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.

On Tuesday, Jan. 11, there were three examples of a public officials being unfairly reamed or slighted by another official. The highly bizarre attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci by Sen. Rand Paul showed a complete lack of civility, and rational thinking. In some ways, it was understandable, because through the years, we have seen a continuous flow of bizarre and far-fetched behavior from the junior senator from Kentucky. All the same, it was completely unwarranted, especially since Paul’s diatribes have contributed to vicious threats of violence directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.

Groups such as Black Voters Matter boycotted President Joe Biden’s major speech on civil rights in Atlanta. Perhaps the most prominent individual who would have been expected to attend but didn’t was Stacy Abrams. She is founder of Fair Fight Action and the likely Democratic nominee for Georgia governor this coming November as she was in 2018. She, and others, thought that the Biden speech was too little too late. They may have been on target about too late, but in retrospect, it is difficult to call the powerful speech too little.

The third case involves government response to COVID, but nothing involving vitriolic senators like Rand Paul or Roger Marshall from Kansas.

Dr. Fauci and Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Rochelle Walensky were grilled about the often confusing and even contradictory recommendations that government officials have given re. COVID. Policies on masks, vaccinations, testing and more continue to change frequently and sometimes unexpectedly.

There is no question that mistakes have been made. But consider the complexity of the problems. Fighting COVID is somewhat like whack-a-mole; when you find solutions to one kind of problem, or variant, then another one pops up.

What to recommend in the way of vaccinations (other than get them as quickly as you can), is difficult because they involve new science with limited time for testing. What masks to recommend depends on the supplies available, and helping consumers determine which are effective and which are knock-offs. The idea of providing adequate testing for 330 million Americans is overwhelming, considering the scope of the numbers involved. Manufacturing techniques are new and distribution logistics are complicated.

If Drs. Fauci and Walensky were like Donald Trump’s fraudulent advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, then criticism would be warranted because he was neither serious nor compassionately concerned. Yes, Drs. Fauci and Walensky have made mistakes, but who wouldn’t? So long as they are making good faith efforts with intelligence and concern, they should be given a great deal of slack.

Similarly, Stacy Abrams and others may have been right that President Biden waited to long to give his voting rights speech. But he had good reasons. As someone who served in the U.S. Senate for thirty-six years, he knew how to quietly negotiate. Unfortunately, Sen. Joe Manchin could not be persuaded (hopefully that will change now following the Biden speech and the follow-up).

As we have said before, it is much more difficult for progressives to advance their agendas than it is for conservatives. This is because progressives actually want to do something; not block progress. The Biden Administration is staffed with many outstanding individuals and is working hard to address America’s and the world’s greatest problems. Let’s give them a break!

The post When to give a break to a politician appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s an oft-cited quote, but one that is easily forgotten. It seems that the mainstream media is doing to Joe Biden what they did to Jimmy Carter. They are holding Biden to a standard of perfection, rather than what it is reasonable to expect of a well-intentioned human being.

The same holds true for many of the American people. Democrats and Independents alike are characterizing Biden’s first year in the presidency as a failure. This, despite the fact that he has returned civility and level-headedness to the White House and the American economy is rebounding.

When Biden assumed office, he had a favorable rating of over 60%. As he convinced Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan, his popularity remained high. But things changed in August. He decided that he would follow through on Donald Trump’s commitment to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan the end of the year.

Things did not go smoothly. The military of the Afghani government was of little assistance in helping American and other foreign troops and civilians leave the country. This was in spite of the nearly twenty years of training that they had received from the allies.

The final departure was chaotic and involved casualties. Regrettably, that is most of what the media currently reports.

It seems that most of the media quickly forgot what Joe Biden said when he announced that the United States would be withdrawing from Afghanistan. He reminded the press, the American people and the world that he was the fourth president who had presided over America’s presence in Afghanistan. He did not want to hand it over to a fifth president.

Equally important is that Biden was able to leave Afghanistan without declaring victory. Since Vietnam, the United States has been mired in numerous wars where it had little or no chance of actually winning, but that was never officially stated.

Lyndon Johnson was remarkably effective and popular with his civil rights legislation and Great Society. But as the number of troops in Vietnam escalated on his watch from 50,000 to over 500,000, he thoroughly undermined his credibility and effectiveness. He left office partially disgraced and he turned the war over to his successor, Richard Nixon, who was equally ineffective in extricating the United States.

After Nine-Eleven, President George W. Bush led America into Afghanistan. There was a justifiable reason for doing so because the Saudi mastermind of the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden, was hiding out in Afghanistan. The United States wanted to bring him to justice.

Bin Laden was finally killed in 2011 in the administration of Barack Obama. But the U.S. did not leave Afghanistan.

Back in 2003, Bush had invaded Iraq for no reason related to Nine-Eleven. He said that there were weapons of mass destruction there, but they were never found. Nonetheless, Bush declared victory. America still has a military presence in Iraq.

By pulling out of Afghanistan, Joe Biden did what Nixon, Bush, Obama and Trump could not do. Yet, when it comes to assessing what he did in Afghanistan, so often he is remembered in the press as Susan B. Glasser did in The New Yorker, “The twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan concluded with an embarrassing and botched American retreat.”

There is not a single American president who has accomplished acts of greatness who did not also make mistakes, serious mistakes, along the way. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but he had also spoken about the best solution to the Negro problem in the United States would be to send them back to Africa.

Woodrow Wilson was the “father” of the League of Nations, but his lack of skill with the U.S. Senate resulted in America not joining.

Franklin Roosevelt shepherded America out of the Depression and through World War II, but was harsh about letting European Jews into the United States and largely tone deaf about racial issues in the U.S.

When a calamity happens on a president’s watch, it not always his or her fault. Jimmy Carter chose to try a military rescue of American hostages in Tehran, Iran, but mechanical problems resulted in helicopters and planes malfunctioning. He paid a terrible price for malfunctions over which he had no control.

Joe Biden did not want America do leave Afghanistan in the way it did. He did not want the Delta variant of COVID to hit the United States in the summer nor the Omicron variant in the winter. It is terribly unfair to blame him for these, but many in the media do so.

Right now, Joe Biden and the Democratic party are what stand between us and a possible destruction of our Democracy by Trumpsters. Give the man a break. All of us, including those in the media, make mistakes or have misfortune fall upon us. Let’s show some tolerance and forgiveness.

The post Biden deserves more than he’s getting from Mainstream Media 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.

If there is a single word that best describes what is key to being a good friend, and also being a good Democrat, it is empathy. You care. You care about people who you know, and equally important, you care about those who you may not know, but who are in need of support. It is a form of synchrony; you deeply value those who share many of your political views as well as those you don’t know but who benefit from your progressive policies.

That’s why if you take a look at the $3.5 trillion proposal that President Joe Biden and progressives in both the House and Senate are advocating, it is clear that you want to provide essential help for those within our society who are most in need.

The bill offers key support to virtually all parts of our society that are struggling economically or socially. There is $450 billion to provide childcare and universal pre-K for young children, at tremendous help to their parents and other care-givers. Medicare for the elderly is expanded to include coverage of dental, hearing and vision services. Prescription drug prices will be cut; there will be more paid family and medical leave.

For the first time since FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, a broad and vibrant plan is proposed to address the major societal needs of the day. Yes, there would be some inevitable inefficiencies in funding a bill so large, but both the public and the private sectors of our economy have repeatedly demonstrated that money can be wasted regardless of how much of it is involved. The bottom line, as President Biden and so many progressives have iterated, is that the economic and social benefits provided to the recipients of the goods and services included in the bill is of far greater value than the cost in marginal inflation or normal waste or inefficiency.

Simply put, it is what friends do for one another.

Which brings us to the question of personal friendships among Democratic leaders in our government. We know from the writings of Chris Mooney (The Republican Brain) and George Lakoff (Don’t Think of an Elephant) that most Democrats are warm and caring towards one another, lacking the harshness of many Republicans. Democrats are less authoritarian, less certain of themselves, and more willing to work through compromise with one another. They place more value on the “common good” than Republicans do; while Republicans are more committed to preserving individual liberties, with some key exceptions such as reproductive rights and voting rights.

You rarely see Democrats going hot and cold at one another the way that Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham do with Donald Trump. The reverence with which most Democrats speak of Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi bears no resemblance to the ways in which the Republicans speak of one another.

Democrats are “doers;” they see problems in our society and are committed to using public policy to address quality of life problems. They are impatient with stalling. Every moment wasted is additional time when those in need must suffer.

This gets us to the curious case of Joe Manchin, senior senator from West Virginia. He is a Democrat, and many regard him as the only Democrat who could be elected from his state which over the course of fifty years has essentially flipped from all blue to all red. Manchin, along with Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, have been the sole Democrats in the upper chamber who have not supported President Biden’s 3.5 trillion “soft infrastructure” plan. Both are playing it coy like a cat, making it difficult to ascertain what they really support. Just recently, it was revealed that Manchin had indicated this past July that he would accept $1.5 trillion in spending, though with little certainty as to which programs he supported and which ones he opposed. He seems in no hurry to advance the Biden agenda.

But what may be most interesting about Manchin is how he simply did not act like a friend to his fellow Democrats. He expressed opposition to his colleagues’ support of $3.5 trillion measure and went through the motions of trying to reach compromise. But to date, he has not come close to the neighborhood where his fellow Democrats reside.

What is most baffling about Manchin is the lack of loyalty and friendship that he offers to his fellow Democrats. This is particularly true with the President Biden. Joe Biden is the consummate political professional who makes time to understand the perspectives and positions of all his fellow Democrats as well as a number of Republicans.

No one could be more gracious with Joe Manchin than Joe Biden, yet Manchin seems to offer nothing of substance in return. It is difficult to say this, but what Joe Manchin reminds me of is ….. is a Republican. Manchin shows no urgency to move ahead with progressive legislation. He cavalierly postpones deadlines for when legislation should be considered, all the while forgetting that the Democrats in the Senate are a single heartbeat away from losing control of the chamber.

If Joe Manchin cannot act like a true friend to Joe Biden, and to forty-eight of his colleagues in the Senate who repeatedly bend over backwards to try to accommodate him, then he truly is an outcast.

Not only does he fail to be an active Democrat trying to seize the moment to address a myriad of domestic problems, ones which may have more impact on his home state of West Virginia than any other state, but he refuses to engage in the give and take that characterizes warm friendship.

We mentioned Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain, and it may be that Manchin has personality traits more like a Republican than a Democrat. If that is the case, then we may have to give up hope that he can be part of the solution. I hope that I am wrong.

I’d love to say, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

The post Being A Good Democrat Means Being A Good Friend appeared first on Occasional Planet.

By the time you’re reading this, barring some unforeseen disaster, the Electoral College will have officially elected Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America. I’ve started to wonder about this era and what history will remember and how we will be defined and by what. After 4 years it is clear that the defining political figure of this generation was not George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, or perhaps even Barack Obama. It has been Donald Trump, this is his era and like Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt before him, he has redefined American social and political life and new political coalitions have formed that seemed previously unimaginable.

The big question of the last 4 years has been “What does the Trump presidency say about America?”. I think it says quite a lot, but first I want to address the election of Joe Biden which I believe is actually a confirmation of the cornerstone of American identity. Denialism.

In America we have a penchant for historical revisionism and erasing or “re-imaging” the parts of our culture that make us uncomfortable. The civil war is now about “states’ rights” as opposed to the obvious, slavery. We declared “Manifest Destiny” because “Genocide” didn’t have the same ring to it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a left-wing anti-war and anti-racist radical who was deeply unpopular in white America yet even he, who existed in living memory, has been retaught as a popular conciliatory moderate. With Joe Biden we are attempting to pretend that we aren’t exactly the country that we know we are. We are being presented with a message that Biden and Kamala Harris represent the beginning of a racial democracy in America. 81 million Americans voted for Biden and Harris, therefore we are renewed and transformed and ready to move away from our old divisions. That’s a message that ignores that Biden was the least “woke” of all candidates in the Democratic primaries. Biden never said “Latinx”, Biden was a frequent target of social justice movements (most notably #MeToo and Black Lives Matter), and Biden had too many gaffes to count whether it was about the decency of Strom Thurmond or “You Ain’t Black”. Yet, he was overwhelmingly the choice of the liberal party. We could, but it’s not even necessary to touch on Harris’ complicated record on race in California as Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney. This is all to say that Biden and Harris do not represent a move towards racial democracy in any literal or symbolic way, yet America continues to tell itself that story. Biden is not Donald Trump, but his record is also a racist one despite serving as the Vice President of the first Black President and now having selected a Black woman to occupy his former office. It’s that incongruity that is American as well, to be able to have these contrasting identities without acknowledging the cognitive dissonance. Which brings us to our outgoing President, Donald J. Trump.

What made Donald Trump different from any American politician that we’ve encountered in this century or the last was his complete irreverence for norms and institutions. Donald Trump never pretended to care about the legitimacy of courts or federalism or the separation of powers or precedent or internationalism or democracy. It’s not clear whether this was because he was opposed to these concepts, or indifferent to them, or simply did not understand them. It’s also not clear that it matters. Because what has become increasingly clear is that these values of the republic were from the top down, lauded by members of government, media, and academia but unfamiliar to ordinary people. Americans thrive in conspiracy, we are distrustful of our government, we are skeptical of new information and we are dreadfully terrified of one another. This is something that goes unsaid in politics because it diminishes the image of an indomitable and virtuous people. It perhaps also goes unsaid because politicians are often so detached from reality that they can’t see what’s in front of them. Regardless, the American people are almost unified in their desire for material prosperity which manifests itself in many different ways. For some it means a clean environment, for others it means economic opportunity in terms of jobs or avoiding debt, and for many of us it simply means having confidence that tomorrow will be easier.

They are unmoored by ideology, which isn’t to say Americans have no strong beliefs. Most Americans are religious, and that faith informs their politics in different ways, as does class and race more often than not. But they are not rigid and are willing to constantly transform themselves to survive. The small government, deficit hawk, free-traders of 10 years ago are now protectionists and have no taste for austerity. Conversely the immigration skeptic, entitlement reformer, doves now see themselves defending an indefensible war abroad and demanding a more generous welfare state at home. This is true of Donald Trump whose politics are self-serving, conceived to maximally benefit himself while minimally disturbing his own prejudices. Is Donald Trump, a man who almost certainly has paid for an abortion, genuinely pro-life? Is Donald Trump, an alleged multi-billionaire from Manhattan, genuinely concerned with Midwestern farmers? Is Donald Trump, a man who donated to Hillary Clinton, genuinely a Republican? There are likely few things Donald Trump is genuinely passionate about, except of course racism and wealth. His willingness to abandon old allies and identities and hold so many idiosyncratic views was part of his appeal.

The slogan Make America Great Again elicited reactions that were appropriate, questions of when was America great and how would Trump restore this alleged greatness. There were some who countered that America is already great because of its diversity or standard of living or high minded ideals. But fundamentally, what Donald Trump did was partly acknowledge that America is a nation in decline. We are not a great country, millions are imprisoned, millions more have been languishing in poverty for generations, the ghettos and the countryside are consumed with addiction, our children have no guarantees of future prosperity, and our infrastructure fails to meet the needs of our population. Of course, Trump was implying a return to a great white America where many were left behind, including a great deal of his voters, but that relevance became increasingly fleeting as the years went on.

Maybe it was our own nihilism that led to Trump because most voters didn’t think he was honest, moral, or trustworthy. But then again it was that he was so very deeply flawed that imbued upon him a level of humanity that he was undeserving of but was nevertheless familiar to so many of us. His many insecurities were laid bare in front of all of us and he was unintentionally vulnerable displaying his neurosis on an international stage. Many of us were embarrassed but many more were amused because to have Donald Trump as President of the United States was the ultimate statement on the ludicrousness of politics in general. Donald Trump is simply the worst manifestation of the ubiquitous frustrations that grip the American people. It is no more ridiculous that any human being, especially Jeff Bezos, should have $200 billion than it is that Donald Trump should be President. It is no more insane that America should be fighting the same war in Afghanistan for 19 years than it is that Donald Trump should be President. It is no more absurd that 60 million people in the richest country in the history of the world are exposed to unsafe tap water than it is that Donald Trump should be President. Americans understand that our shared reality is senseless and so it only stands to reason that we’d abandon all pretense and have a government to match.

Donald Trump will leave the White House next month but what he’s unleashed in America will be with us for the foreseeable future, for better or for worse. Because of Donald Trump all illusions of American Exceptionalism are gone, I don’t pretend to know what that will mean going forward. The best we can hope for is a politics based in the reality of the need to address enormous human suffering. The worst we should hope to avoid is an even more cynical and hopeless continuation of Trumpism which effectively has become a death cult. What I think is most important to acknowledge is that we (as in all of us) made Donald Trump happen. When we didn’t question our political order, it made it that much easier for a demagogue to exploit it’s obvious decencies and bring us closer to authoritarianism than we’ve been in living memory. That’s on all of us and the effects were globalized because when we made Donald Trump a legitimate political figure, it made it that much easier for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Johnson in the UK, Kurz in Austria, Modi in India, and Erdogan in Turkey to maintain power. It will take a long time to even begin to atone for this national sin, but it begins with continuing to question our myths and to scrutinize President Biden.

In the meantime, we’re going to have to wrestle with Donald Trump and recognizing that part of why he so arouses our disgust is because we see him in ourselves. If we don’t like what we see, it’s up to each of us to change it.

The post Donald Trump wasn’t an aberration; he was our most American President appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The interviews in this post emanate from a Facebook page set up for the Kirksville, MO community to share events and news for Northeast Missouri. The author is a moderator for the group which has something near 5,000 people. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States with 306 electoral votes from 25 states and 2 congressional districts. Uncounted in that 306 is Missouri, where the President-Elect was soundly defeated by 57% to 41% carrying only 3 (and the independent city of St. Louis) of the state’s 114 counties. This week, Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined a lawsuit headed for the United States Supreme Court with the intent of overturning the results of this election and he was met with enthusiasm by many Missouri Trump voters. I decided to try to find out why the Trump supporters in my rural community in Northeast Missouri believe what they do, here was that conversation.

Trump Supporter 1 (Woman in her 40s, Trucker): There’s more lawsuits than I can keep up with; some by citizens having nothing to do with Trump or his campaign. Many cases have been thrown out for procedure/technicalities and/or because the lower judges don’t want the case on their hands; they didn’t even hear any evidence.

The plan appears to be to have the SCOTUS be the end player all along. There has been witness testimony at legislative hearings in most, if not all swing states. Even the Thomas Moore Project had a hearing of some sort in Virginia.

A couple of facts, 1.) Most lawsuits take weeks to months to gather evidence; these have been done in mere days. 2.) There’s a long history of voter fraud, but it’s usually not of the election overturning magnitude. 3). If the mathematicians and IT experts in this are correct, this year was exponentially different.

Who honestly wants to believe that in the greatest country on earth we had enough fraud to actually change everything? Instead of, “OK, let’s have a look,” we’re hearing, “There’s nothing to see here; move along.” This has invited even more suspicion. If “they” are sure there was no fraud, then why all the resistance to an investigation?

Texas filed their initial suit on November 10. A month ago. I didn’t hear about this suit until yesterday. Did any of you? Suppression of information by the big media groups only lends to more suspicion and I have seen them (CNN, et al) completely twist something (i.e. testimony) that I watched live. Those sources are now completely illegitimate to me, especially after the phone calls the Veritas Project recorded of the CNN exec.

Matt Braynard conducted the Voter Integrity Project; a call center that called those listed as having requested a mail-in ballot. The former director of the DNI has been investigating in Nevada. The current director of the DNI is investigating. The DOD is investigating.

Will any of this be enough to overturn the election? I haven’t a clue. All I can do is follow along as best as possible and continue to aggravate my diverticulitis with popcorn as I watch it all unfold. There WAS election fraud. The magnitude of it is still being uncovered.

Me: Can I ask you a serious question? If there was fraud to benefit Joe Biden, why did Democrats lose seats in the House and not win the Senate outright? These allegedly fake results to benefit Democrats, would’ve had to have been Biden up top and GOP down ballot. Does that make sense to you?

I don’t know what IT experts you’re referring to, but the election officials from both parties and Trump’s attorney general and The Supreme Court unanimously in a Pennsylvania decision are convinced that this election was as at least as secure as the last one.

If there’s fraud, why wouldn’t we want it exposed? While there are die-hard Trump supporters, I don’t know too many people who are worked up and excited about Joe Biden in the same way. I’ve followed the cases; most weren’t thrown out on a technicality. Many were thrown out for making up precedent or claiming hearsay as evidence or in some cases declaring fraud in places that literally don’t exist in the state (Sidney Powell was looking for Detroit votes in Wisconsin).

As for these challenges, Matthew Braynard was a Trump campaign adviser and RNC political analyst who formed a non-profit to mobilize GOP voters. I don’t think he has any conflict of interest.

I don’t trust CNN either, but it’s not just CNN. It’s every media outlet save for Newsmax and OAN, and to be honest it’s odd for the government to tell me where to consume my news. I understand not every story is covered enough everywhere, but I don’t want news that is uncritical of the government because is that really news?

I think our elections are about as secure as they’ve been for a while. We can do better, it’s why the House has been pushing H.R. 1 but it was blocked by Mitch McConnell. I want free and fair elections everyone can believe in. But I honestly don’t think that these lawsuits are in good faith. I know many conservative voters believe them, but I don’t think GOP politicians do. I think it’s an attempt to placate and make excuses for failing their voters by blaming something else. Otherwise I can’t explain why Trump raised $200 million but has only spent $9 million on these efforts. I hope we get the truth, but I think we have it because if Trump appointed judges won’t even accept the suits; what does that say?

Trump Supporter 2 (Man in his 50s, Pastor): You need to google ballot fraud. Open your eyes to both sides. You at this point are definitely one-sided but I wouldn’t expect less.

Me: Are you open to both sides? Because I’m not saying fraud is impossible I’m just asking anyone to provide the evidence they’re confident in, because why shouldn’t we see it? I’m also asking…why would Democrats produce ballots where it’s Biden up top and GOP down ballot, essentially swinging elections for Republicans? What is the logic in a cheat where you help the other party win seats?

Trump Supporter 2: You need to look for the evidence. It is so blatant in front of everyone’s face and you choose to ignore it.

Trump Supporter 3 (Woman in her 50s, University Administration): Biden claimed at one point that he finished at the top of his class in law school.  He was lying and was near the bottom.  He was knocked out of the 1988 presidential election for plagiarism.  He has been a politician for 45 + years and has only the crime bill for tougher sentences as his signature accomplishment.  He has shown he is racist “You ain’t black,” Obama was a “clean black” and he gave the eulogy for Robert Byrd, a strong member of the KKK.  He fought against segregation and didn’t want his kids growing up in a “racial jungle.”  As VP, his brother and his son have been getting millions from places like China, Russia, and the Ukraine (“with a cut for the big guy”) to gain access to him.  He is on tape threatening to withhold loan guarantees from the US to the Ukraine unless they fire the investigator looking into corruption in the company paying his druggie son thousands of dollars a month.  His whole family has gotten rich from his public service. Meanwhile, thousands of good American jobs go overseas. At this point, he looks to his handlers to tell him what to do and they are listening to the radical side of the Democrat Party. Watch some videos and his wife has had to show him how to leave the stage. I could go on…why do you think he would be a good president?  The only answers I ever get are “he’s not a meanie like Trump” and “he is calm.”

Me: To be fair, I don’t think he will be a good president and have never said as much. I don’t think we’ve had a President who did more good than harm in over 70 years.

Trump Supporter 3: So how did Biden get a record number of votes? How did he get more than Obama?  No one thinks he will be a good president.

Me: 1. More people are of voting age than 8 or 12 years ago. Bush got more votes than Reagan. Obama got more votes than FDR.

2. Some people do think he’ll be a good president! Their politics just aren’t my politics.
3. You don’t have to vote for someone you like. Sometimes people vote for the lesser of two evils. How many Republicans even halfway like Roy Blunt? Fewer and fewer, yet he wins because people are smart and know that if they can’t get what they want they can at least avoid what they don’t.

Trump Supporter 3: I have faith in the American people, so I have to believe that the Dominion voting machines were designed to allow Biden to keep up with and surpass Trump, who also received a record number of votes.  I know that a lot of people have Trump derangement syndrome, but there are a whole lot of people who passionately support him.  There were events at which 50k+ people showed up on a few days’ notice.  There was the huge line of supporters in Arizona.  There is nothing like that for Biden and he had trouble getting many people to watch him online.  If you have seen the Ruby video, you see boxes and boxes of ballots that are being filled out. This corruption was highly organized. I am praying that the truth comes out.

Me: President Trump did have amazing enthusiasm among his voters, and I think he would’ve won if he did things differently the last few weeks of the campaign given how close things were in some states. But Republicans have only won more votes than Democrats once in the last 28 years of Presidential elections. So, I’m just asking, is it not plausible to you that Trump was just a continuation of a trend of a divided electorate where there are slightly more Democrats nationwide? How do you rationalize the great Republican performance down-ballot but Trump’s apparent loss? That would have to mean millions of Illegal votes that had Biden for President, Republican for Governor, Senator, and Congressperson. Why would a cheat look like that? I think we live in a bubble because Missouri is Trump country. While Biden didn’t have crowds, he did raise more money from individual donations than any general election candidate ever which also shows support. We’ve caught election fraud and invalidated elections before, like in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race. I understand why you believe what you do, but I really do think that if Trump won this election you’d have seen more Republicans in the federal government making that case as they did in 2000.

Trump Supporter 3: I am not in a position to know for sure, but if down ballot, there were a lot of Republicans who won… maybe those were the valid ballots?  Where people actually voted?   If there were a whole lot of ballots with only Biden checked at the top (because the people filling them out didn’t have time to fill them out completely), that would explain it, wouldn’t it?  Like I said, I am not in a position to know.  I just pray that we as a country can get through this without another civil war.

Me: That’s unlikely. Here’s results from Pennsylvania, whose results are being challenged. The vote totals are about the same in this congressional district with about 440,000 votes cast in total for President and Congress. Biden won and so did the Republican. This was true in a lot of places, not much undervote with Biden doing well and the Republican doing better (sometimes Congressional races having more votes than the Presidential). It also happened in the reverse with Biden doing worse than the down ballot Democrat, like in Iowa and Arizona. So, I’m just saying, I don’t know why Democrats if they were trying to steal an election would produce ballots stealing elections for Republicans. I hope America can get through this too, because Biden and Trump are no Abe Lincoln and aren’t worth fighting over.

Trump Supporter 3: PA-1 seems to be the north suburbs of Philadelphia with Republican representation. Median income $97k.  Corruption is suspected in highly Democrat areas like PA-2, not everywhere.

Me: President Trump did better in “Democrat Areas” than he did in 2016. In Detroit for example he won more votes than any Republican in 28 years. I don’t think you’re meaning to imply that those votes are fraudulent, because that’s actually where he did better. Because I don’t think we can square “Donald Trump did historically well in the city” with “Votes in the city are fraudulent”.

Trump Supporter 3: I think the essential issue is that we have different sources of news.  Our realities are different. I see videos of Ruby, proudly working hard to create fraudulent ballots in Georgia with boxes and boxes of ballots that were never mailed. I read that it is a mathematical impossibility for some of the returns that happened in swing states in Democrat areas. I hear that an exec at Dominion said he’d made sure Biden would win on an Antifa call. I read about the laptop from hell and the corruption of the Biden family with pedophilia and child trafficking and bribery. You see the mainstream media and aren’t seeing the news they hide. They decide what you see. Mark Zuckerberg gave $230 million to Georgia to help fix the election. Facebook put disclaimers after every post that CNN has declared a winner. “Fact checkers” countering truths with their “mostly false” and “unproven” claims.  Google hiding YouTube videos that don’t fit their narrative.  I’d think that would scare anyone. The media is working overtime protecting Joe Biden from himself.  Let’s hear more about his pets!  The Mueller investigation and report revealed that the Trump campaign was not colluding with Russia, but that was breathlessly reported for three years. And how about the FBI trapping and threatening Michael Flynn’s son and the way Judge Kavanaugh was treated with no proof that he’d ever even met Christine Ford?  I harbor no ill-will, we’re all neighbors.  I just believe we have different realities and we won’t change each other’s minds.

*End of Dialogue*

So, what did I gather from all of this? First, the mainstream media has clearly poisoned the well with tens of millions of people and there is no longer any objective reality or truth in America. As local news outlets have slowly died out and been replaced by an increasingly coastal educated and liberal establishment at the national level, people have become more alienated and detached. This will have consequences for generations. Second, this election controversy is about more than Trump. It’s about the growing pains of entering a new political system where the dominant constituency, white conservatives, have lost their king-making status. The rural-urban divide is more pronounced now than any time in living memory and Americans are beginning to see themselves as strangers in a strange land. Finally, we are on the brink of crisis and it’s unclear whether many of us are truly aware of how fragile our democracy is. In so few words, America has gone off the deep end.

The post A Conversation with Trump Supporters on Election Fraud appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There were over seventy million Americans who voted for Donald Trump. They will not simply go away. If Biden supporters condemn them, it will only raise the Trumpsters’ ire. Liberals need to develop new strategies to reach the Trump voters with the hope they will over time see the benefits that can accrue from progressive policies. It will take a whole new strategy from what most Democrats have tried to date. Central to this approach will be for Democrats to embrace alienated poor white citizens as an essential part of the party; a collection of citizens whose agenda is as important as any other identity group.

Joe Biden can help himself, the party, and the American people by taking a radical approach to filling certain cabinet positions. Key to this will be filling certain positions with “real people;” the kind of individuals with whom alienated poor white voters, and many others, can easily relate.

How about filling the Department of Education with a teacher rather than an educator? Better yet, fill it with a student (I’m not being facetious). How about the Secretary of Labor being a line worker, a truck driver, or a nurse? What about the Secretary of Agriculture being a family farmer?

This would not work for every cabinet position; clearly the Secretary of Energy must be a scientist and the Secretary of State must have an extensive history of studying foreign affairs and traveling abroad.

There are several reasons why I suggest that wherever possible Biden’s cabinet nominees be from the grass roots. Clearly, not everyone in the grass roots would be capable of being a cabinet member. However, throughout the country, there are very thoughtful well-read individuals doing regular jobs who have ideas for reform that would truly advance the condition of people in their profession.

There are people in the trenches of fields like education, labor and agriculture who clearly know best what the current challenges are. They have ideas on what the federal government can do to improve their industry, including the people who work in it and who are served by it. This person may not have had a great deal of administrative experience, but she could have the necessary skills and personal attributes to develop strategies to help others in the grass roots. Naturally, they will have to hire assistants who are skilled managers as well as savvy budgetary gurus.

In addition to skilled grass roots individual making excellent cabinet members, there is another reason to take this approach. Political observers have recently been drilling down to learn why so many members of the Trump base do not like Democrats. For many Trumpsters, it is their disdain for and their separation from the so-called meritocracy.

What is the meritocracy and who are these people? The meritocracy is those people whose standing in life is determined by their professional credentialed achievements. They are the architects, doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, city planners, university professors, journalists – the people who ascended to their positions by doing well in school, scoring well on standardized tests, doing what was necessary to make it through college, and in some cases, learned a few things along the way. To many Americans, these professionals are the backbone of our society, the real strength of the American populace. But to a multitude of Trumpsters; these are the people who have had unfair advantages in life, and live in a cloud in which they can neither see the Trumpsters nor care about them.

Those in the meritocracy have high standing in our society. Their prestige is at a level far above the auto-worker, the warehouse worker at Amazon, the bagger at the grocery store, the clerk at the dry cleaners.

In the world of the meritocracy, others within the clique are to be greatly admired and respected. But in the world of the Trump base, these “achievers” are the “others;” the people who got all the breaks in life.

The Trump base are the people who have been susceptible to misinformation on their social media feeds and have no idea how they are being manipulated. It is true that those in the meritocracy suffer from the same malady of manipulation, but to a lesser degree. In any society, there is a balance of power, or imbalance of power. Currently in the United States, alienated poor white people have considerably less power than those in the meritocracy. They are the “out crowd,” and have enormous resentment towards those in the meritocracy.

Those who are traditional achievers may say that they deserve everything that they have, in work, wealth and status. In the traditional way of looking at human achievement, they are spot on. But by viewing their achievements this way, they alienate those who have not made it to the level that those in the meritocracy have reached.

If we are going to achieve a greater modicum of unity in this country, we are going to have to find ways to respect where each of us stands. It’s not just a matter of accepting where others are. It is a realization that each of us has achieved, or in some cases not achieved, because of factors which go beyond the content of our character. They involve the status of the family in which we were born and other factors of luck.

If you are religious, you would say “there but for the grace of God go I.” If you’re not religious, you might say that some get better breaks than others.

Humanizing cabinet selections is a great way to start. A family farmer knows well how he is constantly under pressure from agri-businesses to sell his land and essentially become a tenant farmer. This family farmer needs more protection for his family and thousands of others who retain independent entrepreneurs in America’s first industry. Putting a family farmer in the cabinet would go a long way in preserving a competitive economy and strengthening American culture.

A teacher who has not aspired to move up the bureaucratic ladder, but instead to stay in the classroom, may have the most innovative ideas for improving education. Why not appoint her to be Secretary of Education and help her bring in a team of innovative administrators.

An auto worker who does not know from one day to the next if her plant will be shut could bring excellent insight to the Department of Labor. She would personally be impacted by job transitions, and could provide innovative ideas that would allow herself and her fellow workers to continue to have gainful employment if their plants shut down.

Not only could grass-roots workers make excellent Cabinet secretaries, but they would represent extending a hand to many Trump voters. Biden would bring into government people “like them” who would have a better chance to understand their challenges, frustrations, and opportunities for advancement.

We know Joe Biden will innovate. Bringing some “regular Joes and Janes” into the Cabinet would be a great way to advance the country and open the eyes of Trumpsters to what Democrats can do for them.

The post Biden Can Gain Trust from Trump Voters with Clever Cabinet Nominees appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Democrats and progressives have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the 2020 election. Polls have consistently indicated that former Vice President Joe Biden has a commanding lead. Yet, frankly, I’m scared about this particular election—and future ones as well.

What frightens me is that while Democrats try to reach out to various voter groups, many of whom are combating systemic inequality that must be addressed, they are forgetting one with legitimate grievances of its own. I’m talking about the Trump base: white, blue-collar workers (or non-workers) who are struggling to make a living. These Americans are largely overlooked by the Democratic establishment or even viewed with disdain.

The odd thing is that blue-collar white people used to be the core of the Democratic constituency. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, after all, was designed to help them find new ways of securing livable wages and job security.

Now, they are forgotten Americans. Forgotten, at least, until Donald Trump saw them, their anger and how to exploit it. Yet although Trump won in 2016, he is not their true leader, nor are the Republican politicians and pundits who support him. They are pseudo-leaders, purveyors of hate, conspiracy, fear and policies that only hurt the working people who vote for them and their ability to provide for their families.

In recent years, the Trump administration and Republicans have passed a massive tax plan that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, opposed raising the federal minimum wage, tried to give employers workers’ tips, proposed cutting their food stamps, rolled back regulations that protected their physical safety and, of course, attempted to take away their affordable health care. The Democrats, meanwhile, have tried to help blue-collar workers through federal anti-poverty initiatives, which studies show primarily benefit working-age white people without a college degree.

What too many Democrats still do not understand is that many white, blue-collar Americans think they are better than “other people” who receive government aid. They would rather have higher status on some artificial scale than higher income. As Barack Obama said in 2008:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. So it’s not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.

Those are tight grasps.

It is very difficult to help people who do not want to help themselves or accept other people’s help, and the Democratic establishment’s assumption that financial aid will be enough to persuade blue-collar voters has so far not panned out.

But that does not mean the Democratic Party should ignore them. As long as their anger and self-pity are allowed to fester, other groups, including Black people, Latinos and immigrants, will be held hostage. While poor white people often cannot successfully advocate for themselves, they can be major obstacles to the advancement of other deserving groups. Look no further than opposition to Medicaid expansion to see how they vote against their own economic interests and concurrently hurt others.

Identity politics becomes negative when one of two things happens: (a) fighting among the individual groups about whose agenda gets top priority becomes so intense that no one gets what they want, and (b) a group with its own identity issues becomes excluded.

As Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter With Kansas, points out, the new dominant core of the Democratic Party is professional workers. Most of these people are white, well-educated and upwardly mobile. They are teachers, doctors, engineers, attorneys, architects, top-level administrators, investors and more. In essence, these professionals have stolen the core of the Democratic Party from FDR’s working-class base.

This professional class wants to have its interests protected like any other group in our society. Professionals want their achievements honored and preserved. They are a class of credentials, and their certificates separate them from others. All the education and training they received must be honored. If a group’s identity can be defined by who is not a part of the group, then professionals are those among us who are certified to be employed in a small assortment of occupations. These people find their interests protected in part by the Democratic Party.

The bottom line is that simply offering economic stimuli will not bring blue-collar white people back into the Democratic camp. The question is, then, how can Democrats appeal to them?

A partial answer can come from winding the clock back nearly 90 years to the New Deal. FDR and the Democratic Congress developed successful ways for many white people who were suffering economically to accept government assistance. Many of the New Deal programs were not direct handouts; they were employment programs. Among the first programs to be passed was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which immediately hired unemployed people to work on public land projects, including upgrading national parks and building infrastructure.

Too many poor white people see their farm subsidies or school lunches as welfare. They consider that to be for “other people.” What they need—in fact, what we all need—is well-paying secure jobs.

Democrats, if you set your sights on the forgotten people and help them through programs that don’t offend them, then they will begin to vote with you.

This opinion piece is cross-posted from Newsweek Magazine.

The post How the Democratic Party Can Win Back the Trump Base appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Joe Biden had another “foot-in-mouth” moment a few days ago when he agreed to a radio interview with a gentleman who goes by the modest name of “Charlamagne tha God.” What most of us have heard is what Biden said more than seventeen minutes into the interview, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” Charlamagne, who is African-American, did not cheer Biden on, instead he said, “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.”

There are so many ways to take this exchange. It’s possible that what Biden said would have gone largely unnoticed in the decade of the 1960s. The 1960 presidential election was when African-Americans took a commanding step away from the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln) and began voting in huge numbers for Democrats. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was largely responsible for this migration. But by 1970, the term “politically correct” came into our lexicon.[1] Such a comment by Biden or anyone would then have been unacceptable.

Regardless of how accurate Biden’s statement about African-Americans voting Democratic might be (approximately 93%), it certainly did not apply to all African-Americans and it assuredly was not politically correct. Generally, it is progressives who are tossing out the allegations of someone or something not being politically correct, but in the case of Biden’s words, conservatives joyfully jump to impugn both Biden’s words and his sentiments.

Biden will pay a price with conservatives for his words, particularly with the millions of African-Americans who do not identify with the Democratic Party. But he also pays a price with segments of his Democratic base because critical thinking, a skill that helps define many Democrats, rarely includes sweeping generalizations.

Some might say that Biden makes mistakes in his use of language because he is frequently over-energetic, or even hyper. That may be, and at his age (77; 78 by Election Day), it is unlikely that he will develop any more self-control than he already has. So, here are two suggestions as to how Joe Biden can minimize making mis-statements that come back to bite him:

1. Be careful to whom he grants interviews. He does better when his energy and intensity is low, so it would behoove him to limit his interviews to reporters and other members of the media who are especially subdued and restrained in their manner.
2. Stop the bragging. In his interview with Charlamagne, he dwelled on his accomplishments. This can be unseemly, especially to political introverts and others who measure words carefully. Biden needs to work with advisors to help him identify when he goes into “bragging mode.” The best way for him to avoid blowing his own horn is for him to focus on the future rather than his past. Let others promote his accomplishments. Biden should be the messenger for rational and empathetic policies in the future; essentially the opposite of everything that comes out of the Trump Administration.

Donald Trump is probably chomping at the bit to debate Biden. Trump always aims at the jugular, and the way to combat that is with calm reasoning and well-placed sarcasm. Biden has to avoid the boorishness of bragging and the echo chamber of laundry lists about this and that. Barack Obama may not have been the world’s best debater, but he never lost his cool. If Biden can stay calm, he will avoid doing anything that is self-defeating.

Whether we’re talking politics, sports, or any other kind of game, the wise competitor knows to never defeat oneself. Joe Biden has yet to show that he can avoid undermining himself. Let his interview with Charlamagne stand as a reminder that he needs to chill, or be as Trump would say, “low-energy.”

[1] William Safire states that the first recorded use of the term “politically correct” in the modern sense was by Toni Code Bambara in the 1970 anthology The Black Woman.

The post Joe Biden Needs a Little Behavior Modification appeared first on Occasional Planet.