Round Two: Hillary vs the Man from LaMancha

One talking head, after the last Bernie/Hillary debate said it was Ali/Frazier, meaning it was a great fight and both fighters were at their best and each took some jarring shots: Bernie painted Hillary as a cynical politico who dances with the boys at Goldman Sachs even if she never allows herself to be seduced, she looks the worse for it. Hillary pictured Bernie as self righteous who thinks of himself as the only pure soul in the room.

Tonight's show will likely be as good or better, now that they've had a chance to take the measure of each other.

Of course, now Bernie does not look like such a long shot. As Barney Frank remarked, what Bernie really had going for him was that even he didn't really think he had much of a chance to win the nomination; he didn't really take himself seriously, which gave him a certain freedom. It's okay to tilt at windmills as long as nobody is really depending on you to actually save them from real threats.

Hillary must be frustrated beyond tears to think that she has to deal with someone, who is, in his own way, as divorced from reality as Trump. He acknowledges if he were elected he would be in no better position to accomplish anything than President Obama, and his "revolution" would likely be as frozen and stymied by a Republican Congress as was Mr. Obama.  
But his impossible dream is so intoxicating, he can get some people to sing along with him, at least for now.

His positions are so extreme, he would be trying to fly the airplane sitting at the far end of one wing;  most pilots have enough on their hands when they are sitting in the cockpit.

His only answer has been that well, we will need more than simply a new President, we'll need a "revolution" which means send me a new progressive Congress.

But, as every political scientist now extant says, the Congress is frozen in concrete. Ninety percent of all Congressional seats are nearly uncontested. Nothing's going to change in the legislature until and unless Gerrymandering ends, campaign financing laws change and Hell freezes over. 

We wanted revolution in the 60's, too, but that didn't make it happen.  Oh, we got premarital, extra martial, elder sex, but we didn't change the world all that much, politically. The war in Vietnam ended, which seemed pretty amazing at the time, but what we got was eternal war, more smaller Vietnams which didn't matter to you personally unless you lived in the wrong zip code and were one of those unfortunates who had no better financial option than joining the Army.

What Bernie is selling is, in some ways, pie in the sky. He's a political version of Timothy Leary, selling a new high. Until you can show how you are going to revolutionize Congress, how you are going to sweep out all the Mitch McConnell's, the Trey Gowdy's, the knuckle draggers who were on display during the Benghazi hearings, you are selling a fantasy.  

Even if only a third of the country is Trump country, that's still enough to block up the hall and prevent any forward movement. The country has as many inbred banjo players in West Virginia and Kentucky as it has independent, forward thinking Yankees in Vermont and New Hampshire.  For every free thinking resident of Massachusetts and New York, there are Bible thumping evangelists in Iowa and Alabama.

President Obama told the Illinois legislature yesterday that the whole system of government in this country was and is designed to create gridlock and the art of government is to figure out ways to clear out some intersections so some traffic can get through.

Ms. Clinton's task tonight is to hammer home the portrait of Bernie Sanders as the Don Quixote of our generation, the man who rides into combat on an ass and tries to knock over that windmill.  But the Impossible Dream is just that, impossible.

If she can sing Man from La Mancha tonight, she might just bring a lot of dreamers to their senses. 

The Answer to the $675,000 Question

George Bernard Shaw, in "Major Barbara" argued there is no such thing as "dirty money" or "clean money" in a capitalist society.  Even the Salvation Army is supported by contributions from weapons manufacturers.  Each part of society is interdependent. 

But Bernie Sanders has stung Hillary Clinton with his focus on her speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, reputed bad guys in the financial crisis.  And, remarkably, she has had no good answer; despite all her resources, her answers have ranged from the lame to the tone deaf.

Paul Waldman, writing in a Washington Post blog, recently offered the best answer to the question of why Hillary Clinton accepted so much money from Goldman Sachs, which essentially was an embrace of the cynicism endemic to members of the political class. What you have to do is allow your audience backstage, and simply reveal your underlying disrespect for the very people who give you money; you bite the hand who feeds you. 

You have to "dis" these people. You have to tell the blue collar audience what twits these rich benefactors really are. You have to tell the truth. "They gave me money because I am famous and I have been important and if I win the Presidency,  I will be even more important,  so they want to put a picture of themselves shaking my hand on their 'brag wall,' and they want to be able to tell their buddies on the golf course what they told Hillary at dinner, so they think they've bought a celebrity buddy, but of course, they have not." Or words to that effect. 

And the truth is, if any of your had a chance to make money this easily, you'd do it too. Grip and grin, take the money and run.

Of course, to reveal all this is risky, because to say all this is to throw your contributors under the bus. Saying  this might best be said by others, by journalists and bloggers (like me) or surrogates to have the public trust, like Barney Frank.

What you are saying to your audiences in the 99% is that you have played the 1% for suckers, because you took their money without really loving them. In a sense, you are playing the role of the lady of easy virtue: Pay me, and I'll be seen on your arm, I'll eat dinner with you, I'll drink your wine, but although I may accommodate you, my heart is elsewhere and I think you are repugnant. You are saying you were insincere with these rich people, but now you are being open with the masses. The joke's on them. 

This is a very tough dance to pull off, but Hillary must find a way to do it. If she has any real friends, they will spend a lot of time helping her. 

She was very smart and canny to hit Bernie at his strength:  You are just so pure, you do not accept that anyone else is as pure as you; nobody measures up to your standards, not even Paul Wellstone, who, inexplicably, voted for DOMA.  Certainly not President Obama, who took Wall Street money.

But including Mr. Obama in that retort was not adroit: Plenty of liberal Democrats, most especially Elizabeth Warren, have been disappointed and bewildered by Mr. Obama's failure to jail any Wall Street executive for his role in the financial disaster of 2008.

Trouble is, when you read Elizabeth Warren's white paper on the too big to jail problem, of the 20 cases she lists as examples of cases where somebody should have gone to jail, only the London whale was a case of clear cut fraud.  A lie is an untruth told by someone who knows it is untrue. Simply being wrong about rating mortgage backed securities as AAA when you should have done due diligence is deeply inept and irresponsible, but it's not clear it's criminal.  Doctors who fail to do all the things they ought to do to proceed safely may be negligent, but few would argue they are criminally negligent. 

And, as many have argued, there is Wall Street and there is Wall Street. There are some enlightened, socially responsible, environmentally concerned players on Wall Street.

What Hillary fails to understand is there are voter resentments not uncovered by the media and politicos who simply miss things. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was almost never mentioned in the campaign with Jimmy Carter, but exit polls found this motivated many voters, even Republican voters to vote for Carter. 

Hillary Clinton may not appreciate the depths of resentment about Wall Street and the dopes who brought us the mess depicted in "The Big Short," which I think is an under-appreciated force in this election. 

Today, my fellow Granite Staters are voting and I've already cast my ballot for Bernie. But, as I've said in the past, if I were voting in the general election, rather than the primary, I'd vote for Hillary. She will make a solid, reliable President. But before she gets there, she has to learn to take a chance and burn some bridges with the upper 1%.
I have voted in every primary and every election in New Hampshire since 2008. I have never been asked questions by anyone doing an exit poll, never seen anyone doing such a poll or known anyone polled. 
What this means to me is the politicos, whether they are academics or operatives are no better at their jobs than those dummies depicted in "The Big Short" who had no clue who held those mortgages in the mortgage backed securities. It was easier to listen to your equally ignorant peers over lunch than to do the difficulty, tedious and laborious work of actually looking at the real data in which the truth resides. 

I know exit polls are taken in New Hampshire, but what I'm saying is there are not nearly enough.  In early voting, we need to know what the voters are trying to say and that means the sampling has to be thorough and visible and pervasive.  At least in my own worm's eye view, the lessons of New Hampshire will probably be missed. 

Barney At The Airport

Seeing Barney Frank at Logan this morning, I was reminded of something you tend to forget when you watch public figures on T.V. 
Living in Washington, DC it was easy to remember those images on TV actually belonged to real people. I filled my car tank at the gas station on River Road where Wolf Blitzer filled his tank.  Henry Waxman bought milk at the High's store in Glen Echo. Supreme Court justices belonged to my swimming pool. When you see people in the flesh, you realize, oh, they're just people, but you tend to forget that when your only connection is television.

I've never met Hillary, but everyone in my town seems to have met her and they all remark how small she is, physically. (Not spiritually.)  Her energy and warmth do not translate well to the cool medium of TV, apparently.

I've been roiling that my favorite politician, Barney Frank, is not running for President, or perhaps, Vice President with Elizabeth Warren for President.

But seeing Barney Frank today, I could understand immediately why he retired. He is vastly overweight and moves painfully, his trousers slipping down below his gut, the cuffs dragging along the floor as he walks. He pants with the short exertion required to get him to the ticket counter. Nobody says anything to him, either because they don't recognize him with his scruffy beard, or because they are Bostonians and they respect his space. 

But, it is clear, physically, he is struggling. And it is sad to see a man with such a lively brain, with a steel honed wit, capable of great clarity and insight, carrying the cross of physical infirmity. He could not run for President because he could not muster the stamina to walk, much less to run, much less to rule.

I have seen Bernie from a distance, and despite his age, he looks pretty good for 74. But even on TV, he does not look vital and vigorous. 

We have to remember the Presidency is a marathon punctuated by sprints.

I'm not even sure Hillary, who was born the same year I was, is physically up to the task. But she looks like a better bet.

If either Hillary or Bernie wins, I sure hope they pick a vigorous Vice President. Martin O'Malley looks fit enough.
And let's not forget Elizabeth Warren. 

Bernie vs Hillary and the Fierce Urgency of Now

There is a Republican debate sometime soon, but I'm still reeling from that masterful 2 hours the Democrats gave us, courtesy of Maddow and Todd and MSNBC.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders confronted the actual thinking which voters, if they are intelligent, will have to consider before casting their votes. For the 40% of the nation who are weighing whether it should be The Donald or Cruz or Rubio, the process of thinking is irrelevant, but for the Democrat or the Independent, last night gave everyone something to chew on.

The basic argument is not whether change is needed. Both candidates want to get the country to the same place. What they are arguing about is what strategy will be most likely to succeed. Ms. Clinton says America does not change by revolution, by large leaps forward, however much we might wish it would. Mr. Sanders says the forces he wishes to overthrow are so dug in, the only way to dislodge them is with a frontal assault: a Wall Street which embraces as its business model fraud, a system in which wealthy individuals and corporations are expected to buy politicians, which is inherently, structurally corrupt cannot be changed by nibbling around the edges.

Sanders, in fact, sounds much like Martin Luther King, who was constantly being counseled to move more slowly, to appreciate it will take time to change minds and hearts, to not push his fellow countrymen to move faster than their culture would permit. But King argued for the "fierce urgency of now" and the movement he led could not possibly have succeeded by incrementalism. 

Some would say that movement did not, in fact, succeed in the end. Yes, the Voting Rights Act was passed to allow Blacks to vote in the South and yes, Blacks were admitted to elite colleges and yes, Blacks entered the professions and the suburbs in greater numbers. But there was fierce resistance. There were riots over busing in Boston. And now the Supreme Court has nullified the Voting Rights Act, and the proportion of Blacks in elite colleges is falling and white flight left many upwardly mobile Black families living in a new ghetto, walled off from wealthy white gated communities.

In fact, Ms. Clinton has history on her side in the case of Medicare. In 1965, when LBJ managed to get Medicare signed into law, the law was a vestigial thing, a mere embryo of the colossus it would become. It covered only the fees of physicians seeing patients in hospitals, not the hospital charges, not the lab or radiology tests, not drugs, not follow up care and no outpatient services at all. Of course, the Republicans and the American Medical Association said it was the first toll of the bell of imminent collapse of American civilization and outright communism. 

The men in the government who fashioned the law, civil servants working with Congressional staffers, figured if they could just start small, just get the one thing covered, and if that worked out okay, then next year they might add something else. And that's exactly what happened, and now fifty years later, Medicare has become an institution it is hard to imagine we didn't always have. How could we live without Medicare?

Bernie Sanders is saying someday we'll all be shaking our heads wondering how we could have been so foolish as to not see that Medicare for all was inevitable.

But Hillary knows nothing in government is inevitable and she is saying the way we'll get where Bernie wants to go, to universal Medicare, is the way we got to Medicare in the first place, small steps.

A Debate Like No Other: One for the Ages

Watching the classic debate between the fictional candidates in West Wing, Matt Santos (Jimmy Smitts) vs Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) I could only say, "If only." If only a real debate could be like that, where the moderators stay out of the way and the candidates get to speak as long as they want and then respond to what the other says. But no, I thought, that could never happen in real life.

Tonight, however, I was proved wrong. 

Rachel Maddow and Mark Todd were masterful at serving up the questions and then getting quickly out of the way. And they asked all the questions I wanted to ask: Bernie, are you electable?  Why would you not simply be the next Barry Goldwater or George Magovern, an extremist beloved by a cult following but defeated in 49 states?  Hillary, how can you say you are not in the pocket of Goldman Sachs when you accept $675,000 in "speaker's fees" from them? 

Hillary had the tougher job, in defending taking the money. Basically she said, well, I was cashing in, but that never affected my vote or my vigorous pursuit of Wall Street when it came to voting for regulation and legislation to rein in Wall Street's excesses.  She scored points for saying you have insinuated I'm corrupt for accepting this money, an  "artful smear" on my character.  Bernie deftly side stepped that by saying, essentially, I'm not saying you are corrupt, but I am saying, as a system, it stands to reason Goldman Sachs and the others wouldn't be spending money on politicians if they thought this was not a good investment. When Wall Street Banks spend millions lobbying for regulation and Congress votes for deregulation, don't you think there might be a connection?

Bernie is pointing to our systems of legal bribery, where Congressmen can accept money as long as there is no specific deal for a specific vote.  Hillary responds by saying, Bernie nobody can be pure enough for you: President Obama, Barney Frank, nobody is up to your standards; wake up and live in the real world.

Well, Bernie says, the truth is the business model of Wall Street is fraud. Anyone who saw "The Big Short" or read "Liar's Poker" will know what he is talking about. 

We all have to swim in the same water, Hillary was saying, and she was basically admitting its a toxic system, but you have to swim in the polluted water if that's what you've got. Bernie is saying, no, I won't dive into that scummy pond. I'm going to decontaminate the pond. 

The wonderful thing about the two of them was how they managed to recover from their own tempers, to get past their very apparent, very real anger, and move on. Bernie took pains to agree with Clinton, when he could and she with him.

He refused to take the bait about demanding a recount in Iowa. He shrugged it off. We are talking about two delegates out of 2500, he said. Get past it.  And he reaffirmed his disinterest in her email problems, saying there was already a process in place and he would not politicize it, which was pretty crafty, actually, because he never said it was unimportant. 

Even the final summary statements were worth watching. Hillary was all polished and prepared, saying she was aware some people in New Hampshire were saying they would vote for Bernie if they voted their hearts but for Hillary if they were voting with their heads and then she wrapped up her nicely shaped and well rehearsed summary by saying she hoped voters would bring both heart and head to the voting booths. It was professional and well crafted, but too clever by half and that's why people don't connect with her. She's too well coiffed. 

Bernie, on the other hand, demonstrated why he has won hearts. He started off by saying his father came to America at age 17 and didn't speak English and would be amazed, had he lived to see his son running for President. This is the sort of thing Marco Rubio trots out all the time, but coming at that particular moment in the night, and put in the tone of wonderment Bernie struck, I found myself almost tearing up. It was like his wordless ad, "Looking for America." There is just something so decent and humble and likable about the man. 

I'm just sorry I didn't record it. Maybe it's on youtube.

The Essence of the Argument: Can You Be a True Progressive without Being a Revolutionary?

When was your last stress EKG?

"Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding."
--Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Democrats are actually having a substantive debate right now. Bernie has said Hillary is a progressive on some days and Hillary points to the times she has accomplished progressive goals, like passing the Child Health act and says, "Well, I was progressive that day." 

Her point is, of course, it's nice to rant and rail but if you want to get elected and if you want to govern and pass legislation, you have to compromise.

Bernie says, that would be a good formula for another era, but when you are faced with Mitch McConnell and his right wing mob and a reactionary Supreme Court, you cannot simply elect a single President and expect anything to change.

A good woman, but that ship has sailed

Tracing the history of the four years prior to his Second Inaugural, Lincoln, in his humble way, remarked about how wrong he and all his countrymen had been, as they drifted into the Second American Revolution which was the Civil War. Lincoln himself thought the slaves could be freed without disrupting the essence of Southern life, and Republicans of his time thought with time, they could persuade Southerners they did not need slaves to continue their cherished way of life, which is to say, their dominance over Negroes, the cotton economy and their highly stratified society which resembled our present 1% owning most of the wealth. Most Southerners were poor or middle class and did not own slaves, but they liked the idea that someday they might, might have a plantation and get rich. 

So Lincoln thought, well, the large majority of whites in the South will eventually realize slavery wasn't worth going to war and change would happen as reasonable men made reasonable choices.  But, as he described in his wonderful address, he was wrong; everyone was wrong; the only choices turned out to be drastic choices and so war came; a revolution came. 


This is the insight Bernie grasped early last year: The system we need to change, although it protects only the top 1% is so thoroughly infiltrated into our national fabric, so tenaciously protected by coordinated power, money, judicial perversity, there is no gentle, gradual, gradual way to change it. 

When you look at a malignancy, you see tendrils penetrating deeply into surrounding healthy tissue and you realize that excising just a piece of it, nibbling at its edges or probing its center will not excise it.  When you decide to renovate the house and you uncover the walls, you find you have to do so much more than you expected, as the foundation is cracked and the wiring has to be replaced.

Mr. Sanders keeps pointing to the big problems:  with the Supreme Court having handed Citizens United to the Koch brothers, big money now can control who sits in Congress and, sometimes, the White House.  You can't just paint over the walls by placing a new Congressman in office if he is still stuck pursuing big money donors. Nothing changes but the color of the paint and the name on the door. If you do not wash Congress clean of the Tea Party Republicans, elected to destroy government, sent to Washington to sit on their hands and do nothing or to shrink government, then electing a progressive President changes nothing.

Hillary says she can get things done by working the game from inside the White House.  President Obama tried that.  He met nothing but intractable resistance from Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and the whole array of Republicans who want to shrink government so small they can drown it in their bathtubs. 

Is it enough to elect Hillary, to claim the White House and to keep it out of the hands of the Republicans? Or do we need to gamble on the idea of trying for genuine change which might rip control of the economy and the government from the hands of the 1/10 of 1%?

As James Baldwin observed, slavery hurt not just the slaves, but their masters.
If we really did redistribute wealth, so the bottom 80% now made $80,000 a year rather than $40,000, this huge population would create huge new markets and they would spend, buy homes, cars, go on vacations, invest in stocks and the people at the top would actually become more secure because the economy and the nation would be more secure.

Right now many of that small group of 300,000 people (roughly 15,000 families) are fabulously wealthy, but they are nervous. Walk around their estates with them and you sense their unease, their sense they might lose everything tomorrow. Where that anxiety comes from is anyone's guess. Guilt? (I don't deserve this and my Marie Antoinette moment is coming.) Insight--all this is built on a phony economy.  Who knows?  But if the nation shared a sense that what we have, where we've arrived is fair, then everyone would be more secure and wealthier and happier.

Memo to Bernie: Put her on the ticket

Boldness: The Bernie vs Hillary Argument

Counsels Caution: Acceptance of the Real World

Says We Will Never Get Change If We Don't  Try

Writing in Salon, Robert Reich gets at the essence of the choice for Democrats and the nation. Here's the link.

Robert Reich in Salon   



What he is basically saying is we have tried the working within the system approach for 7 years with President Obama and the guys trading credit default swaps at Goldman Sacks and Morgan and all the Wall Street firms are still making billions and still behaving as if their ponzi schemes are not hurting everyday people. 

The Republicans still control Congress and have stymied every effort to actually govern.

The T Party, like the Dixiecrats before them, have the power to derail efforts at any meaningful reform.

Invoking Teddy Roosevelt who busted the trusts and got a progressive tax system which taxed the rich more than the poor, Reich says sometimes you have to aim high to hit the target.

When I was in college, we all hated the system we labored under which meant the first elective course I got to take was in my senior year after satisfying all the requirements for my major, my pre medical course and "distribution" requirements to insure I had a "well rounded" education.  The whole idea of education had been corrupted by the pursuit of good grades.  Ira Magaziner came around with the idea that education ought to do more than just prepare a resume for use as a merit badge in applying for jobs or graduate school and he proposed a system where grades were optional. This was radical. A revolution. Everyone said it would never get past the faculty, not to mention the president of the university and the board of trustees, but events conspired and it was adopted and the result was that education improved at the university and the school, which had been the last choice for students applying to the eight schools in the Ivy League moved up to fourth, after Harvard, Yale and Princeton.  

So sometimes, revolutions do succeed and when they do, results can exceed expectations.

It hasn't happened often in American politics, but it has happened: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, all Presidents who led successful, if painful revolutions. 

Are we ready for a revolution?