Month: May 2017

I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that Ben Carson is our Secretary of Housing & Urban Development. He said he wasn’t qualified for the job but the president nominated and the Senate confirmed him anyway. He’s now doing things that HUD secretaries do, like visiting government-funded housing in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, his primary concern is that these dwellings are not places anyone would be content to live. When shown some pretty decent apartments used for veterans, he cracked that the only thing missing was pool tables. He didn’t mean the vets should have them.

His basic outlook is probably formed primarily by his personal experience of growing up in Detroit in very modest conditions and not letting that hold him back from becoming an accomplished neurosurgeon. And there’s a certain degree of common sense involved in his conviction that making misery comfortable can lead to complacency. Anyone who’s tried to move a teenager out of the nest and into the world knows that it’s a delicate dance. Sometimes, you just have to figure out a way to make them want to leave. But, obviously, that assumes your kid isn’t going to get devoured by wolves and eagles before they reach the sidewalk. The world is filled with people who can’t make it on their own, and many others who may be able to make it one day, just not today. Carson does understand this, but he wants to craft policy around the able-bodied and the capable rather than around those who are truly in need.

“We have some people who are mentally ill. We have some elderly and disabled people. We can’t expect in many cases those people to do a great deal to take care of themselves,” he said. But, he added, “There is another group of people who are able-bodied individuals, and I think we do those people a great disservice when we simply maintain them.”

This is a very common way of looking at the world among conservatives, and it helps explain why you’ll encounter so many people who have benefitted from government help who still deeply resent seeing others on any kind of dole. The idea that someone might squander charitable help or exploit the system to enable a life of idleness is so offensive that many are willing to blow up the whole system and leave behind the mentally ill, the disabled, and even those who just need more time to mature or recover from life’s setbacks.

This makes more sense if you’re talking about something like the death penalty, where it truly does seem wise to blow up the system because of unavoidable errors and unintended consequences. It seems cruel to me, however, when you’re talking about low-income housing or food assistance. Figuring out how to set the incentives correctly is a job for policymakers, and there are always going to be opportunities to improve how social welfare programs are delivered and administered.

But, it seems to me that once you get a consensus that there are a lot of people who can’t “do a great deal to take care of themselves,” you should make them the central focus of your concern. Should they live in horrible soul-crushing conditions just so no one who should be pursuing their gifts might succumb to apathy and miss the chance to one day separate conjoined twins?

The way Carson and so many conservatives view the world isn’t making the perfect the enemy of the good. It’s making the perfect the enemy of the decent.

WAPO (Once again w/no paywall. Gotta disseminate that disinfo, right? Gotta reach out to all the suckers!!!)

`I would be your president:’ Clinton blames Russia, FBI chief for 2016 election loss

Hillary Clinton emerged from political hibernation Tuesday by declaring herself “part of the resistance” to Donald Trump’s presidency — and spreading blame for why it is not her sitting in the Oval Office.

Making a rare public appearance, Clinton attributed her surprise loss in the 2016 election to interference by Russian hackers and the actions of FBI Director James B. Comey in the campaign’s home stretch.

 “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president.”

—snip—

Jesus save us!!!

HRC’s “Deplorables” speech. Sept. 10, 2016. Roughly 1.5 months before her preferred date of 10/27/16.

NEW YORK, Sept. 10 (UPI) — Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking to wealthy donors at a fundraising event open to the press, said half of Donald Trump supporters are in “the basket of deplorables,” people who are racist, xenophobic, homophobic and misogynistic, a comment she later said she regretted.

The comment drew a sharp rebuke from the Trump campaign, which demanded an apology for disparaging millions of Americans.

Clinton, speaking to donors in New York, said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,'” Clinton said. “Unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

—snip—

Actually…i agree with her.

If the FBI and the Russians hadn’t hacked her brain that night, she would never have said that awful, self-defeating thing.

I mean…it had to be some kind of outside interference, right?

I mean, she’d never…even at her most self-congratulatory, hubris-loaded, entitlement-poisoned worst…ever say something that bone-headed.

Right?

Riiiiight…

In fact…those dastardly FBIs and Russkies must’ve hacked her brain much earlier than Fall, 2016.

Right?

Like this one from 2013:

Hillary: You Need A `Public’ And `Private’ Position On Every Issue

During a private 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton emphasized the importance of holding two positions on political issues — a “public” one and a separate “private” one.

Clinton’s speech to the NMHC, a trade organization representing apartment building owners and developers, was one of many private speeches she gave which she refused to release the transcripts of despite heavy pressure from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican nominee Donald Trump. Excerpts from those speeches were released Friday as part of a larger leak of over 2,000 emails to Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

In the speech, Clinton talked about how the horse-trading of politics looks bad to the public, necessitating the creation of a separate public position that doesn’t reflect one’s actual views.

—snip—

Give me a break, Hillary!!!

You were a lousy candidate representing a lousy DNC/centrist/globalist/multinational/corporatist set of interests. And you loast to an amateur with attitude.

Go back to Chappaqua and do whatever you do that’s not in public sight.

                      Yer OUTTA here!!!

AG

“Squaring the circle” is an allusion to a task that seems straightforward but is actually impossible: Drawing a square that has the exact same area as a circle. The explanation has to do with irrational numbers and quickly gets all nerdy sounding. But “squaring the circle” is a metaphor, and it’s one that came to mind as I read Booman’s piece about a dangerous electoral realignment and readers’ responses to his blog post. The theme of Booman’s piece and those responses was how to bring back those white working class Rustbelt voters who flipped and went for Trump in 2016. There was a lot of discussion about approaching this task on the basis of  policy. Sounds fair enough, right? Of course, this approach is predicated on the assumption that people calmly and dispassionately size up the policy positions of opposing candidates, opposing parties, and then mark their ballots. But of course there’s another line of argument: that those white working class Rustbelt voters flipped to Trump as an expression of their resentments: resentment about rapid cultural change; resentment about race; resentment about “press 1 for English; para español, marque el número 2”; and especially, a general desire to poke liberals in the eye. We all know folks whose political stance seems to boil down to “if that smart-ass liberal likes it, then I’m against it”, even if taking that stance is objectively self-defeating.

Here’s the question, then: Is it plausible–it is rational?–to pitch policy proposals to people who don’t give a damn about policy? Who are seething with resentments? I believe Booman is saying that we either do that or yield the territory to neo-fascist manipulators like Trump.

I don’t know how to square this circle. I’ve taken the personal decision to try to be very mindful of how I talk and write about the folks whose votes seem to be about resentment, however. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met anyone who responded positively to be told he’s a ignorant, bigoted fool.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I don’t consume much right-wing news, even for research purposes. The stuff makes me ill and life is too short. Every once in a while, though, someone points me to something interesting, and that was certainly the case with the transcript from yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh Show. If you enjoy schadenfreude, you might want to check it out. It’s also just kind of hilarious.

Now, even though I’m not a regular consumer, I know Limbaugh’s schtick, which means that I know he’s pulling a long con on his listeners and we shouldn’t approach what he says at face value. That’s a not very brief way of saying that I give Limbaugh credit for being smarter and savvier than he lets on.

I don’t think Limbaugh is honestly confused about why Donald Trump can’t get anything done. It’s more of a pose that he takes to put himself in the shoes of folks who voted for the man thinking that he could fulfill his promises so fast all our heads would spin.

Still, Limbaugh throws a lot of truth in with distortions. For example, he’s right when he says that the Washington Establishment doesn’t like Trump and that even most of the Republicans there didn’t think he should be our president. He’s right that there is a lot of resistance to Trump’s policies coming from Washington Republicans. He’s right that K Street has a lot of influence and even writes much of the legislation that Congress produces.

Here’s what he isn’t telling his listeners.

Trump is failing because of math.

For Trump to succeed at all (and I think the boat left port already), he would need to govern as neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and certainly not as a factional movement conservative Republican. All presidents lose votes from their own party on certain tough votes, but that can be survived if either your majorities are big enough or you can consistently pick up a few votes from across the aisle. Trump’s majority in the House is healthy, at least on paper, but his majority in the Senate is razor thin.

He knew this would be the case on Election Night but he didn’t understand what it meant. You want to know why he’s calling for the end of the legislative filibuster today? It’s because reality has now smacked him in the face enough times that he realizes much too late that he can’t govern the way he’s been trying to govern.

Sure, his style doesn’t help. His appointments don’t help. The record he laid down during the primaries and the campaign doesn’t help. And, yeah, Washington doesn’t like him.

But it’s a still a math problem.

And Rush can’t tell his audience that because the conclusion would be that the way for Trump to be more successful is to stop trying to lead a Movement Conservative revolution and begin cutting deals with the people Rush and his listeners hate with a seething passion.

Now, some of this is even simpler. Trump said a bunch of shit on the campaign trail that he never thought he’d get held accountable for because he didn’t really consider the possibility he might win. That some people took him seriously is a shame, but, c’mon, there was never a chance that Mexico would pay for his stupid wall. In other areas, it’s easy to promise to do stuff that would violate the Constitution, but a bit harder to get courts to allow those things once you try to follow through.

I can be a little forgiving that folks might not have anticipated how the need to keep the government open and operating might prevent Trump from destroying Planned Parenthood or defunding “sanctuary cities.” The writing wasn’t necessarily on the wall that Trump would have to fund Obamacare and the Environmental Protection Agency. But to hear Limbaugh react with his wailing, “Why is anybody voting Republican, if this is what happens when we win?” is extremely satisfying nonetheless.

One of the interesting things to look for as our country’s politics enter a new phase of more rapid realignment is cases where this messes with the assumptions that were made when our congressional districts were gerrymandered after the last census. The Republicans did so well in the 2010 midterms that they had a huge national advantage when it came time to redraw districts, but Illinois was a rare exception where the Democrats were able to use gerrymandering to the max to carve out a few extra seats.

And then a funny thing happened:

Located in greater Chicago’s western exurbs, Democrats had drawn Illinois’ 14th District to quarantine hostile Republican voters, but after the well-educated district swung from 54-44 Romney to just 49-45 Trump, GOP Rep. Randy Hultgren could be targeted in 2018.

This is the flip side or positive aspect of the change in voting patterns that cost Hillary Clinton the election. Even as she hemorrhaged votes in small towns and rural regions, Trump lost almost as many votes in the suburbs (and suburbanizing exurbs). And it’s not just that these areas are getting younger and more ethnically diverse. Trumpism doesn’t sell well even with tax-averse white professional Romney Republicans, let alone with sophisticated college-educated women who may have been raised to see the Republican Party as a signifier of their status. There’s nothing high class about that Access Hollywood tape.

Of course, there’s a certain risk of perversion of purpose if the party of the underprivileged and dispossessed becomes reliant on the three-car garage set for their votes, and that’s a likely side effect of a realignment like this. Votes are always welcome, of course, but chasing after these voters could come with an opportunity cost if it prevents the Democrats from realizing that their power is eroding badly in this trade. And, of course, there’s the moral element to consider, which is that a left that’s worth its name doesn’t leave people behind.

Winning districts like Iliinois’ 14th could be the straightest and shortest line to winning back control of the House of Representatives. It’s not exactly a low-hanging fruit, but you can reach it with a step-ladder. The risk is that investing in that step-ladder means focusing on messages and making appeals to certain kind of voters. Depending on how that is done, it might actually accelerate the party’s erosion among the white working class, which is the exact trade that has been costing the Democrats control of state legislatures and losing them governors races and Senate seats that they should control. It’s also what made Trump a winner despite losing the popular vote.

That doesn’t mean that the strategy doesn’t make sense, but it is perhaps more alluring than wise. It will only work out well if it doesn’t catalyze a swifter realignment that has so far been most unfavorable to the left.

In other words, the Democrats shouldn’t allow so much of their attention to be diverted into winning formerly safe Republican suburban seats that they don’t take seriously enough the hard work they need to do to stop their bleeding in small towns and rural/exurban areas.

A lot of the debate right now is stuck on a circular argument that on one side says that going after working class voters necessarily means selling out more reliable Democrats on women’s rights, gay rights and civil rights, and on the other side insists that there is no choice.

One thing that is lost is the idea that a party that becomes anchored on the support of affluent professionals will come to reflect their interests and begin to resist the demands of the economically pressed. This realignment may feel good in some respects. For example, it’s nice to allow all the latter day Jim Crow Democrats to find a new political home that doesn’t contaminate the rest of us. If they’re not on board with gay rights and they want to stop immigration by nonwhite people and they’re suspicious of Muslims and they’re resistant to sensible gun violence control and they’re not reliable supporters of women’s reproductive freedom, and they’re more interested in fracking jobs than climate change then maybe they don’t belong in the Democratic Party. Even asking for their votes can seem like a betrayal of principle. But it’s also a certain kind of betrayal to tell whole regions of the country that there is not going to be any left wing to represent their interests against the monopolists who have hollowed out their communities and destroyed virtually all entrepreneurial opportunity. The opioid epidemic may have reached the white professional classes in the suburbs now, but its been destroying these rural communities ever since Oxy-Contin hit the market in the 1990s.

When the left leaves people behind and does a poor job of representing them, the result is riots in our cities and fascism in the heartland. The choice isn’t between purity and cynicism. It’s not about avoiding selling certain people out, and it shouldn’t be about who to sell out. For both moral and practical reasons, the left needs to represent people in every community, and they need to do it on terms that make sense and work for each community.

Also, here’s some cool trivia related to the emerging race in the 14th District of Illinois:

High school teacher and Army veteran Victor Swanson recently became the first Democrat to jump into the race, although it’s unclear if the first-time candidate has the skills and connections needed for such an uphill race. At the very least, Swanson might be able to get some fundraising help thanks to his famous brother Andy Richter, a comedian and actor who is best known for his longtime collaborations with late-night TV host Conan O’Brien.

I wish Andy Richter’s brother success, but win or lose, that contest is kind of beside the point.

You heard all this shit here, months before it showed up all over your news feeds. But they still don’t get what to do about it which is why I just took more than a week off from blogging to research and write about it.

My non-vacation vacation ends tomorrow and I’ll try to get back in the swing of blogging. If you appreciate my ahead-of-the-curve analysis, please consider making a donation toward the upkeep of the Frog Pond.

In the Trump Era, intelligence is a very unfortunate thing to have, because it gets insulted every five minutes.