The Democratic Clown Car

Okay guys, you know I don't like writing about politics these days, but I just have to get this off my chest.  And I'm only gonna say it once, so listen up.

In the last two elections, we all laughed at the Republican clown car; but the pendulum of history is ever swinging to and fro.  Now it seems to me that the Democrats have piled into one of their own, and look even more ridiculous than the other guys did.

I will say two things, without elaboration:

1.  There is no one on the Democrat side I want to vote for.  Joe is a great guy, with all the requisite experience and plenty of political savoir-faire, but too old.  Pete is a very promising newcomer, but too young and has no national experience.  Elizabeth and Bernie each have some bold ideas, and their hearts are in the right place, but neither one is presidential material.  Your mileage may vary.  So be it.

2.  The babble-rabble snowflake Democrats are driving this party out from under me.  I'm not riding with them.  They're too shrill, too smart-ass, and too juvenile.  And that's my very carefully considered opinion.  You are welcome to formulate your own, of course.

Having said all that, I note with approval Joe's essay today about the current temper of the Democratic party, and his reminder of what is really, truly important, above all other considerations.  Excerpt:

The other day I was accused by one of my opponents of running in the wrong primary. Pretty amazing. On one level, it is kind of funny.

I have fought for the Democratic party my whole career. I know what we stand for, who we stand with and what we believe. And it’s not just policies or issues. It’s in my bones. That’s not something everyone in this primary can say.

But at another level these kinds of attacks are a serious problem. They reflect an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics. If someone doesn’t agree with you — it’s not just that you disagree — that person must be a coward or corrupt or a small thinker.

Some call it the “my way or the highway” approach to politics. But it’s worse than that. It’s condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view.

It’s representative of an elitism that working and middle class people do not share: “We know best; you know nothing”. “If you were only as smart as I am you would agree with me.”

This is no way to get anything done. This is no way to bring the country together. This is no way for this party to beat Donald Trump.

Full essay here.

I am a Democrat, by which I mean, a believer in all the best ideas of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. I believe in liberty and justice for all.  I believe in an America where a black man can be elected president, and gays can marry, and everybody gets to dance.  An America that is always becoming a more perfect union.



But it is a very curious thing that despite nearly 90 years of progressive thought and legislation, which have improved the lives of many millions and made the nation bigger, better, stronger, and fairer, still half the population is unconvinced and even hostile to all that is meant in this country by liberalism - which in fact is very nearly a four-letter word now.

Somehow the message has not gotten across.  As if somebody held a big sale, but nobody bought the goods.  What happened here?

I don't exactly know the answer myself.  But I do know one thing:  it's no good leading a charge if the troops don't follow you, ya know what I mean, fellas?

The Dems have just one year to turn it around.  If they don't give the people - and I mean the whole people, not just the cool kids - something to love, something to want, something to stand up and cheer about, something to vote for, then all this political mouthing and moaning is a sheer waste of time.  And that is very, very sad.

Dangerous too.  Because if the Repubs and Trumpistas are not turned out of the highest offices next year, God help us all. It may be a long, dark, and ugly, ugly night before ever the sun rises on America again.  It is already dim and gloomy now.

Somewhere along the line, the Dems have not gotten the message across. They'd better get with it, if it's not too late already, and start trying to win over those unimpressed hearts and minds by appealing to their own self-interests, if nothing else. Which of course requires lots of honey, not vinegar.

And that's all I have to say. Let him who has an ear, listen.

Senator Warren: We Will Fight Back

I haven't paid much attention to Elizabeth Warren heretofore, but I like her speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, which she closed by saying, "I am ready to fight on behalf of the millions of Americans you have lied to:  that includes the millions who voted for you and the millions who didn't."  Huzzah!  You go, girl.

More on Marriage, aka The New Normal

Your Head Trucker is still pinching himself to be sure that last Friday's marriage ruling is really and truly real. I guess it must be, though, with all the conservative heads exploding up and down the country. To give just one example, Time magazine just published an essay by "crunchy conservative" writer Rod Dreher bemoaning the fact that orthodox Christians must now "learn to live as exiles in our own country":

For one, we have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank, the court majority may impose on the rest of the nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a view shared by a majority of Americans. There will be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell. This is the new normal.

Apparently, Dreher thinks all the real Christians left standing should go out and build their own private little communities in the woods, like St. Benedict, where they practice complete holiness to their hearts' content, 24/7.  I wonder if that means no phones, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury?  Good luck selling that new monastic plan, bud - which presumably includes jumping into a thornbush every time an erotic thought pops into mind, like the devout Benedict.

Dreher is, however, honest enough to make these admissions:

Social and religious conservatives must recognize that the Obergefell decision did not come from nowhere. It is the logical result of the Sexual Revolution, which valorized erotic liberty. It has been widely and correctly observed that heterosexuals began to devalue marriage long before same-sex marriage became an issue. The individualism at the heart of contemporary American culture is at the core of Obergefell — and at the core of modern American life. This is profoundly incompatible with orthodox Christianity. But this is the world we live in today.

Christianity is profoundly incompatible with individualism? Um, yeah, if you live in some kind of kinked-up theocratic dictatorship, I suppose - which is no doubt exactly what Dreher and his ilk would dearly love to impose on all the rest of us. And why not, if only they could? Notice Dreher's profoundly egotistic sense of ownership (emphasis mine):

But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution.

Excuse me - just whose country is it, anyway? I thought Mr. Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal - not just the Christians, not just the orthodox, and certainly not just the dudes who are so tight-assed righteous they squeak when they walk. Dreher and company do not have the title deed to America - it belongs to all of us.

Which some folks in Texas are still having trouble understanding - quite a few small-town Baptist county clerks still think they and their church own the place, and are refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, because Bible. 

Marriage map of Texas from the Dallas Morning News.

The ACLU of Texas has a hotline you can call to report any difficulties in obtaining a marriage license: 1-888-503-6838, Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

But even out here on the prairies and plains and deep in the piney woods, they are coming around, one by one.  Because Constitution, as Senator Elizabeth Warren explains:

In America, because of our Constitution, senseless discrimination – discrimination that demeans the worth of our neighbors and our coworkers and our family members – cannot survive when it is brought out of the darkness. It has never been easy for us to shine the light on such discrimination. But when we see it, when we stop looking away and finally acknowledge it, it is never long before we formally recognize what is compelled by our Constitution. We recognize what has always been there: equality and dignity under the law, for all Americans, no matter who they are.

And here is a very timely history lesson for everyone, courtesy of the irrepressible Matt Baume:




Update, 7/1/15: The Dallas Morning News has posted another interactive marriage map of Texas counties:

The Rape of America

Your Head Trucker will make no comments here, leaving it up to you fellas to draw your own conclusions from these six items.

I. "Remember This Date," from the Senate Democrats Twitter account:

II.  Andrew Sullivan, "The Nullification Party," via David Mixner:

I’ve been trying to think of something original to say about the absurdity now transpiring in Washington, DC. I’ve said roughly what I think in short; and I defer to Fallows for an important dose of reality against the predictably moronic coverage of the Washington Post.

But there is something more here. How does one party that has lost two presidential elections and a Supreme Court case – as well as two Senate elections - think it has the right to shut down the entire government and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury to get its way on universal healthcare now? I see no quid pro quo even. Just pure blackmail, resting on understandable and predictable public concern whenever a major reform is enacted. But what has to be resisted is any idea that this is government or politics as usual. It is an attack on the governance and the constitutional order of the United States.

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

Except this time, of course, we cannot deny that race too is an added factor to the fathomless sense of entitlement felt among the GOP far right. You saw it in birtherism; in the Southern GOP’s constant outrageous claims of Obama’s alleged treason and alliance with Islamist enemies; in providing zero votes for a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions; in the endless race-baiting from Fox News and the talk radio right. And in this racially-charged atmosphere, providing access to private healthcare insurance to the working poor is obviously the point of no return.

Even though the law is almost identical to that of their last presidential nominee’s in Massachusetts, the GOP is prepared to destroy both the American government and the global economy to stop it. They see it, it seems to me, as both some kind of profound attack on the Constitution (something even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts viewed as a step too far) and, in some inchoate way, as a racial hand-out, however preposterous that is. And that is at the core of the recklessness behind this attack on the US – or at least my best attempt to understand something that has long since gone beyond reason. This is the point of no return – a black president doing something for black citizens (even though the vast majority of beneficiaries of Obamacare will be non-black).

I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime. Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied.

The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.

This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.

III. David Weigel, Slate, "Why Republicans Have No Problem Taking Us to the Brink":

The gerrymanders of 2011 added to their natural geographic advantage over urban/suburban Democrats and gave them a House they simply don’t think they can lose. In 2012 they proved it, winning 1.36 million fewer votes than Democratic candidates but keeping a 33-seat majority. According to the Cook Political Report, 205 of 435 House districts are solidly Republican, basically impossible to lose without an unexpected bribery or sexting scandal. Only 163 districts are solidly Democratic. If Democrats swept the table and won all the districts currently rated as tossups or “leaning” Republican, they’d win 213 seats, five short of a majority.

That was always the long-term Republican plan. In 2010, when voter anger was already guaranteeing a fantastic party comeback, groups like the Redistricting Majority Project (nicknamed REDMAP) told donors that “the party controlling that effort controls the drawing of the maps—shaping the political landscape for the next 10 years.”

IV. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) blasts Republicans "who cannot cope with the reality of our democracy":



V.  Robinson Jeffers, "Shine, Perishing Republic," circa 1935:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,  

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.    

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.    

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption

Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.    

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he walked on earth.

VI.  Rachel Maddow: "GOP Came to Power Seeking Government Shutdown."

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