Dem Darn Debates, The Third

Start with the obvious: this was a much better debate than the previous two. First, because a bunch of also-rans didn’t qualify, so we didn’t get to hear John Delaney talk for half an hour about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for or watch Seth Moulton deny in real time that he’s not as cool or popular as his handlers tell him he is. Second, the moderators took a page from Chuck Todd’s book and burned it and did not insert themselves into the debate, save to ask clearly-researched, candidate-specific questions (except the first one: George Stephanopoulos’ invitation to Joe Biden to throw some ‘bows about health care and doing his damnedest to get the Republicans a sound-bite saying middle-class taxes would go up). Third, they actually touched a little on things like foreign policy and trade, which a President has a whole hell of a lot more to do with than health care, which is properly the concern of Congress, God help us all.

If you thought those three hours went by fast, you were right, because it was only two hours and forty-five minutes. That said, it was a good deal more substantive and, well, debate-like than these things often are.

So, how’d everyone do?

I’ll start with Elizabeth Warren, because she’s my favorite and, despite the current poll ratings, the one to beat, in my mind. She did, as ever she does, a good job staying above the fray and sticking to making a positive case for what she wants to do (clean up corruption and save democracy and the world!) and tell the very good story about why she wants to do it. She had some standout moments, though they don’t seem to have been picked up on, being more substantive than flashy. I’m talking about her line about not tasking the military to solve problems that can’t be solved militarily and her suggestion that we leverage the power of access to US markets to make other countries up their game when it comes to environmental and labor practices. Like so much else in her campaign, it’s both sensible and radical, and one of the reasons I support her for President. Continue reading “Dem Darn Debates, The Third” →

The Blue Senate Project

Getting rid of Donald Trump is, to put things mildly, an absolute necessity if we want to stop America’s slide into oligarchy; reinvigorate and protect our democracy from gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright corruption; reform healthcare so that all citizens can receive the care they need; enact sensible gun legislation so we have fewer mass shootings, domestic murders, and preventable suicides; address the wealth and income inequality that hold us back, individually and as a society, from reaching our full potential for growth and innovation; enact a Green New Deal to reinvigorate our economy for the twenty-first century and beyond; redress the social, economic, and structural barriers that keep women, people of color, indigenous Americans, the LGBTQ+ community, legal immigrants, and legitimate asylum seekers from fully thriving; undo the obscenity that is the border crisis, with its concentration camps, armed paramilitary militias, and the increasingly Gestapo-esque Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and, last because most important, reverse, obviate, or at least honestly face the consequences of climate change and the ecological, economic, and political crises it has spawned and will continue to spawn so long as we keep turning a blind eye to it as a society.

If we even want to get started on all of that, getting rid of Donald Trump as President (and, presumably, frog-marching his criminal ass to the nearest Federal penitentiary) is a necessary first step.

Necessary, but not sufficient. Not by a long shot.

Because that laundry list of highest-priority, hair-on-fire action items, each more pressing than the last, are mostly outside the President of the United States’s powers as enumerated in the Constitution. If we mean to accomplish even the bare minimum to ensure the survival of our democracy, life as we know it, and, possibly, the human race, we’ll need Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Continue reading “The Blue Senate Project” →

Elizabeth Warren is the Real Deal

I’ve been waiting my whole life for a Presidential candidate I could believe in as much as I believe in Elizabeth Warren. To be honest, I didn’t think there would ever be one, at least not with a credible shot at winning. I never felt that way about Ralph Nader, or Bernie Sanders, both of whom I supported on pragmatic grounds (Nader as a way of getting the Green Party – still new back then, and not the RT-funded spoiler party it later became – federal matching funds, Bernie because he helped mainstream some vitally important issues that were considered fringe by the punditariat and the mainstream media despite their widespread popularity). Both those men were, frankly, imperfect vessels at best, for reasons easy enough to find that I don’t feel a need to get sidetracked into explaining them.

But, as with so much in life, sometimes you have to take what you can get and make do the best you can.

But sometimes life does give you that unambiguously good choice, the one that seems too good to be true, that cynicism tells you can’t possibly be what it gives every indication of being, and will try and talk you out of believing in it, if for no other reason than to protect your precious, scar-crusted heart from being broken again. When that time comes, no matter how weary, how wary you are, you have to find the courage to make that leap of faith, and believe.

This is that time. Elizabeth Warren is that candidate. Continue reading “Elizabeth Warren is the Real Deal” →

Make America What Again?

What with the shit-show we’ve got going on right now as a nation — concentration camps on the border, a wag-the-dog escalation to a war of choice with Iran, a serious bump in hate crimes and people identifying as Nazis and white supremacists, a climate crisis that will destroy life as we know it starting to kick in for real, a nationwide election coming up that will undoubtedly be fucked with by hostile foreign actors while the beneficiaries insist nothing’s wrong, and a legislature unable, thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to do anything but confirm hardcore conservative federal judges to lifetime sinecures, just to skim the surface — it’s easy to understand the widespread longing to go back to the way things were under the Obama Administration. To get things back to normal so we can all go back to living our lives without having to worry that the demented narcissist with the nuclear football will bring about Armageddon in a fit of pique or even just to avoid jail time.

I get it. I really do. I also would like not to live my life in a fog of existential dread, in which every action is pointless because, Rapture or not, the end is probably nigh for the American experiment and possibly human civilization and what can possibly matter anymore?

But even were it possible to return to whatever passed for normal before — and it isn’t — such a return is not even desirable, both on its own merits and especially in light of the challenges we face as Americans and human beings who live on the rapidly-warming, ecologically-imbalanced, and soon-to-be-downwardly-spiraling Earth.

I’ll explain.

Continue reading “Make America What Again?” →

A Woman For President

I’d much rather a woman for President this time around, and more women in positions of power in general. Particularly women of color. Sure, there’s a bit of knee-jerk in there, and some turnabout is fair play. But mostly I’d like our leaders to be the sort of people who’ve had to overcome a lot of challenges to get their seat at the table, and who remember what it’s like to be marginalized. People who had to learn early to take care and keep an eye out, because society granted them no wiggle room, no second chances if they made a mistake. I want people who understand that heroes might make for great stories, but that actual large-scale accomplishment in the real world takes community and cooperation and coalition-building, and is accomplished in halting, agonizingly slow steps (two forward, one back, then one to the side because somebody threw up a wall). People for whom patience and resilience aren’t just virtues to aspire to, but survival strategies that go bone deep.

Sure, life is hard for almost everyone. By design, because civilization has almost always been a pyramid scheme, where most suffer so a few don’t have to. But those against whom the deck’s most stacked have the hardest path from where they start to the table where decisions get made, and the ones who make it – and who remember where they started – tend to have, in my experience, the right combination of toughness, ability, and compassion to lead us into the next phase of humanity, where everyone gets their fair share and their shot at living a meaningful life.