drug companies and the insurance companies?”….

Now our job is not just to revitalize the Democratic Party—not only to open the doors to young people and working people—our jobs is to revitalize American democracy.”

If Sanders can set the Democratic party on the road to realizing that goal, he–and the American political system– will be the ultimate winners.

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Giving Voice to My Fears….

Andrew Sullivan has a lengthy new article in New York Magazine. It’s terrifying. And it’s hard to dismiss.

For Democrats looking at the polls and anticipating a “wave” election if Trump is the GOP nominee, Sullivan’s article should be required reading–a cautionary tale, and a frighteningly hard-headed analysis of how, yes, it could happen here.

A few paragraphs will give you the general tenor of the article, but I really, really urge you to click through and read the whole thing.

Sullivan’s thesis is that America is ripe for tyranny.

In the wake of his most recent primary triumphs, at a time when [Trump] is perilously close to winning enough delegates to grab the Republican nomination outright, I think we must confront this dread and be clear about what this election has already revealed about the fragility of our way of life and the threat late-stage democracy is beginning to pose to itself…..

He considers, at some length, the function of so-called “elites” in a constitutional democracy, the pluses and minuses of “direct democracy,” and the varying diagnoses of contemporary ills.

The evidence suggests that direct democracy, far from being throttled, is actually intensifying its grip on American politics….

Sullivan’s description of the role played by the media in the age of the Internet is particularly perceptive.

What the 21st century added to this picture, it’s now blindingly obvious, was media democracy — in a truly revolutionary form. If late-stage political democracy has taken two centuries to ripen, the media equivalent took around two decades, swiftly erasing almost any elite moderation or control of our democratic discourse. The process had its origins in partisan talk radio at the end of the past century. The rise of the internet — an event so swift and pervasive its political effect is only now beginning to be understood — further democratized every source of information, dramatically expanded each outlet’s readership, and gave everyone a platform. All the old barriers to entry — the cost of print and paper and distribution — crumbled….

The web’s algorithms all but removed any editorial judgment, and the effect soon had cable news abandoning even the pretense of asking “Is this relevant?” or “Do we really need to cover this live?” in the rush toward ratings bonanzas. In the end, all these categories were reduced to one thing: traffic, measured far more accurately than any other medium had ever done before.

And what mainly fuels this is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness. Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin. Godwin’s Law — it’s only a matter of time before a comments section brings up Hitler — is a reflection of the collapse of the reasoned deliberation the Founders saw as indispensable to a functioning republic.

Yes, occasional rational points still fly back and forth, but there are dramatically fewer elite arbiters to establish which of those points is actually true or valid or relevant. We have lost authoritative sources for even a common set of facts. And without such common empirical ground, the emotional component of politics becomes inflamed and reason retreats even further. The more emotive the candidate, the more supporters he or she will get.

Anyone who cares about America, and especially anyone who dismisses the very real threat posed by a Trump candidacy–the very real possibility that he could win– needs to read the entire essay.

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Strategy and Delusion

This political season just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

As Indiana voters prepare to cast ballots in tomorrow’s primary, we are coming to grips with the fact that there is an unreal reality-TV personality leading the GOP field–a lead largely attributable to the repulsiveness of his nearest competitor. (I mean, when have we ever heard a Presidential candidate described by members of his own party as “Lucifer” and ” a miserable son-of-a-bitch”? When have we ever heard a U.S. Senator explain his  endorsement of that candidate as a choice between a gunshot to the head or poison? Because there might be an antidote to poison…)

Every day brings a new “you’ve got to be kidding me” moment. Last week, it was a story from Talking Points Memo, outlining the Trump campaign’s strategy for going after Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

Are you done laughing hysterically?

There are two ways to analyze the Trump plan. The approach most favorable to the Trump campaign begins with the thesis that Americans are irremediably ignorant. (It isn’t that farfetched; after all, the fact that Trump is winning the GOP nomination is pretty compelling evidence that a significant percentage of the population is missing a few synapses.) Sanders is attracting angry voters, Trump is attracting angry voters, ergo, Sanders’ voters will move to Trump.

If, however, as I believe (and devoutly hope!), Americans really aren’t that far gone, the notion that Bernie’s supporters would even consider Trump is ludicrous.

The rap on Bernie is that he wouldn’t be able to accomplish his campaign’s goals: greater social equity, more government transparency, fairer treatment for marginalized constituencies, a higher minimum wage, free university, more equality….in short, despite the decibels at which he delivers his message, the message itself is a kinder, fairer, gentler world–an aspirational social justice writ large.

The rap on Trump is that he doesn’t have positions on most of these issues (or, apparently, even know some of them exist), but to the extent he does, his goals are exclusionary and bigoted: deport immigrants, reject Muslims, put women back in the kitchen (unless they’re good-looking, in which case they can work–albeit for less pay than men), piss on America’s allies and assume the role of world bully. Trump’s goals–to the extent he can articulate any– are dangerous, mean-spirited, uninformed and frequently unconstitutional, and his rhetoric consists of playground-level insults.

Some of the people supporting Bernie may not like Hillary Clinton. Some of the more rabid among them may even stay home in November–unthinkable as I find that. (I also doubt that Bernie has Ralph Nader’s monumental ego and willingness to screw the country to service it.) But a strategy based on the notion that people rallying for economic justice and fundamental fairness can be convinced to go to the polls and vote for Donald Trump is just further evidence that Trump’s narcissism has overpowered his already tenuous connection to reality.

If there ever was such a connection.

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