Category Archives: Politics

The Seeds of Trump’s Undoing

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Musings and ponderation, Politics, The Time of Troubles

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I’ve been working on a couple of long blog posts that I have wanted to finish for a while. However, I back-burnered them all today as I digested the news of Michael Flynn’s resignation as Trump’s national security advisor. I was reminded of something I told my wife on the night of the election, and which I have repeated many times since: the seeds of Trump’s undoing are right in front of us.

I was not making a prophecy. I had simply been reading the news which was available to us since before the election, such as this groundbreaking piece by Mother Jones veteran David Corn. Many have suspected for months that Donald Trump was receiving aid from a hostile foreign power, a power determined to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election.

There are many Republicans in Congress who have circled their wagons around Trump because he is one of their team, because presumably they see some advantage to themselves in protecting the president. But even within the famously disciplined Republican Party there are increasing calls for investigations, not four weeks into Trump’s presidency, into “what did the president know, and when did he know it?”

The echoes of Watergate are obvious, but facile. Our current national nightmare is a great deal worse than Watergate: we are talking about an enemy state, ruled by an anti-democratic strongman, subverting our electoral process in order to bring a favored candidate to power. And Trump, Putin’s favored candidate, has been artlessly, bafflingly open about his desire to reward Putin for the help.

Today on CNN, Democratic congressman Seth Moulton called out the elephant in the room: the support of an enemy state’s agenda at the expense of the interests of your own country is, by definition, treason.

There is chaos and trouble ahead. In the same way that I wonder about my parents’ and grandparents’ stances in 1974, our kids and grandkids will ask about how we acted, and what we did, during the time we’re living through.

Readings for the Time of Troubles

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Musings and ponderation, Politics, The Time of Troubles

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I was surprised to learn that the textbook my daughter was using for her US History class is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I had long been an admirer of Zinn’s lefty outlook on the world from interviews Zinn did in the last years of his life, though I had never read any of his work. Finding out that my daughter is reading his signature book was apparently the encouragement I needed to read the book myself.

While the first edition of People’s History was written nearly 40 years ago and the last edition is over ten years old, the book is timely, and oddly comforting in these last weeks before the inauguration of Trump. I came away from People’s History with two guiding consolations. First, Trump is no aberration. His misogyny, nativism, racism, and venality have deep roots in the history of the United States. If this doesn’t seem like much of a consolation, I might put it another way: the country has been through crises like Trumpism before. Second, for all the suffering the Trump administration will cause millions of people, for all the theft of public goods that is coming, there is a countervailing force of decency in the American character as well. The courage of Frederick Douglass and Fannie Lou Hamer, of Mother Jones and Eugene Debs, of Daniel Berrigan and César Chávez–and of millions of others–is available to us as well. We can fight, in many small and powerful ways, if decent Americans are willing to give up their self-satisfaction and passivity and security to stand up for our country.

While I was familiar with every period Zinn wrote about in People’s History, I don’t think I had ever seen all these periods stitched together into a single overarching vision. Basically, Zinn’s contention is that the true history of the United States is not defined by the actions of presidents and congresses who have worked at practically every turn to enrich a tiny economic elite–by preserving slavery, by massacring the natives, by invading Mexico and Cuba and The Philippines, by overthrowing democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile and Iran. Rather, American history is made up of the often overlooked struggles of the oppressed, the working class, the unrepresented. It is a history of people fighting, over centuries sometimes, to be included in the opening phrase of the Constitution: “We the People.”

It’s an inspiring–if sometimes flawed–vision. I believe that what it offers, in a crowded field of history texts, is a truly alternative analysis of the history of the nation. Many critics have accused him of bias, though I would argue that what Zinn has done instead is abandon the pretense of objectivity that sometimes smothers the work of other historians. No historian, no human being, can be a thoroughly objective observer of the human experience. In telling any history, we leave neutrality behind as soon as we decide which events we will focus on and which ones we will omit.

And so many history texts, even those informed by the counter-cultural critique of history that came out of the 60s and 70s, still focus the actions of “the great men,” the Jeffersons and Jacksons and Roosevelts, with entire social movements of millions of ordinary people receiving comparatively little mention, or in some cases no mention at all. Zinn’s timely contribution is to argue that US History was not made by the Jeffersons and Jacksons and Roosevelts–that our elected leaders were responding to massive social and economic currents that they could barely influence, let alone control.

Presidents and congresses and supreme courts are led by the people, not the other way around. Unfortunately, according to Zinn, our elected leaders have usually been in thrall to what Occupy Wall Street popularized as “the 1%”: industrialists, financiers, speculators, robber barons. But frequently enough, a demand for justice will rise up from the roots of society with enough force that the elected leaders must listen and the law responds. The end of slavery, women’s suffrage, the 40-hour work week, the civil rights movement–all of these changes came, not from the courage of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, U.S. Grant, or L.B.J., but in response to the demands of ordinary Americans. Those demands took decades to make themselves felt sometimes, and the success of those demands depended on the tremendous courage of millions of people, but nearly every advance that the US has made in social justice has been led from below, not from above.

One can work towards neutrality and fairness in writing by committing to telling as many sides of the story as one can–a very common, and admirable, approach among the historians I’ve read. But it’s also valuable to have someone standing outside that system, observing from without, making no claim to neutrality–someone who pulls back the curtain on the mainstream view of American history to expose the so-called historical consensus as a fiction. Zinn’s book has helped me see my country in a new way.

And he’s helped me get my game face on for the time to come: if I want a humane minimum wage for Americans, if I want truly public college education and single-payer health care, I have to fight for those things. Not because I expect the hamfisted con man we just elected to respond to my demands, but because he may make enough people angry enough to care. The day will come when we have a free and equitable society, ruled by justice and reason. It’s up to us to make it.

 

We Can Remake the Electoral College

26 Saturday Nov 2016

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Friends all over the place are talking about how and where to support civic engagement with their time and money. The ACLU tops the list for many of my friends–as well as for a whole lot a friends I didn’t know I had.  There’s good reason today to support The Southern Poverty Law Center, Planned Parenthood, The Sierra Club, The Council on American-Islamic Relations–all places to devote your efforts if you are interested in preserving civil society during the Time of Troubles. I’ll be giving loved ones memberships to these for Christmas.

And there’s at least one more that deserves your support, even though the issue it covers–electoral reform–may seem like small potatoes compared to the threats we are facing. FairVote.org has been doing the quiet, patient work of improving the way elections work in the United States since 1992. And, among the many forward-thinking reforms that they have advocated, one of the most timely is the reform of the Electoral College.

Democrats have ample incentive to support Electoral College reform: Democrats have won the most votes in four of the last five presidential elections, yet we’ve had a Democratic president for only two of those electoral cycles. One can be forgiven for believing that, along with persistent gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics, the Republicans have used the Electoral College to hold on to power despite being a minority party in the United States.

Yet, the Republicans have just as many reasons to support the reform of the Electoral College. Yes, over two recent cycles (2000 and 2016) the Electoral College has favored the Republicans, but there’s no structural reason that this should be so. Indeed, some of you remember the scenario (and personal fantasy of mine) that in 2004 John Kerry would win the Electoral College in spite of losing the national popular vote. If I remember correctly, he came within 70,000 votes of winning Ohio (and hence the election) that way.

I had hoped in part that the election would swing that way in 2004 because I believed (and still believe) that if the Republicans had suffered the same kind of defeat that the Democrats had in 2000, there would be a bipartisan consensus to do away with the Electoral College.

But for better and worse (mostly for better), it will be extremely difficult to do away with the Electoral College entirely. Doing so would require an amendment to the Constitution, and that’s a pretty high bar to clear: the last amendment to the Constitution(the 27th) occurred nearly 25 years ago, 202 years after if had been proposed in 1789.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was some way to reform the Electoral College without having to amend the Constitution? It turns out that there is such a way. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has just the kind of wonky name that puts people to sleep. However, it’s one of the most fundamental advances we could make to our presidential election system today. And we can make it law without having to amend the Constitution.

Here’s how it works. The Constitution is helpfully vague about how states choose who their electors will be:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress…

In other words, individual state legislatures have wide latitude to decide how electors are appointed. And, if a state legislature decides that electors should be appointed on the basis of whoever wins the national popular vote, there’s nothing in the Constitution to forbid it.

Yet, what would be the incentive for a state to give up its influence over the electoral process by choosing its electors that way? That’s a good question, and certainly swing states like Ohio and Florida have little incentive (beyond an interest in democracy) to do so. Those states receive millions of dollars in ad revenue from the presidential campaigns every four years–they have a much greater stake in the status quo. However, the so-called “safe states” like California, New York, and Oklahoma–states which are reliably red or blue in every election–have less influence over presidential elections today than they would have if they simply banded together and agreed to choose electors on the basis of the national popular vote.

And that’s what the compact aims to do. As soon as enough states agree to appoint their electors that way–that is, as soon as states representing 270 electoral votes agree to it–the compact would go into force.

I’ll write more later about the benefits of such a plan, as well as about its constitutionality. But for now, check out the map of states which have already voted to implement the compact. Check out the states where the compact has almost passed–that is, where the compact has a reasonable chance of passing in the future. Check out how many times it took some of the states to pass the compact into law.

One of the beauties of this kind of work is that it is a concrete step for the public good that can be accomplished in state houses, where individual voters can bring more pressure to bear. Friends in Oregon, friends in Colorado, friends in Oklahoma and Tennessee: find out what your state legislator is doing to support this compact–which is to say, find out what your legislator is doing to support democracy in the United States. FairVote.org can help hook you up with this project.

On the Election of Donald J. Trump

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Musings and ponderation, Politics

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Like so many folks, I have felt dazed and heartbroken about the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. I’ll speak plainly: while I believe the United States will survive this demagogue, no president has been a greater threat to the republic than Trump will be. Ever since Plato, political scientists have recognized that the greatest danger to democratic forms of government was demagoguery: and, in his cynical and phony populism, in his breezy dishonesty, in his breathtaking appeals to xenophobia and racism, Donald Trump is the most demagogic person ever to have been elected president of the United States.

SelfAwarePatterns, a WordPress comrade I admire, has posted a very thoughtful reflection on Trump’s win. He notes that while racists and nativists have helped to elect Trump, it does not follow that all—or even most—of Trump’s supporters are racists and nativists. Indeed, at least some of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 came to support Trump in 2016. To ridicule these voters, to call them racists and haters or dupes, is to mistake the nature of Clinton’s loss and to further alienate those voters whom Clinton failed to reach.

While I don’t think that analysis tells the whole story, there is much to agree with here. I’ll start by saying that nothing good will come of trying to ridicule Trump voters. A huge part of Trump’s appeal came from his understanding that millions of Americans feel ridiculed already, feel looked down-on by liberal coastal elites. Trump’s harping on “the rigged system,” his invitation to rally-goers to heap abuse on the button-down liberals sitting in “the press pen,” were ways of blaming working class people’s losses on the kind of people that stereotypically vote for Hillary: those smug, expensively educated NPR listeners whose life is a kind of running Portlandia sketch.

Of course, Trump doesn’t just blame rich liberals for the problems with middle America; he blames Mexicans, “welfare takers,” Muslims. His racism and nativism are far more troubling because he can hurt and bully those target populations so much more easily. It’s the racism of these positions that has convinced many on the left that Trump’s voters must also be racists.

Doubtless some of them are.  Other Trump supporters, I’m sure, are troubled to some degree by Trump’s attitudes and statements, but not enough to consider his racism a disqualifying factor for his candidacy. Still others have been convinced that Trump’s xenophobic positions are the correct ones, even though they could have been convinced otherwise, and perhaps were convinced otherwise by Barack Obama. Are all of these stances equally blameworthy?

Perhaps approaching the problem from a different angle would yield better results. Years of teaching at a community college have taught me that ridiculing a person for their choices marks the end of all dialog. If I believe my choice for president is a better, saner, more moral choice than Donald Trump, I can’t hope to convince anyone of that by shaming them and telling them how stupid they are, as though I have some special insight into stupidity.

However, we can and must critique the system of racism: we can work to help working class whites see that their economic interests align with working class people of color, that modern racism is not some natural human state but rather a conscious political strategy. Racism is in fact a relatively recent political program, designed during the colonial American period by economic elites to divide and conquer the dispossessed that lived here: black slaves, white indentured servants, landless white tenant farmers, Native Americans. A white indentured servant in colonial America may be landless, may be exploited, may be helpless to resist the depredations of creditors and masters and landlords, but he could believe at least that he was better off than a slave or an Indian.

Of course people of color are the primary victims of this control strategy, just as they will suffer disproportionately in this Time of Troubles. All of us who consider ourselves allies have to work together to provide safe havens where we can and to bear witness.

But working class whites do not escape the system of racism without injury. To the extent that working class whites have been bamboozled by elites to believe that their problems are caused by the marginalized, powerless other, rather than by the elites themselves, they too have been made victims. They may escape the brutality and savagery that has been visited on immigrants and people of color—indeed, working class whites will often be the perpetrators of that brutality—but working class whites are lashing out at their own victimization: the hollowing out of their towns, the loss of the dignity of work, the replacement of main streets with pill mills and payday loan shops.

Muslims and Mexicans are not to blame for that victimization. Hillary Clinton is not to blame either, though Trump actually made a fair critique that Clinton represents an investor class which does bear some responsibility for the offshoring of jobs and the decimation of main street. That may be the only fair critique Donald Trump has made in his life.

Those who were convinced that Donald Trump is a regular guy, that he is somehow not part of that controlling elite himself, will perhaps fare better than immigrants and Muslims. But the voters of Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania that elected him won’t fare well: Donald Trump and his gang of goons are predators. Someday, perhaps in two years or four years or 24, there will be an opportunity to drive them out again. I hope when the opportunity comes we take it, and we have an honest conversation about racism. Not racists, but racism.