Tag: Elizabeth Warren

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Politics Politics Feature

It Ain’t Beanbag: Local Campaigns Sling Mud in Last-Ditch Efforts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

So you think this is the hard stuff — President Trump calling his opponent Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe” and using the term “criminal enterprise” to describe the Biden family — or Biden reciprocating by calling the president a “clown” and saying to him, “Man, why don’t you just shut up!”

Both presidential candidates have addressed each other coarsely, though Trump certainly has been worse. Think of Trump’s newest audience-participation contribution: When a disapproved-of public figure is mentioned, the crowd chants, “Lock him up!” That epithet has even been hurled at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the hard-working, non-political chief of infectious disease research in these pandemic times. It’s the sort of thing that is regarded as unprecedented — as a sign of irreversible decline in the civility of our political process.

Jackson Baker

Gabby Salinas (second from left) at Shelby Farms

Well, the fact is, such invective is par for the course, and always has been in the practice of our national democracy. Just look at some of the stuff that’s being put out in our local elections.

Here’s a recent mailout from the Tennessee Republican Party, up in Nashville, aimed at Democrat Gabby Salinas, candidate for local state House District 97: Side one warns boldly, “Gabby Salinas and her Socialist friends are taking aim at our guns.” To the right of this is a huge, ugly, bright-red gun sight, and underneath the warning and the graphic is a triad of heads: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Gabby Salinas, and Bernie Sanders. If that side of the mailer is outrageous, side two is all of that and a blatant fraud as well.

The reverse side of the mailer is loaded up with more gun symbols and with the information that Salinas is “Endorsed by Memphis Democrat Socialists of America; Endorsed by far-left Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren; Supports Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

Jim McCarter

John Gillespie at Cordova Community Center

The outright fraud part comes when the piece declaims “Gabby Salinas Earns an F Rating from the NRA!” sandwiched in between headshots of Warren and AOC and overlaying this legend: “Here’s what the NRA says about candidates [note that plural] who earn an F rating. True enemy of gun owners’ rights. A consistent anti-gun candidate who always opposes gun owners’ rights.” It seems clear that this scourging text was not composed by the NRA with Salinas in mind. She isn’t a “consistent anti-gun candidate.” She isn’t even a “consistent” candidate. This is only her second race! And she runs as what she is, a cancer survivor who came to St. Jude from Bolivia as a child to get medical treatment that saved her life, and stayed on as a naturalized American and as a research scientist interested most of all in public health — someone given the highest possible endorsement by Marlo Thomas of St. Jude.

The negative lines quoted above from the mailer were more likely aimed at Warren or AOC or some other person concerned about firearm violence. Both Salinas and her opponent, John Gillespie, a grant coordinator for Trezevant Episcopal Home, have issued mailouts touting their own claims to office.

And the Tennessee Tomorrow PAC has put out its own attack mailer on Gillespie. It brandishes a cartoon image of the GOP candidate and is in the style of a poem, entitled “Little Johnny Gillespie wants to work on Capitol Hill.” It begins: “There was nothing Little Gillespie/really wanted to be./Why be a doctor? Why dig a ditch?/Why do anything? My daddy is rich!” And it continues in kind.

The contest between Salinas and Gillespie in House District 97 is considered one of the closest and most hard-fought on the ballot, though it is only one of several similar ones taking place in hybrid city-suburban districts this year that will test the Republican hold on the shifting populations of the suburban fringe area.

For the record, candidate Salinas faces the end game with a financial balance of $77,945.43, while Gillespie has $43,430.77.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Talking the Talk: The Case for Three Presidential Candidates

CREDIT: JB

JB

Couny Mayor Lee Harris and Jill Biden at Loftin Yard on Sunday.

In the last few days before Super Tuesday, local voters were beseeched to vote for three presidential candidates. Two — Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden — were represented by surrogates. Speaking for Senator Warren on Wednesday at Makeda’s Cookies and Old Dominick, was actress/activist Ashley Judd. For former Vice President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, did the honors on Sunday at Loftin Yard. Mike Bloomberg spoke for himself at a Minglewood Hall rally on Friday.

Below are portions of their remarks:

Ashley Judd for Elizabeth Warren: “She is going to close the revolving door between lobbyists and government. She is going to shut down the conflict of interest that is Donald Trumps So the good people of Massachusetts notice what she did with the Consumer Protection Bureau. And they decided to elect her to the Senate. And that was quite a remarkable experience because at that time, more women had been burned alive at the stake as witches that had been elected to serve in public office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And she was running against a popular incumbent who they said could not be beat by a woman. Sounds familiar?. But she out hustled, she out, org
JB

Ashley Judd at Makeda’s Cookies

anized and she outsmarted the ball and she walked in by seven and a half points. And that’s what we’re going to do with this. campaign and with this election.”

Mike Bloomberg: “We all know the Trump strategy: Attack Democrats and make their plans look unrealistic and affordable and undoable. . But that won’t work against me because I have the resources to defeat him. I know We can do it. But to get it done, we need to nominate someone who at the top of the ticket can build a broad coalition of rallies democrats and attracts independents and moderate Republicans. I think the Hillary campaign shows that you’ve got to reach across the aisle, and that’s what I’ve done in all three races I won…. But, look, I’m not a typical politician. I have never worked in Washington. I don’t make pie-in-the -sky promises that I can’t keep. I don’t talk until the cows come home. … I’m not someone who just yells a slogan. … If you want someone who has the resources to defeat Trump, that’s me. 

JB

Mike Bloomberg at Inglewood Hall

Jill Biden for Joe Biden: “You know, there is such power in kindness. It can pull us back to ourselves. It can build the bonds of community, and it can mend the fault lines of our broken hearts. We need a president who knows the power of kindness, we needa president who can bring this country back together again. And that’s why He has had this share of trials of tragedies, but it’s never made him feel cynical. It’s never made him want to use his power for personal gain. Instead, it’s made him more committed to serve, made him work for change, make him fight for civil rights and healthcare and gun reform. Joe has the character and the experience to turn this country around on Day One.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Trumped by Facebook

If Senator Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic nomination, her prime opponent in the general election will not be President Trump. It will be Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

That’s because Zuckerberg refuses to halt even the most obvious lies from popping up in political ads on Facebook.

Juan Williams

“I think we are in the right place on this,” he told The Washington Post last week. “In general, in a democracy, I think that people should be able to hear for themselves what politicians are saying.”

That’s great news for the Russians and President Trump. The Russians continue to use social media, principally Facebook, to stir political division, racial division, and hatred, according to the FBI, the CIA, the Mueller Report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is acting on its own to swamp Facebook with lies about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter — and there are no consequences.

Facebook allowed a manipulated video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to go viral, even though Pelosi pointed out that it was fake and asked for it to be taken down.

Now Warren is campaigning on a promise to break up big tech companies. They are so powerful and so wealthy that they are able to ignore questions about how they are enabling propaganda. By selling politicians the chance to twist the truth and deceive voters, Facebook profits at the expense of the public good.

Warren put it bluntly: Facebook is guilty of taking “money to promote lies. … A handful of monopolists” should not “dominate our economy and our democracy.”

Zuckerberg could largely solve this problem by simply refusing to accept political advertising. It is not a significant source of income for his company, which is worth upwards of $500 billion. Another solution is for Facebook to set its own rules to stop political lies and propaganda. That is what newspapers and cable television companies do.

In both cases, Zuckerberg refuses to act. He did nothing even after the documented abuse of Facebook was proven to be the No. 1 pathway for foreign interference in the 2016 election.

Zuckerberg claims he is protecting America’s free speech rights by allowing political spin, distortion, and mockery to flourish on Facebook. People can decide if a politician is telling the truth for themselves, he says. He says he is open to having the government put rules in place. That position allows him to use political paralysis in Washington as a smokescreen.

Warren has a quick, simple solution: Break up these reckless firms. As you can imagine, Zuckerberg opposes Warren’s plan.

“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah,” Zuckerberg told his staff in audio leaked to the website The Verge. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

In other words, Zuckerberg has no interest in Warren becoming president. Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign are betting big on the power of social media platforms like Facebook to carry the president to re-election. That explains the elevation of Brad Parscale, whose primary experience is as a digital media guru rather than in political organizing, to be campaign manager.

Thomas B. Edsall, writing in The New York Times, noted that Trump’s campaign has spent more than all three leading Democrats on social media. According to CNN, in the last week of September more than 1,800 ads ran on Trump’s Facebook page mentioning “impeachment.” Those ads wildly distorted reality to make Congress and Democrats into villains attacking a blameless president.

CNN reported: “The ads have been viewed between 16 and 18 million times on Facebook, and the campaign has spent between $600,000 and $2,000,000 on the effort.”

Just as the right-wing smear merchants put bogus stories about Uranium One into the 2016 election to damage Hillary Clinton, they are doing the same in 2020 with anti-Biden smears regarding Hunter Biden’s position with a Ukrainian gas company. If Facebook continues to allow their platform to be abused by propagandists, they will be giving Trump a giant advantage in the 2020 campaign.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Democratic Party’s Candidate Cluster

Somehow, “President Hickenlooper” just doesn’t sound right. But then neither does “President Trump.” But the former Colorado governor is one of nearly two dozen candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. And despite his state having the No. 1 economy in the nation, Hickenlooper has no real chance of winning.

So why do they do it? Is it to embellish their profiles or just to raise money? And what happens to that money when they invariably drop out? Money talks and bullshit walks these days, so the most cash talks the most trash. Already, records are being broken for fund-raising, and the campaign hasn’t officially started yet. There are so many aspiring Democrats that you can’t tell the players without a program, so in no particular order, here are the top contenders for the opportunity to crush and humiliate the cruelest president in American history.

Joe Biden: Leave it to the Democrats to kneecap the front-runner before the race begins. Biden’s latest controversy comes from former Nevada state assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who has accused the 76-year-old pol of smelling her hair and giving her a “big slow kiss” on the top of her head. Ever seen Biden swearing in new members of Congress with their families? Joe hugs and kisses everyone. He’s just a hands-on guy. Some find it endearing, but Joe has promised to stop giving neck massages and sniffing hair. Biden comes with enough baggage to fill a cargo plane, already: failed runs for president, plagiarism accusations, the Anita Hill circus, his Iraq war vote. In his favor, Biden said of Trump, “I wish we were in high school. I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.” If that event were put on pay-per-view television, we could clear up the national debt. And to his credit, when Biden was Obama’s Veep, it was a big fucking deal.

Bernie Sanders: I thought I was “feeling the Bern,” but it turned out to be just a urinary tract infection. Bernie’s no longer a novelty, so it will be a lot tougher for him to gain traction this go-round, despite raising $18 million and counting. Ever notice how he throws up a lot of “air quotes” when speaking? I can’t watch him anymore without thinking he’s doing a poor impression of Larry David doing an impression of Bernie. Now that Bernie’s ideas have reached the mainstream, who needs a 77-year-old Jewish Socialist from Vermont? Sit down, Gramps, you’re making me nervous and I’m holding a baseball bat.

Beto O’Rourke: Does he charge for those table dances, or does he do them for free? The former Texas congressman is this year’s golden boy, but just coming close to defeating Ted Cruz, the most loathed Senator in Congress, is not enough for a run at the presidency. He’s loved by millennials for being in a punk rock band called Foss, which is the Icelandic word for “waterfall.” As a teen, O’Rourke was in a computer-hacking group known as the Cult of the Dead Cow, named after an abandoned Lubbock slaughterhouse, where his nom de plume was the “Psychedelic Warlord.” Willie Nelson opened for him at a rally outside of Austin where Beto strapped on a guitar and joined the band in a version of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” He’s been compared to Robert Kennedy, but when you’re still skateboarding at 46, you’re no RFK, sir.

Pete Buttigieg: “Mayor Pete” of South Bend, Indiana, has become a phenom because he’s intelligent and informed, qualities that used to work in your favor. Buttigieg, pronounced  “Boot-edge-edge,” is a tough name to put on a bumper sticker, but he could use the slogan, “Go out on a ledge with Buttigieg.” Mayor Pete speaks seven languages other than English and although he is the first openly gay candidate, he would not be the first gay president. That honor goes to James Buchanan, the “lifelong bachelor” who was often considered the worst president in history until the orange putz emerged. At least he won’t be grabbing anyone by the pussy.

Elizabeth Warren: The Massachusetts Senator already has her nickname from the evil one, “Pocahontas,” for bungling her old family yarns about her alleged Cherokee heritage. But since Orangeface speaks with a forked tongue, she can get past it. Warren is the favorite for taking it to Trump, but the galloping palomino of history might have passed her by in 2016. Still a formidable foe who has suggested breaking up “Big Tech,” which is fine by me. We could use a trust-buster like Teddy Roosevelt, someone who Trump thinks is a Democrat.

Kirsten Gillibrand: Appointed by the New York governor to fill Hillary’s Senate seat, Gillibrand has morphed from a “Blue Dog” Democrat with a 100 percent rating from the National Rifle Association into a “Yellow Dog” Democrat who’s tilted mightily to the left. Known as the main cheerleader for drumming Al Franken out of Congress before it became known that it was a Republican hit job, Gillibrand voted to repeal D.C. laws banning semi-automatic weapons. That translates into no shot for the presidency.

Cory Booker: Rhodes Scholar, former jock at Stanford, vegetarian, and former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Booker would be our first bald president since Eisenhower, if you don’t count whatever that mess is on Trump’s head. Passionate even when not needed, Booker lived in a low-income housing project called Brick Towers while serving as mayor, so at least he wouldn’t think the White House was a dump. Booker also saved his next-door neighbor from a burning building, making him the first potential Marvel Superhero candidate.

Kamala Harris: A former California prosecutor who made Brett Kavanaugh squirm, Harris would be the perfect candidate to try Trump for his high crimes and misdemeanors. While 27th District Attorney for San Francisco, Harris famously dated the then married mayor Willie Brown. Savvy and politically astute, Harris supports Medicare for all and legalization of marijuana. What’s not to like?

Julian Castro: The former San Antonio mayor is the first Latino candidate, but President Castro? I don’t think so. Too soon. At least he would have a built-in body double. 

Not enough space to get to Amy Klobuchar (mean to her staff), Tulsi Gabbard (first Hindu member of Congress), Eric Swalwell (appeared with a frosted buzz-cut in his high school yearbook and annoying presence on cable TV), or Andrew Yang (do we need another businessman?). There are just too many also-rans when the only objective is to boot Mr. Nasty out of office. The word “orange” has no rhyme, but that’s the color he’ll be wearing when he’s doing time.

My pick for the Democratic ticket: Warren/Harris. Make America Maternal Again, (MAMA).

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Democrats’ Purity Tests Will Only Help Trump

Can you see what is taking shape on the left? That’s the look of liberals forming a circular firing squad to shoot at top Democrats running for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination. 

The Democratic Party is highly unified in its opposition to President Trump. Independent and swing voters also tell pollsters they disapprove of Trump’s policies on taxes, immigration, and race relations. And the Party of Trump — formerly the GOP — lost 40 House seats in the midterms. That political reality makes Trump a weak candidate for reelection.

Juan Williams

But the Democrats still have to find a good candidate with an attractive message to beat even a bad candidate. The president’s supporters can see what’s up. Right-wing websites and Trump cheerleaders on talk radio are attacking possible Democratic candidates as budding socialists who will increase taxes and let every illegal immigrant run across open borders.

Trump’s white, working-class base is being warned on racial grounds that any Democratic nominee will ignore them while playing “identity politics” that favor blacks, Latinos, immigrants, women, and gays.

Trying to divide voters by race is so predictable for Trump’s team. What is surprising is that Democrats are too often fueling the Trump camp’s caricature by insisting on race-based review of their candidates. How painful and ironic will it be if racial debates inside the Democratic Party are allowed to weaken the focus on beating Trump and his racism?

For example, look at the attacks coming from the left against the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in early polls, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Activists on the far left are bashing Biden for his support of President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill.

That bill had support from the Congressional Black Caucus at the time, being seen as an answer to high crime rates in black neighborhoods. But the old crime bill is now condemned by today’s activists, who take their cues from the Black Lives Matter movement. They fault the bill for pushing more black people into jail as a result of increased sentences for selling crack cocaine, and mandating longer sentences for repeat offenders and violent crime.

Biden is trying to get past this line of attack by asking for forgiveness: “It was a big mistake that was made,” Biden said at a Martin Luther King Day celebration last week in Washington.

Next in line for allegedly failing the racial test is a black woman, California Senator Kamala Harris. Her sin is that she was a prosecutor and California’s attorney general. “To become a prosecutor is to make a choice to align oneself with a powerful and fundamentally biased system,” according to an essay on The Intercept, a liberal website.

Also in line for the gauntlet of race-shaming are white candidates who did not show an interest in racial injustice early enough in their careers. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who supported controversial “stop-and-frisk” police tactics, as well as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are all vulnerable on this point.

More broadly, this year’s Women’s March was a case study in how explosive racial issues — and, in that case, accusations of being soft on anti-Semitism — can splinter the unity of anti-Trump activists. Blacks, Latinos, and liberal women are at the heart of today’s Democratic base. There are record numbers of Latinos, Asians, and blacks now in Congress, and they are almost all Democrats. Honest debate about racial justice is overdue for both parties.

That debate will happen in the South Carolina primary, the first contest with a high percentage of minority voters. Early attention to that race indicates its importance for any Democrat trying to win the party’s nomination.

Democratic strategists know that Sanders would have beaten Hillary Clinton for the 2016 nomination if he had won more black and Latino votes. Democrats across the racial spectrum have to keep in mind that they have far more in common with each other than they do with Trump, a man whose racist rhetoric and white identity policies are damaging people of every color daily.

After a Black Lives Matter leader refused to talk with President Obama in 2016, Obama made the point that activists sometimes feel “so passionately … they never take the next step and say, ‘How do I sit down and try to actually get something done?'”

The most important “something” to get done right now is beating Trump. As liberal comedian Bill Maher is fond of saying, there is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Opinion Viewpoint

New Message Needed

Republicans won the May special election for Montana’s congressional seat even after their candidate throttled and body-slammed a reporter. The upcoming special election in Georgia remains close even with a weak Republican candidate.

Juan WIlliams

So, what will it take for Democrats to start winning?

First, the Montana fisticuffs showed that Republicans can react volcanically to questions about President Trump’s failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Their candidate went ballistic when the reporter, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, asked about the projected higher premiums and fewer people insured under Trump’s health-care plan.

Second, last week’s poor jobs numbers and Trump’s lack of progress on tax reform offer more evidence that the GOP lacks a strong record for its candidates to run on. And, third, the Democratic base is fired up. With Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate deal, the party is unified in its fury at him.

But with the president retaining strong support among his GOP base, are these hopeful signs just mirages similar to the illusions that led Democrats to think Trump could never be elected president? Is there any concrete reason to think that the nation’s politics have changed enough to give the Democrats the 24 seats they need to take control of the House and set themselves up to defeat Trump in 2020?

In Montana, the Democratic candidate lost by only six points, while Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, lost by 20. That margin narrowed even as the GOP outspent the Democrats. And most people voted long before the Republican, Greg Gianforte, resorted to violence.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the Crystal Ball newsletter from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, says: “Democrats can point to overall special election trends that suggest the opportunity for significant gains next year if they can be replicated on a nationalized scale.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced last month that it was expanding the targets for GOP-held House seats in 2018 beyond the 23 districts currently represented by a Republican but won by Clinton. They are now aiming at an incredible 79 seats.

Before he withdrew from the climate deal, Trump’s approval rating was underwater by 14 points: Gallup reported last week that the president’s job performance was approved by 40 percent of the country, while 54 percent disapproved.

And as the FBI, special counsel, and congress continue to probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the GOP policy agenda could be derailed before the 2018 races.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll last week found that 43 percent of voters want impeachment proceedings right now. A Quinnipiac University poll last month found the president with the support of just 29 percent of self-described independents — a group with which he had scored plurality support last November.

But all that is noise inside a political bubble unless there is a winning message from Democrats that goes beyond another dose of fury at Trump.

Last week, a group of Democrats formed the People’s House Project to elect left-of-center candidates. The new group’s goal is to give Democratic candidates in the Midwest and rural areas a new look, with a jobs-first focus. It is one front in the battle to shape the Democrats’ future. That includes the search for an energetic, charismatic leader able to withstand Trump’s attacks.

Former Vice President Biden announced last week that he is forming a political action committee to support candidates in the 2018 congressional races. It is also a possible platform for him to run in 2020.

And two senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey, also look to be auditioning for the role of leading Democrat. They offer different looks for the anti-Trump brigade.

Warren satisfies Democrats who want to go toe-to-toe with a president they view as illegitimate, corrupt, dangerous, and even treasonous. They want Trump treated by Democrats the way President Obama was treated by Republicans for the last eight years — with contempt and unrelenting opposition.

Meanwhile, Booker wants to offer a contrast to the president by branding himself and Democrats as a force for unifying the nation across political lines. “It’s gotta be about love. It’s gotta be about the connections we have to each other,” he told Vox recently.

The Democrats’ search for answers remains a work in progress.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Opinion The Last Word

Not My Problem

CREDIT: Andrew Cline | Dreamstime.com

There’s a graphic that’s been making its way around social media for a while. It says something like, “I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, black, or white. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.” I’ve had many friends share it while patting themselves on the back for being so generous with their correctness. On the surface, it sounds great, but inside lurks the real evil: I’m not going to be nice to you until I see you’ve earned it. This tends to be shared by people who will also say they don’t see color. White people such as myself like to say this because it makes us feel like we’re doing a service to you by denying your ethnicity. After all, true equality means we’re all treated white, right?

I’ve been thinking about this lately because of our new Cheeto-in-Chief. Some of my left-leaning friends have spoken up loudly to say, just as my right-leaning friends did when Obama was elected, that Trump is not their president.

Here’s the problem. He is.

The year 2016 was one of blame cloaked as personal responsibility. Don’t want to get raped? Don’t drink at frat parties. Don’t want to be beaten for being transgendered? Stop being transgendered. Don’t want to be stopped by the police? Don’t dress like a thug. Don’t want to be mocked for your religion? Don’t wear a hijab. Don’t blame me! I voted for Hillary. Can’t blame me! I didn’t vote at all.

A few years ago, Elizabeth Warren and President Obama both stirred a bit of controversy for pointing out that no one achieves anything by themselves. They noted that when you build a successful business you do so using roads we all paid for. Your business is protected by tax-paid police and fire departments. Your business used community-financed resources such as electricity and water. Your responsibility as a business is to help repay that.

Andrew Cline | Dreamstime.com

Elizabeth Warren

They were both castigated for pointing out these facts. Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple? This is what critics asked. Are you saying he didn’t build that? No, that wasn’t what either of them said. Steve Jobs hired programmers, designers, cafeteria workers, security guards. He wasn’t a one-man office. And even if he were, he’d have still had to buy office supplies somewhere. The point was that your success doesn’t mean that someone else can’t be successful because you won’t help pay for repairing the roads you used to haul your goods across country.

When we say Donald Trump isn’t our president, it says that we will not take responsibility for what comes next. It’s a convenient excuse to sit at home and stream Netflix and eat aerosol cheese because, hey, that dude is your problem. Well, hey. Those who voted for him don’t see that dude as a problem. So when the company who makes the computer you use to watch Netflix is the same company as the one that provides your internet service you use to watch that company’s movies, and the cheese you’re squirting on crackers is a subsidiary of that very same company, and you find out this all happened because someone else’s president created a climate in which there is now no place else for you to go for internet and cheese, and your service is now being throttled because you could no longer afford unlimited bandwidth because with no competition that one company could charge whatever it damn well pleases for service, what are you going to do? Now that other person’s president has made it personal, because NO ONE MESSES WITH YOUR MURDER, SHE WROTE MARATHON.

When you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. And that means you think you’re entitled to your opinion that climate change is real. And that being gay isn’t a choice. And that bathroom laws aren’t necessary to protect our children. We’ll agree to disagree. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to deny what you don’t agree with or understand. You don’t get to deny your responsibility as a citizen because your candidate didn’t win. And you certainly don’t get to be a jackass because you think someone else might hurt your special snowflake feelings.

We wanted the swamp drained? It’s been drained and is filling up with corporate logos. With men who think they got there with no help from anyone. The 115th United States Congress will be brought to you by Exxon and Hardee’s. So you can get fries with that.

I cannot think of anyone more resistant to personal responsibility than a man who railed against a corrupt, rigged election that would put his opponent in power, but once he won, denied that same election was corrupted, despite proof a foreign power he lusts after was involved in corrupting it.

But hey, not my problem. I didn’t vote for him.

Susan Wilson writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com. She and her husband, Chuck, have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (March 12, 2015)

Sometimes I think I get a general sense of what’s about to happen. I’m no Edgar Cayce or anything, but I can often imagine the effect that results from the cause. If you disregard my absolute certainty that Al Gore would be president in 2000, my predictions have more often been right than wrong. Even back in 2006, when Hillary Clinton was all but being crowned as the next Democratic presidential candidate, I wrote that two years was an eternity for another candidate to emerge to challenge the presumptive nominee, and one certainly did.

The historical inevitability of Barack Obama couldn’t be stopped, even by the ugly campaign the Clintons ran against him. Hillary’s failed campaign left a lingering resentment among certain Democrats over her scatter-shot tactics and baseless accusations. Her term as Obama’s secretary of state revived her reputation for competence, regardless of the fake “scandals” the GOP tried to lay at her feet. Hillary is probably the most-qualified, best-informed candidate to seek the presidency in decades, and polls have shown the country’s willingness to elect a female president. So let me go out on a limb and make a prediction, then two years from now, you can check back and see if I was correct. Hillary Clinton will not only fail to win the presidency, she won’t even get the Democratic nomination.

A lightning rod for controversy, Hillary can instantly become so exasperated that she unleashes a public barrage of ill-inspired quotable soundbites that only provide ammunition for her enemies. It’s been pretty much settled that the entire Benghazi witch-hunt was merely a concoction of right-wing operatives out to do her damage, but frustrated by idiotic questions over whether to call the tragedy a “terrorist attack,” or a “spontaneous protest,” Hillary spouted, “At this point, what difference does it make?” When stripped of its context, right-wing pundits found her remarks to be pure gold, and the almost defunct House Select Committee on Benghazi has become suddenly reanimated, subpoenaing thousands of her newly controversial emails.

Hillary has a history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Remember when she said she wasn’t going to be a typical first lady, sitting home and baking cookies or “standing by her man,” as the popular song went. The accompanying outrage forced her to go out and profess her love of country music and apologize to Tammy Wynette and America’s housewives. And when the Gennifer Flowers scandal came along, she did stand by her man after all.

While in the White House, she was accused of everything from murder to drug smuggling, as well as being “secretive.” Then she did herself no favors by having her previously requested Rose Law Firm billing statements, said to be long lost, turn up one day in a White House office drawer. Hillary parlayed Bill’s inexcusable sexual betrayal into a senate seat from New York, where she learned the art of “triangulation” — taking the absolute middle ground between two opposing points of view. In this capacity, Clinton voted her approval for the Iraqi War; co-sponsored an anti-flag burning amendment, even though she’s a lawyer and knew that the Supreme Court had already ruled the act was a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment; and voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, opening the door for U.S. attacks on Iran. During Hillary’s senate career, every controversial vote seemed to be made with a political calculation.

This latest kerfuffle about Hillary using her private email account to conduct government business is another stink-bomb attack by her adversaries that won’t amount to much, yet she insists on making it worse for herself. Already believed in certain quarters to be someone who cuts corners or makes her own rules, Hillary set up her own private server, registered to a fictitious name and routed it back to her New York home. She didn’t break any laws, but she bent the rules. The former secretary has announced that she is eager to turn over her emails for scrutiny, but only those pertaining to the business of the State Department. This allows her to exercise more control over physical access and furthers the perception that she has something to hide. At some point, Hillary will also have to justify accepting donations by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state.

It’s enough to give you a case of pre-Clinton Fatigue. Two years is a lifetime for a presumptive nominee to coast, and there are bound to be more gaffes and temper explosions. When Hillary alienates enough members of her own party, the Democrats may be forced to turn to someone else. The GOP will likely nominate a Tea Party extremist as their candidate. Why shouldn’t the Dems offer a true liberal and a fighter for the underdog instead of another blue-dog? Elizabeth Warren insists she’s not running for president. So did Barack Obama before he was finally convinced that his hour of destiny had arrived.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Inequality Issue Can Boost Dems

A year ago, top political strategists pointed to a big stick Democratic candidates could use to beat back a possible Republican landslide in the 2014 midterm elections.

The issue: rising income inequality.

Now the strategy is coming to life with help from Republicans in Congress.

With the GOP majority in the House blocking an extension of long-term unemployment insurance, a group of House Democrats, led by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), circulated a letter recently asking for a meeting to discuss the topic not with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) but with the incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Press reports described this as an “end-run” around Boehner who, along with the outgoing Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), had refused to take up the issue for a vote in the House.

The Democrats, smelling a ripe campaign issue, are quick to point out that if Congress does not act before the end of the year, more than 5 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits and be left out in the cold.

Democrats also have ammunition on income inequality from the Republican refusal to renew the Highway Trust Fund.

President Obama has said that without congressional action to renew the trust fund, which is used for infrastructure spending, many states will have to stop working on projects. He estimated that 700,000 people could lose their jobs.

“That would be like Congress threatening to lay off the entire population of Denver, or Seattle, or Boston,” the president said in an artfully positioned speech on the Washington, D.C. waterfront with a bridge under repair behind him. “Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff,” the president added.

He proposed restoring infrastructure projects by closing loopholes in the corporate tax system. “It’s not crazy,” Obama said. “It’s not socialism. It’s not ‘the imperial presidency.’ No laws are broken. We’re just building roads and bridges.”

Meanwhile an unlikely ally — the business community — is bolstering the Democrats’ complaints about the lack of GOP support for growing the economy. The president of the National Association of Manufacturers, Jay Timmons, has charged Republicans with ignoring the concerns of the people who create jobs.

The business leaders’ priorities include reviving the highway trust fund, acting on immigration reform, and giving legislative approval for the Export-Import Bank.

Timmons, citing Cantor’s defeat in a recent primary, criticized Tea Party Republicans for siding with Democrats on the far left and “demonizing American businesses and trying to throw out those who are willing to govern.”

Gerald Seib, a Wall Street Journal columnist, described Timmons’ speech as “an especially telling sign of the times” because he “questioned the business community’s traditional leaning on Republicans to advance [the business] agenda in Washington.”

The power of income inequality as a political issue is evident in polls. The economy is still the number one concern of voters, left, center and right, in every opinion poll. Gallup polling from earlier this year found that 67 percent of Americans say they are concerned about income inequality.

The House Republicans’ aversion to anything resembling “stimulus spending” puts them in a dangerous political box. They fear offending Tea Party Republicans who refuse to acknowledge that the last stimulus helped lighten a depressed economic picture. But their indifference puts them at risk of alienating voters calling for Congress to expedite the nation’s recovery.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, recently announced plans to force Boehner to act on extending unemployment benefits before the year’s end.

Levin’s tactics come in addition to Cicilline’s plan to get Boehner’s attention and focus midterm voters’ attention on Republicans’ refusal to help the unemployed.

Cicilline has joined with Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) and Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) to introduce a bipartisan bill extending coverage for the long-term unemployed. Some Republican congressmen have joined the effort.

Their legislation is an identical House companion to the bipartisan bill sponsored in the upper chamber by Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is giving a taste of the power income inequality could have as an election-year issue. “Republicans,” she said in a Senate speech earlier this year, “line up to protect billions in tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations with armies of lobbyists, but they can’t find a way to help struggling families trying to get back on their feet.”

Look for Democrats to put jobs, income inequality, and lapsed unemployment benefits front and center in their campaigns this year. Those issues could keep them from losing their own jobs.

Juan Williams is a Fox News political analyst and author of the bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965.