Category: Elections

UNCLE JOE’S TOUCH IS . . . WELL, OUT OF TOUCH

I’ve been a fervent Joe Biden fan for most of my adult life. How do you not love a guy who blurts out stuff like: “This is a big fucking deal” into a hot mic? I even cheered with guilty pleasure when he said he wanted to take Donald Trump “behind the gym and beat the hell out of him”.  In a world of buttoned-down, circumspect politicians guided by focus groups, Biden has forever been one of a kind. But please, Joe, don’t run for president. 

I don’t say this because of the seven women (at last count) who have complained that he invaded their personal space by hair smelling, nose rubbing, head kissing, shoulder squeezing or prolonged hugging.   I say it because his most endearing quality – being himself – is out of sync with an evolving and younger world around him.

As a 69-year-old retiree who had to turn to Google for a definition of the word “woke”, I feel his pain. Yet, one of life’s most important choices is when to leave the party. Particularly after the past few days, now seems like the time for Joe to call it a night. He can flash that disarming trademark smile, take his bows, and lend his considerable wisdom to the diverse and growing cast of Democratic candidates seeking the one office that has forever eluded him.

Because of my affection for the guy, I initially vacillated on the question of whether he should run as the women’s stories began to emerge last weekend. The media frenzy – both social and mainstream – didn’t help. As each woman complaining about Biden’s touchy-feely behavior stressed, this wasn’t about sexual assault or harassment.  Many news stories, however, failed to make that clear, as they trotted out #MeToo background references to men who were accused of assaultive or harassing behavior. Even the esteemed Washington Post, in its Tuesday print edition, ran a cutline saying “Bidden denied sexual misconduct charges”.  

So much of the response to this story has been predictably hyperbolic and tribal.  Fox News has had a field day with “Creepy Uncle Joe” stories. The other side has questioned the political motives behind the accusations.  Social media has been inundated with variations on the social construct that Biden’s hair kissing is de minimis compared with Trump’s pussy grabbing, an assertion that is at once factually correct and a lousy basis for selecting a president.  

Finally, after several days of insisting he never acted inappropriately and had no intentions of causing discomfort, Biden issued a video statement yesterday that was filled with his charismatic charm and empathy, along with a promise to change his behavior. He said he recognizes that “social norms (have) shifted, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it.”

I watched the video three times, warming to Biden’s embrace of human connection as a vital force in life and in politics.  But what really got to me was the fact that he still doesn’t get it.  The boundaries of personal space have not changed.  What has changed is that women have become more empowered to speak out about men who enter that space without consent.  As long as 50 years ago, about the time Biden entered politics, academic researchers put a microscope to tactile communication. They found it to be powerfully constructive if used correctly, but also cautioned that it is far more susceptible to misinterpretation between sender and receiver than verbal or other nonverbal communication. Particularly problematic, they said, is the matter of touch initiated by someone in a position of power over the recipient, as in the case of a professor and a student, or a vice president and a campaign volunteer. 

 In my career as a union representative, I rarely encountered a female worker who didn’t have at least one story of an overly tactile, Biden-like boss. It wasn’t sexual harassment per se, but the managerial touches left them uncomfortable. Because of the power imbalance, the vast majority opted not to complain.  The only thing that has changed over all these decades is that many women are now objecting when they feel their personal space has been violated.

If Joe really got it, yesterday’s statement would have included an apology. With his characteristic authenticity and warmth, he could have said:  “It pains me to no end to think that I made some women uncomfortable. Because we are now in a new era where women – thankfully – feel comfortable in telling us when they are uncomfortable, I know now that I crossed a line that I didn’t know existed. I am so sorry.  I get it now and I will immediately change my behavior.”

Joe Biden, to use his own terminology, is one hell of a decent guy.  But he is of a different era, and it is not easy to adjust to change. That’s why, in a recent speech, he referenced 23 people by name and only three were born since 1961.  That’s why, in another appearance, he blasted the “younger generation” for complaining about how tough things are, and then listed all of the accomplishments of his generation.  That’s why he told a New York gathering that he regrets that he “couldn’t come up with a way of getting (Anita Hill) the kind of hearing she deserved,” a reference to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing he chaired in 1991.

I know well the pain of comprehending that your best years are behind you.  Growing old and being – at least a little – out of touch is a natural life rhythm. But it is not a useful predicate for a presidential campaign. The Democratic field for 2020 is packed with unprecedented diversity, in gender, race, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as new thinking and ideas.  It’s hard to imagine how the enthusiasm in all those constituencies carries over to the general election if the eventual candidate turns out to be an old white guy trying to defend everything he has done since 1972.  For the country’s sake, and for Joe’s sake, I hope that doesn’t happen.

WHAT DEMS NEED TO WIN IN 2020: A BIG TENT AND A SHIFT TO THE LEFT

Pay no attention to the tortured handwringing over the alleged foibles de jour of the Democratic Party. Yes, it’s lurching to the left. And yes, its internecine squabbles can be a tad unseemly.  The fact of the matter is that you can’t have growth without growing pains.  And without growth and change, we are left with the party of 2016.  In case you forgot, it didn’t end well.

I understand the anxiety. If Democrats blow it in 2020, we’re stuck with the worst Groundhog Day of our lives: four more years of Trumpian nuclear winter.  So our blood pressure soars when we see a headline like the one in the Washington Post the other day:  “Pelosi struggles to unify Democrats after painful fight over anti-Semitism”.  Ditto for the almost daily prognostications that “socialist” concepts will assure defeat on election day (here, here and here). 

Best to take a collective deep breath and recognize three basic truths:  The election is more than 18 months away; the depth and breadth of our current problems transcend the reach of centrist ideology and Clintonian triangulation; and, the occasional chaos in the House Democratic Caucus is the very positive result of expanding the party tent to include more than white men. 

For sure, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have preferred to have spent the past week doing something other than mediating an internal party battle between the comparative evils of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.  It’s safe to say that no other House speaker has faced that challenge.  That’s because the new Democratic House majority looks substantially different than its predecessors of either party.  There are record numbers of women, people of color and millennials. Of the 43 non-white women elected for the first time, 22 are African American, six are Asian Pacific Islanders, 12 are Latina, two are Native American and one is Middle Eastern/North African. 

In the good old boys’ club days of Congress, freshmen were to be seen but not heard.  With this new big tent group, however, social media savvy has chipped away at the seniority system for determining prominence in Washington.  At 29, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York became a super star months before her election to Congress, a fete fueled largely by her Twitter following. Falling closely behind her is Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American from Minnesota, who was at the center of last week’s flap.  Omar has frequently criticized Israel with language that borrows heavily on anti-Semitic tropes, setting off a furor that remained at the top of the news feed for the past week. 

As an old white guy, judging linguistic nuances of Jewish and Muslim criticism is beyond my pay grade and life experience. It strikes me, however, that the conflict hardly diminishes Democrats. Instead, it is a byproduct of their vision of diversity and inclusiveness.  If you want a big-tent party, expect and accept some rambunctiousness. If you are more comfortable with politicians who look, act and think alike, vote Republican. 

The other inane anxiety attack that some Democrats are having ( to name a few: Ed Rendell, Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown) is that the party is swinging too far to the left. They are quaking in their centrist boots over selective red-baiting by a president who owes his election to Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin troll farm.  It is beyond absurd to label proposals for single payer health insurance, free college tuition, meaningful climate change precautions and higher taxes on the mega rich as the destruction of capitalism.  Although it is highly unlikely that any of those goals will be fully adopted anytime soon, the Democratic Party would be indulging in malpractice if it failed to push strongly in a leftward direction right now. 

Our government has spent the past several decades helping the rich at the expense of everyone else, resulting in a level of economic inequality not seen since the late 19th century.  That is the observation of the New York Times’ David Leonhardt who went on to note that the really radical approach would be to do nothing, or to make inequality worse, as Trump’s policies have.

Peter Beinart, a political science professor at the City University of New York, writing for The Atlantic, observed that the left has not traditionally had much influence on the Democrats. Yet, he said, there were two critical times when it was able to push its programs onto the table: the mid-1930s and the mid-1960s.  Both occasions involved circumstances very similar to what we are now facing. 

Franklin Roosevelt’s progressive New Deal legislation was the result of intense agitation on the left from forces like Huey Long and Francis Townsend. Their populist movement, according to Beinart, drew support from millions of people who demanded labor rights, easy credit and nationalization of banks and industries. As those very non-centrist aspirations won mass appeal, Roosevelt and many Congressional Democrats moved leftward, producing one of the most liberal legislative programs in history:  a pro-labor law, higher taxes on the rich, Social Security, unemployment insurance and aid for low income families.  Most historians have observed that those sweeping changes would not have happened without a mobilized left wing.

A similar dynamic played out in the 1960s.  Julian E. Zelizer, in his book The Fierce Urgency of Now, writes that John Kennedy had no intention of taking up the cause of racial inequality and the plight of the poor.  He was focused on tax cuts and, according to Zelizer, did not want to waste political capital on social justice issues that he thought had no traction in Congress.  His thinking changed dramatically, however, after two years of intense civil rights struggles and sustained pressure from the left.  After his death, Lyndon Johnson picked up Kennedy’s progressive agenda, resulting in the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act, federal aid for education, food stamps, job training, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid. 

There has not been anything even remotely close to that kind of progressive legislative reach since. Clearly, now is the time for a third wave of bold, sweeping changes to address profound social problems.  But that will not come from a Democratic Party beholden to Wall Street and the status quo. Polling shows significant public support for so-called socialist concepts like single payer health insurance, free college tuition, tax increases for the rich and sweeping steps to combat climate change.  

Just as in the ‘30s and ‘60s, the left is unlikely to capture the entirety of its agenda.  But without forcefully pushing it and agitating for it, none of it will see the light of day.  In this moment, the center of the road is an unproductive and lonely place to be.      

IF TRUMP HAD A SOUL, HE’D SELL IT FOR A MIDTERM WIN

In the interest of good mental health, we should prepare emotionally for a really bad election night. Yes, Democrats are favored to win a majority of House seats. That prediction has been our nirvana, our beacon of light in the darkness of the past 21 months. But we’ve been hurt before, and know only too well the cruel unreliability of conventional political wisdom. We need to brace ourselves for a GOP sweep that would hand Donald Trump a nauseatingly historic win and tighten his stranglehold on our deeply wounded country.

But I don’t have the slightest idea how to prepare for a cataclysm of that magnitude. A category four hurricane? Evacuate. A tornado? Head to the basement. A more powerful, unchecked Trump trampling America’s core values for the next two years? Not even FEMA has a preparatory template for a disaster of that scale.

I haven’t missed an election in the 48 years I’ve been voting. I’ve had far more losses than wins, and the sun always came up the next day. This time is different. Just contemplating a Republican upset that would bolster Trump’s position churns more raw emotional angst than I’ve ever encountered from a matter that is political, rather than personal. For a relatively laid back kind of guy, this level of reaction – to a midterm election, of all things – was startling and confusing. Until I figured it out.

The outcome of this election is not just political. It is deeply personal. Sure, I would hate to see an electorally emboldened Trump get by with shutting down the Mueller investigation, politicizing the Justice Department, enacting more tax cuts for the rich, and building a wall at the border. But none of those things are waking me up at night. What’s eating away at me is the enormity of the pain that will result from two years of supercharged Trumpism, from turning loose on the American people – particularly those at the margins – an unrestrained, unhinged president who has no soul.

There was no hyperbole in that last sentence. The man is truly without a soul, and that’s what makes this election so different from the others. That’s what makes it personal. Donald Trump isn’t evil because of his political beliefs. He is evil because he believes in absolutely nothing outside of himself. He is evil because he will trample anybody or anything that stands in the way of making himself look like a winner.

He recently captured the entirety of his essence in five words. Asked about his mocking and demeaning of Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, the Donald said: “It doesn’t matter. We won.” Nothing beyond the perpetual feeding of his pathologically engorged ego matters to this president. Not decency. Not respect. Not justice. Certainly not truth.

For 242 years, this country has been striving to form a more perfect union, to become a society of equal opportunity, to offer a beacon to those struggling to be free. Despite rampant imperfections and setbacks, we eventually reached the stature of power and moral authority that endowed our presidency with the distinction of being the leader of the free world. Hark, the trumpets now sound! And what words of wisdom sayeth Forty-five? Nothing matters but winning.

A caravan of frightened, desperate refugees ambles through Central America, finding protection in their numbers against the violence they are fleeing. Trump seizes their plight as stagecraft. In an attempt to pull his base to the polls, he insists Democrats organized this illegal march to our borders and that the migrants are gang members, criminals, even Mid-Easterners, hell bent on terrorism, rape and pillage. None of it is true. But if it helps Trump win, it doesn’t matter.

Nor does it matter to the president how much harm he inflicts on 1.5 million transgender Americans with his edict to, in effect, delegitimize their status and degrade their humanity. If that’s what helps to get the Evangelicals to the polls, so be it. It’s all about winning, so it doesn’t matter.

After days of rhetorically contorting himself over the alleged murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Trump’s Saudi Arabian buddies, the president takes to a campaign rally stage and raves about a Republican congressman who body slammed a reporter and pled guilty to assault. Bad timing? Sure. But he has an election to win. Nothing else matters.

It’s not Donald Trump’s evil alone that has me in a pre-election panic. It is this: Unchecked and unrestrained, this evil will metastasize far more quickly throughout the body politic, spreading its venom through hateful, hurtful bullying, racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

It’s already happening. A man groped a woman on a Southwest flight the other day and told authorities that “the President of the United States says it’s ok to grab women by their private parts.” Hateful, racist attacks by Trump’s merry band of white nationalists are an everyday occurrence. Hundreds of GOP congressional candidates have taken the president’s lead and campaigned on his lies of savage, ruthless, Latino killers storming our borders at the behest of Democrats. That’s all happening now. Imagine if Trump ends up owning one more election night. How do you prepare for the consequences of a disaster like that?

This is the most important midterm election of our lives. Sadly, for us liberals, there is little to be gained but much to be lost. If the bluest wave of our wildest dreams washes ashore November 6, Trump and his veto pen will still occupy the White House. Single payer health insurance, wealth redistribution and saving the environment will continue to occupy the cheap seats in our theater of great expectations The fault lines right now are not about legislation. They are about the cancer careening through the veins of a government led by a morally bankrupt, psychologically impaired and utterly incompetent president.

We are engulfed in a spiraling dystopia. There are databases tracking the president’s lies, sexual assault accusations and his insulting and degrading remarks. When we think he can’t get any worse, he does. In the simplistic zero-sum bubble he has drawn us into, there is only one exit strategy. Donald Trump – and all that he represents – must lose. A Democratic midterm victory will not create an end to our nightmare, but it could be a much-needed beginning of the end. This much is certain: We will not get our country back until Donald Trump loses. Right now, nothing else matters.