Author: Robert I. Grundfest

I am a teacher, writer, voice-over artist and rationally opinionated observer of American and international society. While my job is to entertain and engage, my purpose is always to start a conversation.

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Donald Trump Education

Trump’s Education Pick: Making American Public Schools Worse!

Just remember: Most voters rejected Donald Trump’s vision of the United States. They rejected his rhetoric, his vile comments about women and minorities, and they don’t want large tax cuts to the wealthy, a trade war with China or a Supreme Court that overturns hard-won democratic victories for women, gays, and those that desperately need health insurance. They also rejected the far right’s view that religious people should be able to discriminate in the name of God’s love and that hate groups should have a seat at the country’s table of power.

Donald Trump will, of course, not pay any attention to this. That’s why we need to remind him at every turn that we are here and we will be loud. And by the way, Charles Blow is my new hero.

As Trump builds his cabinet, it’s becoming clear that he is not a new Populist, but an old-style Republican with the added twist of not respecting the Constitution or his responsibility to be president 100% of the time, not part time so he can also sell his name on buildings. He also hasn’t given a lot of thought about how his appointments will actually contradict what he ran on.

For example, his proposed choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos. Had Hillary Clinton won the presidency, her choice would have reflected a commitment to public schools with a mixture of Charter School policies sprinkled in. Ms. DeVos, however, has never taught in a classroom, doesn’t have experience with public schools, doesn’t have any political experience, and doesn’t respect that public school teachers need representation and protection from a very political public school system. She begins with a firm commitment to school vouchers and Charter School, with public schools an afterthought. Oddly, she worked with Jeb Bush in Florida and is a fan of national standards, though not calling them Common Core. Her track record is terrible. Just what we need for education policy.

It’s a very good thing that the federal government has no constitutional role in the public schools because both Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, and Ms. DeVos could do far greater damage. As it is, Ms. DeVos can try to guide policy towards more school competition, but she can’t force districts to radically change their curricula or administration. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the choice of Ms. DeVos sends a message that the Secretary of Education need not have very much actual education experience. It’s insulting to have someone foisted on you who knows less about education or what works in the classroom for students than you do. It’s also a travesty that Ms. DeVos has little respect for the associations, such as the NEA, that continue to work hard to defend teachers against unwarranted interference and ensure that every education professional earns a livable salary and works in a safe, productive environment. Living through the Christie years here in New Jersey saw the education establishment fight for every scrap of respect and bargaining right we ever had. We won some and lost some major ones. We will fight, but it would be nice if we didn’t have to.

Donald Trump and the new know-nothing Republicans he’s appointed so far have a point-of-view that does not reflect the majority of voters in this country. They are anti-Muslim, supportive of far right wing hate groups, or just inexperienced to the point that they will be learning on the job for the first year, including the president-elect himself. Many of his supporters want to make America great again, when it’s pretty great as it is.

It’s a shame that we’ll be taking three steps backward before we take one stride forward.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Politics

The Will of the Minority

The American people have spoken. And a majority voted for Hillary Clinton. Which would be great if we had a democracy in this country, but we don’t. We have a republic…if we can keep it. And in a republic some funny things can happen, like protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

But who’s going to protect the majority from an especially rabid minority who now controls every branch of the government and has little reason to consider the effects of their policy proposals on the country at large? It will take some thoughtful opposition from the GOP majority to put a brake on what I’m sure will be some terrible ideas. And I have very little confidence that Donald Trump, the rather self-centered con man huckster who will sit in the Oval Office, will moderate his ideas in the interests of unity. He might, but I am extremely skeptical.

Consider his latest appointments.

He is bucking the Republican establishment with his picks for CIA Director, National Security Adviser and Attorney General. That mix of Mike Pompeo, Michael Flynn and Jeff Sessions should create an explosive brew of anti-Muslim sentiment, seasoned with a hatred of Hillary Clinton and a bias towards torture. And of course we have the very real prospect, I’d say a certainly, that Trump will nominate a climate denier for Interior and a hawk for Defense. I understand that the president-elect wants to shake up Washington, but he’s doing nothing to help bridge the wide chasm between the majority who voted against him and the minority who set aside many of the things he said in the campaign that show him to be less than a moral leader for this country, including support from the far right voices of hatred. Does he care that a shift of 70,000 votes would have cost him the election? Probably not, but ignoring those voters will turn out to be perilous for him.

What’s also becoming clear, and will be clearer as we get into the first months of his term, is that just because Donald Trump said he was going to do certain things like rip up trade agreements and set punishing tariff rates, doesn’t mean that the world will stand still for them. China and Mexico have weapons at their disposal to make things difficult for our economy and the people whose manufacturing jobs Trump has promised to create. Getting rid of NAFTA will actually cost the country jobs. Plus, if the bond market continues to firm up, that will mean higher interest rates on mortgages and automobiles which will then require wage hikes and probably higher inflation. All we’ll need is disco and polyester to complete the 70s throwback. How fun. And if you thought the Carter family was interesting, just wait. The Trump family will be far more entertaining and one of them will conduct themselves so badly that they will be disowned via Twitter by the midterm elections.

Despite the hopes of the liberal press, and even some of the conservative media, Donald Trump is no moderate. He will try to deport millions of people, demonize Islam, ignore his more enthusiastic right wing hate group supporters when he should be strongly condemning them, criminalize abortion in many states and open up more public land for commercial use. The rest of the GOP will then take a knife to social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which are exactly the programs that Trump’s core supporters rely on. How terrible it will be when they realize, too late, that the Republicans actually want smaller social programs. Yes, we will likely get better roads, bridges and other infrastructure improvements and some jobs for the people who are hurting, but at what cost?

All of this will also come in an atmosphere where Trump will complain loudly and often on Twitter about the unfairness and inaccuracy of anyone who opposes him. This weekend’s Hamilton incident is a case in point. We can debate whether the cast should have broken protocol and addressed Mike Pence, but in an era where Republicans and Democrats talk past, over and under each other, getting a message directly to the incoming Vice President was a smart move. Trump’s response, that Hamilton is an overrated show, tells me volumes about the thickness of his skin and his artistic appreciation. And besides, the real point was to stop speech and to stifle dissent.

For someone who doesn’t command the will of the majority, that is dangerous.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Donald Trump Featured

On the Election: This Is Bad, and It’s Going to Get Worse

Remember when Ronald Reagan–the actor–was supposed to represent the nadir of presidential victors? How could we elect a former actor? What a laugh riot.

This is not funny. This is bad.

I’ve read and watched a lot of news and I’m still having trouble reconciling the people who decided in the end that Donald Trump would make a good president. Don’t get me wrong; I fully understand that many Americans are angry and frustrated, have lost their homes while wealthy bankers got bailouts, have seen their communities lose resources, jobs and hope, and generally don’t see Washington as a place where problems are solved. I get that. I feel it too. But it takes a special leap sans parachute to go from that to seeing Donald Trump as the best person to solve these problems.

I especially don’t understand how anybody associated with women (mothers, daughters, sisters) could vote for him after what he said about them. Those kinds of comments disqualify you from being a moral, upstanding person who will represent all Americans. Yet more white women voted for him than Hillary. Many of the articles I’ve read quote women as saying that he was going to bring back jobs. Or they just didn’t like Hillary. Or maybe it was Comey’s letter. It still doesn’t excuse what he said. or make him in any way presidential.

The same thing goes for the other groups that Trump verbally assaulted during the campaign and the bitter, angry tone in which he not only said ugly things, but the way he tolerated that speech, and actions, in his followers. He ran a stupefying xenophobic, hateful campaign, but because enough people decided that despite that, he was the only candidate that would bring back their coal and steel jobs, that they could rationalize him away as refreshingly honest. It’s no wonder that schoolchildren were actually afraid the day after the election.

But the joke will be on those who think that Trump will change Washington. Almost immediately, the same lobbyists and interest group attorneys who genuflect before Republican winners were back in the capital, eager and willing to do whatever bidding the Trump trolls will ask of them. They will serve themselves at his table, but this time in the name of the oil and gas industries and, yes, the same multinational corporations that have no interest or intent in bringing jobs back to the United States. Trump will talk about ripping up trade deals and slapping 35% tariffs on Chinese goods, but that will produce higher prices, higher interest rates and higher anxiety as the world sees America as an adversary, not a friend. Choking off immigration will further erode our economy because new residents are a major source of strength and growth, and if you think that American citizens are eager to pick fruit, clean hotel rooms and do the dirty work at slaughterhouses, then you are in for a rude awakening.

And then there’s the reason why Hillary lost in the states where she needed to win. Much of the reason is in the numbers below.

Republican votes by the year:
2008 59,930,551
2012 60,934,407
2016 59,022,040

Democratic votes by the year:
2008 69,438,98
2012 65,918,507
2016 59,245,315

Democrats didn’t come out in the numbers they did for Obama, and it turned out that the Hispanic juggernaut and African-American support was a myth too. Even with President Obama stumping for Hillary in North Carolina and Florida. That, to me, was a sobering lesson. Not even Obama could get his coalition out in sufficient numbers. I guess too many people in key states just didn’t like Clinton.

Then there’s this piece of political stool-softening that tries to paint Trump as essentially a pragmatist who will likely jettison his most incendiary campaign proposals and rule from the center-right. I don’t believe a word of it. Trump is not experienced enough in the ways of governing, nor do I think he really understands at more than a headline level what’s involved in legislation and how it can hide some explosively nefarious provisions. With both Ryan and McConnell, but also the farthest-right and alt-right voices clamoring for his short attention span, he will be at the mercy of the Republicans who have been slobbering over themselves in anticipation of controlling the levers of power for the first time since 2006.

They will send him cuts to Medicare, Social Security, AFDC, Medicaid and any other social program they can get their hands on, and he’ll probably sign most of them into law. He has promised to work first on an infrastructure bill, but the GOP regulars, allergic to any new revenue, will demand that a costly measure such as that be paid for with corresponding tax breaks to businesses and cuts to other programs. Guess which ones? The GOP will also attach their greatest hits such as cuts to Planned Parenthood, overseas family planning projects, and school programs other than abstinence education while restoring aid to religious institutions, And did you say women’s health programs and abortion? By 2020, we might be wistfully remembering a country that had a heart.

As if the talking heads haven’t been discredited enough, the news organizations are saying that the angry, tweeting, inappropriate, insulting, profane Donald Trump is a character that he will retire, a la Stephen Colbert. That one smells too nasty to even consider. The Donald Trump of the past two weeks is the real imposter and it’s only a matter of time before he loses his cool and his credibility (what he has) over some perceived slight or media report. He’s already advocated for laws that would make it easier to sue for libel, and, like Nixon but with a real personality, he will do something about it. The media will continue to play lap dog for him and find false equivalencies by comparing him to other presidents. There is not comparison. He is the Singularity.

But there is good news. More voters supported the Democratic vision of the country, as evidenced by the popular vote. And Trump’s margins of victory in the states that mattered–Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan–were tiny and were also based on promises that he will have a difficult time keeping. If he and the GOP also decide to repeal the Affordable Care Act and millions lose their health insurance, then the GOP will be toast.  And then there’s the future of the party. Right now, it’s difficult to see who will emerge as the face of the Democrats in the coming years. Sanders can be the driving ideological force, but the party will need a younger face to run for president.

The best news, though, is that this means that the Democrats will likely gain seats in Congress in 2018 because the party in power usually suffers midterm losses. This bodes well for the Senate especially, where the Democrats will need to defend far more seats than the GOP. In the meantime, I expect new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to hold the line against the far right.

This will be a difficult four years for the country, and we will even survive this, but only if we agitate, agitate, agitate.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Politics

Let’s Not Do This Again

What, really, is there to say? We have come to the end of a truly unique and disturbing Presidential election, and in the end, most people will reject Donald Trump’s twisted view of America and his repeated assertion that only he can fix our problems. Yes, I know that many on the left, and some on the right, are rightly appalled that he stayed so close in the race through November. Why isn’t Hillary Clinton trouncing him in the polls? What’s wrong with the Republican Party? Where’s the outrage?

The honest truth is that it was always going to be far more difficult electing a woman to the presidency. Overt sexism is alive and very well in the United States, and, more specifically, at Harvard University, and while I can’t say that it’s more or less virulent than racism, it does seem to manifest itself on a broader level in society. More people, it seems, see racism and treatment of African-Americans as more unjust, more obnoxious and more unfair than our historic treatment of women, and I think it’s because mistreatment of women cuts across all ethnic and racial groups. Seeing women as second class citizens and/or as sex objects is still a cultural norm.

That Hillary Clinton will likely become the first female president will be a significant milestone in the country’s development. She will have overcome an opponent who represents the worst of America and who reminds us that we are not a nation that wants to turn the clock back to a time when it was fine to refer to woman as inferior or to question someone’s judgement because of their ethnicity. Three debates and countless news stories have shown that Donald Trump is not the kind of person most people want to lead our country. It will be close. In the end, it won’t matter. Hillary will be the president and she will have the power of the office.

It will then be up to the Republicans to decide whether they want the country to move forward. Will they make good on their promise to block any Supreme Court nominee that Clinton send them? Will they threaten to shut down the government? Will they refuse to compromise on tax reform, immigration reform and background checks? We cannot afford four more years of one party believe that the other party’s presidents are somehow illegitimate. It’s time to move forward.

Make sure you get out and vote on Tuesday.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Politics

Stop The E-Mail Panic! Hillary Will Still Win!

Come on now, be honest. Did you panic on Friday night? Are you still panicked over the emails that might cost Hillary the election and cost you your sanity? Are you angry that Hillary set up a private email server in the first place? Even angrier that FBI Director James Comey had the gall to insinuate himself into the election?

I’m here to tell you that you are wasting precious emotional and intellectual capital by doing any of those things. Hillary Clinton will be elected president on November 8 and chances are good that the Democrats will control the Senate, if only because Vice president Tim Kaine will be around to break ties.

What makes me so confident you say?

First and foremost, there doesn’t seem to be anything that indicates this new batch of (10,000+) emails came from Clinton’s server. They are messages that Huma Abedin had because she was printing them out or they were duplicates of emails that Clinton had already given to the FBI. Of course, there could be some messages that we don’t know about or ones that Anthony Weiner saw and shouldn’t have, but that’s what the FBI is looking at. The GOP can say all it wants about investigating Clinton’s server, but that’s not an issue here.

Also, the Clinton campaign will make this about James Comey, and will do so effectively. He will need to defend his actions when other Justice Department officials told him that they opposed releasing such a bombshell so close to a presidential election date. He will ultimately need to say that he doesn’t know what’s in these emails and that to conclude that the are in any way incriminating would be wrong. Then the GOP will attack him and the story will continue to be about James Comey, not Hillary Clinton.

I understand why he sent his letter to Congress, because to sit on this information until the election was over would open him up to accusations that he wasn’t following the law. And obviously if there was something incriminating he has his duty to release it, but there isn’t any. In fact, his letter to FBI employees states specifically that they don’t know what’s on the computers. This is irresponsible. Imagine if you did that on your job. The job you would then lose, I mean.

The other nonissue is that most voters have already made up their minds and either have voted or wouldn’t dream of voting for Trump. This is where polarization works to Hillary’s advantage. If the GOP had a reputable candidate and the election was close, then I could see being worried. But Donald has already overreached by calling this as big as Watergate and I’m assuming that Comey will need to clarify that the FBI doesn’t know what it has, so that will undercut Trump’s attempts at blaming anything specific on Hillary. Plus, the email issue is nothing new and it won’t erase the terrible things that Trump has said over the course of the campaign.

What about the polls, you say? The polls have been tightening, right? Well, yes and not-so-yes. The margin by which Hillary has been leading, since July, I might add, is getting a bit smaller, but that seems to be because recalcitrant Republicans who were repulsed by Trump’s misogyny are coming back to the party. They’ll regret it later, but Trump’s improvement has been almost entirely built on his getting a greater share of GOP voters than he did earlier this month.

Most state polls, which are the ones that we should be watching, show that he’s behind in most of the swing states and has never led in the Electoral College projections since the campaign started. He could even win Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida and still lose, assuming that Clinton wins Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, which she will, so I don’t know why you’re bothering me about this. Probably because you’ve been consulting the mainstream press, which has an interest in creating uncertainty so you’ll continue to consume their messages. Please stop.

The most important thing that Democrats can do now is to vote. I know that some thought that Hillary had this in the bag, but that’s not true if people don’t vote for her and Democrats for House and Senate. Vote early if you can. This election is too vital not to.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Politics

The Debates Do Their Job

I love the presidential debates. Why, especially in a campaign that will go down in history as one of the nastiest? Because the debates uncover what the candidates want to cover. They ultimately show us the character of the candidates. And they tell us a great deal about how each person would rule, should they win the election.

This year was no different from any other.

For most of the campaign, the media reported that Donald Trump was unique and that he could say anything without exacting any penalty from the electorate. We were also told that Hillary Clinton was a flawed, unpopular, programmed candidate who could do nothing but damage herself in the debates because, surely, Trump and the moderators would pummel her with the emails and the foundation and Benghazi! It turned out that exactly the opposite was true.

Hillary Clinton’s performance in the three debates will become mandatory viewing for anyone who aspires to national office. She utterly defeated, deflated and defanged Donald Trump with clinical efficiency and cool professional effectiveness. She turned questions about her weaknesses into attacks on Trump, and was able to deflect the more damaging accusations into her past with a smile. Of course, we all want candidates to answer for their sins, but part of being a great debater is knowing how to parry and evade. Clinton did that; Trump did not. By the end of the third debate, it was crystal clear that Trump did not prepare or have any strategy other than to bully, interrupt, cite questionable evidence or hurl accusations.

And this is where the debates were so instructive. They really did show us that the Trump campaign is a Potemkin operation, built on personality and the teachings of Chairman Breitbart, with the GOP’s greatest conspiratorial hits from the 1990s thrown in. They also showed that Trump is not suited for the presidency. Given the biggest stage of the campaign, he didn’t prepare, and it showed. His answers were short and scattered, he didn’t press advantages that he did have, and his behavior was abominable. For someone who was supposed to be able to use his television experience, his body language showed him to be too aggressive, and his constant interruptions came off as ill-mannered. He went for every piece of chum that Hillary threw at him and he got angry, which rarely plays well on the tube (contrast Trump with Reagan’s “I paid for that microphone” line to see the difference between power and tantrum).

Clinton was not perfect, but she was close. Trump helped by letting her off the hook on many occasions and by reacting too emotionally when she brought up things that he didn’t expect, which is part of debate preparation. She interrupted him at times despite her promise to “go high,” but she understood that she had to seem even more in control because she’s a woman, so she couldn’t back down. At the third debate, where she essentially closed the deal on the election, Clinton spoke forcefully and in command of the issues. She’s clearly thought a great deal about them over the course of her adulthood and she enunciated them impeccably last week. Trump played along for a while, but his lack of preparation, personal control, and content sunk him.

In the end, we learned a great deal about each candidate. Clinton did her due diligence, Trump did not. She displayed a command of events and issues and explained them in cogent, factual terms. Trump was able to do that on occasion, but he then got caught in rhetorical whirlpools which led to what unfortunately became signature moments that didn’t help his campaign. She was able to put him on the defensive and keep him there; he tried, but didn’t have the intellectual stamina to press his points. He called her names and accused Clinton of conspiracies and plots that the right has manufactured for almost 30 years. He also, fatally, said he would not accept defeat.

As for Trump being able to say anything he wanted and get away with it, those days ended for good with the groping tape. Trump had always been penalized for what he said, rarely polling over 42% nationwide and never leading in the electoral college count, but the media couldn’t fold up its tent in July, so they continued to feed us the story that this campaign was different and that political correctness was on the run. Yes, there is a sizable group of people in this country who support Trump and what he says, but there are far more who finally saw through his tactics and are abandoning him with impressive speed.

The record low for a major party candidate in a presidential election is a popular vote of 39%. I predict that Trump will poll lower on election day. He’ll cry fraud, but he’s the only fraud in the race. Clinton beat him fair and square in three debates because she’s the most qualified of the two, and of many more, to be president.

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Categories
Donald Trump Politics Republican party blows up

Indefensible, And Getting Worse

Political parties blow up. That’s a fact of life. But not all political explosions are similar and this year’s nuclear meltdown of the Republican Party is unique in the United States and, I’m sure, terrifying to other countries who depend upon our, well, dependability to keep the peace, ensure economic tranquility and to fight against injustice most of the time.

Consider. When the Democrats blew up in 1972, the issue was the Vietnam War and the influence of the far left wing, many of whose adherents were communists. That year’s nominee, George McGovern, a Senator from South Dakota, was not the party’s first choice, but since Nixon’s dirty tricks campaign had eliminated Edmund Muskie and scared off Ted Kennedy, this is what the Democrats were left with. Add to the fact that Nixon was popular after having gone to China in February and that the GOP had wads of (unregulated, illegal, corporate) cash, the race was going to be an uphill climb for McGovern. Then he made the mistake of naming a semi-vetted running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his VP. When word got out that he had undergone shock therapy and had to drop out, any momentum McGovern was going to get was gone. His policies veered too far to the left and the pictures of long-haired, drug-taking hippie freaks in Nixon attack ads pretty much sealed his fate. Watergate hastened the return of the party in 1976, behind a religious, centrist Jimmy Carter, but that was just the drain plug that couldn’t hold back the conservative tide that won three elections in the 1980s.

Ah, the good old days.

The Republican Party’s descent into political hell that Donald Trump is leading makes 1972 seem like a peaceful transition in a Scandinavian country. His especially noxious brand of politics, which by the by has been on display from Day 1 of his campaign, is unprecedented for a presidential campaign in this country. He has decided that the issues don’t matter, except to point out that he would arrest and jail his Democratic opponent, arrest millions of immigrants, and build the wall with Mexican money. Everything else he’s said over the past week has been offensive, sexist, contradictory, or just plain unintelligible.

His focus on women’s looks and bodies is a reminder that we not only continue to have a race problem, we have a gender problem in the United States. We also seem to have a problem understanding how destructive words and actions can be and we also have a problem realizing that words can be equal to an assault if they cause someone to change their physical or psychic behavior. The latest right wing defense of his words seems to rely on the fact that he didn’t act on them, and that those women who said that he did act on them should have reported them contemporaneously. But that’s not how power relationships and bullying work. Plus, in some ways, it’s easier to let it go if that person, and Trump certainly is one of those people, might have control over your financial or personal future.

And his incessant talk about physical appearance is beyond any locker room I’ve been in. Men joke, men comment, men wish, men hope, men beg, but decent men do not talk about grabbing, groping, or physically assaulting women, and if they do, most of the time they get called on it. Trump’s comments saying that he would not have tried anything with the women who’ve accused him of lewd behavior because they aren’t attractive enough for him is far beyond the bounds of respectable behavior. Forget about disqualifying him to be president; that behavior should disqualify him from being an employee at any corporation with a functioning Human Relations department.

It’s a good thing that he’s going to lose badly, but the terrible part is that he’s going to drag down our political culture over the next three weeks. he will not discuss issues and he won’t allow Hillary Clinton to say much about policy in the final debate this Wednesday. He will likely challenge the results of the election and I’m assuming he won’t concede in the traditional manner. What we as decent citizens of this country need to do is to explain to our young people that this election is an anomaly, and that it should wake us up to the danger of any candidate who objectifies groups of people, shames them or speaks dismissively of them.

This quote never gets old: “Have you no decency, sir?”

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Categories
Donald Trump Featured sexism

It’s October, But This Is Not a Surprise

I suppose the real question is why it took so long for the smoking gun tape to make its way out of the sewer that is Donald Trump’s campaign for president. We’ve built up to this since 2010, when the Tea Party ran some candidates who decided that rape was a major public policy item, not for the shame and injustice it rained down on women, but because evidently many Republican men believed that a woman couldn’t get pregnant as a result of it or that it was much ado about nothing. Yes, we always knew that Trump was disgraceful sexist and that he saw women as objects to be conquered or groped, but somehow the morality bar got buried under the sand this presidential go ’round and his rantings became the stuff of boys will be boys or, worse, lauded by some as evidence that we’d lost our sense of humor in the haze and smoke of political correctness.

There’s a reason the word “correctness” is associated with the phrase. Because it’s correct to respect women, and the other minorities, and the physically challenged people Donald Trump has savaged. It’s correct to actually speak from facts and research, not from the good old 1950s paradigm that many of Trump’s supporters want the country to return to. And it’s correct to hold everybody accountable for remarks that denigrate any person for whatever reason.

And we are learning so much about the Republican Party and its candidates, aren’t we? Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, said nothing after reporters repeatedly peppered him with questions about Trump’s remarks. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s once and present advisor, reminded us that we’re electing the leader of the free world and one who needs to lead by example, not a Sunday school teacher, which presumably means that the president can say anything he wants in the interests of being tough.

Paul Ryan didn’t appear on stage with Trump. Sorry, not good enough.

The party leaders and elected officials need to condemn, in no uncertain words, what Trump has said. They need to disavow his campaign and, at the very least, withdraw their support. It’s bad enough that Trump’s ideas are dangerous and incoherent. It’s quite another for this man to think that he can follow a man like Barack Obama into the White House and have any moral standing.

This of course will be one of the topics of Sunday’s debate, but I expect that since voters will be asking questions, that they will move on to jobs and security and taxes and other issues that should be the crux of Sunday’s event. Hillary, though, will not leave it alone, nor should she. This is exactly why we need a strong woman as president. The country needs to get over the female leader barrier in the same way that we’ve smashed the race barrier at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Perhaps this means that we’ll get the landslide election we clearly deserve.

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Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump

This Trump Guy Is Volatile, No?

What a difference a week makes. The buildup to last week’s debate was breathless, and so was the debate itself, what with Trump wasting his energy interrupting Hillary and getting red in the face as she baited him all evening. He clearly had not prepared much other than to ask himself who the best-looking, smartest, most leader-like candidate in the race was. And of course his mirror had the answer, as it always does.

Then came the continuing attack on Alicia Machado as Trump tried to tie her to a sex tape and other sordid events from her past, many of which she has owned up to. But he fell into the Republican male blame-the-victim trap. Ms. Machado might have some things in her past. That doesn’t mean it’s in any way excusable for him to shame her about her weight. And then to continue to do so on Twitter at 3:00am when nobody should do anything on any electronic device anywhere. Anywhere. Go back to sleep.

And of course today there’s the report that Trump might not have paid any income tax over an 18 year period because of, well, the tax laws. And the reason he might not have had to pay was because his businesses…sucked wind. Went bankrupt. Failed. For someone who’s running on his managerial and business acumen, he surely doesn’t have a successful track record. But why would that surprise anyone? He’s been running on non-sequiters and nonsense for over a year. Now that the national media has woken up, he’s not getting away with saying the things that his base voters think is true.

What’s also remarkable about the past week is that media outlets that are normally rock-solid Republican, like the Arizona Republic and the Cincinnati Enquirer. USA Today went out of their way to tell people how dangerous the man is. The free ride is over.

The polls, which saw  movement towards Trump as of last weekend, are now moving to Clinton. That’s good news for her, but she does have to be careful because this week has been all about Donald the Terrible and very little about Clinton’s vision for the future. I’m sure she’ll take the help that Trump is giving her, but she really did want to spend the post-debate period talking positively about what she’d do to help the country. I’m not sure that Trump will ever let her do that because he’ll do anything to keep the media spotlight on him and he clearly has no desire to enunciate a coherent policy agenda over the final 5 weeks of the campaign.

There are two more presidential debates, and a VP face-off on Monday, but really, can Donald Trump undo the damage he’s done over the past few months? Does the GOP and the media think that one good, solid debate performance from him will wipe away the things he’s said about women, minorities and every other group in this country? I don’t think so, plus he’s shown no compulsion to do anything except try to convince the electorate that he is absolutely right on every issue and that only he can fix our problems. This has to be frustrating to Hillary because she can’t seem to lead the headlines with policy, as she wants to. The next debate will likely be an even worse experience for her as I’m expecting Trump to interrupt every answer she tries to give and to bring up everything except what he’ll do the help the country.

It will be fiery television, but not much else.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump News Politics

Time For the Main Event

I suppose it was inevitable that the first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign would be touted as a must-see, Super Bowl-sized audience extravaganza. This has been building since Dwight Eisenhower lamented that running for president was akin to being a product marketed across the country. Television and now social media has turned this election into the first full-force, multi-screen election. We will never turn back.

But the main concern is about the match-up. Who will win? How will they win? How will the debate shape the race? The conventional wisdom says that the debates in and of themselves will not change the dynamics of the campaign, but the research also says that the first debate has the most overall impact on shaping voters’ attitudes.

As of now, Hillary Clinton has rebounded from a bad couple of weeks and has seen her poll numbers improve. Trump has taken the lead in some of the key swing states, but that was based on his rise nationally, and those swing states should come back to Clinton. The reason for Trump’s rise, though, is interesting. Most of his rebound is based on Republicans deciding to support their nominee including, evidently, Ted Cruz, who endorsed Trump this weekend. The country remains as polarized as ever and there are a larger number of voters who say they are undecided and could be swayed by tomorrow’s debate. Then there are the Johnson and Stein voters, more of whom are Democrats who don’t want to vote for Hillary.

Which brings us to debate strategy. Of course, the more compelling media story is which Donald Trump will show up: the controversial, offensive one or the moderate, less blustery one. This is a false choice. Donald Trump has shown that he can’t stay away from saying things that grab headlines and reinforces stereotypes, and I expect that this is the Trump we’ll see on Monday night. He can try to appear presidential and restrained, but he’ll still be talking about building walls and deporting people and what terrible shape the country’s in right now. The last time he had to make a consequential speech, at the GOP convention in July, he painted a dystopian picture of a country that really doesn’t exist. During the summer, after he hired a new set of advisors, his message did become restrained at times, but we were never more than a few days removed from his making an outrageous claim about things that were not supported by data. And further, he told so many untruths, it was difficult to keep up. He will not be able to get away with that on Monday.

Hillary’s job in the debate, quite simply, is to appeal to the Bernie voters who don’t think she’s got his back. If she can convince wavering Democrats that her agenda is liberal enough for them to vote for her, then she’s done her job. Along the way, she needs to look presidential and strong, and she needs to remind the audience about Trump’s, shall we say, discomfort with specific policies. She will face some rough spots over the emails and the Clinton Foundation, but if she keeps the focus on Trump’s questionable business activities that will blunt some his points. And if Trump really tries to bring up things like Bill’s affairs or Hillary’s looks or any other topic from the dark side, Clinton should just remind people that we have very pressing issues, but Trump is worried about THAT?

Of course, if either candidate makes a huge mistake or comes off looking anything resembling unpresidential, then that will absolutely damage their chances. It will be interesting television and I’m glad that so many people are expected to watch.

This race is still Hillary’s to lose. I don’t expect her to.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Politics

The Lie That Keeps On Giving

It’s funny how public opinion can be swayed by a good lie or repeating an untruth until people believe it. OK, well maybe it’s not so funny when it comes to the presidential race, but here we have it. Up to now, Hillary Clinton was seen as the less truthful candidate, but the real truth is that more than half of the public pronouncements Donald Trump has made are, well, lies. And that’s really why I said last week that Hillary’s drop in the polls was not anything to panic about. All we had to do was wait a little bit and Trump would likely say something that would further reinforce the fact that he is woefully unprepared and unqualified to be president.

We didn’t even have to wait a week.

Trump’s commitment to the birther issue is proof positive that he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to run the Executive branch. After all, how can someone who is gullible enough to believe, and susceptible to low-level analytical arguments, be trusted to gather information and make an educated decision that might cost us lives? And he stuck with it for five years. Then, even though he received documentary proof that he was wrong, he continued to push the lie. Until Friday. Then he finally acknowledged what has never, ever been true. Trust Trump to make a decision. Nope.

But wait, there’s more. He then doubled down on the lie that Hillary Clinton wants to gut the Second Amendment and, gasp, take your guns away. Rather than making the point with a political argument, though, he repeated the idea that Hillary should be harmed by pro-gun citizens in order to…prove a point. I’m not quite sure what that point would be, but since it is not anchored in reality, it really doesn’t matter what the point is. The result is quite a backlash against Trump, and one that will reverse his momentum in the polls, and rightly so.

I’m sure that Trump will try to deflect all of this at the debates, but if he can go so far off script during a scripted campaign event, imagine what he’ll say during a debate that, evidently, he hasn’t really prepared for. September 26 should be quite a show.

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Domestic Policies Donald Trump Donald Trump News Politics

Concerned About the Polls? Don’t Be.

CHARLOTTE, NC - JULY 05: Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks on as U.S. president Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally with on July 5, 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hillary Clinton is campaigning with president Obama in North Carolina. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

I know you. You’re a Democrat, or at least someone who believes that Donald Trump is a disaster waiting to happen, and you’ve been very concerned over the past week because the polling seems to indicate that Hillary Clinton’s once safe lead is vanishing with every news release. You also wonder how anyone, and I (you) mean ANYONE, could vote for that Trump guy, and it’s a travesty that he’s even polling in the forties, much less close to Clinton. And you also fear that not only can Trump say anything without being punished in the polls, but that Hillary is losing. LOSING.

With all of this in mind, I have a question for you: Are you daft?

Let’s calm down and look at some reality. First of all, Clinton has a lead in every national poll aggregation since, well, the spring and she continues to lead in the RealClearPolitics average of both national and state polls (sorry, but that CNN poll is an outlier. Like Pluto.). She also is ahead in enough states to have more than the 270 electoral votes in RealClear, FiveThirtyEight, Princeton Election Consortium, electoral-vote.com (where on Sunday Clinton was losing Ohio and Florida, but still winning the election) and..and…and every other reputable polling site in the media ether. Plus, the odds that Hillary Clinton will win the election are above 70% according to most calculations and above 80% in some others. Last week, the Washington Post released polls for each of the 50 states and found that…Hillary is leading in enough states, even Texas and Georgia, to win handily. But that’s clearly not enough for you weak-kneed liberals who must have your 90% win projections and a 400+ electoral vote landslide in the bag before Labor Day.

It’s not going to happen. Hillary is not popular enough and voters are in a foul mood and the country is locked in at about 45% support for each party, with the middle 10% the deciding voters. It’s striking to hear that some Republicans will not vote for Trump, but there are still Bernie voters who won’t vote for Hillary. Plus, it’s still relatively early. Political junkies have been mainlining the politics cut with baking soda for more than a year now. The pure stuff doesn’t arrive until September 26. That’s when most of America will pay serious attention.

Which brings me to the most noxious comment that people make about Donald Trump, that he can say anything and not be punished in the polls. He is being punished in the polls. His numbers are terrible and they continue to be terrible even with the race tightening. If you look, you’ll see  that Trump is still polling nationally in the low 40% range. The race is getting closer because Clinton’s numbers are falling a bit because of the email and Clinton Foundation stories. She also essentially took the summer off to raise money and to let Trump say ridiculous things without competing for air time.

Trump’s numbers didn’t budge. His supporters remain who they were during the primaries (and by the by, Hillary is essentially right about them). He’s doing abominably with women, Hispanics, African-Americans, college-educated people and those with middle and upper middle class incomes, and he’s saying nothing that will win them back. To go even further, even with Clinton’s troubles, more voters support her for president than Trump. It’s terrible that this election seems to be a race to the bottom, but Trump is winning that race convincingly.

Starting this week, Hillary Clinton will be more visible and she will begin to actually run for president. She’s clearly the best qualified, and she’s the candidate with the answers that most other Americans agree with on the issues of the day. They don’t agree with mass deportations or banning Muslims from the country or Trump’s view that the country is a cesspool of stagnation, violence and decay run by a president who might still not be a citizen, but is definitely a Muslim. Hillary will make her case and make it forcefully. I also think that the debates will be an eye-opener for Trump because he’s going to be called on every one of his contradictory comments and will be forced to actually take a stand on issues he’s clearly not studied. Hillary will also have some zingers of her own and she’ll show a sense of humor that many voters don’t think she has.

And that’s ultimately why Hillary Clinton will win the election. She’s ahead in the polls now and my take is that she’ll still be leading by this time next week and the week after that. She will use the debates to reintroduce herself, her qualifications, her vision for the country and her steady realism and that will enable her to win.

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