Bernie's "electability"

At this point in 2016, the consensus among the talking heads was that Donald Tr*mp could never win the Republican candidacy, much less the presidency.  Surely, they opined, Tr*mp was too extreme, too unorthodox: the nominee would be a far safer candidate.  (Remember Jeb Bush?)

What the punditry missed was that it was Tr*mp's unorthodoxy – his disregard the "rules" – that powered his candidacy.  Tr*mp was a disruptor – a norm-breaking agent of change – and change was just what many voters desperately wanted.  It was the same impulse that helped Obama win in 2008.  (The black guy just had to be different – right?)

For decades, American optimism has been in decline.  Only a third believe their children will be better off than they are, and the data indicate that the majority two-thirds are probably correct.  Over the past three years, nothing has happened to change those attitudes.  A low unemployment rate makes it easier to find a second job when your first job won't pay the bills, but that's not a recipe for life satisfaction.  In the critical Rust Belt states, Tr*mp's trade wars have reduced the number of well-paid manufacturing jobs; and insecure "gig" jobs with no benefits offer little comfort.

The face of change this time around is Bernie Sanders, and his plan for disrupting the status quo centers around redistributing wealth from the obscenely rich to the rest of us.  Granted, the USofA already may be too corrupt for that goal to be attainable, but that doesn't make the goal any less attractive to the many who feel left behind, or any less valid if we hope to salvage some of what we call "democracy" in America.

Tr*mp's own weaknesses could make him vulnerable to any potential Democratic opponent (with the possible exception of Joe Biden), but cautious incrementalism doesn't inspire voters to flock to the polls.  The real "swing voters" aren't cautious moderates; they're angry malcontents.  Like it or not, Bernie is the Democratic Party's best chance to win over those voters and take the presidency.

Change? Yeah, right!

You know, I think people would think better of politicians if they actually tried running their own campaigns, instead of hiring consultants to do their thinking for them. (At this point, I suspect Hillary Clinton wishes she'd run her own campaign -- she was very poorly served.)

Yes, I know the strategists advise presidential hopefuls to run to their bases -- liberals for Democrats, conservatives for Republicans -- during the primaries, and then move to the center for the general election. It's a sensible strategy except for one thing: it leaves the candidate sounding just like a, well... like a politician -- a self-serving, pandering hypocrite.

Barack Obama had me gagging recently when he commented on a couple of Supreme Court decisions. Yes, Barack, nobody likes child rapists -- but when you suggested that the Court was wrong to deny states the right to execute them, you were criticizing exactly the sort of Justices you've pledged to appoint. Oh, right, your consultants were afraid the Republican attack machine would portray you as in favor of raping children! Or perhaps you genuinely believe states should have the right to execute people who haven't taken a life, but whose behavior the public finds especially distasteful. Well, just how distasteful does an act have to be? If we give up the "life for a life" standard, a very wide range of behaviors could put a person on death row. Is that what you want?

Then, after you pandered to the "kill anyone I don't like" crowd, you pandered to the "pry my gun from my cold dead fingers" crowd when you appeared to support the Court's rejection of Washington's hand gun ban. Come to think of it, they're really pretty much the same crowd -- and I don't see too many of them voting for you anyway. Hell, their alternative is a macho white war hero!

Face it -- you're not going to convince anybody you're a secret conservative. You're just starting to look less and less like an "agent of change," and more and more like the same old empty suit.

To Barack Obama from an old white guy

A little while ago, I posted the video you can watch above to YouTube, as a response to a video from the Obama campaign which you can watch here. If you don't find my video in the "video responses" section, it means the Obama campaign didn't "accept" it -- that is, decided they'd rather not have it associated with their video.

If you didn't have the patience to listen to me go on for close to ten minutes, here's the gist of it -- I tell Obama that what I really want him to do is undo the Reagan Revolution. I tell him he should significantly raise taxation of the very rich, re-regulate a lot of what's been deregulated over the past quarter-century, and run a government that's actively pro-union. Beyond that, I want him to put government workers back on the payroll to do most of the work that's been contracted out, and I assert that the Iraq War was started specifically so the private sector could loot the Treasury.

Yes, it's one of my usual diatribes, and if it actually appears on YouTube as a response to Obama's video, I'll be flabbergasted -- but there's at least a chance that somebody in the Obama campaign will have looked at it.

The truth is that I don't expect Obama could accomplish what I think needs accomplishment even if he wanted to. The biggest problem I see with an Obama presidency has nothing to do with Obama. Rather, it has to do with the fractious nature of the Democratic Party. Will Democrats in Congress unite behind Obama if he wins? I'm guessing they'll give him all the stunning support they gave, say, Jimmy Carter. Thanks in part to Clinton pulling the party to the right, there are quite a few powerful Democrats who are quite conservative -- and the fact that Congress becomes more and more of a millionaire's club with each election cycle won't much help either.

By the way, I tried to make the video more visually interesting than just my talking head by adding a bunch of stills and animations, some of which are moderately amusing. If you haven't watched it yet, please give it a try.

Change? They want change?

No shit!

Things always change, of course -- that's the nature of, well, things. Sadly, they often are inclined to change for the worse. At this point in our history, things are as bad as they've been for quite some time, and it appears they'll get worse before they get better. That, of course, is not the kind of change people are demanding. People want things to get "better." The question is, how?

The leading Republican candidates for president don't seem to have an answer to that question. They all seem to think what's needed is more of the same; more tax cuts, more war, more restrictions on civil liberties. As for the leading Democratic candidates, well...

Hillary Clinton says, "Just trust me. My experience as First Lady means I understand the change you want even better than you do, and I promise to deliver. It'll be just like when Bill was President. You'll be back to drinking lattes and making paper fortunes in no time flat!"

Uh huh. She'll just "change" things back to the way they were before Dubya (I miss you, Molly Ivins) and all your dreams will come true. But what if you're like me, and the Clinton Administration made you nostalgic for the liberalism of the Nixon Administration? And by the way, just what's the chance of Hillary voluntarily giving up those new authoritarian powers Bush/Cheney usurped for the presidency? (I'd put it just shy of 0.03%.)

Barack Obama, darling of the very young and the incurably romantic, wants us to believe he'll be able to successfully put an end to red/blue animosities. In a new spirit of hope, he promises, we'll all do what's best for America.

Could anybody elected to the United States Senate be innocent enough actually to believe that? Do you believe that? If you do, please forgive my expression of awed incredulity. Try to remember that while you're holding hands in a circle and singing Kumbaya, it's really easy to pick your pockets.

Both Clinton and Obama are very well funded, though, so they must be doing something right. To figure out what that might be, we'll have to follow the money -- but I'll save that (and John Edwards) for another day.