Morning Fog

Town Hall Meetings - Some Quick Impressions

Morning Fog had the chance to see parts of each of the two "town hall" meetings last night - one with Trump on NBC, moderated by Savannah Guthrie; one with Biden on ABC, moderated by George Stephanopoulos.

It appeared that Trump must have taken his meds for the occasion. He seemed more relaxed, and more coherent - even, if you didn't know anything that's gone on the past four years, "reasonable." Sadly, being Trump, he continued to spout lots of serious falsehoods, and to blame any and all failures on somebody else. Trump unconvincingly insisted that the reason he felt no guilt at the GOP's bad faith in making a very late-term rush to get Amy Barrett in the door was how poorly Brett Kavanaugh had been treated during his hearings.* On this and other issues, Ms. Guthrie did a surprisingly good, and firm, job of holding his feet to the fire.

Biden came across as reasoned and calm, if sometimes bordering on soporific. Overall, he put forth a clear contrast between himself and Trump, which appears to be the main goal of the Democratic campaign strategy. He was able to address some concerns Trump had raised earlier [i.e. lies] about his policy plans without being screamed down. Mr. Stephanopoulos had little to do.

Optics are important on TV.  Whoa! Trump's show won hands down. It looked like a town hall. It was colorfully produced and the citizen questioners were well within camera range most of the time, although I found the professional nodder posted right behind The Donald to be distracting. Optics with Biden on ABC were dreadful. Biden, sitting with Stephanopoulos on a brightly lit but too monochromatic stage, did manage to doff his mask, but the citizens were in bleachers, in the dark, 100 or more feet away. ABC's commercials were very frequent, numerous, and intrusive, whereas ads on NBC were less noticeable. In fact I can't recall for sure that there were any. 

The best takeaway from these two sessions is that the town hall format may offer possibilities for the future, while Trump may have effectively killed the whole idea of debates.

* Side Note: It's known that Trump was distressed that Kavanaugh actually cried during questioning by Congress. Many of us were. We should not ignore how vicious these confirmation spectacles have become. We should look for ways to mitigate them. Ms. Barrett has not been subjected to the same degree of hostile questioning yet I have a strange feeling that - unlike Cavanaugh - if she had, she would not be crying; she is made of sterner stuff.

Breaking The National Political Logjam [Part 1 of Umpteen, Maybe?]

Trump's support has remained steady almost no matter what he does. So if he were reelected, we can't look to the Party of Trump (PoT)* to do us much good in breaking down the tribal barriers that now pervade our national political life. In fact it seems likely that we could count on a further deterioration, to the point of ruin. So obviously, the moderate course is to rely on the Democrats.

Will Biden and Harris be able to reach out? I'm not optimistic. They'll be too busy with trying to undo the regressive trends that Trump and his sycophants have tried to implant in so many areas (literally ALL areas). They will also working to establish new progressive models, as voters clearly expect, to deal in more creative ways with matters that now seem higher-profile than before -- racism, national health care, income distribution, and climate change, to name a few. They will be doing this not only against the pushback from Republicans who survive the election, but possibly also from different factions within their own party. These jobs will take years; a full Presidential term or even two. And if they should craft some semblance of bipartisan consensus on measures addressing one or two issues, the only barriers that get broken down will be those among a handful of politicians.

This is all good and necessary work, but not enough to keep 2024, or 2028, from looking just like 2016, when we will be looking again at a very narrowly decided election, and we'll be off again on the next Trump disciple's rush to take the country back to the 1950s or earlier.  

Could it be that Biden and Harris need to go much further? Trump's base is real. Certainly it includes malevolent and self-interested politicians who lead them down garden paths, and it includes a small tranche of people who really are "deplorables," not the "fine people" Trump so infamously declared neo-Nazis to be. Democrats should keep in mind that until the mid-1960s, those same deplorables were voting Democratic. But that's the fringe. I believe that mostly the 40%, or 45%, whatever, are just regular Americans. They too have to pay the bills, deal with their health, educate their kids.  They vote, they have issues they legitimately expect their government to help deal with, and - useful to keep in mind - issues where they believe the government ought NOT to get involved.  If they are on average more white, more male, older, less educated, or live in less densely populated areas than those on the other side of the political divide, they are still as American as apple pie and violence.

As a nation, what shall we "do with" this large contingent? If we're going to get past the current state of intense polarization, they are the people to whom Joe and Kamala will need to reach out. Frankly, in the current environment of mutual suspicion and hostility, I don't see how the more extreme proposals of the left get us there. History suggests a President may be able to bring one major change to fruition during a new term. On the other hand, many commentators are seeing hope that the current juxtaposition of several churning crises (black lives matter, climate change, attacks on our constitution and voting procedures, coronavirus) can produce another era of sea change a la FDR. I don't see Joe Biden in that mold.

*There is a terrible punster behind the curtain at Morning Fog who suggests that probably the PoT would rather just sit back and call the kettle black. Or maybe destroy the kettle.

 

Trump's Coronavirus

President Trump has announced that he and the missus have tested positive for coronavirus.  

In our supercharged political atmosphere, we may expect a lot of "I-told-you-so's" - and those would be much deserved.  Beyond that lie dark speculations about whether it's a hoax and how Trump intends to turn it to his advantage.

We can also be sure that if the shoe were on the other foot, Trump would be mercilessly mocking Biden.  

The political moderate, however, will hope that Biden's and other Democrats' reactions will be limited to expressing regret, wishing a successful and symptom-free quarantine period, and reiterating the health cautions as dictated by "the science." 

Back in Business

In the header above, you'll see that Morning Fog has the subtitle "A Moderate View on Current Affairs."  That's always been there, and it's the reason I stopped blogging almost two years ago.  It appeared that moderation had died. This blog itself had become more partisan over time, as one Trump outrage followed another. But there were plenty of commentators to point that out.  Why add to the din?

Now, though, there is a very evident need for moderation in the U.S. political landscape. 

Soon I hope to elaborate exactly what moderation means (to me).  Suffice it to say for now that both major U.S. political parties are moderationally challenged. 

The Republican Party, if we can honestly still call it that, is by far the worse offender, but they recognize and own their extremism; they see it as their only way of staying alive. (My take is that they've failed to save themselves, but more on that later.) 

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, as it had to become the anti-Trump, is less conscious of its lack of moderation.  If they don't correct that, they could become as irrelevant as the Republicans are now.  And then what, for the people of the United States?

So Morning Fog is open for business again.  

Sensible, Thinking Persons

"... every sensible, fair-minded person was surely thinking ... [that]  the hearings that brought both Kavanaugh and Ford to tears were driven by a partisan quest for power without regard for the human collateral damage."

That's a quote from a recent column by Kathleen Parker on the Kavanaugh hearings.

Now, I don't often agree with K.P., who is one of those many rightist pundits whose every utterance is guided by partisanship. But here I confess I think she's entirely correct.

Partisan quest for power? Spot on! Ms. Parker's beloved Republicans have, for three decades, engaged in a "partisan quest for power," a quest that grew ever more reckless, and culminated in "Senator" Mitch McConnell's racist-based refusal to cooperate in any way with the president the people elected in a landslide. 

Of course the nomination of a justice has long been partially political, and Democrats have played the game too. But with McConnell, the party realized that what it clearly was losing through elections -- an electoral mandate -- could be achieved by dominating the Supreme Court instead.  Sooo much easier to have a select group just rule your views as the law of the land, than to have to win elections from a bunch of ingrates who just couldn't see how going backwards was a positive thing. 

Thus was born the uber-bitter extreme politicization of the Supreme Court nomination process that has wrecked at least two lives (but not Mitch's). It's brave of Kathleen to admit it. Will her life also be wrecked for having done so?

The Reinking Republican In The U.S. Senate

The Reinking who is the catalyst for this post is of course Travis Reinking, the fellow who was recently arrested for "allegedly" killing four innocent victims in yet another needless shooting in a Tennessee Waffle House. But this is more about Travis Reinking's father Jeffrey [I assume his last name to be Reinking also].

The reports on this incident were, sadly, ho-hum news of the day until we also heard later that Reinking's father intervened in August 2017 to avoid having law enforcement officers confiscate Travis's weapons. Dad agreed to hold the weapons himself on the understanding he would not return them to his son. Illinois police should have had better sense than to agree to that, but since they did not, guess what?  Jeff gave Trav his guns back!  It's been reported officials are now "uncertain" whether either Travis or Jeffrey broke any firearms laws (hah! only in America, as they say).  Firearms laws or not, though, a case can and should be made to prosecute the father; the charge should in my view be accessory to murder. We can't be sure if Jeffrey is good at his work (whatever it is) but we can see he is one hell of a fine enabler.

Regular readers know Morning Fog is a fan of "interesting" juxtapositions of news events and developments and in this case, it struck me that Reinking (the elder) is just a small potatoes example of a much worse enabler, namely, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader.  

How so? McConnell is the prime enabler of Donald Trump. That's true on many fronts, but the one that immediately suggests to me a philosophical kinship between Mitch and Jeff is the Mueller investigation into the Gordian knot of Trump's team and the Russians. We know Trump's style. First the posture that something will "never" happen, he wouldn't even think of it; then the edging away; then an apparent decision that "maybe" he can get away with some egregious action; and finally, the action itself.  

Trump has been testing the envelope on firings at Justice:  Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller.  Both McConnell and his erstwhile partner in enablement Ryan (good riddance!) have refused to stand up to Trump on the issue of firing Justice officials who just happen to piss him off. Just as Jeffrey Reinking seemingly assumed his son would not do anything with those firearms, McConnell doesn't see a need for specific legislation to protect Mueller - one might even say he has "waffled" on that -- because reportedly he just doesn't think Trump intends to, or really would, fire Mueller.

That's a dangerous thing. McConnell eventually will get his political comeuppance (or not) but by the time he does, it may be too late for the country to avoid having the Department of Justice turned into a Waffle House.

Alabama - The Republican Party Loses Either Way

In a little more than a day, barring a very close cliffhanger that requires a recount, we'll know whether Republican Roy Moore won or lost his bid for the vacant Alabama seat in the U.S. Senate.

There's been a lot of controversy about Moore - not just the accusations by several women than he sexually assaulted them years ago, but his fundamentalist religious beliefs, his racism, his love of guns, his lack of respect for the U.S. Constitution.  Republican Party leaders, (after some false starts, as when Mitch McConnell said he believed Moore's accusers and thought Moore should back out of the race) have generally decided that these issues of character and suitability for the job don't matter in the least to them.  The poster boy for that attitude is President Trump himself, who is making appeals to Alabama voters based solely on the fact that he (Moore) is a conservative Republican who will support him (Trump).  Thus they arrive at the mantra of "letting the people of Alabama decide."  Fair enough, but that would not mean that the GOP necessarily has to pour funds into Moore's campaign.  It's all very cynical, but nothing is new in that.

Until lately, it has also seemed that those who really count, i.e. those selfsame voters of Alabama, are equally unconcerned about Moore's ethical, moral, and political weaknesses.  After all, if they went for Trump, why wouldn't they vote for their very own home-grown Trump clone? And maybe there are some who seek to steal the title of "America's Most Backward State" from Mississippi, which has held it undisputed for so many decades.

Yet there are signs now, I read, that not all Alabamans are really so stupid or naïve. Many are expressing concern that Moore is not the right guy. Foremost among these is Alabama's other Senator, Richard C. Shelby, who has said he can't vote for Moore. And who's to say that Alabamans generally will take kindly to President Trump's  blunt, arrogant and ethically challenged message to them: "Vote for Moore, I need him."  It's these currents that have made tomorrow's special election more of a real horserace.  We shall see.

Personally, I'm not sure the outcome matters greatly to most of us. But I do think his candidacy is a lose/lose for the Republican Party. A loss would be a serious blow to the GOP leadership and should cause them real concern about their fate in next year's mid-term Congressional elections. A win will put in power a man who cannot be anything but an embarrassment and a liability to Republicans nationally, with (again) obvious implications for the midterms. Win or lose, Moore may be the outlier that begins to unravel the Republican death grip on the South. So yes, please, let's let the voters decide, and see what happens.

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Sanity Clause (Let's Hope)

What better time to rev up the engine on my long-dormant blog than when the nation's politically minded are so intensely focused on a political contest right here in my own back yard?

I refer of course to the facts that (1) Virginians will go to the polls tomorrow to choose our next governor, and (2) as soon as the polls close, analysts will be going bonkers trying to analyze what the Virginia vote augurs for national Congressional elections next year.

Augury is a great word for this process, referring as it does to ancient and not-very-scientific processes like reading tea leaves, the entrails of a goat, or the patterns of the clouds against the sky at dusk. Whatever the outcome of the Virginia election, I believe its reliability for predicting anything broader than who will be the next occupant of the Governor's mansion in Richmond is minimal.  

What's more interesting to me is what this unique election in one single state reflects about how the nastiness of our national discourse affects our political process. The current political climate has caused the two candidates to conduct  negative, increasingly bitter campaigns that seem aimed at polarizing the electorate and fomenting division and hatred.

The Democrat, Northam, has run against Trump (even calling him a "maniac" in his primary campaign) and seeks to label his opponent - a long time figure in Virginia politics - as a Trump puppet.  Meanwhile the Republican, Gillespie, has tried to paint Northam - a soft-spoken pediatrician - as an enabler of child molesters and pornographers. It's all pretty ridiculous. Worse than ridiculous -- it distorts the voters' picture of the candidates and distracts from discussion of actual issues. 

In fact, the two candidates in my view are not so different.  Although they belong to different parties, they both are really moderates. These two guys can sit with each other and discuss the state's issues calmly and pragmatically, as they did in early debates between them. Things will get done in Virginia in coming years pretty much as in the past, with an occasional bit of legislation tilting slightly to the right or left. Or so we will hope, if they can maintain their sanity and don't let themselves become creatures of their own campaign distortions.

   

  

The Hostage

It's been a long silence on my part about Our National Embarrassment, Donald Trump. Is it because my mother taught me "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? Actually she never taught me that - quite the opposite!

But if I were to look for something nice to say about Trump, one might be that his stated policy objectives -- if divorced from the means he wants to use to attain them - are not all total garbage. We could do with fewer government regulations, especially where it comes to tax simplification. The ACA does need some tweaking to make it more viable in the long run, but it need not be purposely sabotaged.  Jobs - well, who doesn't want more jobs? Middle East peace? A real iconoclast like Trump might be just the fellow to make it happen. Name your own national goal that you might wish Trump could achieve, I'm sure you can think of at least one. So it isn't so hard to understand why a strong minority of an electorate desperate for change might vote for him, even continue to support him as he bumbles about.

Sadly, it now seems clear that whatever small promise he represented in that regard has been squandered.  Much of the failure is attributable to his own lack of qualification or preparation for the job, there's no denying it.  But it certainly can't help that he has so evidently become the hostage of the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and has failed to break from them.  On ACA, on the travel ban, on the Supreme Court nomination, on climate change, and on many issues, hard-line know-nothings in the party have ruled the day, making sure that Trump does not step over the line into compromise - or reality,* for that matter.

I feel sure that this is why Trump, in so many current photos, comes across looking disinterested, with a blank stare, as if he'd prefer to be somewhere else. He's tired of the job already, because he learned that it's not as easy as he thought.  He has probably begun to realize that his little caper of running for President won't lead to a rising tide of adulation, but will instead destroy his reputation as a leader, a tycoon, a hard bargainer, a decision-maker... He began as the least-respected Chief Executive ever to occupy the White House; he stands a good chance of leaving it (in four years, if not impeached sooner) at a far lower level.

The solution, Mr. Trump, if you're listening, is to stop being a hostage, to break away and start working with ... GASP ... the opposition.  You could become the guy who ended Washington's dread deadlock.  

 

* P.S. - As a lover of word play, In leaving the Trump topic, I can't help but observe how poetic is the justice of having a liberal-leaning leaker named Reality Winner turn up to challenge the country's leading Fantasy Loser.

 

  

 

(Epathetic) Dopey Donny

So, just a couple of days after delivering an address to a joint session of Congress - a speech that made Trump fans, at least, hopeful he might actually qualify at some point for his new title of "President" - there was Donald Trump again, issuing a blast of surreal, paranoid tweets in the middle of the night.  It wasn't unexpected; I'm surprised it took him so long!  But still, with every such outburst, a thinking person's opinion of "The Donald's" qualifications must sink lower. Ye gods, when will this man GROW UP and at least try to do the job he was elected for?

This episode, though, helped crystallize my thinking on one point:  We need a special kind of name for Trump: an epithet!

I recall from my high school days that an "epithet" in classical literature was a common way of attaching a positive attribute to an individual. I remember this particularly from Homer.  For example, Homer might choose to refer to Achilles as "strong-heeled Achilles."  And he would do so time after time. every time Achilles was mentioned.  (Incidentally, this did not make the reading of The Odyssey any more pleasant.)

After hearing DT attach a label to each of his opponents in the election campaign (Little Marco, Lyin' Ted, Crooked Hillary, etc.) I realized that he was emulating Homer (unconsciously, no doubt!), except these epithets were negative and hateful. I decided we really must have such a name for Donald. after all, what's sauce for the goose, you know... but I hadn't nailed it until these latest charges ("Obama wiretapped me!"). 

Given some of the characteristics I've seen, I considered "Delusional Donald" or a Homerian choice, like "Unbelievably Unqualified Don." But those are too long to grab people's attention, and have too many syllables to be grasped by the To-Be-Named himself. 

So the best I've come up with is "Dopey Donny."  This works on many levels. It sounds like something you'd hear on a fifth-grade school playground, as do most of Trump's outbursts. (The use of the diminutive "Donny" enhances this effect.) Further, "Dopey" is an old-fashioned word, as old-fashioned as Trump himself. It reflects the strange bewildered, where-am-I look that appears on Trump's face when he appears in public; yet it also aptly assesses many of Trump's policy statements. Finally, Dopey was one of the seven dwarfs, while our President seems to believe he's a giant. Dopey Donny it is. 

Perhaps you will ask, is it right to fashion such a moniker for a President? Isn't it disrespectful? Well, it used to be. But Trump himself changed the game.  He expects respect without earning it, yet had no problem using such mini-titles for serious and respectable people of all stripes.

Last, the title of this post is NOT accidentally misspelled.  I think "epathetic" nicely melds "epithet" with "pathetic."