The Pandemic's Staggering Impact on the World’s Cities

As much as Trump's rural base hates America's cities and the "liberals" who live in them, cities - and generally the blue states in which they are located - have been the engines that have driven America's economy.  Moreover, blue states have paid far more into the federal system than they receive, thereby subsidizing red states which often are viewed as unattractive venues for new and progressive businesses.   Now, the coronavirus pandemic has hit cities with their denser populations especially hard and the economic impact may be long lasting, especially for those cities with the densest populations and most costly living costs. Service industries such as restaurants - some predictions are that 70% will never reopen - may be among those most severely harmed. Add to that the new working from home model which may change how large corporations with large numbers of white collar workers operate, and the impact may be magnified.  A piece in Washington Post looks at the huge impact.  Here are highlights: 

Cities across the world have become sites of the novel coronavirus pandemic’s greatest tragedies. New York City is possibly now the single biggest hot spot of the virus and has suffered close to a quarter of all U.S. deaths. It’s a similar ratio in London when set against the rest of Britain. Madrid’s toll may be even worse.

In most cities, life is a shadow of what it once was, with streets empty, arenas abandoned, businesses shuttered. Well-heeled residents have skipped town to country abodes and seaside getaways. Most of those who remain have slipped into an atomized existence — their movements curtailed, their social circles exponentially shrunk — that’s anathema to the whole point of living in a bustling, vibrant city.

From the financial capitals of the West to teeming megacities in the developing world, the crisis is both exposing profound systemic problems and raising tough questions about whether cities will ever be able to return to what they once were.

The imperatives of social distancing have plunged the world into a giant experiment in remote work, and some office workers may never want to return to the stresses, steep housing costs and public health risks associated with life in a dense, big city. As Cavendish noted, trends already underway may accelerate: The populations of global cities like New York, Paris and even Shanghai were declining before the pandemic struck, largely as a result of soaring rent prices.

UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, warned Tuesday that the pandemic may kill 1 in 8 of the world’s museums. Myriad local retailers and businesses that in part help cities distinguish themselves from suburban areas more beholden to corporate chains face extinction. A recent survey in the United States found that 70 percent of smaller restaurants don’t expect to reopen should the coronavirus crisis last more than four months. Hundreds of American towns and cities plan on cutting public services in the coming year as tax revenue plummets.

With many companies probably downsizing their physical footprints and demand for commercial real estate slowing, the skyscrapers that shape skylines from Manhattan to Mumbai may start to look more like white elephants than symbols of financial might.

“If pandemics become the new normal, then tens of millions of urban service jobs will disappear,” wrote Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard University. “The only chance to prevent this labor market Armageddon is to invest billions of dollars intelligently in anti-pandemic health care infrastructure so that this terrible outbreak can remain a one-time aberration.”

Pandemics have inspired substantive innovation and change before. “In the 1850s, the cities of New York, Paris, and London rebuilt their sewage systems in response to a century-long global cholera pandemic that killed more than 1.5 million people and ushered in a new age of urban sanitation that spread across the globe,” wrote Steve LeVine in Medium’s Gen magazine.

Now the world’s cities may become crucibles for a new wave of experimentation. This may range from the benign — consider the many cities shutting down streets to car traffic and expanding public outdoor seating, pedestrian- and bicycle-only spaces — to the more sinister — consider the new technologies of surveillance and contact tracing that may come to dominate urban life even after the pandemic.

The crisis may provide a short window for our unaffordable, hypergentrified cities to reset and to reenergize their creative scenes,” wrote University of Toronto urbanist Richard Florida. “Predictions of the death of cities always follow shocks like this one. But urbanization has always been a greater force than infectious disease.”

If Trump remains in the White House and the GOP retains control of the U.S. Senate, do not expect the required investment in an anti-pandemic infrastructure.  Voting in November for a straigh Democrat ticket has become all the more important.

Louisiana Dem. Governor John Bel Edwards Wins Reelection

In another blow to Donald Trump's fantasy that he can invincibly mobilize his toxic base to defeat Democrats merely by tweeting and holding rallies,Democrat John Bel Edwards won reelection yesterday in Louisiana.  Among popular measures Edwards had oversee during his first term were Medicaid expansion and criminal justice reforms, plus passage of a sales tax to address the budget disaster left by his Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal who, like GOP extremist Sam Brownback in Kansas proved GOP tax cut policies are disastrous.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Edwards' win and the erosion of governorships held by Republicans during Trump's time in office.  Here are story excerpts:

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was elected to a second term on Saturday, overcoming opposition from President Trump and an increasingly polarized state electorate to hand Democrats their second major victory in a governor’s race over the past two weeks.

Edwards, 53, was running against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, 70, in a runoff election after neither candidate won an outright majority of votes last month.

Edwards’s victory is another setback for Trump, who traveled to Louisiana twice over the past month to campaign for Rispone and sent a series of tweets urging Republicans to vote. [Trump's] The president’s popularity in the South has failed to prop up GOP candidates in two of the three states that held gubernatorial elections this year, allowing Democrats to gain governorships for the third consecutive year.

In Kentucky, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear unseated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin this month. In January, 24 of the nation’s governors will be Democrats, up from 15 at the end 2017.

The Louisiana election caps off a grueling campaign in which Edwards, a relatively conservative Democrat, worked to prove his party could still lead a state that has continued to drift to the right in the Trump era.

[Trump] The president made another pitch for Rispone on Saturday.  “Louisiana, 3 hours left, get out and Vote for @EddieRispone for Governor,” he tweeted. “Lower taxes and much more!”

But Edwards, who was minority leader in Louisiana’s House of Representatives before being elected governor in 2015, has remained relatively popular throughout his term and was optimistic his reelection bid could withstand the head winds of national politics, including the ongoing drama in Washington over the impeachment inquiry.

“We need to keep moving forward, and we can’t take a chance of going back,” Edwards said at a campaign event in New Orleans this past week.

After he succeeded Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Edwards worked with a Republican legislature to balance the budget, imposing a sales tax increase. He also successfully fought to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which extended coverage to nearly a half-million residents. The governor also pushed to hike teacher pay while working to drive down the state’s unemployment rate to the lowest level in more than a decade.

One of Edwards’s most high-profile accomplishments has been legislation reworking the criminal justice system in a state that had one of the nation’s highest and most racially unbalanced incarceration rates. The bipartisan legislation, which reduced sentences for some drug crimes and made it easier for some inmates to seek parole, could cut the state’s prison population by 10 percent over a decade, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Democrats have made a net gain in governorships for the third consecutive year. The party picked up seven governorships last year in the 2018 midterm elections, including winning several Midwestern states that Trump carried in 2016.

Democrats also gained a governorship in 2017, when Gov. Phil Murphy (D) replaced Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey in the same year that Virginia voters elected Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to replace former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe.

I Don’t Want "Thoughts and Prayers. I Want Gun Control

Telemachus Orfanos (right), a 27-year-old Navy veteran, was among
the victims of the shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif. (Facebook).

Stunned and distraught families deal with the needless loss of loved ones in the wake of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California - often rated among the safest places in America - one is hearing the usual disingenuous refrain from legislators (especially Republicans) of sending "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families.  I'm sorry, but when one has failed and refused to enact strict gun control that could have prevented such often repeating tragedy's the statement is nothing short of a complete insult to the dead and their families since actions demonstrate that the speakers don't even mean the words. Thoughts and prayers are bullshit uttered by those complicit in the slaughter.  As is the case over and over, the shooter had "legally purchased" the gun used to commit 12 murders.  Thankfully, the parents of one of the victims are rejecting the meaningless, dishonest statements of "thoughts and prayers" and speaking out for gun control now.  Only a mass movement demanding gun legislation and a repudiation of "thoughts and prayers" for the enablers of mass murder will bring America the legislative change it so desperately needs.  A piece in the Washington  Post looks at this rejection of the bullshit response so favored by legislators in the pockets of the gun lobby.  Here are excerpts:

Marc and Susan Orfanos awoke at 2 a.m. on Thursday in Thousand Oaks, Calif., to a call from a relative in New York. The groggy-eyed couple stumbled into a ritual that is familiar to parents in Columbine, Blacksburg, Aurora, Newtown, Orlando, Parkland — and, as of this week, also in the quiet outpost of Los Angeles.

They waited to find out if their child, who had survived the deadliest gun massacre in modern American history last year in Las Vegas, had perished in another mass-casualty shooting.

It wasn’t until noon on Thursday that a police officer told them the news: Their 27-year-old son, Telemachus Orfanos, was dead.

That marked the end of one grim ritual, and the beginning of another, as the Orfanos parents channeled their private anguish into a public cry for gun control — a cry that has echoed from Aurora to Newtown and beyond.

But what distinguished their plea was an utter disavowal of the stock response to the violence that claimed their son’s life.

“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control," Susan Orfanos said on local TV.

“And I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers," she said, vigorously shaking her head. She emphasized each word, demanding: "No more guns.”

Whether anyone will listen, her husband said, the victim’s parents know that’s hardly certain.

“If mowing down 5-year-olds at Sandy Hook didn’t make an impression, nothing will,” said Orfanos, a semiretired substitute teacher. “The bottom line is the NRA owns most of the Republican Party, and probably some of the Democratic Party as well. Until that vise is broken, this is not going to end.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, founded and financed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, urged “common-sense, strategic actions” to reduce gun violence. Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in 2011, said she was “heartbroken, angry, and never going to accept this as normal.”

The NRA, meanwhile, pointed to California’s already-tight controls — the state was the first to ban assault rifles, nearly 30 years ago. The organization’s spokesman, Dana Loesch, [dishonestly] aimed to make the debate about mental illness, which is a problem that is not particular to the United States, where the rate of gun homicides is nevertheless much [much] higher than it is in other high-income countries.

Authorities said Ian David Long, 28, had legally purchased the .45-caliber handgun he had wielded inside the bar. He also used an extended magazine, which officials said required additional analysis to determine how many rounds it could hold, and whether it may have violated state law.

Democratic lawmakers expressed hope that the new balance of power in Washington, ratified by the midterm election on Tuesday, would shift the debate. There were notable victories for gun control advocates, including Lucy McBath, whose son was killed in a 2012 shooting. The Democrat seized a closely watched House seat in the Atlanta suburbs.

“It is unfortunately not surprising that on the same day I officially became a congresswoman-elect, other families in this country are receiving the same exact call that I did six years ago when I learned my son had been murdered,” McBath said in a Thursday statement posted on Twitter. She said she would work to “make our communities safer.”

In the Colorado district that includes Aurora, the Denver suburb where 12 people were killed in a movie theater in 2012, Democrat Jason Crow unseated Republican Rep. Mike Coffman. Guns were also a fault line in Northern Virginia, where Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock fell to Democrat Jennifer Wexton.

But the NRA also had gains to celebrate. . . . The NRA helped oust Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and it helped elevate Senator-elect Marsha Blackburn, a Republican congresswoman in Tennessee.

He [Marc Orfanos] said the country’s “gun culture" is the cause of his son’s death — a culture maintained by what he condemned as the fearmongering of the NRA.

“I blame flat out the Wayne LaPierres of the world, the Dana Loesches, because they put the fear of God in some of these people who think they need to have guns up the wazoo,” Orfanos said, referring to the executive vice president of the NRA and the group’s prominent spokeswoman.

The only way to change the culture, he said, is to pass “rational gun legislation” that protects people’s ability to arm themselves in the interest of self-defense but prohibits weapons such as AR-15s and high-power handguns.

To pass such legislation, it will be necessary to defeat more Republicans, the handmaidens of the NRA.  In Virginia, 2019 will offer the opportunity to have the Democrats take control of the Virginia legislature and pass legislation that has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans.  Thus, in Virginia, if you support gun control, it's not too early to get involved in targeting Republicans for defeat. 

Nov. 6th: Last Exit Off the Road to Autocracy

It is election day and today's election results will determine many things.  First, as note in the previous post, whether or not America regains its moral compass and rejects Trumpism and the racist and discriminatory agenda of the Republican Party that is striving to restore the worse abuses of the Gilded Age.  Secondly, today may may well determine whether true democracy continues in America. If Republicans prevail today, expect voter disenfranchisement efforts to sky rocket - tactics employed in Georgia will go nationwide in GOP controlled states - and the social safety net will be shredded to pay for tax cuts for the most wealthy and privileged.  I'm not being overly dramatic in this latter issue.  One need only look at what has happened in other purported democracies where one party rule is now in place.  Even the early Roman emperors  maintained the trappings of the old Roman Republic  even though democracy had in fact died.  A column in the New York Times looks at this other key element of America that is at stack today.  Here are highlights:

Whatever happens in the midterms, the aftermath will be ugly. But the elections are nonetheless a fork in the road. If we take one path, it will offer at least a chance for political redemption, for recovering America’s democratic values. If we take the other, we’ll be on the road to autocracy, with no obvious way to get off.

It’s a near-certainty that Democrats will receive more votes than Republicans, with polling suggesting a margin in votes cast for the House of Representatives of seven or more percentage points — which would make it the biggest landslide of modern times. However, gerrymandering and other factors have severely tilted the playing field, so that even this might not be enough to bring control of the chamber.

And even if Democrats do climb that tilted slope, anyone expecting Republicans to accept the result with good grace hasn’t been paying attention. Remember, Donald Trump claimed — falsely, of course — that millions of immigrants voted illegally in an election he won. Imagine what he’ll say if he loses, and what his supporters will do in response. And if and when a Democratic House tries to exercise its powers, you can be sure it will be met with defiance, never mind what the Constitution says.

But ugly as the scene will be if Democrats win, it will be far worse if they lose. In fact, it’s not hyperbole to say that if the G.O.P. holds the line on Tuesday, it may be the last even halfway fair elections we’ll ever have.

Look at what’s happening in Georgia, where Brian Kemp — the Republican secretary of state, who oversees elections — is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams. In any other democracy, letting a man supervise his own election would be inconceivable. But that’s how it is in Georgia, and Kemp is abusing his power to the max.

A political party with any kind of commitment to democracy and fair play would treat Kemp as a pariah. Instead, he has the full support of the national G.O.P.

And Georgia is far from unique. There have been similar if less spectacular attempts to rig the vote in Kansas and North Dakota, where would-be absentee voters were told that they had to use the right color ink — and were given conflicting information about what color was acceptable.

The lesson we learn from all these abuses of power is that today’s Republicans are just like their fellow white nationalists in Hungary and Poland, who have maintained a democratic facade but have in reality established one-party authoritarian regimes. Everything we’ve seen says that Republicans will do anything they can to take and hold power, and Tuesday’s elections may be the last chance to stop them from locking in permanent rule.

Oh, and in case you’re tempted to bothsides this: No, both sides don’t do it. Voting restrictions are almost entirely a Republican thing. As always, Democrats aren’t saints, but they appear to believe in democracy, while their opponents don’t.

Democrats haven’t made the clear and present danger to democracy a central theme of their campaigns; they’ve been running mainly on health care instead. And it’s hard to fault their judgment. After all, health care is indeed on the line in these elections: Millions of Americans, especially but not only those with pre-existing conditions, will lose coverage if Republicans hold the House, because they’ll finally repeal the Affordable Care Act and will soon go after Medicare and Medicaid.

[W]ith the crucial moment here, everyone should bear in mind what’s at stake. It’s not just tax cuts or health coverage, and anyone who votes based simply on those issues is missing the bigger story. For the survival of American democracy is on the ballot.

If you are registered to vote, be sure to do so and vote a straight Democrat ticket - even if you have to hold your nose to do so.  It really is that critical.

Nov 6th Will Prove Whether or Not Trump Is What America Has Become

Traveling abroad back in September, it was literally an embarrassment to be an American and to have to explain to foreigners (i) we had not supported or voted fr Trump, and (ii) many Americans, hopefully a majority, were not Rump supporters and did not support the racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynist that Trump and his base espouse and embody.  Tomorrow's election results in the midterm elections will prove whether or not America and a majority of Americans are different from Trump and the basket of deplorables (which includes 81% of evangelical Christian voters) who support him.  Should the Democrats fail to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, perhaps the even the U.S. Senate, and numerous governors mansions, the verdict will be damning and Trump and all of the hate, racism and bigotry that he proudly supports will indeed define America.  I, like a column in the Washington Post, pray that America will reject Trumpism and the Republican Party which has fully embraced Trump just as the Vichy french embraced their Nazi occupiers 78 years ago.  Here are column excerpts that also sum up my hopes:  

[O]n Election Day 2016, there was one thought that dominated my thinking. “America, prove me wrong.”  It was a plea to my country to not do what I thought it was going to do: Elect a man president of the United States who ran an openly racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and nativist campaign. He dared turn over rocks and exploit the bugs of hatred and bigotry scurrying beneath that previous politicians thought better not to disturb. His reward was the Republican presidential nomination. 

My hope that night was that America would prove me wrong. I feared that Donald Trump’s ugly campaign that traded the dog whistle for a bullhorn and exhortations to violence would be rewarded.

This Election Day, one thought again dominates my thinking. “America, prove me right.”

It is a plea to my country to follow through on what I think it is going to do: Rebuke President Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress and restore some semblance of checks and balances by at least returning the House of Representatives to Democratic control.

Since the day after Trump’s inauguration, when millions swarmed Washington and other cities around the nation (and world) for the women’s march to protest the new president, the American people have raised their voices against Trump’s myriad affronts to norms, decency and truth. As horrendous as his I-don’t-give-a-damn response to the pipe-bomb assassination plot to take out prominent Democrats was, as callous as his look-at-me preening in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue slaughter later that same week and as heartless as his whine that both horrific incidents slowed GOP momentum in the midterms, nothing was more offensive to me than his ceding the moral authority of the Oval Office after the August 2017 murderous celebration of white supremacy in Charlottesville. [T]hat shameful display is nothing compared with the unrepentant racism that is Trump’s closing argument in the 2018 midterm elections. Rather than run on his tax cuts (a constant Republican goal) and two Supreme Court justices (a constant conservative goal), not to mention the record number of judicial appointments to lower federal courts, Trump is railing against a slow-moving “caravan” of Central American migrants making their way to our southern border with Mexico. They are nowhere close to reaching the United States, yet Trump is vowing to send 15,000 troops to prevent them from entering the country. He said that he wants the military to think of rocks as rifles. The audience gathered for my speech hosted by the Fulbright Center and the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam last month was as interested and concerned about the midterm elections as the Americans casting ballots. They are keenly aware that what happens on Nov. 6 will have an impact on them in some way. But it was in that speech that I expressed why I thought America would prove me right this time. Why the goodness and decency of the American people would win out.

My nation is not perfect, far from it. We get so much right and a lot of things wrong. But we are a nation that strives for perfection. It might take us a while, but when that Arc of the Moral universe bends towards Justice, more often than not it is at the insistence of the American people or of their leaders who had the foresight to see the right path forward.

In the lede of their Nov. 3 story, The Post’s Matt Viser and Philip Rucker crystallized the 2018 midterm elections. “Two years of political volatility will culminate Tuesday,” they wrote, “when voters for the first time since the stunning 2016 election render a nationwide judgment on whether Trumpism is a historic anomaly or a reflection of modern-day America.”

Prove me right, America. Prove that this is not a reflection of modern-day America. Go to the polls and send a loud and clear message to the nation and the world: Enough is enough.

If you truly care about America, its founding principles and democracy, vote tomorrow and vote Democrat in every race.

Will There be a Youth Vote Wave?

One of the big questions that will be answered tomorrow, for good or ill, is whether or not younger voters will go the polls and reject a Republican agenda that will harm them more than anyone else in the long term.  Similar questions, of course, exists about blacks and Hispanics, two minorities targeted for harm by Republicans.  A story in the Washington Post looks at an overtly racist robo call campaign going on in Georgia:

“This is the magical Negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow Negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia,” the robo-call begins, before spewing nearly 60 seconds of racism coupled with a dash of anti-Semitism. Georgians began hearing the call last week, according to the Hill.

Younger voters are more racially diverse than the older generations and one can only hope that ads like this one cause outrage that drives them and other minorities to the polls tomorrow.  This type of overt racism is now standard fare in the Republican Party.   But back to the youth vote.  A piece in the Washington Post suggests that the youth vote turn out will likely be up significantly.  The question then remains of whether or not it will be enough to outweigh aging whites who support Republicans and Trumpism.  Here are article highlights:

Youth turnout rates in the midterm early vote are up by 125 percent compared to 2014, according to Catalist, a voter database servicing progressive organizations — an eye-popping and historically high figure, say strategists on both the left and the right.

Young Americans ages 18 to 29 who say they are definitely voting tilt leftward, according to polls. But the data also shows young Republicans are bubbling with enthusiasm headed into tomorrow.  Here are the Catalist numbers for early voting:

  An “attitudinal” shift: A recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll indicated the most dramatic shift in their polling history is young people’s attitudes about whether politics makes a tangible difference in their lives. John Della Volpe, IOP's polling director, said pollsters saw a 15-point increase post-2016. 

  Per the poll: Forty percent of 18 to 29-year-olds reported they will “definitely vote” in the midterms (54 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of independents). 

  2020 implications: Among young people polled, 59 percent said they would “never” vote for President Trump vs. 11 percent who said they'd be “sure to” vote for him. 

  Narratives vs. numbers: “Almost all of the data I’ve seen from the last two Harvard polls indicate a significant increase in enthusiasm, interest and likelihood of voting for people under 30 — so the data has been consistent but the narrative inconsistent,” Della Volpe told us.

  'A big boost': “The media expectation before AVEV (Absentee Voting/Early Voting) started, based on survey responses about enthusiasm, was that young people would not be a factor again,” a Democratic strategist told Power Up. “Clearly, they’re going to be, especially if those voting are as Democratic as they survey. It’s a big boost for Democrats’ hopes.”
   GOP pollster: Chris Wilson, the CEO of WPA Intelligence, told us he thought it was a “bit too much” to call the turnout “historic.” But he said the electorate is looking younger “than both the 2016 and 2014 general elections. “Voters under 25 are outpacing their vote share from both the 2016 and 2014 general.
 The Issues: Nine months after 17 students were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Della Volpe's firm, SocialSphere, found that school shootings are the most worrisome issue to young Americans.
 The mass shooting generation is showing up: We spoke with Jackie Corin, co-founder of March for Our Lives, who voted for the first time last week. Corin, along with a handful of her peers, has been traveling the country, meeting with lawmakers and mass shooting survivors, speaking on college campuses and visiting communities to build what the group calls a “youth infrastructure” to carry over into 2020. 

·         Get woke:  Corin says she credits the big interest to issues young people care about “behind the names on the ballots . . . You're not just voting for this candidate but for your brother who might go to a college next year in an open carry state.”  

·         Civic engagement is cool: “Activism is becoming more of a normalized activity for teenagers — they are seeing their friends get involved with campaigns and issues and it’s spreading like wildfire,” Corin added. 

·         Twitter working against Trump?: Corin also credited the spike in awareness and engagement to Trump's Twitter habits. “The president uses Twitter as main source of communication and that’s something that young people see every single day — they’re always on Twitter and Instagram so they're more engaged about what's going on.”

·         Real progress: Since the Parkland shooting that killed 17, over 60 state laws have been passed tightening gun control. “The constant mass shootings are large motivators … it’s what has activated thousands and thousands of people across this country,” Corin said.

Final thoughts: There's been a lot of talk about "waves" this election cycle — from an energized Trump resistance, to suburban women suddenly engaged against the president. We've spent less time focusing on the youth vote because it hasn't historically turned out in off-year elections. We still don't know if the shift pollsters are seeing in early voting will be reflected at the ballot box. But it's definitely something we'll be watching closely tomorrow.

I hope and pray younger voters, blacks and Hispanics turn out in high numbers and vote Democrat.  If they fail to do so, I truly worry about the future which could turn out to be something very, very ugly.  

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan and Why He Will Vote Democrat

Andrew Sullivan, a gay former Republican, and I have not always seen eye to eye  on a number of things ranging from his delay in fleeing the GOP and his unwillingness to walk away for Catholicism.  But with the midterm elections on Tuesday, we are in agreement on the crucial need for people to vote a straight Democrat ticket even if it requires them to hold their nose while doing so.  What is happening to America must be stopped and the most practical tool available is to vote to cripple the Republican Party and put Democrats in a position to retrain the misogyny being spewed by Donald Trump.  As indicated in a prior post, I am not engaging in hyperbole when I state that there really is no other option for decent and moral people.  Here are excerpts from Sullivan's latest piece in New York Magazine:

Whatever else it will be, Tuesday will be a relief. We will finally find out where we are in the surreal dystopia of the last two years. We will see, in a tangible way, what America now is.

These years have been overwhelmed and saturated by a single figure with no political experience, who won almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, has had consistently lower approval numbers than any of his recent predecessors, and speaks and acts in ways no previous president ever has. He has cast a staggering spell over a hefty segment of the population, and he has earned the intense loathing of the rest. And for these very reasons, it has been tortuously hard to see what is in front of our noses.

Is this the new normal? Or has this been a detour into the freak zone, with a president accidentally elected, a major party temporarily hypnotized, but with a population still aware of something called reality?

There are few historical guides. It is hard to think of a precedent for a president who endorses violence against political foes, sees the Justice Department as his own personal prosecutor, calls the press “the enemy of the people,” tears children from parents, brags of multiple sexual assaults, threatens to lock up his opponents, enthuses about war crimes, “falls in love” with the foulest dictator on the planet, refuses to divest of personal holdings in office, lambastes allies, treats the Treasury as a casino, actively endorses the poisoning of the environment, destabilizes NATO, baits minorities, lies incessantly, and oversees a resurgence of the white nationalist right.

My instincts tell me that every single person whom this president has dismissed, insulted, or demonized will show up to vote. If they do, they will pierce the Trump bubble. They were a majority two years ago, after all, before this nightmare of governance began. They could be a bigger majority next Tuesday.

The Republican Party . . . . has turned itself into a cult behind a figure hostile to liberal democratic norms, responsible government, and any notion of moderation. It is less a political party than a mass movement sustained by shame-free, mendacious propaganda around a man whose articulated values place him more in the company of Putin and Duterte than Merkel and Macron.

The GOP cannot be talked out of their surrender to this strongman. With each rhetorical or policy atrocity, they have attached themselves more firmly to him.

That’s why I will vote Democrat next Tuesday. I have many issues with the Democrats, as regular readers well know. None of that matters compared with this emergency. I don’t care, in this instance, what their policies are. I am going to vote for them. I can’t stand most of their leaders and fear their radical fringe. I am going to vote for them anyway. Because it is the only responsible thing there is to do.

This president is quite clearly unfit for his office. If he is checked by the Congress, he will still be a danger — to the rule of law, the Constitution, and civil peace. But if he remains unchecked — and even vindicated by a midterm Republican success? After the themes he has involved and exploited — especially in this final week? After the massive lies he has told, in greater frequency these past few weeks than ever before? What he will learn from all that beggars belief.

It is time — way past time — for the opposition to be other than the press. It is time for it to be the Congress where it rightly belongs. . . . . Capturing the House is the only way the republic can strike back.

It may be a critical path to preventing civil unrest. As this past tragic week has again shown, this president has enabled bigots and cranks. The flourishing of white nationalism, the rebirth of hideous anti-Semitism, the dehumanization of the brown and the black, the deployment of cruelty against children, the celebration of violence — we have had politicians like this before, but we have never had a president like this. . . . . If we survive another two years of this man we will all be lucky. If he remains utterly unchecked, we may very well not be.

Today's GOP: A Party Defined by Its Lies

A column in the New York Times basically makes a point that I have pretty much come to believe: good people can’t be good Republicans.  And I say this as a former Republican who comes from a family with generations of Republicans.  Now, none are Republicans.  And, if they were still living, I suspect my parents and grand parents would not be Republicans any longer.  All of them had a strong sense of right versus wrong and believed that basic honesty and morality mattered. Thus, by definition, they could not be Republicans nowadays.  But back to the column which lays out the truth that the entire GOP agenda is based on lies and deception.  Here are column excerpts:

During my first year as an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, I wasn’t allowed to use the word “lie.”

That first year coincided with the 2000 election, and George W. Bush was, in fact, being systematically dishonest about his economic proposals — saying false things about who would benefit from his tax cut and the implications of Social Security privatization. But the notion that a major party’s presidential candidate would go beyond spin to outright lies still seemed outrageous, and saying it was considered beyond the pale.

Obviously that prohibition no longer holds on this opinion page, and major media organizations have become increasingly willing to point out raw falsehoods. But they’ve been chasing a moving target, because the lies just keep getting bigger and more pervasive. In fact, at this point the G.O.P.’s campaign message consists of nothing but lies; it’s hard to think of a single true thing Republicans are running on.

And yes, it’s a Republican problem (and it’s not just Donald Trump). Democrats aren’t saints, but they campaign mostly on real issues, and generally do, in fact, stand for more or less what they claim to stand for. Republicans don’t. And the total dishonesty of Republican electioneering should itself be a decisive political issue, because at this point it defines the  party’s character.

[T]here are two big themes. They lie about their agenda, pretending that their policies would help the middle and working classes when they would, in fact, do the opposite. And they lie about the problems America faces, hyping an imaginary threat from scary dark-skinned people and, increasingly, attributing that threat to Jewish conspirators.

Both classes of lie are rooted in the real G.O.P. agenda. What Republicans truly stand for, and have for decades, is cutting taxes on the rich and slashing social programs.

The G.O.P.’s problem is that this agenda is deeply unpopular. Large majorities of Americans oppose cuts in major social programs, while most voters want to raise, not reduce, taxes on corporations and high-income individuals.

But instead of changing their agenda to meet voters’ concerns, Republicans have resorted to a strategy of deception and distraction. On one side, they have gone full black-is-white, up-is-down on policy substance. Most spectacularly, they are posing as defenders of protection for people with pre-existing conditions — protection that their failed health bill would have stripped away, and which they are now trying to take away through the courts. And they’re claiming that Democrats are the ones threatening Medicare.

On the other side, they’re resorting to their old standby: race-based fear.

The lies have come nonstop since Trump’s inauguration address, which conveyed a false vision of “American carnage.” But they have gotten ever more extreme, culminating in the portrayal of a small caravan of refugees still 1,000 miles from the border as an imminent, menacing invasion — somehow full of diseased Middle Eastern terrorists.

The crucial thing to realize is that these aren’t just ugly, destructive lies. Beyond that, they shape the G.O.P.’s nature. It is now impossible to have intellectual integrity and a conscience while remaining a Republican in good standing. Some conservatives have these qualities; almost all of them have left the party, or are on the edge of excommunication.

Those who remain are either fanatics willing to do anything in pursuit of power, or cynics willing to go along with anything for a share of the spoils. And it’s foolish to imagine that there are any limits on how far a party of fanatics and cynics will be willing to go. Anyone who might have had a sticking point, some uncrossable red line of bad behavior, has already taken the off ramp.

That’s why a Republican campaign built entirely on lies should itself be a political issue — a reason to vote Democratic even if you want tax cuts. For we’re not just talking about a party selling bad ideas on false pretenses. The addiction to lies has also — let’s be blunt — turned it into a party of bad people. . . . If they pull this midterm election out, expect the worst.

Why the 2018 Midterm Elections Matter

In response to my earlier post today, some of my Republican" friends posted laughing emojis on the cross posting on Facebook.   Not surprisingly, these individuals tended to be white, heterosexual males and all from privilege.  I can only assume they lack much, if any, empathy for others and are only concerned with tax cuts and/or protecting their "white privilege."  Protecting the rule of law and maintaining some semblance of morality and decency seems to matter not so much.  It's very disheartening.  Confirming that I am not alone in lamenting what is occurring under the Trump?Pence?GOP misrule, The Economist, a staid British publication not known for hysteria, makes the case of why the 2018 midterm elections are so important and why, at a minimum, Democrats must retake control of the House of Representatives.  Here are article highlights:

Toxic federal politics is America’s great weakness. It prevents action on pressing real issues, from immigration to welfare; it erodes Americans’ faith in their government and its institutions; and it dims the beacon of American democracy abroad. The mid-term elections are a chance to begin stopping the rot—and even to start the arduous task of putting it right.

Mr Trump did not begin this abasement. But he has embraced it as enthusiastically as anyone and carried it to new depths of his own devising. All politicians stretch the truth. Mr Trump lies with abandon—over 5,000 times since he was inaugurated, according to the Washington Post. His deceit is so brazen and effective that many of his supporters take his word above any of his critics’, especially those in the media, and seemingly in the face of all the evidence. That suits Mr Trump because, once nobody is believed, he cannot be held to account. But it is disastrous for America. Once reasoned debate loses its power to win arguments, democracy cannot function.

Mr Trump is also wilfully divisive. All politicians attack their opponents, but presidents see it as their duty to unite the country after a tragedy. Only Mr Trump would think the Tree of Life synagogue shooting a chance to hit back at the media and the Democrats for criticising him (see article). Only he would suggest that, rather than tone down his explosive rhetoric, he might just “tone it up”. Such divisiveness matters because, when your opponents are simply bad people, the compromise that is the foundation of all healthy politics becomes hard within parties and almost impossible between them.

America’s democracy is robust—it was designed to be. However, one by one, its institutions are being infected with toxic polarisation. Congress caught the bug in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker. The media have also fallen victim to partisan scepticism—certainly among audiences, if not also among contributors. Just 11% of strong Trump supporters believe the mainstream media, whereas 91% of them trust Mr Trump, a CBS News poll found in the summer. Among Democrats those beliefs tend to be reversed. Now the Supreme Court is perceived to be partisan, too. Democrats see the recent confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the court as the ramming through of a partisan who has lied, possibly about a sexual assault, and who will be incapable of putting the law above his party. 

A dishonest executive, conniving with a fawning legislature and empowered by a partisan judiciary: were it to come to that, America truly would be in grave trouble.

What is to be done? Just as American politics did not sour overnight, so the route forward is by many small steps, beginning with next week’s elections. And the first of those steps is for the House, at a minimum, to switch to Democratic control.

This matters because Mr Trump should be subject to congressional oversight. He shows contempt for the norms that, to varying degrees, constrained past presidents—whether by refusing to release his tax returns, mixing official and private business, or bullying officials working in, say, the justice department who should be independent. Congress should hold hearings to investigate such behaviour. . . . a continued Republican majority in the House would eventually imperil the rule of law.

For Democrats to win control of the House would, in the long run, benefit both parties. Defeat would encourage some Republicans to start putting forward a conservative alternative to Trumpism. Defeat in the Senate, too, would turbo-charge that effort, though it looks unlikely. The status quo, by contrast, would cement Mr Trump’s takeover of the party.

America will not mend its politics in a single election. At a minimum, progress will take more votes, a renewal of the Republican Party and a different president with a different moral compass. But the right result next week could point the way.

Well said.  A second necessary step is to drive animus motivated, ignorance embracing evangelical Christians back into the political wilderness, hopefully, forever. 

Millennials Have the Most to Lose If They Don't Vote

I grew up in a politically engaged family - family gatherings often ended up in running political discussions and debates - and, as a result I and my siblings (and my children) have always voted and often become involved in campaigns. Thus, I find it maddening that Millennials - the group that will suffer the most from reverse Robin Hood policies of the GOP and the racist agenda of the Trump/Pence regime - are among those least likely to vote. Yes, America's political system is seriously f*cked up, but not voting only makes the situation worse.  Indeed, if Millennials, blacks and Hispanics would vote in force, the GOP would likely be forced into a permanent minority position.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case as to why Millennials need to bestir themselves and get out in vote.  Here are article highlights (share the piece with Millennial friends and family members):

The American political system has given young people plenty of cause for deleting its number from our phones, unfriending it on Facebook, and cutting it out of our lives completely in a fit of self-care.

Electoral politics promised us a democracy, then let the Supreme Court pick our president; vowed to protect us from terror, then sent our friends to die for the cause of birthing ISIS; seduced us with sweet nothings about upward mobility and “the knowledge economy,” then buried us in our parents’ basements under a pile of student debt; gave us hope that an audacious young president would make change we could believe in — then bailed out the banks, foreclosed on our families, and delivered us into a nightmare parody of all that he was supposed to save us from. And now this sorry excuse for a republic has the temerity to ask us to study its byzantine voting rules, slip out of a job we can’t afford to lose in the middle of a Tuesday, and wait in line for hours to choose between a feckless donkey and a psychopathic elephant.

But unfollowing electoral politics won’t make it disappear. And our political system will only grow more dangerous without your voice in its ear. So if you’re among the 65 percent of those ages 18 to 29 who plan to sit out the midterms, please consider the following five reasons to go to the polls.

1. Playing hard to get will get you nothing.  ➽ If you don’t like how a company does business, boycotting its products can (sometimes) be an effective means of forcing change, because corporations need your money to survive. But if you don’t like how politicians govern, boycotting elections will change nothing because the government doesn’t need your ballot to stay afloat. When left-wing millennials sit out elections, they don’t force Democrats to pay more attention to their interests; they make it easier for the entire political system to ignore their wishes by ensuring that no one in power will be worried about losing their support.
 2. The size of your voting bloc matters.  ➽ There are few things the GOP isn’t willing to do to please its donor class, but cutting boomers’ beloved benefits is one. AARP members owe this immense clout not to the militancy of their street protests or the wit of their Twitter owns, but to their singular propensity for showing up at the polls. If we followed their example, we’d have the numbers to make student-debt relief, public day-care, and any of our generation’s other policy priorities into a source of bipartisan consensus.

3. Voting for the lesser of two evils is great — that way you get less evil.  ➽ The Democratic Party is a deeply flawed institution, complicit in economic inequality in the U.S. and in unjust wars overseas. But if millennials had voted at the same rate as our parents in 2016, in all probability hundreds of thousands of longtime legal U.S. residents wouldn’t be in danger of losing the right to live here, thousands of child migrants wouldn’t have suffered the trauma of “family separation,” the Supreme Court wouldn’t have approved Republican efforts to disenfranchise nonwhite voters in Ohio and Texas or undermined reproductive rights in California, the Education Department would not be restricting access to federal-student-loan forgiveness while relaxing oversight of predatory for-profit colleges, the EPA would not be comporting itself as a lobbying arm of the fossil-fuel industry, the Treasury would not have forfeited hundreds of billions of dollars to America’s wealthiest taxpayers, and everyone the world over would have been able to continue ignoring the existence of the American president’s Twitter account.

4. You’re (probably) better informed about politics than the average American voter.  ➽ Many young people say they don’t “know enough about the issues” to vote. But we’re still far more in touch with reality than our elders. Millennials are more likely to accept that climate change is man-made, less likely to endorse prejudicial views of racial minorities and Islam, and far more liable to recognize Donald Trump’s unfitness for high office than any other generation of Americans. . . . . if more millennials voted, it would likely increase the salience of renters’ interests in U.S. politics. Similarly, the existing electorate is much less likely to comprehend the broader material challenges younger Americans face: Despite the U.S. doing far less for its young people (in subsidizing education, job training, housing, and child care) than just about any other advanced democracy, a majority of boomers say the government “does enough for young people” (but still needs to do more for older folks).

5. If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal — and they are. ➽ In 2008, young voters helped deliver North Carolina to Barack Obama. Shortly thereafter, Republicans in the Tar Heel State’s government revised voter-ID law to exclude student-ID cards. Eight other states have adopted similar restrictions. Just this year, New Hampshire passed a law that effectively imposes a poll tax on college students who wish to vote in the state, Florida’s Republican governor (and Senate candidate) Rick Scott tried to block early voting on university campuses, and state legislators in North Dakota have disenfranchised just about everyone who lives on a Native American reservation. Millennials may doubt their ability to effect change at the ballot box, but the powers that be sure don’t.

Please!  Encourage all of your Millennials friends and family members to go to the polls and vote DEMOCRAT. 

Hate Is on the Ballot Next Week

The midterm elections are a week from today.  On the ballot are many Republican and Democrat candidates and various others.  But there is something else on the ballot: hate and division.  Sadly one parties - the GOP which I belonged to for years - is now the the party of hate while the Democrats stand for equality for all and believe that one's rights should not be dependent on one's skin color, creed or sexual orientation.  A column in the New York Times looks at this reality.  Those who claim to be decent, moral people have a hard choice to make: are they going to vote Republican out of habit and possible racial animosity or are they going to vote for decency and in the process condemn purveyors of hate towards others.  We are not talking about political differences.  We are talking about who supports morality and decency and who does not.  Sadly, a vote for any Republican candidate makes one complicit in demonizing and disseminating hate and division. It's a black and white choice.  Here are column highlights:

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes. Just in the past few days, bombs were mailed to a number of prominent Democrats, plus CNN. Then, a gunman massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Meanwhile, another gunman killed two African-Americans at a Louisville supermarket, after first trying unsuccessfully to break into a black church — if he had gotten there an hour earlier, we would probably have had another mass murder.

All of these hate crimes seem clearly linked to the climate of paranoia and racism deliberately fostered by Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and the media.

Killing black people is an old American tradition, but it is experiencing a revival in the Trump era. When the bombs were discovered, many on the right immediately claimed that they were fake news or a false flag operation by liberals. But the F.B.I. quickly tracked down the apparent source of the explosive devices: A fanatical Trump supporter, whom many are already calling the MAGABomber. His targets were people and a news organization Trump has attacked in many speeches. The man arrested at the Tree of Life synagogue has been critical of Trump, who he apparently believes isn’t anti-Semitic enough. But his rage seems to have been fueled by a conspiracy theory being systematically spread by Trump supporters — the claim that Jewish financiers are bringing brown people into America to displace whites.

This conspiracy theory is, it turns out, a staple of neo-Nazis in Europe. It’s what our own neo-Nazis — whom Trump calls “very fine people” — were talking about in Charlottesville last year, when they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

It’s also the barely veiled subtext of the manufactured hysteria over the caravan of would-be migrants from Central America. The fearmongers aren’t just portraying a small group of frightened, hungry people still far from the United States border as a looming invasion. They have also been systematically implying that Jews are somehow behind the whole thing. There’s a straight line from Fox News coverage of the caravan to the Tree of Life massacre.

So how are Trump apologists dealing with this ugly picture? Partly through denial, pretending not to see any link between hateful rhetoric and hate crimes. But also through attempts to spread the blame by claiming that Democrats are just as bad if not worse. Trump supporters try to kill his critics? Well, some Trump opponents have yelled at politicians in restaurants! False equivalence, portraying the parties as symmetric even when they clearly aren’t, has long been the norm among self-proclaimed centrists and some influential media figures. It’s a stance that has hugely benefited the GOP, as it has increasingly become the party of right-wing extremists.

You might have thought that the horrifying events of recent days would finally break through that norm. But you would have been wrong. Bothsidesism is, it turns out, a fanatical cult impervious to evidence.

This needs to stop, and those who keep practicing bothsidesism need to be shamed. At this point, pretending that both sides are equally to blame, or attributing political violence to spreading hatred without identifying who’s responsible for that spread, is a form of deep cowardice.

The fact is that one side of the political spectrum is peddling hatred, while the other isn’t. And refusing to point that out for fear of sounding partisan is, in effect, lending aid and comfort to the people poisoning our politics. Yes, hate is on the ballot next week.