Politics

I have been in a funk since the day after last year’s presidential election. About a month before the voting, I began to feel as though Donald Trump would beat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I thought the only hope was that she could eke out a win through the Electoral College. Well, we all know that didn’t happen.

Welcome to the post-Obama world. I am of two minds about the Obamas’ departure from the White House. On the one hand, I am glad that they are no longer in the public eye, a clear target for the virulent, naked racism that has been on display in America since the day they moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the other, I wish they could stay forever. They are the embodiment of what we claim to be about in America – excellence, equal opportunity, meritocracy – and they make me so proud. And so since last year’s election, I’ve been thinking about how I feel about the Obama presidency.

With the mind fogging meme of “Russian Influence,” we are avoiding a fact-based analysis of the 2016 election at our own peril.

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Sir John Harington 1561-1612  -  (Also credited with being the inventor of the flush toilet.)

Tragedy, Comedy and Farce All Rolled Into One

The official mythic revisionism of the recent US electoral debacle now seems to be settling firmly into place: Putin did it – the outcome was a result of ‘Russian influence.’

One can see how the Russian Influence Mind Fogging Meme might be mutually convenient for the elites of both parties to unite behind. 

For the Dems it deflects attention away from their terminal corruption and incompetence.

For the GOP it deflects attention away from their gargantuan election theft apparatus, patiently assembled by the ruthless radical right-wing billionaires over the past decades . 

Can you name the President who added 10 millions jobs in his eight year term where 94% of the jobs were temporary with little to no benefits? (as per study by Harvard University L Katz and Princeton University economist A Krueger)

Can you name the President since 1980 whose administration saw the widest gap between income for black men versus white men in the USA? (as per study by University Chicago economist KK Charles and Duke University economist P Bayer)

Can you name the President since 1988 whose administration reduced the USA nuclear stockpile the least? (Pentagon figures -hint – this President has also initiated nuclear upgrades that will cost over $1 trillion dollars)

Demesia Padilla’s sudden resignation as Taxation and Revenue Department secretary last week sent a jolt through state government. It was also a blow to Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who had stood by Padilla, one of her longest-serving Cabinet members, as the Attorney General’s Office carried out a monthslong investigation into Padilla’s personal finances and allegations that she tried to thwart a state audit into one of her former tax clients.

That changed last week as the contours of the investigation came into focus with the release of a stunning search warrant affidavit. The document, released a day after agents raided Padilla’s state offices, revealed that investigators were looking into a host of possible criminal activities, including tax evasion and embezzlement.

Martinez, who had once challenged the investigation as a politically motivated attack, accepted Padilla’s resignation and said she had ordered the tax department to fully cooperate with investigators.

I pledge allegiance to . . . what?

The Electoral College, to no one’s serious surprise, voted Donald Trump in as the nation’s 45th president, and the pot of outrage in the American spectator democracy begins to boil.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no — no to all his right-wing and idiotic cabinet and Team Trump appointments, no to his conflicts of interest and serial tweets, no to his sexism, his reckless arrogance, his ego, his finger on the nuclear button.

lections have consequences, as the cliché goes, and those consequences are unpredictable, perhaps never more unpredictable than when no one wins the election — but someone takes office anyway. When that happens, the country is largely defenseless, as we learned so disastrously in 2000.

That was when we had five unprincipled Supreme Court justices to thank for promoting an actual (but uncounted) loser to the presidency. George W. Bush proceeded to reward the country’s wary trust by blithely ignoring warnings of a terrorist attack, then using 9/11 to jingo up the fear-laden public mood and urge us to go shopping while he (and a complicit Democratic Congress) started wars that have yet to end. (For reasons having nothing to do with decency or justice, Nancy Pelosi led the opposition to impeaching this war-criminal president.) For extra credit, Bush presided over a bipartisan wave of unchecked criminal capitalism that brought the economy to its knees and Democrats to the White House.

As we think about the election — what went wrong, what’s been unleashed and what we should do about it — please, please, let us expand our vision beyond some technical fix or updated “message.”

Even if we’re talking about the Democratic Party.

James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, discussing the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and the future direction of the party, wrote recently: “Many rank and file Democrats had lost confidence in their establishment and were looking for an authentic message that spoke to their needs.”

The growing push to defeat Trump by any of the following means:

would be far more energized and popular if the "defeated" candidate were Bernie Sanders, who -- judging by all existing polling (and theorizing what his general election campaign would have looked like) -- would almost certainly not have been defeated by any means in the first place.