With the redacted Mueller report about to drop, it’s tempting to get sucked into the news and spin cycles that are sure to follow. I plan not to do that today. But I also plan not to go politically inactive and abandon the field of action to others. I am going to keep doing the activist thing I’ve been doing lately – sending personalized postcards to Democratic voters urging them to vote in various local, state, and special Congressional elections. (https://postcardstovoters.org/)
I am also going to continue using the wonderful online tool, Resistbot, to easily write and send letters and faxes to members of Congress demanding that the full, unredacted report be made public, and keeping the pressure on about other important issues.
And I’m going to look for opportunities to keep hammering away at the long term enduring work needed to win local, state, and federal elections for Democrats, by checking on Indivisible’s work in my area and keeping up with a great activist organization in my state, Turn PA Blue.
We can’t count on good luck with news cycles and the unfolding of events. If the eventual contents of the full Mueller report see the light of day, and if those contents actually bring Trump down or decrease his chances of re-election, huzzah – bonus – yay! But we all know that things might play out very differently, justly or not.
Along with at least 63 million fellow citizens, I’ve been all kinds of a wreck since the election. I don’t see myself as having any special insight, wisdom, or forward-looking strategy to offer, and I’ve been ambivalent about blogging for all kinds of reasons. I’m not sure if what I might have to add to the conversation is useful, but this morning I find myself following my instinct to write. Maybe it’s the coffee.
The one idea that keeps resurfacing for me is that the election of Donald Trump is an event that has so profoundly disrupted, frightened, shocked, and disoriented me that it has thrust me, kicking and screaming, into what some have called a state of “narrative wreckage.” I’m working on an upcoming book about an ancient 1st – 2nd Century rabbi (I know, another big money making book, right?), and I’m going to excerpt a small part of the current draft, because as I’ve been working on this book I’ve gotten into this whole narrative wreck idea. Here goes:
Arthur W. Frank is a sociology professor at the University of Calgary, and he is the author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, published in 1995. In the book, Frank discusses the ways that people cope with the disorientation, disruption, and chaos that come with the arrival of a serious illness or disability, with a special focus on how illness affects their life narratives. I was assigned readings from his book in rabbinical school in some of my pastoral counseling classes.
This is a great book. To this day I’m a bit baffled by the publisher’s choice of image for the cover. I guess they were going for a sense of someone vulnerable (i.e. naked) suddenly being off balance, falling backwards. But I’m afraid the cover really just looks a lot like … well, I’ll let you decide.
As a congregational rabbi, Frank’s ideas aided me in my efforts to provide people with helpful pastoral counseling during times of crisis and loss. …
In The Wounded Storyteller, Frank claims that when someone discovers that he or she has a serious, life-altering illness, the person becomes a “narrative wreck” (Frank credits this phrase to the American philosopher, Ronald Dworkin). The idea is that each one of us has an operating narrative that orients our lives. Serious illness interrupts that narrative and, initially, throws its subject into narrative chaos. …
Let me be clear that I’m not saying I think the election = the country suddenly having a serious illness. In the book I’m working on, I also explain that the illness metaphor doesn’t exactly fit the point I end up making about the time of the ancient rabbis’ historical situation.
What I find helpful, however, is the idea that sometimes life brings incredible disruptions – a death, a war, an epidemic, a shocking election with serious implications for millions’ of peoples’ safety and future – and that Frank’s description of the ways that we sometimes confront these narrative earthquakes may be helpful to us in our situation now.
Let me quote Frank again. In describing his work with people facing the news of serious illness or disability, he observes that for each of these people, the operating narrative each of them functioned within, whether consciously or not, became suddenly “. . . wrecked because its present [was] not what the past was supposed to lead up to, and the future [was] scarcely thinkable.” I think it’s fair to say that about half the U.S. population, at minimum, is feeling something like this, not to mention who-knows-how-many people around the world who are still trying to pick their jaws up off the floor in response to last November 8th.
Here’s another quote from the current draft of my book:
Frank writes that, having become a narrative wreck because of the shock and disruption of seriousdisease, the person coping with the illness faces the challenge of having to find a way to re-narrate his or her life going forward.
That’s part of what’s been so hard for me, and I assume for so many others, these past 12 days. The many competing theories of why Trump won, what the Democrats did wrong, what the media did wrong, what the Russians did to us, what the Republicans did with gerrymandering and voter suppression, and the competing rants about what the Democrats should do going forward all have added to my sense of confusion and disorientation. I don’t know whose analysis is right, and I don’t know what the best way forward is. I still can’t accept what happened, and I can’t simply shift into a posture of hunkering down and helping to do the work that now needs to be done because I’m confused about what exactly that work is. (Okay, on some of the immediate issues, like Bannon, or objecting publicly now to the creation of any kind of national registry for Muslims, I’m not having confusion about what to do, but I’m talking bigger picture than that.)
I’m still stuck somewhere in the swirl of “did this really happen?” and, to quote John Oliver, “what the f*** are we supposed to do now?” On the second question, I hear various activists, pundits, and politicians offering very different recommendations.
Some people are saying organize, resist, and fight! Others are saying try to understand our white working class & rural neighbors! Some are saying there needs to be a combo of both. And some are still saying it’s not too late to stop this from happening! I’m thinking of the petitions to the Electors urging them to either put Hillary in the White House or cause the House of Representatives to select the next president, presumably a Republican other than Trump. No, I don’t believe there’s any chance that’s going to happen, and yes, I signed on to all those petitions.
In The Wounded Storyteller, Frank describes the people he has worked with as ultimately responding to the crisis that serious illness has brought into their lives by trying to find a way to re-narrate their lives going forward in one of three common ways: the “Restitution Story,” the “Chaos Story,” and the “Quest Story.” Some of his patients would move from one of these coping strategies to another. Frank clearly thinks that only the third option is the most helpful, though he doesn’t judge people who end up going with either of the first two strategies. Here’s what I’ve written in the draft of my book about these three kinds of coping responses to the experience of narrative wreckage caused by serious illness:
The Restitution Story treats the illness as something temporary that medicine is going to heal completely. The subject tells herself that the interruption it is causing is only transitory, and that her pre-illness self-narrative will resume shortly. If this in fact is medically true, then the Restitution Story can work well for the subject. But, the Restitution Story can also be an expression of denial, serving only to delay the subject’s need for a new life narrative.
When a seriously ill person embraces what Frank calls a Chaos Story, he gets “sucked into the undertow of illness and the disasters that attend to it.” His new story is, in some respects, not even a coherent story – there is no viable narrative, except maybe the expectation of continued chaos or doom. He has no sense of a path towards a viable future meaningful life narrative. Here’s the contemporary American Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg, quoting Hannah Arendt as she reflects on this idea. Salzberg writes:
In commenting on the power of a story to give our lives cohesion, writer Hannah Arendt says, “The story reveals the meaning of what otherwise would remain an unbearable sequence of sheer happenings.” To perceive the events of our lives as “sheer happenings” is indeed unbearable. [I wanted to explore a new story that] would take the scattered shards of my life and fit them all together in a new and different way.
The Chaos Story is full of panic and disorientation, and it is painful to witness someone who is living within its brutal and sorrowful grip.
Finally, there is the Quest Story, which Frank argues is the healthiest and the noblest kind of new narrative for the person facing severe illness to adopt. “Quest stories meet suffering head on; they accept illness and seek to use it. Illness is the occasion of a journey that becomes a quest.” When a person facing severe illness develops a quest narrative, she engages in an act of courage and creativity that enables her to tell a new story about her life that incorporates the disruption of her previous life narrative, accepts the parts of that narrative that are permanently lost, and designates new meaningful destinations and goals for her life.
For a Quest Story to be successful, Frank writes that it needs to be what he calls a “good story.” A “good story” is one that is honest about the past and what’s been lost, while also setting forth a new direction in which the subject’s goal is to “rise to the occasion” that has been created by the changed reality – including the losses and new challenges. The Quest Story that is also a“good story”“. . . meet[s] suffering head on . . .”, accepting the illness and seeking “to use it” so that it propels the subject into a quest to create meaning and goodness within a new and unexpected framework that couldn’t have been anticipated before the arrival of the illness.
There’s another part of the challenge of embracing a Quest Story that Frank discusses that I think is important to mention here. He writes that a surprising number of the patients he works with use some version of the metaphor of being shipwrecked to describe their experience of being confronted with the news of their serious illness or new disability. He writes:
Almost every illness story I have read carries some sense of being shipwrecked by the storm of disease, and many use this metaphor explicitly. Extending this metaphor describes storytelling as repair work on the wreck. The repair begins by taking stock of what survives the storm. The old map may now be less than useful, but it has hardly been carbonized. Disease happens in a life that already has a story, and this story goes on, changed by illness but also affecting how the illness story is formed. (p. 54)
What stands out to me in this quote is that if the moment we’re living in is calling upon us to develop a Quest Story, Frank reminds us that that task will involve identifying which parts of our shipwrecked narrative are truly lost, and which parts are still intact and are going to be important components of a successful Quest Story, a “good story.”
One thing that’s clear to me now as much as any other time in my life: I need a narrative to operate within in order for my life to feel meaningful and worthwhile. I need a new personal life narrative – a mythic story of Maurice’s life – because of this election. I’ve come to accept that this election in particular is that personal, that huge, for me, and that the narrative wreckage I’m experiencing is literally on par with some of the worst narrative-wreck-moments I’ve experienced in my life, including the sudden and traumatic loss of my father when I was 18. And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Beyond my personal need for a new, good, functional life narrative, progressives in this country collectively need a new organizing narrative that gives meaning and purpose, and a sense of hope, to guide and focus our activism and provide us with an emotional, psychological, and even spiritual bedrock that can give us inner calm and strong faith in our vision. What is that narrative? I still don’t know.
But. Frank’s work on narrative wreckage and illness feels really useful to me right now. Listening to him, I feel a little bit more clarity and hope. His writing says to me that even if we are currently stuck in Restitution Stories and Chaos Stories – and I am definitely still shifting back and forth between those two a lot – our aim should be towards a Quest Story. I can picture getting to a Quest Story for my personal life narrative. I don’t know what it looks like, but Frank helps me remember that it will still include a lot of the elements of my pre-Trumpocalypse personal operating narrative.
The same applies to progressives in America. Frank reminds us that despite this shipwreck (or earthquake, or whatever you want to call it), we have a lot of maps and assets that have survived intact. That includes the religious, moral, and historical wisdom of the Jewish people, which given the devastations and crises Jews have survived over many centuries, is probably more prescient than we realize. It includes the remarkable social progress that African-American leaders and organizations have brought into being in our society through many decades of creative organizing, moral suasion, inspiring preaching, and inspiring leadership. It still includes countless lessons learned and battles won by progressives throughout American history. Trump’s win doesn’t erase the power of MLK. Or Stonewall. Or Cesar Chavez. Or Harriet Tubman. Or even the fact that, as Jon Stewart recently put it, the same country that elected Trump also elected Obama twice.
That said, some things have been permanently lost in this shipwreck, and identifying them and letting them go is, according to Frank, part of what makes the difference between working with a dysfunctional operating narrative or developing a healthy Quest Story. At this moment I’m not sure what those things are, but I expect that’ll become clearer.
I’ll close out this post with some early thoughts about what some elements of a new Quest Story might look like for progressives. In order for a new, shared progressive narrative to be what Frank calls “a good story,” I think it needs to include a moral imperative to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbors” (Lev 19:16) and to be our brothers and sisters keepers (Gen 4:9). For me, as a white Jewish man with a middle class job and a graduate degree, my freak out over Trump, while intense, frightening, and excruciating, does not include the sudden dread that my cousins or school mates might be deported. It doesn’t include the threat of a national registry for people of my religion (though I’ve signed a pledge to register as a Muslim if such a policy is attempted, and I hope others will do likewise). My trauma and disorientation doesn’t include what millions of women in this country now have to face in the form of increased fear of consequence-free sexual assault, nor am I stuck suddenly having to wonder whether in a couple years my marriage to my beloved partner will be reversed. I’m not saying that as a Jew I’m scot free – not by any means. For the first time in at least 20 years, I’ve been on the direct receiving end of anti-Semitic hate speech, and many of my rabbinic colleagues have described the same. Shit got real for me, for sure, but I’m less in the cross-hairs of the most aggressive and threatening aspects of the angry right wing than a lot of my neighbors. Anyway, my point is that a Quest Story for progressives needs to include a mandate to stand up for the most vulnerable and viciously targeted groups in our society, now and going forward, and not just for the less vulnerable to stand up for the most vulnerable, but for all of us who share these values to stand up for each other.
I’m also guessing that while a Quest Story that works will need to motivate an organized and honorable defense of the vulnerable, it will also need to motivate organized and honorable efforts to try to connect with and have transformative experiences with Trump supporters. I say “with” because I do believe there’s a role in a new progressive Quest Story for insisting on the humanity of our neighbors who went for Trump and for trying to better understand their needs, hopes, and fears, and yet there’s also a need to hold firm to the convictions we hold that bigoted and dehumanizing beliefs don’t get a free pass under the banner of economic insecurity or perceived cultural disenfranchisement. Perhaps this looks something like MLK’s core civil rights message, which never wavered in its determination to advance the rights of African-Americans, but which invited white Americans to join in the creation of a society of equals and insisted that we would all be – and it hurts to use this phrase but I will – stronger together in this new vision.
I’m out of steam, so I’m going to stop writing now. If you read this, thanks. If you have ideas about what a healthy Quest Story might look like, I’m very interested.
Note #1: I need to get back to this and add in some citations for works that I’ve quoted or referenced. Sorry not to have done that just yet.
So, I got a job just outside of Philadelphia, and one small but important reason I’m glad to be a Pennsylvania resident at this time is that I get to vote in a meaningful swing state in the election next month. I’ve also been volunteering with HRC’s campaign, mostly doing voter registration shifts with one of the campaign’s 7 offices in the greater Philly era. (Side note: Trump campaign has 2 offices in the same area.) I’ve also done a little bit of phone banking and participated in my first ever text-a-thon last Wednesday night (more on that later).
Two of my co-campaigners registering voters outside a Wal-Mart in NE Philly. On the left is an intern for HRC’s campaign who has been working for a few months. She’s 14 and was the seasoned expert volunteer. Next to her is a retail store manager who decided to respond to her fear of a Trumpocalypse by joining a campaign for the first time in her life.
Doing this work has been inspiring and emotionally grounding for me during a campaign that, thanks to Trump & the accompanying cray cray, has managed to freak out huge portions of the population unlike anything in my lifetime.
When I started looking into volunteering, I thought I’d do two things: register voters in Philly, and then fly to Florida to do GOTV the last few days before the election. At the time I was thinking this way the race was pretty much a tie and I figured FL was the place where I could have the most impact. So I followed their interface, which made it very easy for me to input my preferences to do the voter reg in Philly and the GOTV in Florida.
Within a couple days, I’d received calls and emails from the Bustleton Ave HRC campaign office in Philly, which was the one I had selected even though it isn’t the closest one to where I live. (What inspired me was shopping at a Ross in that part of town and seeing the overwhelming diversity of the folks there, and thinking “we should be doing voter reg right here”). I also received a personal email from a campaign office in Orlando, FL, which was the place in FL I had indicated I wanted to work (I’d read that there were large #’s of newly arrived residents from Puerto Rico in Orlando, and because they’re already U.S. citizens, they’re able to vote in FL as soon as they establish residency). The FL person
warmly encouraged me to come take part in GOTV there. She also asked if I needed a place to stay (!) and whether I might be able to bring a friend along.
So, get this. Back in Philly, when I go out for my first voter reg shift, I have a great time. They pair me with an affable 40-something white guy who it turns out is an osteopathic doctor, is Jewish, and is every bit as extroverted as I am shy. We only registered a couple new voters outside a Shop Rite, but probably 200 people or more saw us with our Hillary gear as we called out “Registered to vote?” to passers-by. We had lots of conversations, which I enjoyed a lot. I’d say about half the people who came by were Black, maybe a quarter Latino, a tenth Asian, and the rest White. Probably 2/3 were women. Occasionally women wearing hijabs came by. Most people who responded to our barkers’ call told us they were already registered. This neighborhood is solid D, so there were only a few Trumpsters, and in fact they were, at least by appearances, young or middle-aged white men.
Ok, so after enjoying my first venture, I re-up and return the following week for another shift. This time they pair me with the two women in the photo above. When we arrive at the Wal-Mart, we find this guy already there with a clipboard, asking everyone who passes him if they’ve registered. Is he with the Trump campaign? was my first thought, admittedly based on a kind of profiling that I found myself having to actively resist in this toxic and hateful climate (which yes I frankly blame fully on Trump and the GOP’s long years of promoting racist memes and giving succor to extremists). Well, turns out he was also with HRC’s campaign – from another campaign office – a duplication of efforts that I took as a sign of health in the ground game. I mean, you want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing in a campaign, but this is the kind of inadvertent inefficiency that is borne out of having lots of offices, lots of staff, and lots of volunteers. He was a long-time union guy, with a Philly working class accent (“Who sent youz guys?”) The white woman who was part of the crew I showed up with also had a working class Philly accent. The black young woman – a high school frosh – was from the Philly suburbs, her accent and presentation reflecting suburban middle class life. And then there was me, the middle-aged Jewish white guy who has lived a bunch of places.
In Oregon we’ve had vote-by-mail for a long time – since before my wife and I arrived here in 2003. It works really well, we get consistently high voter participation, and officials of both major parties don’t seem to have any complaints about the security of the system. I
happen to be someone who would always feel uncertain about my vote being recorded properly if I used a touch-screen system to vote, so it feels good when I take a black or blue ink ball point and fill in the little oval next to each of my choices.
I filled out my ballot today, May 4th, even though I have until the 17th to submit it. (Another nice thing – no missed work-time waiting in unpredictable lines at a polling station). As someone who has written a fair amount of pro-Hillary stuff, it might surprise some of my friends to see that I voted for Bernie.
I voted for Bernie because my politics are closer to his politics than any other candidate in the race. But, I also voted for him because I believe Hillary is going to be the nominee, and because I want to strengthen the place of the policies and ideals that Bernie’s campaign has emphasized within the Democratic party. I want Bernie’s people to have some good leverage when they sit down with Hillary’s people to hammer out what kind of influence on the D agenda Bernie’s ideas will have, in exchange for his clear and energetic support for her once she’s the nominee.
I hesitated before I cast my vote for him in part because of the Bernie or Bust movement, which is a cause I do not want to lend any support to. I very nearly voted for Hillary, not as a lesser evil, but as an impressive and strong Democratic presidential candidate in her own right. Assuming things play out as expected and she wins the nomination, I plan to campaign for Hillary and vote for her in November. My vote for Bernie was not a vote against Hillary.
As a Jewish-American, it felt surreal and stunning to find myself, for the first time in my life, casting a vote for a Jewish person for president, just as it felt surreal and stunning the first time I voted for an African-American person for president. I am expecting that the first time I cast my vote for a woman for president it will also feel remarkable and exciting in terms of what it represents for the social progress of our country.
My vote for Bernie was not a vote against Hillary.
I’m grateful – profoundly – to Bernie Sanders for running a campaign that eschewed corporate financing and raised small amounts from millions of people. I’m doubly grateful for the way he and his supporters have put income inequality, greed, poverty, and the realities of a rigged economy firmly on the radar of our popular discourse. This is huge. I’m also grateful to Bernie for mounting a serious and productive challenge against Hillary, because I think she’s a better candidate for it, and I think her campaign team understands how important the issues Sanders’ campaign has stressed in a much more thorough way than they might have if they hadn’t faced this challenge.
All that said, I’m not sure I would have voted for Bernie if the dynamics of the primary race were different. If I thought he still had a serious chance of being the nominee, I think I’d have probably voted for Clinton. I’m happy with the idea of either of them carrying the torch against Trump this November. I think she gets less credit than she deserves for her achievements and her commitment to a wide array of progressive causes. I think the scrutiny Bernie’s campaign has brought to bear on all candidates who have had cozy relationships with Wall Street interests is fair, but I don’t believe it’s disqualifying, nor do I think it’s fair to paint Hillary as some kind of corporate shill, and I think it’s seriously loony to paint her as “the same” as the Republicans or as some kind of evil right-wing crony posing as a liberal.
If I had my way, I’d like Obama to be able to serve another term. I can’t have that. I’ll take Bernie or Hillary over Trump a zillion times over, any way you slice it.
As I await the results of today’s primaries in several New England states, I am thinking about how much we have to preserve, how much we stand to lose, and how much we could gain if the Dems hold the WH this November (and, presumably, win back the Senate in the process). I’m leaning towards voting Bernie in the May primary in Oregon, and I am guessing he’ll win here and maybe in California too, though that’s a tougher read.
But I’m definitely not on the “Bernie or Bust” train.
I’m on the “Bernie or . . . Hillary” train.
My BOB friends tell me that Hill’s a corporate neo-con she-devil who is probably not worth voting for in November. She’s a coldhearted coddler of dictators in Central America*, a Wall Street wolf in sheep’s clothing, a Goldman Sachs insider who loves corporate oligarchy, and a double dealing diabolical damsel of doom.
I tell them that I don’t think she’s as bad as they say. She doesn’t inspire me like Obama (or Bernie, for that matter), she has a checkered history on a number of progressive issues as a Senator, and she certainly is part of the Washington establishment. Yes, all true. But she is not Satan’s corporate spawn, nor is she the secret neocon prodigy of Dick Cheney. As a progressive who wants to see income inequality decline, climate damage reversed, diplomacy-first international policy, universal health insurance, and FDR-level investment in education and infrastructure, I recognize that Hillary’s past hasn’t been that of a consistent and clear advocate of all of those policies full force, though these are the ideas and ideals at the core of her vision and hope for this country.
But, I also recognize that her haters on the left have a habit of tarring and feathering her by listing all of her (real and sometimes fabricated) faults, while ignoring everything good – everything that progressives care about – that she’s achieved and fought for throughout her career. And that strikes me as where the distortion starts to creep in to the Bernieverse. I like Bernie, I’m probably voting for him this May, but I’m increasingly frightened of the Bernamentalists.
Compromised creature of politics that she is notwithstanding, an HRC succession to Obama’s 2 terms would enable us to preserve hugely important progressive changes that so many of us have worked and fought for for decades. Hillary in the WH means we get to:
keep Obamacare, and at minimum expand it. (Personal note: any R in the WH will be able to single-handedly kill Obamacare, by refusing to sign into law any budget that funds it. My family would be screwed. I sometimes think Bernie voters who choose to skip the Nov election should be willing to pay for our impossibly high premiums once O-care is gone thanks to their refusal to vote for the She-Devil.) This is real folks, for millions of people. The uninsured rate has been cut in half so far and will continue to shrink if a D is elected.
get Merrick Garland or some other liberal justice added to SCOTUS. If a R wins, Mitch McConnell’s Senate continues to block any vote on Garland, and we get instead another right wing justice. Bernie-fans: if you want any chance at a SCOTUS that might overturn Citizens United, we need 5 libs on the court for that to be remotely possible. Also, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a.k.a. Notorious RGB, is already in her 80s. I hate to say this, cuz I adore her, but she may be the next justice who needs to be replaced. If we elect an R this November, we could end up with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court. How the bleepity bleep bleep are we supposed to get anything revolutionary done if that happens? If you care about labor rights, we need a Dem in the WH – even the Blonde Terror of Rodham. If you care about abortion rights, or voting rights, or a dozen other crucial issues that SCOTUS gets to decide upon, then it makes no sense to refuse to vote for HRC in Nov.
prevent the deportation of several million undocumented immigrants whom Obama has tried to shield via executive order. The court just heard a case on this question and is likely to divide 4-4, meaning it will need to get revisited when justice number 9 (number 9, number 9, number — sorry, couldn’t stop myself) finally arrives. This shit is real folks. Please don’t inadvertently assist in a mass deportation that I bet you are fully and totally against. If D’s take the Senate and make gains in the House, maybe even get comprehensive immigration reform passed with a path to citizenship. Even if a corporate shill like Hillary signs that bill into law, it makes a yuuuuuuuge difference in the lives of millions of people who are among the most disadvantaged and exploited people living in this country.
expand voting rights and maintain a Justice Dept that is willing to investigate voter suppression and systematic racism in police departments. Yup. Even dreadful Hillary is totally for that, from the bottom of her heart.
keep the Iran Nuclear Deal in place (and thus NOT go directly into preparations for a brand new massive war with Iran). Hillary the Hawk will uphold the Iran nuke deal, you ask? Uphold it – she’s the main architect of it. She’s the Sec State who got the coalition of nations, including recalcitrant Russia and China, to join the US in implementing the intense sanctions that brought Iran to the table. It was Obama’s policy, but she’s the one who did the intense diplomatic work to put that coalition together and keep it focused. When she handed off to Kerry, he was able to finish the job. When AIPAC and the GOP tried to kill the deal, she immediately and strongly stood up for it, and she continues to stand up for it to this very day. Every R candidate, by contrast, says they’d scrap the Iran nuke deal, and Trump and Cruz might just take us directly to war do not pass go do not collect $200, or in Trump’s case, $200 billion.
keep Planned Parenthood fully funded and keep women’s health at the top of the government’s agenda. Hillary has a stellar record on this and is a smart and tough advocate.
push for, and potentially pass, common sense gun laws (the ones that big majorities of Americans support, like universal background checks, bans on military-grade assault weapons, etc.) Hillary has been full-force blitzkreiging the NRA and advertising against them with an anger and abandon that I for one appreciate, given how in the past Dems have tended to tread carefully even while advocating these policies. This is not a dig on Bernie, btw. I don’t care if he was a bit more sympathetic to hunters than gun control purists would like. He’s totally on board with the basic reforms that need to happen, and that will not have a chance with an R in the WH. (See how I did that? – I preferred HRC’s politics on an issue but I gave Bernie the benefit of the doubt on his take.)
increase federal funding for Head Start, support for adoptive families, children’s after-school programs, and serious help with college affordability. No matter how many speeches Hillary got big bucks for at Goldman Sachs last year, she has been, is, and forever will be the person whose professional career started with the Children’s Defense Fund, the person who is passionate about government support for single moms, at-risk kids, poor families, and working families. I seriously defy anyone to say that isn’t who she is and what she advocates for, in a much feistier way than Obama does, btw (and I f—ing love Obama).
continue to stand up for LGBT equality, dignity, and full inclusion. This matters not just for millions of Americans, but the role the US has come to play internationally as an advocate of LGBT human rights is helping to change thinking in a positive direction all over the world.
continue to stand up for the equal treatment, respect, inclusion, and appreciation of people of all faiths or no faith at all. Hillary has been up front and clear every step of this campaign on all these issues, and her ads have been nothing short of fantastic.
build on Obama’s climate-change policies (and at the very least, not renounce them and walk away from the Paris treaty we just signed). Hillary is a full-on supporter of the Paris climate change agreement, and a full-on supporter of the federal investments that have quintupled American use of solar power since Obama signed the much maligned stimulus bill in 2009. Someone’s gonna say – No! She’d have allowed Keystone XL. Maybe, but Keystone XL is dead. Someone’s gonna say – No! She supports TPP and trade agreements that will cause us to fail to meet the Paris agreement targets. Well, maybe. Obama supports (and signed into law) TPP, and when I’ve listened to him explain his position, I frankly find him pretty convincing. But even if I’m wrong and Obama has sold his soul to corporate oligarchs for the TPP (I really don’t think so), would I have preferred McCain/Palin or Romney/Ryan be president in exchange for sitting out either of the last two elections as a matter of progressive “principle”? Hell-to-the-no-way-baby! I think when the chips fall that Hillary understands that global warming is real, that renewables are our best shot at a livable world and a strong 21st century economy, and that that’s what she’s gonna pursue as her big picture policy goal.
I am hoping that, assuming she gets the Dem nomination (which seems likely), if Hillary ends up facing off against, say, Rubio and he comes at her with the standard GOP trickle down economics bs, her response sounds something like:
“You guys wrecked the economy. We fixed it. There’s more to do, but we fixed it. And now you want to break it again with the same policies that wrecked it in the first place.”
You broke it. We fixed it. You want to break it again. We want to protect it and build on our success.
Or maybe the metaphor should be medical?
“You guys made our economy so sick it almost died. We revived it and got it back on its feet. Now you want the chance to do the same things you did before that made it sick in the first place. We want to help it keep healing and getting stronger.”
Along those metaphoric lines: “your prescription for making this recovery spread faster to the middle class is to cut taxes for the rich and the big corporations, and to let the big banks to whatever they want? If you were doctors you’d have your licenses revoked! Our
The GOP’s Rx will make the patient sick again.
prescription is to do more for average Americans, to protect the things that have gotten better for them in this hard-fought recovery, and do even more to make this economy even healthier and stronger for everyone.”
And: “you fought us tooth and nail every step of the way as we tried to heal this economy, and despite you we’ve gotten our economy back on its feet. What we need to do now is keep strengthening the patient, by making sure average Americans get a fair deal, by making the system work even better for the middle class. We should build on Obama’s success reviving the economy, not pull the plug on what’s working and give the patient the same bad prescription that threw the economy into cardiac arrest!”
Am I any good at this? I don’t know, but I do enjoy thinking and writing this stuff…
Since we live in an online media/social media era and more of us than ever have the chance to write up our takes on the political moment, I’ve decided I’ll join in the cacophony. Here’s my basic take on a bunch of stuff in no particular order:
One: Hillary Clinton is not the person that her haters say she is. This is true for her right wing haters, but right now I’m talking about her pro-Sanders haters, and there are quite a few out there. Is she the progressive’s progressive, the pure outsider who isn’t tainted by questionable concessions to power, or by ties to Wall Street and centrist elements in the Democratic party? Obviously not. But is she the right wing wolf in sheep’s clothing, the corporate shill, the warmongering neocon that her haters claim? No, that claim just makes no sense at all. It ignores so much of her professional and political history.
This is clearly a woman who is passionate about public policy as it affects children (Children’s Defense Fund); as it affects women in the workplace; as it affects working class and middle class families trying to make it; as it affects religious minorities; as it affects immigrants, undocumented and legal. She hasn’t hesitated to stand up for Muslim-Americans in the face of the racist intimidation that Trump & Co have put out there. She hasn’t hesitated to support the Dream Act and a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. Her campaign has been out loud and proud in support of LGBT Americans, with impressively strong and unambiguous ads supporting Trans rights. And Hillary is also the person who, as part of Obama’s Administration, did a ton of hard work as SecState to put together the international coalition that produced the Iran Nuclear Agreement, preventing a neocon war with Iran that had tons of powerful interests behind it. And she’s the person who demonstrated that she could put personal pain aside and go to work for Obama after losing to him. She’s also the person who led a major effort to craft universal health insurance legislation in the early 1990s, then lent her political support to Obama’s successful effort to get the ACA passed, and now wants to preserve and expand what’s been gained.
Am I pretending that she doesn’t have a mixed record, that she doesn’t have political allies and friends on Wall Street, that she didn’t vote the wrong way on W’s war resolution? I’m not. I get it. She’s not 100% pure as a progressive, and she’s got such a wide range of friends, supporters, and connections that there’s more than enough fodder for just about anyone to paint a portrait of her as a right wing wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The problem is that in order to paint that portrait, you have to cherry pick the things you talk about. You have to list her moments of political compromise, expediency, or even lack of courage in a row while ignoring all of her impressive, hard-fought, progressive, and determined stands and accomplishments. I didn’t support Hillary in 2008, and as Obama moved into position to win the nomination, I admit that by that time I had come to seriously dislike her. But the way she handled herself after that defeat, and the way she served as SecState seriously impressed me. She rebuilt the U.S.’s international reputation as a country that is capable of diplomacy, not just cowboy militarism. She re-established our good name in the international community, and she advanced Obama’s foreign policy objectives with effectiveness and intelligence. She got China and Russia to agree to form a single negotiating team with the U.S. to confront Iran, culminating in the Iran Nuclear Deal, which has probably prevented us from being back at war on a massive scale in the Persian Gulf. So I’m not buying the hate from the left of the left.
Two: I’m also not buying the claim that Bernie shouldn’t be nominated because he’s “un-electable” because he’s a Democratic Socialist. I know that’s frequently put out there by HRC supporters and by the MSM as a reason to give Dems pause before supporting Bernie with a primary or caucus vote. But the polling that exists so far, and my sense of the zeitgeist, tells me that there’s not really good evidence to support this argument. I think the truth is that whether Bernie’s Democratic Socialism (or his older age or his Jewishness or his outsiderness) make him un-electable is something we just don’t know. He presents us with an unknown. What appears to be true is that public attitudes towards socialism are more nuanced than they were a couple decades ago, and that adults under 40 in particular don’t generally think of Bernie’s association with socialism as a deal breaker, though they’re not necessarily sold on Democratic Socialism either. I think the reality is that if Bernie were to win the nomination, and if HRC endorsed him, and the party really got behind him, his chances would depend a lot on who the GOP nominates. If they nominate Trump or Cruz, I would bet on Bernie to win. If Trump isn’t nominated and runs as an independent, I think Bernie would win the general handily. So would Hillary. If it were a Trump vs Sanders vs Bloomberg election, I’d still give the edge to Bernie. So yeah, he’s electable, partly cuz social attitudes have changed, partly cuz the middle and working class folks are feeling left out of the recovery and he represents the idea of them finally getting their share, and partly because of how the other party is (horrifically) proceeding with their own chaotic awful nomination process. I think Dems should vigorously support Bernie or HRC but resolve to support the Dem nominee no matter who wins.
Three: The thing that scares me in this election cycle is the Republicans, period. Not Hillary’s lack of progressive purity. The fact that the “moderates” among them are doing so poorly makes me take seriously a Trump or Cruz nomination as a possibility. If it ends up being a Rubio nomination, at least he’s not insane, though he reminds me of W in that I don’t think there’s a whole lot there beyond the surface, and he seems like a ready-made puppet for the Karl Rove /neocon crowd to manipulate. That also scares me plenty. Kasich and Bush seem to be the most reasonable / moderate, and – it kills me to write this – but Bush actually seems more moderate than Kasich. The Jebster at least has repeatedly argued against Muslim-bashing, and he’s not parroting the same awful lines on immigrants as Trump and Cruz. He also has experienced America as a multi-cultural place, in both his family life and in his political life in Florida, one of the most culturally and racially diverse states of all. Like I said, I cringe writing this, as I have so much stored up bitterness over W and over the Iraq war and the SCOTUS people he appointed, not to mention what he did to the economy and what Cheney did along with him. But there is no Jon Huntsman among the GOP candidates this cycle, and there’s nobody the likes of candidates like former Republican senator John Danforth or even Bob Dole – people I respected even though I disagreed with them. In the 1996 campaign, I saw TV footage of Dole on the campaign trail one day, in which one of his supporters used extremely disrespectful and hostile language as she referred to Bill Clinton. Dole interrupted the person and said, “Let me make something clear. President Clinton is my opponent, not my enemy.” I remember my respect for him jumping up a bunch of points that day. That’s called having a sense of what it means to do politics in a civil society.
So, to recap: Hillary is a solidly liberal, superbly qualified Democratic standard bearer who is smart and compassionate and has withstood incredible adversity. She is not secretly the devil. Bernie’s campaign is awesomely helping shape American politics, and yes he could win the general. The GOP candidates are awful, their front-runners are intensely dangerous, under the right circumstances they could win the general, and if one of them does win the White House we’re going to see a bunch of really bad stuff happen fast. Dems and progressives should support who they prefer in the primary race, but come together behind the nominee and campaign hard in November, because we have so much to lose and, potentially, a lot of Obama-era progress to build upon. I’m glad we’ve settled all of this. Now I fully expect everyone out there to accept my opinions and act positively based upon them, and I thank everyone for that in advance :).
Former US Sen. John Danforth, currently age 79, was a thoughtful Republican senator from Missouri. With his warm dignity and long career of treating political opponents with respect and civility, he could be part of a whole slew of GOP heavyweights banding together to discredit and eject Trump. Why isn’t that happening?
Former Sen. Olympia Snowe, (R – Maine), supposedly left politics because her party had moved too far right for her. She could be banding together with other Repubs who see Trump as a dangerous demagogue. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dick Lugar, Colin Powell, Condaleeza Rice,
Of course, this is only the latest episode in Trump’s media-grabbing use of shock-language, xenophobia, and hate. That someone like Trump could be doing what he’s doing right now is not terribly surprising. But what’s inexplicable and appalling is the overall lack of a clear and forceful condemnation of Trump’s destructive narcissistic fear-mongering by the rest of the Republican leadership, including the other Presidential candidates, current major office-holders, and retired respected GOP figures.
This guy could be standing firm against Trumpism and it would make a difference.
Yes, some of the other candidates have objected to things Trump has said, or have criticized him at times in strong terms. But that’s not enough. Not enough for a major American political party that carries some of the responsibility of upholding our most basic core American values.
There’s no way the Guvernator is down with all of Trump’s mishugass. So come on, Ahnold… give him a piece of your mind!
I’m saying it out loud now: Republicans are making a huge mistake by not having collectively called out Trump’s many bigotries as completely unacceptable for our nation and for their party. What we should have been seeing in the past 8 weeks is a parade of high stature GOP leaders coming forward in every media format to take this guy down. There are 3 living Republican former Presidents who could do this. There’s Colin Powell and Condi Rice. There are retired Senators, like the well-respected Republican moderate, John Danforth, of my home state of Missouri, and John Sununu, and even The Guvernator! All of these folks, including all of the current GOP candidates for pres, should have huddled and then set forth on a clear, unequivocal rejection of Trump having a place in the party. The message would be “we’re conservative – perhaps even very conservative these days – but racist, sexist, and just plain arrogant and cruel comments are out of bounds for our party.”
He could be clear and loud denouncing Trump.
I don’t know how party rules work, but if it is possible for them to kick him out of the party, they should have, along with the full-blown denunciation and condemnation. Instead, the criticisms aimed at him are scattered, weak, and do not reach the level of stopping this dangerous demagogue from hijacking the party brand. Continue reading “Rant Rant Rant Dammit Trump Hate-fest GOP Letting Him Go Too Far”→
, to easily write and send letters and faxes to members of Congress demanding that the full, unredacted report be made public, and keeping the pressure on about other important issues.
On the second question, I hear various activists, pundits, and politicians offering very different recommendations.
the Wal-Mart, we find this guy already there with a clipboard, asking everyone who passes him if they’ve registered. Is he with the Trump campaign? was my first thought, admittedly based on a kind of profiling that I found myself having to actively resist in this toxic and hateful climate (which yes I frankly blame fully on Trump and the GOP’s long years of promoting racist memes and giving succor to extremists). Well, turns out he was also with HRC’s campaign – from another campaign office – a duplication of efforts that I took as a sign of health in the ground game. I mean, you want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing in a campaign, but this is the kind of inadvertent inefficiency that is borne out of having lots of offices, lots of staff, and lots of volunteers. He was a long-time union guy, with a Philly working class accent (“Who sent youz guys?”) The white woman who was part of the crew I showed up with also had a working class Philly accent. The black young woman – a high school frosh – was from the Philly suburbs, her accent and presentation reflecting suburban middle class life. And then there was me, the middle-aged Jewish white guy who has lived a bunch of places.
happen to be someone who would always feel uncertain about my vote being recorded properly if I used a touch-screen system to vote, so it feels good when I take a black or blue ink ball point and fill in the little oval next to each of my choices.
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t don’t know. He presents us with an unknown. What appears to be true is that public attitudes towards socialism are more nuanced than they were a couple decades ago, and that adults under 40 in particular don’t generally think of Bernie’s association with socialism as a deal breaker, though they’re not necessarily sold on Democratic Socialism either. I think the reality is that if Bernie were to win the nomination, and if HRC endorsed him, and the party really got behind him, his chances would depend a lot on who the GOP nominates. If they nominate Trump or Cruz, I would bet on Bernie to win. If Trump isn’t nominated and runs as an independent, I think Bernie would win the general handily. So would Hillary. If it were a Trump vs Sanders vs Bloomberg election, I’d still give the edge to Bernie. So yeah, he’s electable, partly cuz social attitudes have changed, partly cuz the middle and working class folks are feeling left out of the recovery and he represents the idea of them finally getting their share, and partly because of how the other party is (horrifically) proceeding with their own chaotic awful nomination process. I think Dems should vigorously support Bernie or HRC but resolve to support the Dem nominee no matter who wins.
tually seems more moderate than Kasich. The Jebster at least has repeatedly argued against Muslim-bashing, and he’s not parroting the same awful lines on immigrants as Trump and Cruz. He also has experienced America as a multi-cultural place, in both his family life and in his political life in Florida, one of the most culturally and racially diverse states of all. Like I said, I cringe writing this, as I have so much stored up bitterness over W and over the Iraq war and the SCOTUS people he appointed, not to mention what he did to the economy and what Cheney did along with him. But there is no Jon Huntsman among the GOP candidates this cycle, and there’s nobody the likes of candidates like former Republican senator John Danforth or even Bob Dole – people I respected even though I disagreed with them. In the 1996 campaign, I saw TV footage of Dole on the campaign trail one day, in which one of his supporters used extremely disrespectful and hostile language as she referred to Bill Clinton. Dole interrupted the person and said, “Let me make something clear. President Clinton is my opponent, not my enemy.” I remember my respect for him jumping up a bunch of points that day. That’s called having a sense of what it means to do politics in a civil society.
The Accidental Rabbi 