Post-debate reactions & reflections

I don't enjoy watching political debates, especially primary debates, but they are a necessary discomfort.  Now I know some ([cough] Sam) will say that we should suspend judgments after a mere single debate with a number more yet to come, the voting is many months away.  The problem with that is that our media hosts and panels are obsessively cranking out their takes from the second the bell rings closed the final round.  The perception cake is getting baked, like it or not.  So premature or not, for whatever they're worth, I have some reactions and reflections to add to the batter...

One debater on Thursday night almost brought tears to my eyes.  His rasping speeches evoked in me the memory of the now-classic movie whose last scene had me bawling when I was leaving the theater: it was called Old Yeller (the eponymous dog is dispatched off-screen at the end).  His words said "Medicare for all!" but his tone said "Get off my lawn!"  (It has also been suggested that the tone is more like -- "I'll have the Reuben, put the sauce on the side!")

None of last night's candidates inspired me with their hopeful vision or passion for justice, much as they tried.  They seemed to have taken a few lessons from Wednesday night: barge in hard and loud to get as much air time as possible (they saw that moderators could be pushed and self-assertion worked better than hand-raising); attack rump whenever possible (post-game panelists spotlighted the lack of same); and the best way to get talked about in the TV post-mortems is to make a frontal assault on a higher-polling competitor (e.g., Julian Castro on Beto O'Rourke).  

But none of them could be Elizabeth Warren.  Warren did inspire me, again.  She has the studied X-ray vision to see the nature of the American problem with greater perspicacity, confidence and clarity of expression than any other candidate.  She effectively relates the life narrative that authenticates her empathy and her devotion to economic and social justice.  And she has thought through the root problem to well-differentiated, well-articulated, reality-based solutions.  (Although her endorsement of eliminating private insurance in favor of Medicare for All seems out of tune with her groundedness in policy proposals.  On this one I think Klobuchar makes more sense; the impression is that EW strayed a bit out of her pragmatic lane to compete ideologically for Bernie's peeps.) 

I had already seen those strengths in her, but what I had not seen before was the easy warmth she showed in mingling intimately with the people on the seating floor after the debate.  She seemed to be responding on substance with them while she was posing for selfies and kissing children.  My sense is that, unlike Joe Biden, she has been coachable and responsive to suggestions that she be a bit less strident and bring out more of her inner Dalai Lama. 

Last night Joe and Angry Bernie both seemed brittle and defensive.  Being the front-runners, they've been under attack from all sides, and they knew they'd be targets.  Joe didn't seem to have his heart in it, as if he wished he could have skipped the whole thing.  His unpreparedness also suggests that he may think he can just show up and wing it based on his experience, his personal story, his instincts and his effective and enduring close partnership with Obama.    

Over his many appearances with Rachel and Co., I have come to see Eric Swalwell as firmly grounded in his commitment to doing the right thing, but he struck me as lacking the depth to make a dent in this  I thought he way overdid the "pass the torch" mantra.  Come on, bring a better reason for me to vote for you than being younger than the poll-leaders -- especially when the most reliable demographic group to turn out to vote are the alter cockers.    

Mayor Pete had gravitas and the composure to generate substance and even weave in nuance and deep reflectivity.  His acknowledgement of his inefficacy as mayor at building trust between police and the minority community was both lauded for honesty and flagged as an explanation for his low numbers with black voters.  My sense is that he will come out of this debate at about the same place in the pecking order as he went in. 

Marianne Williamson probably should have gone full-bore New Age spirituality rather than trying to offer political critiques of her fellow Dems' ideas.  She's being satirized anyway as if she had recommended national distribution of crystals and essential oils.  She'd have added something no one else could have if she had actually talked about collective consciousness, meditation, the power of visualization.  It is remarkable that she has received sufficient support to get on the stage, but I saw an interviewed voter in NH say that "Marianne's my girl", so there is a following that believes in her.  But... for president?  

Kirsten Gillebrand lost me when she appeared to me to make the case that a male presidential candidate is disqualified by dint of gender from proposing to be effective in protecting women's reproductive rights.  Full disclosure, she lost me long ago when she forced her fellow Democratic senators to go along with her call for Al Franken's immediate resignation or else to be left with the mark of a sexual-assault enabler.  That wasn't due process, that was no process. 

To my dismay, Joe was not ready to face even the most expectable confrontations, most notably the one launched from a script by Kamala Harris.  She opened with, "I know you're not a racist," then launched into the BUT part wherein she accused him of "praising" segregationist senators (e.g., Eastland) and opposing busing for desegregation.  Either he had neglected to prepare a response to shots taken at these brightly flashing soft targets at which many had already aiming charges, or he and his team did a terrible job of same.  That does not inspire confidence that he would be the person to beat rump or the person to lead the country.   

Harris had been polling way behind Biden among black voters, by 30+ points.  They reportedly are wary of her hard-liner prosecutorial past, while Uncle Joe has the glow of the Obama association.  So her number one priority was to change those images and those numbers.  The post-hoc TV commentarians universally hailed her successful offensive against Joe's cred in the black community.  

My evaluation is that Kamala clearly is comfortable, authentic, strong and competent at aggressively prosecuting a case and attacking an opponent, as she also did in a hearing in questioning the diabolical dissembler, Bill Barr. I'm less convinced of her authenticity when she goes on to advocate progressive policies.   

What will be the upshot of Harris's rat-a-tat at Biden?  I believe Harris's attack may have done him more harm than it did her good, despite the herd-like kowtowing to her by the post-mortemers.  If that's right, Liz Warren will benefit most from any points Joe lost.  

Joe will have his chances to return Harris's fire and in general to show greater agility and capacity for honest reflection.  Kamala will have opportunities to show that she has deeply-thought-through solutions to national problems.  She identifies and states the problems quite well.  Maybe it's just that I've listened to Warren more than Harris, but to me that's the key difference, and Warren's greater traction in polls up until now could be read as reflecting that difference.  Harris needs to convince that she's a better candidate for president than she is for Attorney General.   

Last impressions:  Why does Joe not get down on the floor with the crowd like all others after the debate?  And his avoidance of responding to an interviewer's questions is a mistake.  If he doesn't trust himself to deal with questions, how can he expect us to?

Who on earth thinks MAGA devotees are drawn in by hate?

When rump cult members are asked by polls or media interviewers, they will almost always claim that they are "color blind" and have no hint of bigotry influencing their attraction to the greatest president ever.    

You know who doesn't believe a word of their denials?

Uh-huh, Pres. Hare-brain von BottomlessPitOfEvil, that's who.

The op-ed below by Philadelphia Inquirer writer Will Bunch is chillingly on the mark in explaining how and why a feral, sadistic sociopath is able to drag the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave down into a rabbit hole of fascist perversion complete with -- indeed, politically built and reliant upon -- MAGA-crowd-pleasing genocide (given the in-custody deaths that have occurred in America for the first time in decades, "genocide" is not hyperbole).  rump just began his 2020 campaign the same way he oozed onto the scene in 2016, by scapegoating immigrants and other darker-hued enemies of God-fearing angry white people and promising to keep the Others out, to throw them in cages and/or to kick them out.

Possibly he does this because every time he throws out these lines at rallies of the MAGA faithful, they roar with glee and adoration.  For a colossal narcissist, that is sustenance itself.

The administration's sadistic treatment of asylum-seekers, says Bunch, is rump's instinctual appeal to the bedazzled acolytes who'd cheer his shooting "someone" on Fifth Ave.  Bunch invokes the super-charged term "concentration camps", and then he repeats it just to make sure we know he meant to say "concentration camps".  He combines it with the term "gulag" to lace the image with the recognition that the mission these cages serve is an autocratic scheme to keep the corrupt regime in power.  The treatment of rump's child hostages at the border fails to meet the internationally accepted standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.  

When that demonic fake descended the gilded escalator with Mrs. Diablo, the image told the world where his diseased personality would take the country if he got the chance.  Down.  

Bunch aims to inject a bone-deep chill of fear about the danger that we could see another Election-Day debacle.  He catalogues the forces and agencies that will be openly and surreptitiously working to recreate the 2016 dynamic that engaged white supremacists and seduced voters disgusted by him to throw their votes away or not cast them at all.

Better to be terrorized now, to fully face the real danger, and so to be spurred to make whatever difference each of us can before the election; better to feel a moving angst now than later to regret having done less.     

Words of hate in action under Trump

WILL BUNCH

Central American migrants wait in March for food in a pen erected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to process a surge of migrant families and unaccompanied minors in El Paso, Texas. CEDAR ATTANASIO

Do you smell something?

That’s the stench of freedom dying, and it’s coming from America’s southern border, where refugee children seeking U.S. asylum as they flee murder, rape, and degrading conditions in Central America have instead been tossed into a growing gulag of squalid concentration camps, created by an administration desperate to cling to four more years of power.

Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University tasked with monitoring government compliance with a court order on how long migrant kids can be held in detention, said that, not only is Trump’s Border Patrol not complying, but attorneys are shocked at what they found at a Clint, Texas, facility where hundreds of youths have been sent: children sleeping on frigid concrete floors, covered in filth, unable to shower for days, and taking care of one another because the authorities are looking the other way.

Binford told the New Yorker that some of the kids who’d been in Clint for three weeks or longer “were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once.”

This report was just one of several in the last week about the rapidly expanding number of young migrant children detained in conditions that aren’t just substandard but inhumane to the point where they fall short of international standards such as the 1949 Geneva Convention, which demands that detained people receive “conveniences which conform to the rules of hygiene,” such as showers equipped with soap and water.

The progression here is both horrifying and yet blandly predictable to anyone who’s followed modern world history. An authoritarian strongman rides a populist wave to power by demonizing The Other — in this case, refugees — as people who are murderers, rapists, and something less than human.

Now in power, the Trump administration is pursuing foolish policies (like eliminating the aid to Central American countries that can stop people from making the dangerous trek north in the first place) that then turn asylum seekers into next-level political props, as “defenders” of prisoners whose detention proves to Trump’s base the threat that Dear Leader is defending them from “an invasion.” These policies are shocking crimes against humanity from a nation that once held itself out as a beacon of human rights, and it’s getting worse. At least six migrant children have died since September in U.S. custody along the border, most in the growing gulag of American concentration camps.

After an initial 29 months of the Trump presidency that has infuriated and yet somehow numbed the president’s millions of critics with a state of what could now be called “normal chaos” — a daily parade of lies, outrageous tweets, firings, mini-scandals, and giveaways to Big Business — the past week should have served as a wakeup call.

This week brought America to the brink of an even worse state of affairs. The nation and the world came with a couple of hours, if not mere minutes, of a military conflict in Iran that had enormous potential to trigger a regional inferno in the Persian Gulf. The launch and recall of a U.S. strike on the Islamic republic was an inevitable next step in a policy that ripped up a working peace deal for a non-nuclear Iran and traded it for confrontation at the behest of Trump’s patrons — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel — and to prove the “toughness” of the American autocrat. The rampant militarism and national pride of authoritarian governments is always a road to war. Do you really think Trump will turn out any different?

Iran wasn’t the only alarming operation that the president launched and called back this week. Shortly before Trump kicked off his 2020 reelection campaign with a raucous rally in Orlando attended by members of the Proud Boys and other extremists, he tweeted that an operation would commence this weekend to deport “millions” of unauthorized immigrants from inside the United States, ripping apart families in mostly blue-state big cities. The number of immigrants to be raided, detained, and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dipped into the low thousands and then the entire operation was put on hold for two weeks — but it’s a fight that’s far from over.

The strategy of Phase 2 is twofold — to keep Trump’s base inflamed but to create new divisions among those who oppose him, to make Democrats furious at each other over impeachment/ lack of impeachment, and to rile up key voting blocs such as young people or African Americans who in enough cases voted for third-party candidates like Jill Stein or flat-out stayed home in 2016. They may do so again in 2020 if egged on by enough Facebook ads, whether they come from Trump Tower or from St. Petersburg. And all it will take to get there is this amped up strain of neofascism. 

wbunch@inquirer.com

215-854-2957 will_bunch

Remember "Baseball and Ballantine"? Used to be a thing.

My dear friend Sam became concerned about what he saw as my risk of burn-out in over-reacting to all the vicissitudes of a primary campaign that is still in its toddlerhood, if not infancy.  He kindly emailed me a cool-it warning, reproduced here along with my response.  

When I was becoming sentient back in the '50's, politics and baseball had more in common. In his book If We Can Keep It, Michael Tomasky reviews America's historical phases of partisanship's role in our democracy and makes the case that the era from World War II to the poisonous onset of Newt Gingrich as Speaker was distinct from other eras in that there was more inter-party cooperation and less bloodthirsty tribalism.  He attributes much of that to diversity within the parties that made it possible for alliances to formed across the parties to achieve specific goals on behalf of the country.    

For the last few years the conventional wisdom has been that the president has a good shot of destroying democracy and the rule of law -- and maybe the planet along with civilization as we know it -- if the GOP bloc continues without objection to support his policies and deny his crimes.  The point of no return may be on this side of the horizon...    

Howie,

It is June 20, 2019. You will exhaust yourself by mid September by the way you are going.

I am watching the Dodgers blow a 9 run lead to the Giants right now as Trump has recalled an air strike headed towards Iran.

BASEBALL, OUR NATIONAL PASTIME AND NEEDED DISTRACTION.

Sam

Sammie,

Aye, my friend, there's the rub!  You're entitled to kvetch about the Dodgers blowing a lead, but you are grousing about the top team in the league.  They still reward you for your time with a gratifying W in two-thirds of the games.  

My pitiable plight is so much more lamentable than yours.  What was also a pleasant and serene distraction for me has become a suppurating sore spot.  The Phillies are by no means waiting until mid-September to exhaust my fandom; they're showing so little fight as they blow the whole season with a dive so steep that it's become too painful to watch.  It's one of those spirals wherein underperforming leads to some trying too hard and some peevishly deciding not to play hard at times, thus producing even less run-wise from the offense they do generate at the bat.  

So what the hell, I can't click off MSNBC to watch the miserable Phils when their RISP batting average is lower than Mayor Messam's poll numbers!  Yeah, that's a real Dem presidential candidate that almost nobody knows exists and fewer support.  Not to take pleasure in his failure to gain traction, he is just a convenient example of someone else who's not having a good season. 

With regard to John Bolton aka Gen. Jack D. Ripper and his apparent success in manipulating us ever closer to war with Iran, you have rump contemplating a wag-the-dog rallying of support versus the concern that he might pay consequences for betraying a promise he repeatedly made to the MAGA-loons: that he would not engage the country in more bloody and expensive entanglements.  I don't think he's capable of any policy consideration that doesn't bear directly and immediately on his keeping that support and that of the Congressional GOP.  This may come down to a race between Bolton's efforts to create a casus belli and actions by some of the GOP to stop Bolton.  Seven GOP senators yesterday voted to block the administration's arms sale deal with the Saudis, so my hope has some basis in behavior.  

My expectation is that this dog won't be wagged as it was in 2003, that no Democrats in Congress would support an attack and that he would lose some Repubicans, Tom Crazy-ass Cotton notwithstanding.  The Iran "policy" epitomizes the rump admin's moronic foreign relations "strategy", which has only gotten more incoherent and belligerent as the adults have cleared out their desks and left to salvage a vestige of soul and sanity.  

To start a war with Iran would be the most insane and destructive thing this bunch of idiots, madmen and criminals could do at this time.  They've already set a high bar for that distinction with their concentration camps, alienation of NATO allies, tariffs and dozens of other monuments to stupidity, venality and treachery.  But using our armed forces to bully Iran like Michael Cohen was often dispatched to bully rump's many antagonists, that would set a new high water mark for evil, stupid and destructive.       

H~~