Can one person change the course of life for millions of others?

Radically.

We have Putin as our most conspicuous contemporary example.

Just a few moments ago in our elastic present-day concept of time here at home, we had the hotel magnate, Trump, as our elected leader, influencing our daily lives like a twin Putin autocrat.

Thanks to that very same hotelier, we now have Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett firmly ensconced on our Highest Court, pretending to be impartial, damaging lives left, right and center.

So let me reframe the question.

Can one person change the course of life for the good of millions of others?

Right away, all of the above are disqualified.

Putin, apparently whimsically – and just because as a simple Russian bureaucrat elevated to the highest post of his land well beyond his abilities – misunderstood the zeitgeist and ordered Russian troops to invade and decimate neighboring Ukraine. Unwittingly, he relegated Russia to minor player status on the world stage going forward.

His US counterpart, Trump, tried to upend the real world here at home and declare his opponent’s election invalid. Unlike in Nicaragua, where a Trump think-alike, Ortega, has been able to maintain and enhance his power through manipulating elections since 1979, Trump failed to falsify Biden’s Presidential triumph. At least for now. Fingers crossed.

There are now six Catholic justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, 6 out of 9. That might be par for the course in Italy or France; not here in the United States. Immigration from largely Catholic Latin America has given us a Catholic population in our 50 states of about 20%. Yet according to the Pew Research Center, we identify ourselves as a country predominently Protestant, 43%, unaffiliated, 26% and Jewish, 2%. Six Catholics on the highest Court of the land is way out of proportion to our religous identity as a nation.

Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the most recent Catholic arrivals to the Supreme Court, gave us ample reason to doubt their true personas in their Congressional hearings. A psychology professor, Christine Blasey Ford, accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault years before. Our elected Republican senators shut their ears. They voted him in anyway. OK, they seemed to say, Boys will be boys. They were fast to overlook the implications of his traditional conservative Catholicism, or perhaps eager to espouse it.

In 2020, the Washington Post reported that, while in law school, Coney Barrett

lived at the South Bend home of People of Praise’s influential co-founder Kevin Ranaghan and his wife, Dorothy, who together helped establish the group’s male-dominated hierarchy and view of gender roles.

In June of this year, London’s Guardian had this to say on the very same People of Praise co-founder:

… the People of Praise, a secretive charismatic Christian group that counts the supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, was described in a sworn affidavit filed in the 1990s as exerting almost total control over one of the group’s female members, including making all decisions about her finances and dating relationships.

Were our elected Republican senators interested in any of this? Did they care? Not at all. Coney Barret was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice on Oct 26, 2020 with 52 of 53 Republicans voting in favor. Maine’s Susan Collins was the sole dissenting Republican.

Could we now, just possibly, be seeing People of Praise influencing a Supreme Court decision on abortion? Yes, we could.

You are totally within your rights to shout out loud about that right now. As Marcellus once said in in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Back to the original question.

Can one person change the course of life for the good of millions of others?

Lest we forget, the answer is yes, yes and yes again.

There are still some Americans who might fit the bill. Franklin D. Roosevelt comes to mind. How about our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln? Or our 44th, Barack Obama?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our 32nd President, was elected to the office four times, something no longer possible. He led us through the Great Depression and World War 2. He launched the New Deal, a transformation of American society that included the creation of the Social Security Administration, which today continues to provide essential daily benefits for more than 70 million Americans.

Abraham Lincoln was our President during our first and only – up to now – Civil War. Not only did he preserve our Union – an achievement that continues to reverberate for all 330 million + of us living in the United States today, but he also just happens to be the President who abolished slavery. At the time, the ending of slavery immediately affected the lives of four million African-Americans living in servitude. Since then, the abolition of slavery has daily touched the lives of millions and millions of others, as a constant reminder of our need, and necessity, to acknowledge and embrace each other, and to celebrate our similarities and differences.

So how many lives did Abraham Lincoln impact for the good? The number in incalculable and uncountable.

Oh and by the way, Abraham Lincoln was something called a moderate Republican, a species now apparently extinct.

Barack Obama served as our President from 2009 to 2017. In our lifetime, we have been witness to Obama’s supreme gift to our nation, the establishment of Obamacare. Thanks to Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reports that we have:

35 Million People enrolled in Coverage Related to the Affordable Care Act, with a historic number of 21 Million people enrolled in Medicaid Expansion Coverage.

In terms of doing good for the greater benefit of society, that counts.

It would seem that we are in a constant back-and-forth between those who want to do good to the benefit of all of us alive on earth, and those who are equipped with an aberrant gene that is programmed to do us harm.

Unfortunately for those of us living in the United States today, we are confronted with, and confounded by, a hotelier equipped with the aberrant gene, a hotelier who would seem to be planning further assaults on our democracy.

See fingers crossed above.

Our DT, our Wizard of Doom to democracy, is still with us.

At any moment, he could rise from the ashes.  At any moment, he could still consume us, devour us, and swallow our collective notion of peaceful coexistence in one night-sweat gulp.

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Like many progressives, I would be delighted to have a Green New Deal as well as a host of other progressive programs that would immediately and directly help the American people. However, this is not going to happen anytime soon. Joe Manchin has shown that he can single-handedly prevent it now; he has in the past. His help from Republicans will grow exponentially if they reclaim one or both houses of Congress this coming November.

All the same, political power in the United States is distributed in a way that gives Republicans far more influence than they are warranted. They hold half the seats in the U.S. Senate despite the fact that their senators represent only 43% of the population, compared to the Democrats 57% In other words, 43% of the American people are represented by the 50 Republican senators; the remaining 57% by the 50 Democrats. That is clearly unfair.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, five million more Americans (3%) voted for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates, and yet the Democrats have only a few more seats than the Republicans. Once again, this is unfair, especially as we will shortly have new elections for the House with hundreds of districts that are gerrymandered.

The Supreme Court is heavily weighted towards Republicans, in a particularly pernicious way since five justices were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. They became presidents only because of the antiquated Electoral College.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were appointed by President George W. Bush who lost the popular election to Al Gore by 500,000 people. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were appointed by Donald Trump who lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton by three million popular votes.

Over half (5 out of 9) of the justices who were appointed by semi-illegitimate presidents. This has been a grave and great injustice and needs to be corrected.

These problems of disproportionate power in the hands of Republicans exists in all three branches of our government. This is why we need a recalibration of how power is distributed in Washington and in our states. Recalibration is different from retribution. Changes should not be designed to make it “the Democrats turn.” Instead, it should be time for “fairness to prevail.”

Here’s how we would do it in three steps:

1. Either abolish the Electoral College or codify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which the electors in all states are bound to vote for whomever one the national popular vote, not the vote in their state. This would be fair because our presidents would be elected solely on the basis of the vote of the people – the people who he or she represents.
2. Outlaw gerrymandering, the practice of dividing geographic areas into legislative districts in a way that gives one party an advantage over another. By outlawing gerrymandering, the number of seats from each party from each state would come close to reflecting that party’s percentage of voters in the state.
3. Institute some permanent and temporary changes to the Supreme Court:
   1. Permanent: Put term limits on how long a Supreme Court justice can serve, perhaps twenty years.
   2. Temporary: Because the court is currently leaning so far to the right, allow President Joe Biden to nominate three additional justices to the Supreme Court, temporarily constituting the court with ten members. Each of Biden’s nominees would be linked to one of the three Trump appointees. They would leave the Court when that particular Trump appointee no longer serves. The president at that time will then select one nominee to replace the two. When all six of the Trump and Biden appointees (exclusive of Ketanji Jackson Brown) are no longer on the court, it will be back down to nine members.

It is fair to ask how could this come to be. Why would Republicans accept these three changes, all of which would help Democrats, at least in the short run? These would be difficult changes to enact under any circumstances.

Naturally, there is no guarantee that Republicans would accept any of these changes. However, if the American people knew that Democrats were going to take a temporary pass on the most impactful items in their legislative agenda in order to spend several years focusing on recalibrating our democracy, it is possibly that many independents would join Democrats and a few Republicans to get this done. No guarantees, but the idea of advancing and simplifying democracy has a natural appeal to a great many voters. It’s worth a try because Manchin and the Republicans are not going away.

The post Recalibrating our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

More and more Democrats are expressing dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden. It was particularly evident on the weekend of July 9 – 10 when thousands of protesters gathered outside the White House to express their frustration that Biden was not doing more to protect abortion rights. The protesters seemed absolutely unaware of what Biden had done the day before through executive action to protect reproductive rights, as accurately described in “The Week:”

President Biden on Friday signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion and other reproductive health care services now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Per the administration’s fact sheet, the order “builds on the actions” the White House has already taken by protecting access to abortion and contraception; guarding patient privacy; promoting safety and security for patients, providers, and clinics; and coordinating federal efforts to safeguard reproductive rights. In more specific terms, the order directs Health and Human Services to expand access to abortion pills, fortify birth control coverage under Obamacare, and organize free legal services for those that have been criminally charged for seeking out or providing an abortion. [CBS News, The Week]

Within an hour of the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, Biden expressed his outrage and his commitment to Congress codifying Roe. He has done all that could be expected of a reasonable person to find ways to minimize the impact of the Dobbs decision and to advance reproductive rights. What is it about what Biden has done that his protesters do not understand?

Biden has also done virtually everything that a reasonable person could do to control inflation. It is a global problem, not something that can solely be solved by the United States or any other individual country.

He just completed a trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Once again, progressives are giving him considerable criticism. When in Saudi Arabia, he did not shake hands with heir to the throne, but rather had a fist-bump with Mohammed Bin Salman. This had to be difficult for Biden to do, because he has repeatedly stated that MBS is responsible for the torture and mutilation of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi.

So, why did Biden do this? Because oil prices in the United States have been soaring until the past several weeks. While Biden and many others know that in time more oil will be drilled, pumped and refined the U.S. to bring supplies to a level where prices will go down, most people cannot be the patient. The best source of additional oil at the present time is from the OPEC countries of which Saudi Arabia is a leader. So, Biden has to hold his nose and “beg” for OPEC to immediately increase supplies.

He did not do it in the most elegant way, but he did it as anyone would when it becomes essential.

Biden is doing so many of the things that Americans want, but he is getting little credit. More an more we are hearing that Biden is too old to be president; that he is a “doddering old man.” He may be older than most of us, he may not be the steadiest person on his feet, but he is mentally as sharp as he has ever been. He is probably smarter than ever because he is outstanding at learning from his past mistakes.

Maybe we want a younger person to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. But for now, Biden is our president and he’s a damn good one. If Joe Manchin won’t give him a break, the kind that would send his popularity soaring, then let’s have the rest of us provide him with the support that he needs and has earned. It’s time to say ‘yes’ to him.

The post What Part of ‘Yes’ Do You Not Understand About Biden? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You probably did not think that a key reason why the current Supreme Court is so out of whack with much of America is because of gerrymandering. This is so because the makeup of every Court is determined by the two other gerrymandered branches of government, the executive and legislative.

Twelve of the last fifteen justices have been appointed by Republican presidents, and that is not an accident. With our Constitution, it is virtually impossible not to have partisan Supreme Courts when we choose our presidents and legislators in ways that are mired in a deep gerrymandering pie, or cesspool.

Here’s how it works:

The U.S. Senate is perhaps the most insidious form of gerrymandering that we have. A good working definition of gerrymandering from Merriam-Webster is “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” At the time that the American constitution was created, there were no political parties. But there were political interests. The most significant of these interests was what powers would individual states have as opposed to the federal government.

For example, who would be responsible for determining whether a road should be built, or whether it would be legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink whiskey? Who would be able to levy taxes, or even tariffs? At the time that the constitution was being written, there were two key interests within the states that created the groundwork for gerrymandering:

1. The smaller states such as Rhode Island or Delaware did not want to be overpowered at the federal level by larger ones such as New York or Virginia.
2. The states where slavery was legal and was commonly used wanted to have equal power to the states that did not have slavery.

Many of the founding fathers were leery of direct democracy, meaning direct votes by the people. In order to prevent runaway “popular democracy,” the founders created a Senate to go along with the House of Representatives in the Congress. The Senate was undemocratic in two ways, both of which impacted the Supreme Court.

1. Initially, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not the people. This would be a way of better ensuring that the interests of the states, as opposed to the people, were represented in the Senate. This was clearly undemocratic, and in 1917, the 17^th Amendment was passed, allowing the people to vote for their Senators. But at that time, “the people” were essentially only white males.
2. Each state has two senators. That ensures that there is equal representation among all the states in the Senate. At the same time, it ensures that at least one house of Congress does not include equal representation of the people. For example, California has a population of nearly 40 million people while Wyoming has less than 600 thousand. For each person in Wyoming, there are over 60 in California. What that means in the Senate is that each person in Wyoming has as much power as 60 people in California. That is terribly unfair, and it means that states like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, etc. have far more power in the Senate than states like California, Texas and New York. The same is true for southern states such as Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina which are relatively small by population. Additionally, these states are no longer politically competitive. Conservative Republicans win virtually all state-wide elections including for the Senators.

Right now, the U.S. Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Democratic Senators represent nearly 57% of the population, whereas Republican Senators represent around 43%. If the Senate was democratic, the Democrats would have a large majority. But in today’s real world the Democrats will probably lose seats in the 2022 mid-term election and once again be a minority.

We should also point out that the House of Representatives is gerrymandered in a different way. Take Missouri for example. It has eight Congressional seats. Recently, the state has voted between 50% – 60% Republican. Even at 60%, Republicans should get only five of the seats. However, they get six and some tried to get them seven. Why does it come out this way?

It is because in Missouri the districts are drawn by the state legislature. The Missouri General Assembly is currently veto-proof Republican. What the legislature has done is to draw two “minority majority” districts. This means districts in which some minority constitutes a majority of the voters. In Missouri, it is African-Americans. One district is in the eastern part of the state, St. Louis, and the other in the western part, Kansas City. None of the other districts is competitive.

Similar to the legislative branch, the executive (presidency) is deeply influenced by gerrymandering. The way in which the founding fathers took care of that was by creating the Electoral College. The E.C. is not really a college. It is a barely known organization that only exists every four years, when there is a presidential election. The number of representatives that each state has in the E.C. is somewhat based on population, but not entirely. What is important to know is that when the Electoral College works properly, the electors from each state vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state. In other words, the electors in Alabama vote for whomever carried the state and the electors in California vote for whomever won that state.

Where it gets undemocratic is let’s suppose that Candidate A carries Alabama by one million votes and loses California by a 400,000 votes. You might think that Candidate A would be ahead at that point, because she has 600,000 more votes than Candidate ‘B.’ But with the Electoral College, Candidate ‘B’ is ahead with 55 Electoral Votes from California as opposed to Candidate ‘B’ who has the 9 Electoral Votes from Alabama.

The fact that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president through the E.C. is not just hypothetical. It has happened five times in our history. The two most recent are the two most consequential. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote from George Bush by over a half million votes. However, Bush won the Electoral vote when the Supreme Court made a decision that gave Bush Florida’s electoral votes. That would not have mattered if the decision had been made by the popular vote.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by more than three million votes. However, Trump narrowly won “battleground states” such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and that propelled him to an Electoral victory.

It’s possible that two of our worst presidents ever were elected by the Electoral College than the popular vote. These two presidents are also responsible for five of the current six conservatives on the Supreme Court. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito; Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

This is how the Supreme Court became impacted by gerrymandering. Without a gerrymandered presidency and a gerrymandered Senate, the Supreme Court would have been more balanced and reflective of the values of the American people.

To make matters worse, the Supreme Court itself has recently refused to overturn the creation of gerrymandered districts by the states.

The political ramifications of the gerrymandering dynamics is that Republicans are helped in all three branches. Theoretically, the three branches of government are supposed to restrain one another through a system of checks and balances. But that does not work when all three branches are dominated by one party, and that particular party is intent on thoroughly dominating government and extending very few levers of power to minority parties.

How can this change? At the moment, it’s difficult to conceive. Trump Republicans have a number of plans to further a radical right agenda in America. For our government to become more balanced it will require challenging victories by non-Republicans in congressional and presidential races. Stay tuned to see if that happens.

The post The Gerrymandering Virus – It’s Everywhere! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The history of the Republican Party over the past seventy years includes battles between the moderates within the party against the extremists to the right. During most of the second half of the 20^th Century and some of the 21^st Century, the moderates were able to seize the presidential nomination. But the far-right Donald Trump steamroller movement seems to have almost crushed the remaining elements of the moderates.

In 1952, the Republican Party was divided between the moderates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower and the deeply conservative (though barely extremist) element favoring Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Eisenhower won the nomination in 1952 as well as the presidential election. The same thing happened four years later in 1956.

The GOP nomination in 1960 went to Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon. At that time in his life, he was actually quite moderate, in part because he was constantly currying the favor of Eisenhower. It was not a certainty that Eisenhower would endorse Nixon until a day before the convention. Nixon was opposed by progressive New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but the former vice-president won the nomination, carrying all eleven states with primaries as well as every other state that did not have a “favorite son” running. Nixon’s ease with winning the nomination did not carry over to the election as he was edged by Democrat John F. Kennedy.

1964 was the first year in which a true right-wing extremist won the Republican nomination. The nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, as he defeated Rockefeller on the strength of his appeal to many voters who were angry about the progressive turns in the Kennedy-Johnson years. Goldwater became famous for uttering in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater wanted to undo much of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as well as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But he carried very few moderate Republicans and was soundly defeated in November. That election, 1964, was the last time that Democrats won in a landslide.

1968 was one of the strangest and most disconcerting years in American history. Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek renomination. Two other individual seemed to be likely candidates, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. Kennedy was assassinated right after the California primary in early June. Johnson’s vice-president Hubert Humphrey ran as the “proxy Johnson” candidate. He did not enter any primaries, but with the help of Johnson in garnering support from the “party regulars,” Humphrey was able to win the nomination at the disjointed convention in Chicago where on-going violence was taking place in downtown.

On the Republican side, Richard Nixon was able to make a comeback, in large part because of the support that he had given Republican candidates across the country over the previous six years. He was opposed by newly elected governor of California Ronald Reagan and New York’s long-time governor Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon won ten of the twelve primaries and 61 % of the delegate votes. His politics fell somewhere between the progressive Rockefeller and the conservative Reagan. He won the election against Humphrey and third-party candidate Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Nixon governed moderately for his first several years, but as his anger rose, he became more and more conservative.

Even though the Watergate break-in occurred in 1972, it did not impact Richard Nixon’s reelection that year. He carried every state other than Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He had no opposition in the Republican primary that year, and his election race against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a breeze for him. But he was initially worried that he would have to run against popular Maine Senator Edmund Muskie. The fact that McGovern bested Muskie for the Democratic nomination was due in part to the Nixon “plumbers” who created false and misleading information about Muskie, and they eventually trapped him into appearing very unpresidential in a press conference.

Once Nixon won reelection, his primary focus was on the Watergate cover-up. This brought out a great deal of anger and meanness on his part. It also was consistent with his notion of an “enemies list” and crafting domestic policies to undermine Johnson’s Great Society. By the time that Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his governance was quite conservative.

In 1973, after disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan became vice-president. He assumed the presidency upon Nixon’s resignation. He was faced with problems of inflation, recession, and an extended energy crisis. He was considered a moderate, in large part because he did not fervently support the right-wing Republican social agenda on abortion, gay rights, etc. Leading to the 1976 election, Ford was seen as vulnerable. He was challenged by the aforementioned former Governor Ronald Reagan of California. The contest was extremely tight as Ford carried 26 states and Reagan 24. Ford won 1,121 delegates and Reagan 1,078. Ford won the nomination, as a moderate, but Reagan had established himself as a national leader and was poised for 1980.

In the 1976 general election, Ford carried a great deal of Nixon’s baggage, including the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon for “all crimes committed or might have been committed.” Ford lost to energetic Democrat, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Carter had a somewhat sluggish presidency as he faced many of the economic and energy problems that Ford did and he was further burdened by the fact that 51 Americans had been taken hostage by Iran during a califate revolution. The 1980 Republican nomination was going to be a prime plumb and Reagan was poised to secure in on behalf of the conservative wing of the party. He carried 44 states to the six carried by moderate George H.W. Bush, who Reagan accepted as his vice-president. Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide. Four years later, Reagan faced nominal opposition for the nomination and then prevailed in another landslide election, this time against former vice-president Walter Mondale of Minnesota.

The race for the 1988 Republican nomination was largely between two party regulars who fell somewhere between moderation and extremism. Vice-President George H.W. Bush battled Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Extremists to the right were represented by Rev. Pat Robertson of Virginia, but he carried only four states. Dole became quite upset with some of the accusations by Bush, whose campaign was managed by one of the greatest masters of dirty tricks, Lee Atwater. The Bush campaign dispensed of Dole rather early in the primary sweepstakes and went on to carry 42 states.

The Democrats continued a habit of choosing weak presidential nominees, this time former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Atwater was incredibly skilled in embarrassing Dukakis, portraying Dukakis as being both soft on crime and weak as a military leader. Bush won in the third straight Republican landslide.

When Bush ran for reelection in 1992, he a tougher race. First, Atwater had died the year before from a virulent form of brain cancer, and his Democratic opponent was a strong one, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Bush was also challenged from the right within his own party by former journalist and Nixon speech-writer Pat Buchanan. Bush carried all 50 states and the District of Columbia and easily dispensed of Buchanan to win the Republican nomination.

In 1988, Bush had campaigned on a very conservative plank, “read my lips, no new taxes.” He had been able to fulfill that promise until 1992, reelection year. The federal government was running short on money and new taxes were in order. He walked back his pledge, albeit with sound reasoning. But it hurt him politically. Clinton was a breath of fresh air, particularly in the debates where he came across as much more human and compassionate than Bush. Clinton won the election in a three-way race in which eccentric businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent.

While Clinton had a difficult time getting legislation through Congress, he was still popular among voters. Two veterans of previous presidential races were the top contenders for the GOP nomination in 1996, Kansas Senator Bob Dole and Virginia journalist Pat Buchanan. In this case, the moderate, Dole, achieved an overwhelming victory, carrying delegates from 46 states, this, despite losing New Hampshire to Buchanan early in the cycle. Dole was a legitimate moderate who knew as well as anyone how Congress operated, something that was tough for Clinton to do. But Clinton started his campaign well before Dole won the Republican nomination and he carried 31 states plus DC for a 379 – 159 electoral victory. Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of over eight million votes.

The fight for the 2000 Republican nomination featured moderate Senator John McCain against conservative former Texas Governor George W. Bush. While Bush seemed to many to be too naïve and inexperienced for the job, he had an extremely skilled campaign staff, and he was able to capitalize on the growing conservative movement in the country. In the primaries, he won nearly twice as many votes as McCain and carried 45 states.

In the November general election, Democrat Al Gore of Tennessee, the sitting vice-president won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. The electoral victor depended on the vote from Florida where there was considerable confusion and malfeasance, particularly with the use of “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County. At first it appeared that Gore would carry Florida; then Bush, whereupon Gore conceded. But as the Florida vote tightened up again, Gore rescinded his concession. Virtually all components of the Florida race were thrown into the courts which resulted in numerous precinct recounts. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that resulted in Bush winning the election. It was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later said that she thought that she made a mistake in her vote. But Bush won and what happened in the country was quite different from what would have happened with an Al Gore presidency.

Gore graciously accepted the Supreme Court’s decision, and Bush was inaugurated as president. It remains an open question as to what Bush and the Republicans would have done had the Court ruled in Gore’s favor.

It was on Bush’s watch that nine-eleven occurred. Many scholars believe that had Gore been president, he may well have paid more attention to the CIA’s warning about Al Qaeda during the first eight months of his administration and perhaps would have been able to prevent the attack from happening. Had nine eleven occurred on his watch, it is unlikely that he would have invaded Iraq for specious reasons as Bush did.

In 2004, Bush had the most nominal of opponents in the Republican primary. In the general election, he won the popular vote by over three million votes and the determinative electoral count, 285 – 251.

Most people remember the 2008 election because of Barack Obama’s nomination win over Hillary Clinton, and then his win of the presidency. But Republicans had a very competitive race for their nomination. Eventually Senator John McCain of Arizona won the contest, winning the races in thirty-seven states. But former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won eleven contests and nearly five million popular votes to McClain’s ten million. Both McCain and Romney were seen as moderates.

Two other candidates in the race were former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who was on the far-right of the evangelical wing of the Republican party, and Texas congressman Ron Paul who was more of a libertarian than a Republican. In 2008, the moderates in the GOP clearly carried the day.

2012 was another year in which the moderate wing of the Republican Party prevailed. Romney won going away with 42 states and over 52% of the popular vote. His nearest competitor was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum who was an extreme right-wing religious candidate. Also on the race were Ron Paul again as well as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who in many ways was the father of the modern right-wing Republican Party.

Romney won the nomination but lost the general election to Obama. Even though Obama won reelection, he was being stymied with his legislative agenda, particularly with the obstinance of Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.

Charles Darwin would have liked the 2016 Republican race, as it was clearly an exercise of survival of the fittest. The fittest won the nomination and eventually the election, but as was clear to many when he first announced his candidacy in June of 2015, Donald Trump was not the fittest to govern.

He won the nomination against fifteen other candidates who took the stage on at least one of the televised Republican debates in the 2016 cycle. Most Republicans thought that Trump’s candidacy was a “joke,” but as more and more of the other candidates dropped out of the race, Trump became more of a concern, and then a favorite. The other candidates learned rather quickly that it was not wise for them to cross swords with Trump. He had ways of humiliating others while responding to attacks on him with more vicious rebuttals on his opponents. He dispatched in quick order with some of the previously favored candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Santorum, Paul and Huckabee. Even before the primaries began, well-known Republicans such as former New York governor George Pataki, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Some of those who dropped out were moderate (Kasich and Bush) but most were extreme right-wingers. The last person standing before Trump clinched the nomination was extreme right-winger Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump attacked Cruz by insinuating that his father had been part of a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy, and that his wife was unattractive. When the Republican delegates assembled in Cleveland, Trump had nearly three times as many delegates as Cruz. Trump organized the convention to in many ways be a “hate-fest” as he and his supporters lambasted Republicans who did not agree with him as well as anyone with a ‘D’ (Democrat) after their name.

If the Trump – Clinton race has occurred in virtually any other democracy, Clinton would have won solidly, with nearly three million more popular votes than Trump. But this is the United States, and it has the anachronistic Electoral College. In that arena, Trump prevailed 306 – 225, and thus was declared the next president of the United States.

By 2020, Trump was so popular within the Republican Party that his only opposition was the not-well-known former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, a genuine moderate. In the primaries. Weld won only 2.35 % of the vote while Trump essentially won the rest. Trump won the nomination and then went on to lose the general election to former vice-president and senator Joe Biden of Delaware by seven million popular votes, and in the Electoral College, 306-225, the same margin by which he had won four years previously. However, now, twenty months after the election, Trump still does not understand that he lost, nor do many of his supporters. That in itself exemplifies how far to the radical right the Republican Party currently sits.

The main difference in the 2022 Republican Party is that it’s virtually impossible to find a moderate Republican. Where are the Dwight Eisenhowers, Nelson Rockefellers, Gerald Fords, George H.W. Bushs, Bob Doles, John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the Republican Party? It seems that somewhere between the time that Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination in June of 2015 and the time that he won the nomination in July, 2016, it became virtually impossible to be a moderate in the GOP without getting verbally demolished by Trump.

Following the testimony of White House Chief-of-Staff aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 committee on June 28 of this year, it seems that Trump is not a shoo-in to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But the mostly likely opponents are current “Trumpsters” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, former vice-president Mike Pence of Indiana, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. If there is a well-known moderate in the party, it would be Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney. In reality, her views on most issues are strongly conservative. Where she differs from the others is in her integrity, as show so vividly in her role as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee.

As we see from the chart above, Republicans have won eleven of the eighteen races since 1952. Had the winner been based on the popular vote, the split would be nine each. The Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the last eight elections (W. Bush in 2004). Theoretically the Democrats should be on a roll.

But Republican extremists seem to have captured the party, though it was only ten years ago when the party nominated a moderate (Romney in 2012). Under fair and equal rules, the Democrats may have a bright future. However, the conservative Supreme Court is actively undermining democracy, and at the present time, all bets are off.

The post Are moderate Republicans dying with a whimper; or will there be a resurgence? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Mr. President,

Every day the President is confronted with major issues that affect the life and prosperity of our nation and our planet. The decisions that the President makes often are collaborative with input needed from many players and the Constitution provides that some decisions require consent from another branch of government. However, there are moments when the decision belongs to the President and the President alone and these issues are often of the greatest consequence and shape the very identity of our nation. You are now faced with such a moment as Justice Breyer has announced his intention to retire from the United States Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has been at times the solitary mover of progress and it has often been the roadblock to advancement. It is the one branch of government that does not find itself accountable to voters, to the media, or to the wrath of political donors. The Supreme Court is accountable only to the Constitution of the United States of America and has the ultimate authority over what that Constitution means. This should mean that the awesome task of nominating and confirming a Justice should be taken seriously and not treated as another partisan exercise. However, this has not been the case in the last several nomination battles as Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett have been confirmed in a process that has been totally outside of regular order. Furthermore, organizations like the Federalist Society have removed all pretense of judicial impartiality by poisoning the process with right-wing ideology disguised as constitutional reasoning. Regrettably, politics has become part of the process and will remain part of the process until the political will exists to enact the reforms necessary to restore public faith in the Supreme Court.

It is vital that we engage with reality as it exists, not as we wish it existed. The reality is our system of government is threatened by forces who do not believe in representative government or American democracy. The reality is that these forces are poised to gain a meaningful amount of political power over the next year and will exert that power to meet their ends of disrupting American democracy. The reality is that it is not guaranteed that these forces can be defeated without extraordinary action. Therefore, I am presenting an extraordinary action that could prove immeasurable in preventing our slide towards illiberal democracy.

Nominate Vice President Kamala Harris to fill this Supreme Court vacancy. The obvious should be stated that Harris is qualified for this position, she understands the constitution to be a living document, and she generally can be counted on as a liberal vote despite justified criticism of her past positions on criminal justice. There is something that is perhaps less obvious that must be said, the public generally does not expect nor at this current moment desire to see you seek re-election to a second term as President. It is assumed then by the public and by our party that the next Democratic nominee for President will be Vice President Harris. I believe given the increased risk of permanent and irreversible damage to the American system should authoritarian forces be successful in electing their candidate for President, it would be worse than irresponsible to have Vice President Harris lead our party into a general election.

The Vice President was unable to continue her 2020 campaign for President into 2020, dropping out well before her home state’s primary who’s polling placed her outside any hopes for victory. Vice President Harris, despite having a lower profile than yourself has been rated as significantly more unpopular by virtually every pollster. Candidly, I would not be surprised if the Vice President were the first Democrat to lose the popular vote in 20 years. Some of the opposition she faces is because of her race and gender, undoubtedly it must be in a country with as much fraught racial history and racism denialism as ours. However, it would be dishonest to suggest that all of her opposition comes from misogynists or racists.

This is not meant to disparage or attack the character of the Vice President; she would be a champion for the rights of so many and would likely establish a legacy rivaling the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should she be nominated and confirmed. The Supreme Court allows an individual to make changes to our society not possible from the White House or Congress, it would not be a demotion but a vote of confidence in the Vice President’s ability to interpret law.  However, it is my sincere belief that she would be unable to win a general election for President of the United States even in the most favorable of circumstances. Nominating Vice President Harris would not only fulfill your promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, but it would also allow you to pick a successor who would have a greater chance of success in a campaign for President. It is my hope that you would select Rep. Karen Bass of California or Rep. Barbara Lee of California or Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin to succeed the Vice President. These distinguished women have shown themselves to be dedicated public servants, empathetic campaigners, and more than capable of being President of the United States. Furthermore, they have been champions of your agenda as President and progressive causes throughout their careers.

You have often stated that we are in “a battle for the soul of America”, I would counter that for the last 60 years we have been in “a war for the soul of America”. It is imperative that we are all doing what we can to pull this country back from the brink if it can in fact be pulled back. I do not know that the Vice President would accept a nomination to the Supreme Court, but I believe that she should be asked. Mr. President, ultimately the choice of a Supreme Court nominee is yours and I hope that you will consider all of your options.

Sincerely,

Reece Ellis

St. Louis, Missouri

The post An Open Letter to Joe Biden: Nominate Kamala appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Political Playbook of Tuesday, January 25, 2022 includes a lengthy description of how Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership strategy has led to considerable simmering among Democrats.

Reporters Rachel Bade and Tara Palmeri spoke with a half-dozen Democratic staffers in both houses of Congress Monday night and heard frustration with how Schumer and other Democratic leaders are treating Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

Apparently, Manchin continues to be furious at how he has been treated. Other Democrats are now upset with Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others for having stated the obvious. For either the Build Back Better Act or the Voting Rights Acts to have passed, the votes of both Manchin and Sinema were needed. Obviously, that didn’t happen with the voting rights proposals and a Senate vote on BBB has been indefinitely postponed because of a lack of affirmative votes.

In an earlier iteration of Manchin saying that he would not vote to change the filibuster rule, he implied on Fox News Sunday that the Biden Administration was not working respectfully enough with him. It may indeed be possible that some staff members in the White House were expressing their exasperation with Manchin either to him directly or to outside sources.

Manchin and Sinema are entitled to view issues differently than the other 48 members of the Senate Democratic caucus. What they don’t have a right to do is to get upset with other Democrats who have increasingly been frustrated with them.

Had Manchin and Sinema joined the other 48:

1. Two voting rights bills would have passed and the discriminatory election and voting laws that Republicans have passed in nineteen states would either be negated, or involved in court cases, the types of which the federal government has traditionally won.
2. The Build Back Better Act would be law meaning child tax credits would be expanded, there would be child care subsidies, free universal preschool, health care subsidies, paid family leave and a host of other provisions that would help families and bring the American economic and social safety web closer to those in other industrial countries.
3. President Biden’s popularity would be much higher and the prospects for Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections would be much better.

Who could blame Democrats for being upset that these two senators have greatly damaged their party politically, and deprived the country of perhaps the two most necessary pieces of legislation currently being considered?

Manchin could whine and pout about how he is being treated, but other Democrats were not entitled to express frustration over how two senators are using antiquated rules to hold the country hostage.

Strictly speaking, the reporting in of Bade and Palmeri is accurate. Democrats other than Manchin and Sinema are expressing their frustration with other Democrats. But the reporting is not in context, with inclusion of how Manchin and Sinema set off a chain of bad feelings within the party.

It seems that the two wayward Democratic senators have the same privilege as Mitch McConnell and essentially the entire Republican caucus. They can speak of hurt feelings as if they are righteous victims and have been unjustly attacked, while other Democrats cannot say “ouch” for fear of being called wimps. The press needs to take a leading role in not perpetuating this unfair and false equivalency.

The post Who on Capitol Hill is Allowed to Whine appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Being a Republican in Congress is a lot easier than being a Democrat. That’s because there are very few things that Republicans have or want to do. Most Democrats have full plates in front of them as they want to reform our society so that government provides a strong and secure safety net for all of us, particularly those most at risk. If we reach a point of gridlock, of stalemate, it is the right that wins, because if nothing happens, that is exactly what they want.

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and other rebellious acts from the right, there is increasing talk of a new American civil war. What shape it might take is open to all kinds of interpretation. It certainly would not be like America’s first civil war, or even a feared possible upcoming war between Russia and Ukraine.

That does not mean there would not be violence. The January 6 insurrection resulted in the deaths of five individuals and the injuring of hundreds. The Right certainly does not hesitate to use threats of violence against those with whom they merely disagree.

For example, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters recently told a group of conservatives to “ambush” Dr. Anthony Fauci with questions and “go in for kill shot.” Fox News has not reprimanded Watters; in fact, they have not said a word about his using their platform to threaten to kill someone. Fox did the same things with correspondent Lara Logan who compared Fauci to the Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele (also included in the clip below).

As we approach the end of 2021, the Washington Post reports “Inside the nonstop pressure campaign by Trump allies to get election officials to revisit the 2020 vote.” The Big Lie continues more than thirteen months after the 2020 safe, secure and democratic elections.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

The important point in the article is that the Trumpsters are continuing their efforts to intimidate Republican-controlled state legislatures to undo the past and change the future so that free and fair elections become something of the past.

A “civil war” could include numerous other acts of aggression by the right including the intimidation of teachers, vigilante forces, Congressional action to not raise the debt limit and not fund necessary programs that are the framework of our social and economic safety net.

COVID has already played a key role in dividing the nation and threatens to do so for some time to come. Samuel Goldman in The Week suggests:

I’m not the first to compare the way of thinking about the pandemic still dominant in official statements to the military disasters of the last two decades. My colleague Noah Millman and the journalist Daniel McCarthy have both noted parallels between the interminable conflicts that followed 9/11 and the “war” on COVID. “Like the old Afghan government,” Millman wrote, “those in charge of public health have little practical ability to shape events. But they speak as if they are sovereign and in control.”

It is hard to imagine what aggressive actions those on the Left may take. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, extremists far to the left of the Democratic Party engaged in bombing attacks on both public and private buildings. But there was very little coordinated about that and as it became apparent that the bombings were counter-productive, the bombings essentially ended.

Regrettably, there is very little that the Right needs to do now to win a “civil war.” The current stalemate allows those on the Right to generally get their way.

Progressive legislation will not pass. The right to safe and legal abortions will be ended in most states when Roe v. Wade is overturned, elections will be rigged to favor far-right Republicans, COVID and other infectious diseases will continue to run rampant, gun-control measures will not be passed, climate change legislation will stall and those who do not agree with those on the Right will live in fear of violence.

The only real way that progressives and others can prevent an escalated “civil war” is by winning big in elections and having protections against Republican electoral manipulation. This means that the U.S. Senate is going to have to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in order to maximize the chances of free and fair elections. Additionally, Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to elevate the popularity of Joe Biden and improve their chances of winning 2022 Congressional races. Perhaps a backlash to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade would help, but that seems unlikely.

The stakes are truly high for progressives; we need to do all that we legally and non-violently can do.

The post Why A “Civil War” Would Be So Hard for Progressives to “Win” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has taken a lot of flak for the slow sales of his book, Republican Rescue. During its first week in stores, it sold only 2,289 copies.

Even though Christie has been a long-time friend of Donald Trump and assisted him considerably during his campaigns and presidency, Christie generously criticizes Trump and his supporters for their penchant for falsehoods and conspiratorial thinking. He is well aware of the fact that Trump’s assertion that he won the 2020 presidential election, but it was stolen from him is clearly a Big Lie.

Christie believes that the Republican Party needs to separate itself from its right-wing extremists and revert to a conventional conservative platform based on ideas rather than myths, or simple opposition to whatever Democrats advocate.

He says,

“As Republicans, we need to free ourselves from the quicksand of endless grievances. We need to turn our attention to the future and quit wallowing in the past. We need to face the realities of the 2020 election and learn—not hide—from them. We need to discredit the extremists in our midst the way William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan once did. We need to renounce the conspiracy theorists and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts. We need to give our supporters facts that will help them put all those fantasies to rest so everyone can focus with clear minds on the issues that really matter. We need to quit wasting our time.”

Clearly not the word of a loyal Trumpster. Christie is not alone in asking Republicans to abandon Trump, the “Freedom Caucus” or Tucker Carlson and return to its core values of a generation ago. Georgia Lieutenant-Governor Geoff Duncan strongly critiqued his party in his book GOP 2.0. He was at Ground Zero for much of Trump’s efforts to unconstitutionally change the Georgia vote. Duncan is a solid conservative, but he believes that the party has been infected by extremism based on falsehoods tinged with absurd conspiracy theories. He stood by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others who firmly opposed Trump’s efforts to “find nearly 12,000 votes for him” so that he could be declared the winner in Georgia.

In the wake of the poor opening sales of his book, many have said that while Christie’s ideas may be of value, he is seeking an audience that is far smaller than he anticipated. Democrats are not interested in rescuing the Republican Party and Trump supporters am not inclined to support traditional Republicans.

I would recommend Christie’s book for several reasons:

1. It provides further insight into one of the greatest mysteries for people who are not Republicans, and even some who are. I’m talking about the makeup of “the Republican Brain.” This is a phrase that became the title of Washington Post writer Chris Mooney’s 2012 book by the same name, The Republican Brain. The book is quite detailed and nuanced, but among the key points is that Republicans do not have the same level of empathy as others, nor do they engage in critical thinking the same way.
2. It is becoming more apparent that the number one challenge for Americans is preserving our democracy. This means that we should do all that we legally can do to restrain the extreme right. Progressives and other Democrats need to preserve and strengthen the traditional Republican Party, no matter how weak it might be now. Rather than mocking Christie, I think that it would be wise to support him in his party-building efforts, though not with most of his conservative social and economic policies.

Christie is interesting, because while he shows no mercy towards the Biden Administration, he supports numerous progressive ideas on community policing, eliminating debtors’ prisons, making school curricula more relevant, and providing improved and more accessible health care.

If we are going to preserve democracy, we need to be prepared to talk with the Chris Christies of the world.

The post Libs: Chris Christie’s New Book May Be Well Worth Checking Out appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s really hard to be a Democrat these days. Yes, at the moment, we have a slim majority in the House of Representatives and the slenderest of margins in the Senate. Joe Biden is our president. All of this contributes to why it is especially important now for Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to join their fellow Democrats and support the Build Back Better Act.

Everything comes with difficulty for Democrats. It’s not like with the Republicans where there is a myriad of ways to say no, to obstruct, to negate, to undermine. Democrats have to deal with a real diversity of opinions within their ranks and focus on constructing policy rather than destructing programs.

In 2009-10, Democrats had a slim workable majority in Congress and were able to pass the Affordable Care Act. It was a significant step forward, but because of literally no help from Republicans and some dissension within their ranks, it was a watered-down version of the bill that President Barack Obama wanted. It did not include the public option which would have given citizens the right to choose a government-sponsored health care program that would have been more affordable than others because unlike private plans, it did not involve make a profit for the insurer. Despite the absence of the public option, the ACA was the biggest new federal program passed since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Right now, there is an opportunity for Democrats to once again pass major legislation. They have done so with the COVID-related American Rescue Plan and then the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But there is a third piece of legislation that will really strengthen the social and economic safety net that was created in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and then the Great Society. It is the Build Back Better Act.

This omnibus bill is a remarkable proposal that provides comprehensive benefits for everyone from infants to the very elderly. Once again, it appears that there will be no help in the Senate in passing the bill. And, if history serves us right, next year’s mid-term elections will see one or both houses of Congress revert to the Republicans. That will put an end to any meaningful social, economic and human rights legislation that Joe Biden wants to pass.

This is why now is not the time for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to not jack around Biden, Congressional Democrats and the American people. We have a window of opportunity that is almost certain to shut after next year’s elections. Currently, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and others can go to Manchin and Sinema and ask them to support the Build Back Better Act. Manchin in particular has shown a willingness to meet, even at inconvenient hours. He hears, though we don’t know how well he listens. But this is the time for him to accept the wins that he has already accomplished (including reduction of the bill by more than a trillion dollars). He could still qualify to be TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year because he has perhaps had more influence of the US, if not the world, than any other person. TIME awards the honor whether the change effected by the recipient is positive or negative.

After the 2022 mid-terms, Democrats will likely be in the minority. Any talks between Biden and Congressional leaders with Manchin or Sinema will be meaningless. As the political pendulum has swung in recent years, there may not be another opportunity for a decade or more.

So, Joe and Kyrsten, whether your really are Democrats or not, now is the time to at least pretend to be one and help the party in this infrequent window of opportunity. Tomorrow’s next chance is far too far off.

The post Another reason why Manchin and Sinema should vote like Dems, at least for now appeared first on Occasional Planet.