June 27, 2019--What's the Matter With "What's the Matter With Kansas"?

I read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America when it was published in 2004 to great acclaim among progressives.

I found its central thesis to be persuasive. In a sentence Frank showed how over decades the conservative Kansas political establishment promised, if elected, to enact a long series of rightwing cultural policies (end abortion, bring prayer back to public schools, provide vouchers that would enable parents to offset the cost of private school tuition, ban same-sex marriage, eliminate the teaching of evolution, and so forth) while in return voters would not stand in the way of the conservatives' real agenda--essentially cutting government spending on all social programs such as Medicaid in order to pay for dramatic reductions in taxes for the wealthiest Kansans; and then, most important, once in office, they failed to deliver the social agenda but instead cynically enacted their self-serving regressive economic program.

Frank's central question was--Why are Kansas voters so seemingly willing to put aside their own self interest and go along with policies that will only make things worse for themselves?

In regard to this latter point, for years there has been something about it that did not sit right with me.

And then on Tuesday, during a long lunch with my politically-savvy cousin Harvey who lives in Maine, what has been troubling me for years became clear:

The Frank book is not about what's the matter with Kansas but rather what's the matter with the people of Kansas.

And for that reason it is incendiary because it ultimately blames the victims (the people) and not the perpetrators (the political leaders) for the voting patterns in Kansas and other Midwestern red states. 

Frank's point then turns out to be yet another version of the professional and academic class's saying to working people that we know better than you yourself what's good for you; and, further, we know even more clearly than you what needs to happen to serve your best interest is an expanded role for government.

Many, perhaps a majority of people who live and vote in the middle of the country for years have been saying that this is offensive and patronizing because it fails to recognize their ability to articulate what they value and the kind of role they on their own see it appropriate for government to play. 

More than anything they hate being taken for granted and feeling talked down to.

They have been saying this but not enough of us have not been listening. And thus for the most part Democrats running for national office have not figured out an effective way to communicate with voters they need to attract if they are to regain the White House and retain a majority in at least the House.

June 10, 2019--No Need to Vote

I've been hearing from friends who live in blue states that they're not planning to vote next year.

"You must be kidding," I've been saying. "You're lifelong liberals, Democrats, you can't abide Trump, and yet you plan to sit on your hands in November? The 2020 vote may turn out to be our last chance to rid ourselves of him. I'm not sure I want to be involved with you if this is your plan."

"Before you cut me off," one said, "I live in deep-blue Massachusetts. There we can already chalk up the Electoral votes for whoever the Democrats nominate."

"Or California where I live," another said. "Last time around it gave Hillary more than a four-million vote plurality. So what does my vote mean?"

"Then there's New York," one of my oldest friends said, "My vote won't count there either. The Democrat always wins at least 60 percent of the vote."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," I said and was tempted to change the subject so we could remain friends.

"What's the counter argument?" my California friend asked, "So Biden or the nominee wins by 'only' three-and-a-half million popular votes. But still he cleans up in the Electoral College."

"You're right that what happens with the Electoral votes will determine who becomes president but the national vote also counts in some big ways."

"Enlighten me."

"First of all the potential size of the Democratic plurality will contribute to repudiating Trump. He won't be able to claim that there's fraud if the vote against him adds up to many millions. No matter what states the votes come from. As we know he's all about size."

"Fair point."

"Then there are the potential political consequences. With a big plurality the winner's coat tails will be longer and maybe more Democrats will be elected to Congress. This then could contribute to what legislation gets enacted and, perhaps most important, who can get confirmed to the Supreme Court. In other words, the size of the vote could enable the winner to claim a mandate. Pressure by the electorate to push Congress to protect the environment, women's rights, a sensible approach to foreign affairs. All sorts of things you support that have been gutted by Trump and his administration."

In general, after these conversations pretty much everyone says they will rouse themselves vote to help run up the numbers.

We'll see. 

March 2, 2016--Hillary Clinton's Red State Strategy

What do the following states have in common--

Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas?

Now add South Carolina to the list.

Three things at least--

The first group of states participated yesterday in Super Tuesday caucuses and primaries. And South Carolina held its Republican primary just three days ago.

Hillary Clinton won all of these states by wide margins, which essentially means that she will be the Democratic nominee for the presidency.

But, all eight of these states are so-called Red States, which means that for decades as well as for this November, there is virtually no possibility that any Democrat, much less Hillary Clinton, running against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio, will carry any of them. They represent the new Republican Solid South.

Why then did the Democratic National Committee agree to allow these very conservative, solidly Republican states to determine who would be the Democratic nominee?

I would be tempted to say that this is because the DNC, under the manipulated leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz--my Snowbird Florida congressperson and fervent supporter of Clinton's---did everything she could to rig the outcome of the Democratic selection process.

She and the DNC, knowing that these states, though they for decades have wound up safely in the GOP column in national elections, in Democratic primaries, because in some states more than half of registered Democrats are African American, they predictably wind up solidly behind Hillary Clinton.

For example, in South Carolina last weekend, where about 60 percent of registered Democrats are black, Hillary Clinton garnered more than 90 percent of their votes. Enough to help her carry the state by 50 percentage points. In this, she did even better than Barack Obama in 2008.

I would be tempted to say that Wasserman Schultz arranged the primary schedule to manipulate this outcome, but that would be more than stretching the truth because since Super Tuesday came into existence in 1976, the primary schedule has been pretty much structured as it currently is.

In effect this means that the Democrats appear to be willing to allow Red States to play an inordinate role in determining their nominees. More specifically, to have African-American voters have a disproportionate say.

There is much to complain about how black people still face discrimination but, in this important case, they are more than fully empowered.

April 23, 2014--Obama's Drones

Five days after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released an audacious video of a daytime militant rally in southern Yemen, President Obama authorized a drone strike that killed at least 55 Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

Putting aside for the moment the legal and ethical issues, in many ways this was a good thing. These men are among the world's most dangerous people and drone strikes are a good way to get at them with little risk to U.S. or Yemeni forces.

The openly-flaunting way in which Nasser-al-Wuhayshi, head of AQAP, organized the rally and brazenly made videos of it public, not only emphasized the level of the threat he and his fighters represent but also was a way to humiliate his enemies, especially the United States. He brashly seemed to say, "Catch me if you can."

So Obama was quick to rise to the taunt. At least three drone strikes were carried out over the weekend and as a result dozens were killed.

One thing even fierce critics of Obama's concede is that he not hesitant about authorizing drone strikes against bad guys, including an occasional American citizen.

Putting tactics aside--drones' ability to respond quickly to threats--it is striking to see Obama acting so decisively about . . . anything.

The very same Republican critics who poke him about "leading from behind" give him begrudging credit for being so aggressive about the use of drones. But I suspect Obama is uncharacteristically decisive and forceful when it comes to the deployment of drones for other than just military or political reasons.

Political-Psychology 101 would suggest the unfettered use of drones is the one arena in which Obama has undisputed power and can act out his frustrations.

For a president who knows that at least half the reason conservatives oppose everything and anything he initiates or even supports is because he is African American, for a president who is reluctant to play the race card much less even openly confront this political bigotry, fearing being characterized as an "angry black man," having a means to act out his frustrations and, I am sure, rage about this must be irresistible.

The giveaway that this is not a preposterous notion is that authorizing the use of drones without seemingly endless cogitation--a quality for which Obama is known and not-entirely-unfairly criticized--is the one area of leadership in which he clearly leads from the front and is expeditiously decisive.

In Freudian terms--this is an example of displacement theory.

As a close reader of the Constitution, he knows that much of this is extra-legal or, minimally, questionable; and yet, time after time, instead of being cautious or timid, he acts boldly. And, it would appear, successfully.

It may be unfeeling to suggest that ordering the killing of people--even terrorists--is in some ways therapeutic, but considering the circumstances in Washington and in Red-State America, on some level it is understandable.

April 19, 2013--Two Americas

I don't know what to make of my America.

During the past 10 years I've read a lot of American history and am not naive about our Founders' commitment to democracy (in fact, most warned against democracy itself, fearing mob rule); who was included and who wasn't (in various ways women, slaves, the poor, and the propertyless); and, since then, the bumpy, incomplete road to securing rights for all.

I've come to prefer the Declaration of Independence--because of its inclusive vision--to the highly compromised Constitution.

But when 90 percent of the population support something as simple and commonsensical as expanding background checks to include people who buy guns at gun shows or via the Internet, when in spite of this the Senate votes it down, in a somewhat bipartisan way, I despair for my country.

What does representative democracy mean when something that has the support of almost everyone--including a clear majority of Republicans and even NRA members--is soundly defeated?

I can only conclude that it means that a central component of our tripartite government no longer represents us. It represents 7-9 percent of the population who, though ignorant of its original intentions, are fanatically devoted to protecting Second Amendment rights as absolute and sacred.

I know who these folks are. The dead-enders, the paranoid black helicopter crowd. I can look across my lawn here to see one--Dick Morris and his wife whose most recent instant book is The Black Helicopters Are Coming.

They preppers cling, yes they cling, to their assault weapons to defend themselves from their own government. When the black helicopters come for them, they'll be ready to fight back. This is really what it is all about--being prepared to fight the U.S. government. And, of course, to keep weapons manufacturers, who underwrite the worst of the NRA agenda, among the nation's most profitable businesses.

It's their country now, not mine.

If the Sandy Hook parents couldn't mobilize 60 votes in the Senate, what can I do?

I have never felt more powerless. Write letters? To whom? Tweet? Again, to whom? And to what purpose other than attempting to make myself feel better? About something like this, however, it's hard to fool myself that letters and few thousand dollars of campaign contributions will make any difference.

Which of the 46 senators who voted to defeat background checks and who are running for reelection (reelection being the meaning of their lives) is vulnerable? Perhaps only the three Senate Democrats. Wouldn't that be ironic--they'll get knocked off in spite of their cowardly vote and the Republicans as a result will retake control of the Upper House.

It may be close to time to concede that we do indeed live in two Americas. Not red or blue states. That's not fine-grained enough. Look at the 2012 electoral map by county and you will immediately see that by geographic mass almost all of this country is red. The blue parts are mainly concentrated around cities.

So perhaps like black folks who sought relief from segregation by moving north during Jim Crow days, like Eastern European immigrants who clustered on New York's Lower Eastside; and how for other reasons gay people flocked to relatively hospitable cities and, for career reasons, actors found their way to Hollywood and financiers to New York City, maybe it is time for those of us who do not want to have our lives defined by the NRA, weapons manufacturers, so-called right-to-lifers, and antievolutionists, perhaps its time to secede internally--by county, by city, not state as in 1861.

Let's leave to their own devices those fearfully scanning the skies for black helicopters or living in terror of other forms of armageddon. Let's consider decoupling ourselves from their narrative in favor of our own. Maybe it's finally time.