Majority Rules!

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We have spent the last two years enduring all manner of insult to our democratic society.  With the election of Donald Trump, an era of autocracy in the United States began.  The hints of its arrival have been foreshadowed for the past twenty years by movements like the Tea Party, the Alt Right and now the Freedom Caucus.  But then on January 20, 2017 the full measure of this new modality of our government actually began.

As Americans, we have been raised on the notion that whatever the result of an election, we must abide by the concept that the electorate has spoken and is entitled to have its way by virtue of a voter mandate.  And so with the arrival of the Trump Administration we were told that the era of “American Carnage” was finally over.  What we didn’t realize is that the era of “American Carnage” was just beginning.

Starting on that dark January day we watched as our new Chief Executive set about methodically dismantling the levers of government that over the past 240 years had delivered a society that certainly has plenty of flaws, but has given all of us a standard of living that is the envy of the entire world.

Those first actions were a harbinger of the chaos that would soon envelop us: the Muslim ban, the escalating prejudice against minorities, the effort to instill fear in our populace concerning the ‘other’, the constant lying, the appointment of corrupt executives to the President’s cabinet, etc.

So, here we are two years after that with a government that is purposefully understaffed in almost every realm; a sinister strategy to undermine our law enforcement structure and corrupt the rule of law; the unbridled effort to undermine the Mueller investigation,; the abdication of Constitutional oversight responsibility by the Congress; the reversal of practically every regulation promulgated over the past 50 years to clean up our environment; the ominous rise of ‘nationalism’ and hate related crimes; the rise of pernicious racism; the campaign to paint the press as the ‘enemy of the people’; the creation of new tax cuts that do nothing for the average citizen except add over a trillion dollars to the national debt; the poisonous destruction of the fabric of who we are as a country.

The results of the midterm elections have shined a light on what has evolved, and have made a start at revealing all the bad things that have resulted from this new Trumpian era.  But that does not mean we are out of the woods….just look at what has happened in the few short days since the election:  Trump continues to threaten a warlike stance against the new Democratic majority in Congress.  (He is threatening to go to war with his own government!)  His methodology of distracting and creating unnecessary crises continues with the ‘threat of the caravan’ from Mexico.(Have you heard anything about this "threat" since the election?)  His policy of voter suppression is expressed in his and his sycophant's statements and actions about the elections in Arizona, Georgia and Florida.  He is purposefully sowing the seeds of doubt in voter's trust of the integrity of the election process.  You can be sure that he will double down on that effort in advance of his attempt at re-election in two years. And most recently, his appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting Attorney General is wrong and perhaps unconstitutional.

Considering all of the above, the question arises: Why is it so difficult to reign in Trump and his black-hearted legions?  One would think that the majority of Americans would have more power in containing this malignancy.  It is a constant struggle to oppose his endless effort to fulfill some sort of personal mission he has to make this country his empire, with himself as king, and poison our relationships with all our allies in the world.

Faster action is stubbornly opposed by forces that do not relate to an understanding of society as the majority of us know it.  The minority is still ruling the country!  And that is the fallacy in our democracy.  It is true that the rights of the minority should be protected in our country, but that doesn't mean that the minority should rule when they have not actually obtained a voter mandate.
A democracy is supposed to be guided by the majority.  But over the past 30 years there has been an effort by the Republicans to undermine that basic concept.  From voter suppression to gerrymandering to corrupt special interest money financing politics, the will of the majority has been consistently thwarted.  The Republicans claim majority, but the reality of their actual majority is a lie.

So, to right the ship, we must turn the boat, however it is the proverbial battleship that cannot turn on a dime.  It IS turning back in the right direction, but we can hardly see the change.  We have to be committed to hold the wheel firmly in the right direction.  Our vigilance will, over time, return us to a more humane and less chaotic society.

It is a painfully slow process to fix this mess, and we will still suffer mightily during the next two years, as we fight this sickness infecting our country.  I hope we all learned a lesson about vigilance and the preciousness of our democracy.  One election does not a victory make, but at least we are starting our own rehabilitation.

What can each of us do to persevere in the face of the difficult two remaining years of Trump’s presidency?  We can try to hold back our passion and rage at each indignity Trump hurls at anything having to do with truth.  We must simply understand that he is who he is, and will be that way until the bitter end.  We must focus on the future and what we will need to do to fix the damage after he is gone.  That’s why the recent opposition campaign focused on health care and infrastructure was more successful than Trump’s focus on fear and dangerous immigrants. I think our citizenry implicitly understands this.

Our challenge is to relax about the fact that he is unchangeable.  We must continue to counter each abuse he hurls with a ‘wall’ of truth and integrity.  We can only oppose each outrage with steadfast belief, and the action available to each of us to support the rule of law and speak out for what we know is right and true.

We have what it takes to win the long game.  We must all keep the faith.  In the end, majority rules.

                                                                   Majority Rules!

Joy and/or Relief

Well, I guess we are all breathing a bit easier this morning after the Democrat’s capture of the House of Representatives.  We finally have some leverage to try to re-balance our governmental machine.  We can now re-establish our Constitutional controls over the abuse of power by the Executive branch. 

But this change is only the beginning of this marathon. It is certainly a major victory to have overcome the 9% popular vote edge created by Republican gerrymandering.  The result: the arrival on the scene of over 100 women and younger representatives.  There was also the turnover of at least 7 governorships to Democrats.  There is now a more balanced division of Statehouses between Democrats and Republicans.  This is important because in 2020 there will be a new census and revision of gerrymandered district boundaries for voting.  And with new Democratic strength, the effort to change the gerrymandering will show positive results.  Hopefully we will see the retreat of crazy district borders that favor Republican victory when even the popular vote is in the Democrat’s favor.  In fact there were ballot initiatives passed in Michigan, Colorado, Utah, Missouri approving redistricting controlled by the citizens and not the statehouses.

The Democratic majority in the House will now be able to propose legislation to try to move initiatives forward that will benefit the average working middle class family, including a restructuring of Obamacare to insure protection for people with pre-existing medical conditions; infrastructure initiatives; even a workable immigration policy.  None of these issues were approached positively over the past two years.  And if they are met with obstructionism by Republicans, then those actions will be evidence supporting renewed voter approval for additional Democratic victories in 2020.

Additionally, the House will now exercise its subpoena power to investigate corruption, specifically from Cabinet appointments that abused their power and position in so many egregious ways for the past two years.  And most importantly, they will now be able to provide oversight and investigation into the actions of Donald Trump.  Perhaps we will now be able to discover who has financed him all these years, as his tax returns become the target of investigative subpoenas.  Also, it is now unlikely that the Mueller investigation will be aborted by an uncontrolled Executive branch.  Re-establishment of checks and balances will hopefully diminish the abuse of power with regard to Trump attempting to discredit the Justice Department and the instruments of national security, the FBI and the CIA.

Also, the Senate elections in 2020 will be much more favorable for Democratic seat pickups than were possible in 2018.  In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the worst Republican senators decide to retire before that election to avoid them having to serve in a minority position after 2020—think Mitch McConnell, who certainly wouldn’t relish being a minority leader after the being the majority leader for the last 8 years.  He would probably rather leave than suffer the indignity of having his arbitrary actions during his tenure be wholly reversed.  Maybe we will get lucky and people like Chuck Grassley and Orin Hatch will also pass into history.

I would like to congratulate the voting electorate in California District #50 and New York District #27 for showing how ignorant and stupid they are in re-electing two men who have been indicted for crimes, Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins!  Those voters deserve the representation they will be getting—perhaps from their chosen representatives while incarcerated.    Imagine parents trying to explain to their children why they voted for people who were indicted for criminal behavior.  God bless family values!  Perhaps those parents will say, "Yeah kids, don’t do any research on the candidates; just vote for people because they are pretty and say they are innocent."  

Let’s not forget the House’s greatest Republican white supremacist disgrace—Steve King—re-elected in spite of his anti-semitic and anti-immigrant rants.  Good going you voters in Iowa’s district #4!  As my mother would say, “He’s not from the ‘finest!’”  What do you think King meant by suggesting that two female Supreme Court justices should disappear and ‘elope’ to Cuba?

There were disappointments, to be sure, especially in Florida, Georgia and Texas.  But those races invigorated a somnolent voter base and introduced some new energetic personalities to the Democratic scene.  It also exposed the naked voter suppression being foisted upon the citizens by the Republican candidates.  

There were also some really positive moves against some negative people.  Scott Walker was defeated in Wisconsin.  Walker was anti-union and anti-healthcare initiatives.  He lied to his constituents that he favored protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions while he signed a lawsuit trying to do away with that protection.  Hypocrisy is sometimes so unabashed!  A bad governor was rejected in his re-election campaign in Maine in favor of a Democratic woman.  Darryl Issa is gone, and so is Paul Ryan.  No loss there for sure.

So, on balance, there is much to be thankful for in the results of this midterm election.  The slide toward autocracy has been blunted.  There is now a true opposition party in the mix.  Our two years of hog-tied impotence are finally over.

Let’s hope that the Democrats are judicious in their pursuit of justice and successful in bringing smart legislation to bear.  There is much work to be done, but now, at last, there is a repository of positive energy and action that we hope will re-invigorate our American ideals and spur progress on a whole host of issues too long ignored by the current administration and Congress.

A New Day.....

My fellow citizens--

We are complacent and overconfident about our security as a democracy.  We have learned over the past several years that what we once thought were bedrock values in terms of our moral and civic foundation are actually porous and penetrable.

So now we are at a pivot point.  Tomorrow we will decide as a nation whether we change our direction based on the warning signs that have been flashing red since November 9, 2016.

A majority of Americans prior to November 2016 were naively certain of our democracy and its solidity.  We couldn’t imagine its disintegration.  We couldn’t see how our country would be threatened by the forces unleashed by the election of Donald Trump. 

To be sure, there were hints and signs of unrest.  A major part of our body politic was infatuated with a ‘savior’ who said he would solve all the problems that were percolating up as a result of years of forced inequality and deprivation of the rights and aspirations of the middle class.  This new wave of populism hinted at the pool of anger just below the surface of our collective awareness, and the desire for revenge against the ‘elite’ and those who were ‘other’.  We saw the trends, but still believed that we were safe—nothing really could corrupt America we thought….

The premise put forward by Trump that immigration was the monster ruining our country became a compelling distraction to his base.  So the disaffected minority belched forth its anger and hatred, with the encouragement of its provocateur President.  And make no mistake about the fact that he is THEIR President and not the President of all of us. 

We could be wrong about our misguided perception of what the majority of our country looks like.  The polls leading up to the midterm elections are not definitive.  I know that I am in disbelief when I watch angry citizens who somehow believe the tripe that is being fed to them on a daily, minute by minute basis by Fox News and other right wing, so called ‘news outlets’.  They still love this man in spite of all the horrible things he represents.  Truth is not important to them.  It’s easy to ask yourself, “Who are these people??”  The uneasy, unsettling answer is that they are our neighbors and the majority of our current leaders.

We, as Democrats and Independents, and even as people of good will of no particular party, may have mistakenly believed that our moral foundation was somehow secure, that this couldn’t really happen in the United States of America.  So, now we face the real test.  What is our moral character as a nation?

Does our tolerance of free speech have any boundaries?  Is there no stopping the fountain of lies vomiting forth from Trump’s fetid mouth? Can we sit idly by and watch our ideals as Americans be twisted and corrupted by this genius of division and hate? 

I submit to you that the events of the past ten days: the attempted mass assassination of the best of our former leaders who have devoted their lives to public service; the mass carnage perpetrated by a Neo-Nazi intent on killing as many Jews as he could--these are the cherries on top of the horrid cake already full of other indigestible ingredients being ‘cooked up’ by Donald Trump: disdain for the rule of law, lying to the American people daily, blaming the media as  ‘Enemy of the People’, stoking fear and hatred of immigrants, steering our economy toward bankruptcy from uncontrolled debt, etc.  Do I really need to itemize all this again?

As inconceivable as it once may have seemed, this one man has been a catalyst for the emergence of the decaying rot of prejudice that he encourages as he stokes the flames of division from the chanting mobs at his rallies, and that has lain just under the surface of our civic discourse for years. 

This election tomorrow is not the entire answer.  It is, however, the fulcrum of the tipping point that will determine the future of our nation and ourselves.  We all must pray that the results of this most sacred obligation and exercise of our right to vote will herald a new day of optimism and truth.  It is a chance for those of us who believe in the concepts of fairness, integrity, honesty, compassion and humanity to restate our commitment to those ideals that are the bedrock of our Constitution and our republic.  If we regain at least part of the Congress, the road will still not be easy.  The potholes are large and many.  Until we begin to shed ourselves of the Republican sycophants and remove President Trump from the scene, we will still be in mortal danger as a democracy.

However, we must make a start to take back our country and to imbue it once again with the ideals that our founding fathers so brilliantly imbued in the Constitution all those years ago.

I wish all of us good luck in our quest for a righteous result and a turn to the light that is the promise of this great nation, the United States of America.

Please VOTE!