How A Socialist Mainstay Found A Democrat Worth Supporting

 

Grand Choral Synogogue, Petersburg, where I communed with my grandfather's teenage spirit

A few years ago I visited Russia for the first time. My grandfather, fleeing a series of pograms in his district, left there when he was a young teen and came to the U.S. When I was in St Petersburg I visited the Grand Choral Synagogue, the biggest in Russia-- built in 1893. My grandfather, who wasn't a religious person, was there about 10 years after it was completed, the first non-wooden building he had ever been in and the last building he was in before leaving for the New World. Politically, he was my mentor. He came to America a committed socialist and, though he became a successful entrepreneur, he stayed true to his beliefs for his whole life. He used to tell me that there was "only one thing worse than the Democratic Party-- the Republican Party."

But... he abandoned the Socialist Party itself in 1936 and supported President Roosevelt, the first-- and last-- Democratic president he felt any enthusiasm for. The Jewish Daily Forward was already an old and established newspaper when my grandfather was starting to get involved with American politics. Today it is just known as The Forward and it has changed significantly. Like my grandfather, it used to be part of the Socialist movement... until FDR came along. Yesterday, reporter Talya Zax explained how that happened way back nearly a century ago.

"Nothing in this campaign happened to change my mind about there being no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties," Norman Thomas, the 1928 Socialist Party presidential nominee, wrote in a Forward column that appeared on Election Day that year, Nov. 6. "The question of who will win this election isn’t much more significant than the question of who will win the next big football game or the world series. Giving your vote to one of those two parties, that are so similar to one another, is what’s called tossing your vote away."

It was a statement completely in keeping with the politics of The Forward, which had, since its founding in 1897, consistently called for readers to vote the Socialist line.

But only eight years later, as Thomas sought the presidency for the third time, The Forward had shifted its stance on at least one of America’s two mainstream political parties. In a shocking move, our founding editor, Ab Cahan, endorsed the incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt-- a candidate whom he had described in 1932 as embodying the capitalist system against which The Forward was determinedly arrayed.

How could The Forward, which had built its reputation on its staunch Socialist politics, have gotten in bed with the Democrats?

The story begins with Eugene V. Debs, perhaps the most famous Socialist politician of the 20th century.

Debs first campaigned for the presidency in 1900, when President William McKinley, a Republican [and Karl Rove's favorite president], ran for reelection against Williams Jennings Bryan, the Democrat he had beaten four years before. It was the first national election since The Forward’s founding, and Debs’ campaign was rich fodder for the young Socialist paper.

On Nov. 5, 1900, after circulars were distributed in Indiana falsely claiming that Debs was leaving the race, The Forward rushed to his defense. "Since the campaign began, the capitalist newspapers and politicians throughout the country have tried to swindle the citizenry," a column about the incident noted. But the Forward had a telegram from Debs himself standing firm against the falsehoods. "McKinley and Bryan will resign in favor of me, rather than I for them," he wrote. "I stand in these fights until the bitter end." (The Forward's postscript to the telegram: "Politicians know Debs as a bone stuck in their throat… Tomorrow is the day their skin crawls.")

Debs' dedication to his cause reached an apex in 1920, when he ran for president from a prison in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was serving a 10-year sentence on charges of sedition. The Forward was as loyal as ever, reveling in his comparatively successful-- but still losing-- campaign.

"Debs’ vote… will explode like a bomb in the barracks of the capitalist classes," crowed a column on election results. "The 3 million citizens who have given their votes for the socialist candidate who sits behind iron bars because he fought courageously for his ideas and for the right of his ideas to be freely expressed-- that powerful voice will echo in the ears of the capitalist reaction that so arrogantly raged across the country over these last years and once and for all, rouse from slumber their sweet dream of having finally succeeded in choking and snuffing out the spirit of freedom and rebellion against their despotic rule."

But by the time Thomas ran his first race, two years after Debs' death in 1926, the political environment had slowly begun to change. The Soviet Union, which The Forward initially believed might show the world the benefits of living under socialism-- the paper was an early American publisher of Leon Trotsky-- was veering increasingly into authoritarianism. The conflict between the upper classes and the organized-labor movement, the latter of which was a core passion of The Forward's, was reaching a new apex after the 1927 execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. And while the economy was temporarily holding strong, seeds had been planted for the 1929 collapse that would instigate the Great Depression.

By the mid-1930s, a clear rift had opened between The Forward and the Socialist Party under Thomas. The Forward celebrated Roosevelt's New Deal for its substantial investments in organized labor; Thomas lambasted it as shoring up a capitalist system that had, in the economic collapse, once and for all proved its fundamental insufficiency. The Forward had been raising alarms about the threat of Hitler for years, and pushing for aid to Europe's Jews; Thomas was a committed anti-interventionist. And as The Forward's editors saw far-right forces on the rise in the United States, they increasingly saw a mandate to prioritize the defense of liberty over ideological purity.

It must have pained Cahan to step away from the party affiliations he had spent decades urging American Jews to cultivate, but as his 1936 endorsement of Roosevelt made clear, there was no helping it.

"In these elections, as we have come to see, there’s a lot at stake. We all stand to lose, or win, a lot in these elections," he wrote.

"And so we must not neglect our duty. Each of us must today give their vote for Roosevelt and Lehman as candidates of the American Labor Party. No vote should be lost today. Each of us with the right to vote, must use their right and their duty and must vote today. The time has come when, with our vote, we can influence and decide which side will be victorious-- the reactionary one or the progressive one, and in that decisive moment no one must permit their vote to be used simply as a means of protesting against the current capitalist system."

It was a strident call, especially from a man who had, for decades, argued the opposite approach. But no matter what his emotions on the occasion were, Cahan was clearly certain that if his readers followed him in making such a sharp political turn, they'd be working for the public good. "Our conscience," he wrote, "will then be clear."

 

Centrism Has Proven Itself Disastrous For Most Americans-- Which Is Why Bernie Is Going To Be President

The more we see the anti-working class MSNBC personalities and other contemptible pundits attack Bernie, the more he rises in the polls. Literally. Eli Yokley explained it a little differently for Morning Consult readers: Sanders Rises as Primary Voters Grow More Confident About His Chances Against Trump. Morning Consult polled after the Nevada blowout and Bernie already considerable lead grew by 2 points while Biden dropped into third place, confirming his slow Jeb Bush-like decline back into the political oblivion Obama warned him was waiting for him.

Despite the hysterical and desperate efforts of the hated punditocracy and media elites, Democratic primary voters grow more bullish on Bernie’s chances of beating Señor Trumpanzee in November. Morning Consult's poll on Sunday "found 32 percent back Sanders as their first choice for president, widening the gap over former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to 13 percentage points-- his biggest national lead of the campaign. Sanders’ support is up 2 points from a Feb. 20 survey conducted the day after the party’s debate in Las Vegas and up 4 points from a Feb. 12-17 survey conducted after the New Hampshire primary.

At the same time, a separate Morning Consult survey of 954 Democratic primary voters also conducted Sunday found 34 percent said Sanders has the best chance of beating Trump, up 5 points from the post-New Hampshire poll and 11 points higher than the share who identified Bloomberg as the most electable Democratic candidate.

The latest Morning Consult tracking poll also finds Sanders leading the field among black voters for the first time as the race moves to South Carolina, the second successive state with a significant black population that former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign views as a firewall. Thirty-three percent of black Democratic primary voters said they’re backing Sanders, compared with 29 percent who said Biden, within the subsample’s 4-point margin of error.

With Biden at his lowest point since Morning Consult began tracking the race, and no moderate contender solidifying support, Democratic primary voters are increasingly coming to terms with the possibility that Sanders could lead the ticket in November. Among the 69 percent who correctly identified Sanders as the winner in Nevada, a 43 percent plurality said they expect him to be the party’s nominee, up 11 points from the post-New Hampshire poll.

While Sanders’ early victories in the nominating contests have raised alarm bells for some Democrats who fear he could jeopardize gains in the House, chances of taking back the Senate and even of beating Trump, the party’s voters are expressing more confidence in the democratic socialist’s ability to win.

Fifty-two percent of Democratic primary voters who knew Nevada’s victor said they believe Sanders can beat Trump in November-- up 5 points from the share measured immediately following New Hampshire.

Paul Krugman should give his Nobel Prize, or at least his column, to Richard Wolff. This is a very valuable video-- a friendly debate between Krugman and Wolff-- inspiring, compelling and really worth watching.

For Mayor Sanders, Wielding Power Meant Mobilizing Disaffected People To Vote And Ejecting Entrenched Democrats

Paul Waters-Smith noted, over at Current Affairs that if we want to build popular power, we need an organizer-in-chief and urged his readers to take a chance with a Socialist and "back the one and only chance at a pro-labor presidency we’re likely to have for a generation. We’ve got an incredible chance and it would be criminally irresponsible not to take it. There are five core reasons why a Sanders presidency represents such an unprecedented opportunity:

1- The power of the “bully pulpit” is immense, shaping the expectations and visions of what is possible for working people and rich alike, and creating the opportunity for social movements to grow.

2- Bernie 2020 is running a working class left-wing campaign, clearly aimed at governing from the streets, not in the backrooms of Washington or in Martha’s Vineyard.

3- Sanders speaks like a good organizer and labor leader, and his proposals are universal guarantees that can serve as movement rallying-cries.

4- The Sanders 2016 campaign has already proven an enormous boon to the left, and changed the country in ways that offer a small preview of the immense changes that could occur if he were elected.

5- Radical politics is not a luxury at this point in history. It is an absolute do-or-die necessity, and Bernie’s is the only candidacy that makes effective climate action conceivable. 

"We don’t get a whole lot of viable left candidates in the United States," he concluded. "Bernie is the first such presidential candidate in at least 96 years. And he’s the first ever self-described Socialist to come anywhere near the office. The potential of a Sanders presidency to remake our concept of the politically possible and breathe new life into workers’, socialist, and left-wing movements is overwhelming. And given the looming deadline to save dozens of nations from climate oblivion, it’s an opportunity we cannot afford to give up. When we look back in decades, we do not want to have to say: We saw this chance and we watched it go by. A very special moment has come, a moment that could change the future of the country and even of human society. Let us rise to the occasion, and take a chance on the first democratic socialist president so that we may never have to regret what we could have and should have done."

Waters-Smith is a dedicated Socialist. Alexander Burns isn't. But his story in the NY Times yesterday, Bernie Sanders vs. The Machine is one Bernie skeptics might want to read. Or just start by reading Burns' great Twitter storm.

Sanders learned quickly in Burlington that winning one election was not enough. He was regarded as a fluke, an interloper who could be blocked from implementing his agenda.

He responded by choosing confrontation rather than compromise.

Sanders's 1980s letters detail his political education-- and struggle to reconcile huge Ideas w/limited power.

“I have limitations as any mayor would, but I try to overcome these by expanding the role, by taking the job out of City Hall and into the streets where the people were.”

For Mayor Sanders, wielding power meant mobilizing disaffected people to vote in city elections, jolting turnout and ejecting entrenched Dems.

He reflects today: "What that tells me is that if government does respond to the needs of working people, they will come out and participate."

This is the approach Sanders wants to bring to the White House-- a presidency defined by grassroots mobilization along class lines and against legislative obstruction. He's talked about it with Barack Obama, who seems to have been skeptical.

This is the utterly repulsive alternative, that most of us have had way more than enough of. Just think about how well Status Quo Joe or Mayo Pete would fit right into this disgusting photograph. SMILE!

American Christian Socialism?

John Gehring is author of The Francis Effect: A Radical Pope’s Challenge to the American Catholic Church. He seems hopeful that the white Catholics in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan who gave Trump is first term are poised to make sure there is no second term. and that's die, at least in part, because his "actions have raised a theological and moral question: Can a faithful Catholic vote for Trump?"

This may seem to be a strange question, given Trump’s commitment to appointing anti-abortion judges and his appeals to religious liberty in chipping away at LGBT rights. Both are strongly supported by the Catholic hierarchy. While polling shows a majority of Catholics oppose criminalizing abortion and a majority favor marriage equality, opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage are lynchpins of Catholic identity for bishops, conservative Catholic activists and millions of Catholic voters.

In fact, those issues have been so central to defining the Catholic political narrative that two months before the 2012 election, a bishop in Illinois warned his flock that voting for a Democrat could put “the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”

A less discussed but increasingly relevant topic for Catholic voters is church teaching on racism. “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors promoting an intrinsically evil act,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states in “Faithful Citizenship,” a reflection guide for Catholic voters released every four years. Among those acts, the bishops specifically cite racist behavior, noting that Catholics “would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil” if their intent was to support such actions.

Racism is not treated as a peripheral issue by the bishops. “If a candidate’s position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior,” the bishops write,” a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”

Almost half (48%) of U.S. Catholics now think Trump is a racist, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, compared with 21% of evangelicals. On a recent Sunday at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic parish in Washington, a priest made national news for his homily that called on Trump to resign because he “spews hatred, bigotry and intolerance.”

The president has earned these opinions. A man who claims there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.; who tells women of color in Congress to “go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came”; and who recently described a predominantly black district of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” has demonstrated a consistent pattern of willfully exploiting racism for political effect in ways that no conscientious Catholic should support.

...Along with white nationalist rhetoric that fuels violence, the Trump administration’s policies have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Court documents recently filed by the American Civil Liberties Union show that more than 900 parents and children, including infants, have been separated by U.S. border authorities since a federal court ruling ordered the government to reunite more than 2,700 children with their parents more than a year ago.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court stopped Trump, his administration moved to systematically deprive communities of color resources and congressional representation by requiring a citizenship question on the U.S. Census, part of a broader voter suppression strategy the GOP has engineered across the country. This is in direct contradiction to the bishops’ national pastoral letter on racism, released last fall, that specifically cites “lack of access to the vote for some communities of color” as an example of “systemic racism.”

Faithful Catholics will have another reason to question their support for Trump after the recent decision by Attorney General William Barr to reinstate the federal death penalty. Barr, a Catholic, said in announcing the decision that “we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

But last summer, Pope Francis built on several decades of pro-life church teaching that challenged the death penalty and revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church to categorically declare capital punishment “inadmissible” in all cases because it is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

After Barr’s decision, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich called the Trump administration’s decision “gravely injurious to the common good, as it effaces the God-given dignity of all human beings, even those who have committed terrible crimes.”

If Catholic teaching definitively recognizes that opposing the death penalty is central to maintaining a consistent pro-life commitment, Catholic voters can’t ignore the administration’s decision when considering their vote.

The Trump administration’s pattern of racist policies and support for the death penalty are not separate issues. Many studies over the years suggest that the criminal justice system and death row cases are riddled with racial bias from the quality of legal representation defendants receive to sentencing disparities. Black defendants are far more likely to receive the death penalty if they kill a white person than the reverse, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Voting requires prudence and well-formed consciences. Neither political party has a monopoly on Catholic values. But faced with an administration that doubles down on racism at every turn and that has a politically expedient understanding of what it means to be pro-life, Catholics who check a box for Donald Trump will do so while ignoring core justice teachings at the heart of our faith.

Let's go way back before there was such a thing as a progressive pope-- to the turn of the century... when the 1800s turned into the 1900s, when the rise of industrial capitalism "challenged," wrote Aaron Sanchez for Sojouners Friday, "nearly every concept that people used to explain the way the world worked. The proliferation of the wage system, the rise of the corporation, hyper-urbanization, and the shift from farm to factory left people questioning all they had known to be true. Factory workers worked longer hours and made less. One in every 26 workers in the country would be injured or maimed while working. Farmers worked more, planted more, and harvested more, only to discover that they too made less. No matter how much they grew, the price for the products kept falling. African Americans had been promised freedom only to find themselves trapped in institutions meant to recreate their bondage. Natural resources, which had one seemed inexhaustible, were on the verge of running out-- trees, soil, animals, land. Filth and toxic waste poisoned water systems. The air, thick with pollution, shortened the lives of all who lived nearby. Success seemed uncertain, while perpetual debt and perpetual poverty was certain. The world was growing more unequal. The world that most people had known was coming undone. And yet not all Christians were not preparing for the second coming. Some believed they had to play a central role in the social transformation that was to come, so they became socialists."

Christian socialists did not shy away from class struggle. They believed it was the defining feature of the era. The growing chasm between rich and poor in nearly every facet of life from life expectancy to living conditions drew the attention of pastors, practitioners, and theologians.

Capitalism was neither a natural force nor a supernatural one. This hand was not invisible and it was certainly not the hand of God.

This was a system made by humans, but the greed was as old as Cain and Abel. This was the message of Congregationalist minister, George D. Herron in his 1890 sermon, "The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth." Cain’s choice, according to Herron, “was the first bald, brutal assertion of self-interest as the law of human life-- an assertion always potential with murder.” He believed that capitalism was founded on the ancient evils of self-interest and competition. Those foundations made capitalism incompatible with Christianity. He declared: “The trial in progress is Christ versus Cain. The decision to which the times are hastening us is, Shall Christ or Cain reign in our American civilization?” Christians could not ignore their responsibility.

Herron campaigned for socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. In 1901, he helped organize the Socialist Party of America. He was not the only minister to become a socialist either. One historian estimated that between 5 and 25 percent of all mainline Protestant clergy were socialist party members or voted for the party in the first three decades of the 20th century. Congregationalist minister Franklin Monroe Sprague wrote Socialism from Genesis to Revelation in 1892. John Spargo, a Methodist minister, became a socialist educator. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister, ran for president of the United States as a socialist candidate from 1928 to 1948. Charles Vail, a Universalist minister, was an important socialist writer. African Americans, both outside and inside of the socialist party, also demanded fairer economic systems that affected other facets of life, pushing white Christians and socialists towards a “new abolitionism.”

Socialism attracted Christians because of the growing influence of the social gospel in the U.S. and its social interpretation of sin and salvation. Inequality was a social sin and Christians were responsible for addressing it. Yet the answer was not in the promise of a singular saved soul but the remaking of society to be more just. This justice had to be achieved through reforming institutions in order to create an environment of equality for everyone. Socialism, or what some called “industrial democracy,” would provide the equitable distribution of economic and electoral power.

Christian socialists were true believers in both the gospel of Jesus and socialism. They often combined the two. The interpretation of Jesus as a radical who opposed capitalism was widespread. Less so was the idea that socialism could be the foundation for a more universal humanistic religion. Norman Thomas expressed both ideas when he wrote in 1921 that “essentially the faith of radicalism is religious” and in 1936 that “socialism is the hope for all mankind.”

So where did all the Christian socialists go? They went the way of most socialists in the U.S.

Intra-party fighting over involvement in World War I caused many rifts. The popularity of the New Deal in the 1930s coopted much of socialist party’s plank and melded it to an ameliorated capitalism which drew voters and members away. Thomas criticized the New Deal as “reformed capitalism” and he meant it as an indictment of the programs, but most citizens and politicians were happy with the characterization. Post-World War II social programs minimized economic inequality among white Americans and the Cold War ushered in a second Red Scare. In addition, influential theologians turned away from Christian socialism for either its universal post-Christian aspirations or its utopianism. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, disavowed his youthful socialism for political realism, which abandoned the notion that the government or any bureaucracy could be perfected in order to achieve social salvation.

As the century progressed, the rise of the New Right political coalition welcomed white evangelical Christians and welded them to a free-market ideology. The social gospel, while not fully replaced, lost its prominence in the pulpit. The proliferation of the prosperity gospel in the late 20th and early 21st centuries wedded Christianity to capitalism-- God’s blessings were individual and material. Christ, it appeared, was markedly anti-Keynesian.

Today we are living in a Second Gilded Age. National and global inequality is reaching similar levels as they were in the late 19th century. Half of the world population lives on less than $ $5.50 a day. In the U.S., the top 1 percent of the population holds 40 percent of the wealth. The largest corporations in the country like Amazon and Walmart don’t pay their workers a livable wage. Pollution is on the rise and we are on the verge of an environmental catastrophe.

While they were often dismissed as utopian, Christian socialists and others believed that capitalism was a passing phase of human history. This wasn’t naiveté. There had been a time when industrial capitalism hadn’t dominated their lives, so it made sense that there could be a moment when it no longer did. Although today very few people believe that capitalism is a passing phase in human history, it is not a transhistoric, invisible force. It is not the will of God. Social programs made industrial capitalism bearable for many, though not all people, in the U.S. Those programs have been cut since the 1970s. That’s policy and not divine intervention.

Christian socialists were not afraid to talk about class struggle. In fact, it was the defining feature of society; it was the central social sin. Today, mentioning the chasm between rich and poor is often derided as “class warfare,” as a way to erase the grievances of the poor as the product of laziness and their jealousy. Class and its intersection with race must be at the center of any social or biblical analysis.

In the midst of the Gilded Age and the rise of Jim Crow, religious historian Gary Dorrien explained of Black social gospelers: “They wrung a liberating message from the Christianity of their time. They did not settle for making segregation more tolerable. They rebelled and endured, taking the long view, laying the groundwork for something better than the regime of oppression and exclusion they inherited.”

In the midst of the Second Gilded Age, we are called upon to do this today.

Or, at least, to vote for Bernie (and AOC).

Democrats Are Still Twisting Themselves Into Knots Trying To Explain Health Insurance And Other Progressive Initiatives To Voters

"Look," no one serious ever said, "we can't put the Mob out of business because it will throw so many people out of work." It's true. If the Mob were shut down, all kinds of people doing work that, in varying degree, is anti-social. Insurance companies are also doing work that is anti-societal. Yet it is widely thought that if they are phased out as an anachronism for another, more effective means of paying for healthcare, too many people will be unemployed. Writing for This Week last week, Ryan Cooper pointed out that Democrats need to get over their fear of disrupting private health insurance. "About half the population is insured with private, employer-based coverage," wrote Cooper, "leading liberals to adopt a defensive posture. 'A lot of people love having their employer-based insurance,' says Nancy Pelosi." Yeah, I did too-- when I was president of a division of Time-Warner and had the best private sector insurance money could buy. The I turned 65 and got on Medicare and realized private health insurance absolutely sucks. Medicare is MUCH better-- other than Medicare Part D, Republican Medicare-- than anything available on the private market. People who say they love their employer-based coverage are just ignorant, like I was. A good leader would trying showing them why.

Cooper noted that Pelosi's reasoning leaves aside an important fact-- the private insurance system is itself constantly knocking people off their insurance. There is no way to reform the system in a way that will simultaneously preserve private insurance and not be blamed for people losing their coverage, because the private system is so inherently unstable.

While ObamaCare was being discussed and negotiated, Democrats twisted themselves into knots trying not to fuss with the private insurance system too much. Thus during the 2008 campaign and afterwards, Barack Obama said some version of "if you like your insurance, you can keep it" dozens and dozens of times.

This line blew up in his face spectacularly. One of the objectives of ObamaCare was to clean up employer-based insurance. This made perfect sense, in the context of the ObamaCare approach-- before the law, there was a substantial market in absolute garbage policies that didn't really cover anything (which are coming back thanks to Trump, by the way), and lot more with gaps in their coverage. New regulations on guaranteed coverage standards, the medical loss ratio, and so on made employer-based insurance considerably better-- but also required substantial restructuring of the market, which destroyed a lot of policies.

Conservatives and the mainstream media had a screaming fit-- especially so-called fact-checkers, who are always on the lookout for liberal flubs to give them nonpartisan cred (PolitiFact labeled Obama's claim as "lie of the year" in 2013).

But critically, the freakout was given major strength by the background condition of people being constantly kicked off their insurance. People switch jobs often, and employers routinely shop around for different or cheaper coverage. As Matt Bruenig details, a Michigan study shows that fully 28 percent of people on an employer-sponsored plan were not on the same plan a year later. About half of the population-- or 160 million people-- is on private insurance. If that's a representative study (and it's surely in the right ballpark), that means about 45 million insurance loss events annually, or 3.7 million per month.

Obama didn't get in trouble over his broken promise because people are deeply in love with their (increasingly crummy and expensive) private insurance. He got in trouble because it was a stupid promise that was logically impossible to fulfill, and he couldn't have avoided sounding like an outright liar. No matter what health-care reform passes, so long as private insurance exists conservatives will always be able to point to millions of people losing their existing coverage and blame it on the reform.

As an aside, it's also worth noting that the ObamaCare exchanges also require people to shop for new insurance every year as a matter of design-- and anytime an insurer withdraws from the exchange, which happens all the time, everyone on its plans gets kicked off. Bit of an odd choice from people who are supposedly obsessed with the backlash problem.

At any rate, all this demonstrates the only way around the backlash hurdle-- be honest with the public, and hold out the promise of good coverage that is actually permanent, like Medicare-for-all. Yes, if you have private coverage, you will lose it-- but in return you'll get something really good that will stay with you for life. No more worrying that losing your job means your whole family losing their coverage, and possibly being driven into bankruptcy, or staying in a lousy job just because you need the insurance. (Medicare also has the advantage of being widely understood already, so fear of the unknown is reduced.)

Conversely, trying to design a health-care reform that preserves private insurance is inescapably vulnerable to backlash, because constant insurance loss is built into the private system. Moderates trying to tiptoe around the backlash problem end up being deceptive about what their plans would do, just like Obama did, which only fuels the backlash-- for instance, Medicare-for-some proposals described as letting "people keep employment-based insurance" would absolutely kick millions off their coverage.

Indeed, if framed properly, this could be a powerful argument for universal Medicare. As Bruenig writes, "Critics of Medicare-for-all are right to point out that losing your insurance sucks. But the only way to stop that from happening to people is to create a seamless system where people do not constantly churn on and off of insurance." If we want good coverage that everyone can really keep forever, simply scrap the stupid, inefficient private system and sweep the whole population onto the same high-quality program. As usual, good old Big Government is the best way to go.

Meanwhile, Pramila Jayapal's new-and-improved Medicare-For-All (H.R. 1384)-- which has been expanded to include, among other things, dental and vision care, prescription drugs, long-term care and mental health-- has 108 co-sponsors, fewer than the less robust Conyers proposal last session (124 co-sponsors). Why? Frightened freshmen. Only 16 are co-sponsors so far:

• Veronica Escobar (TX)
• Chuy Garcia (IL)
• Debra Haaland (NM)
• Jahana Hayes (CT)
• Mike Levin (CA)
• Andy Levin (MI)
• Joe Neguse (CO)
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY)
• Ayanna Pressley (MA)
• Rashida Tlaib (MI)
• Lori Trahan (MA)
• Katie Hill (CA)
• Ilhan Omar (MN)
• Susan Wild (PA)
• Jared Golden (ME)
• Josh Harder (CA)

45 freshmen have not signed on as co-sponsors. Before progressives can hope to persuade Republicans and before they can take their case to the public, they really should try persuading their colleagues. If not hardcore Blue Dogs, how about some of the freshmen in the Progressive Caucus aren't there yet, like Angie Craig (MN), Gil Cisneros (CA), Sylvia Garcia (TX), Steven Horsford (NV), Andy Kim (NJ), Joseph Morelle (NY), Madeleine Dean (PA) and Mary Gay Scanlon (PA)?

The Republican wing of the party-- the Blue Dogs, New Dems, the corrupt careerists-- aren't embracing progressive initiatives unless they're forced to by voters, but with DCCC chair Cheri Bustos (who is all of the above-- a Blue Dog, a New Dem and a corrupt careerist) outlawing primaries against right-of-center incumbents like herself, there is no way to effectively pressure anti-progressive Democrats in blue districts.



Last month Bob Borasage penned a piece for The Nation, Centrists Are Using Calls for Civility to Silence the Left, that makes it clear how "[m]any members of the civility police come from the beleaguered center-right of the party, and their calls for unity are often just forewarning progressives to lower their sights and curb their tongues. The chiding often comes with shots at Senator Bernie Sanders specifically or the left more generally. The civility police assert that Trump will pounce on any weakness of the Democratic nominee that gets exposed in the primaries. Michael Tomasky argued that the 'one terrible and unforgivable thing the Democratic contenders can do to one another' is to 'expose that Achilles heel and worsen it.' 'This is what Sanders did with respect to Clinton in 2016,' he claimed, by setting up 'Trump’s Crooked Hillary line of attack.' Really? Donald Trump has a canny and ruthless instinct for the jugular. He didn’t need Sanders to prey on Clinton’s self-inflicted vulnerabilities."

“We should not eat our own,” cautioned David Brock, which is rich coming from a professional hatchet man servicing both sides of the aisle at different points in his career. In reality, the ones doing the eating are primarily centrist pundits using high minded postures to skewer Bernie. Sanders has been assailed by a former Clinton staffer for using private planes while stumping for Hillary in 2016. He’s been attacked for hiring David Sirota, a respected left-leaning journalist who got his start in Sanders’s House office twenty years ago. (Sirota was raked over last week for supposedly hiding his conflict of interest while at The Guardian, a claim that turned out to be simply false). Tomasky presumptuously issued a “personal plea” to Bernie to rein in his supporters, while saying nothing about the Clinton advisers publicly vowing to unleash their oppo research from 2016 on Sanders.

The civility police call for a debate over policy and ideas, not personal attacks, which is surely right. The question, however, is what is a personal attack? Biden insider and Washington lobbyist Ron Klain argued that “a debate about ideas is healthy, a debate about motives is not. The Democrats should hash out their differences in 2020 without slashing up one another-- not casting aspersions on each other’s integrity, motivation or intentions.”

Clinton and her supporters consider Sanders’s repeated criticism of the hundreds of thousands she pocketed for speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks an “aspersion” on her integrity. But the corruption of big-money politics and the unholy alliance with the financial sector is at the center of the failure of the establishment of both parties. Trump made the corruption of politicians-- Republican and Democratic alike-- the central theme of his campaign in 2016. The Democratic primary debate would be foolish to rule airing the issue out of bounds.

...This concern about unity too often masks the real concern of centrists: their belief that only a “moderate” candidate who offers “realistic” reforms can win. Politico trotted out Stuart Eizenstat, Jimmy Carter’s former policy adviser, to make the case explicitly. “Maximalist ideology is a prescription for division and defeat,” he wrote, adding that Medicare for All may be a “useful campaign slogan,” but a “totally government run program is not a solution.” The answer to climate change is “not a Green New Deal… but ‘market based incentives.’” He believes that if progressives want to win, they’ll join a “united front” around a centrist candidate.

In the name of unity, Eizenstat calls for robust debate in which progressives defer to the responsible center. Democrats ran an experienced centrist with moderate policies against Trump in 2016 and got beat. Democrats won twice with a charismatic center-left candidate in Barack Obama, and Sanders’s agenda has gained ever more adherents. Most of the top-tier candidates-- from Sanders to Warren to Senator Kamala Harris-- are making the case for bolder ideas and politics.

Eizenstat might be more on target were he focused on cautioning centrists on the need for unity behind a progressive nominee. Jonathan Chait’s dyspeptic article-- “Will Bernie Sanders Split the Democratic Party in 2020?”—exposes just how savage and embittered centrists are. Chait is simply deranged about Sanders, accusing him of running a “factional splinter campaign” in 2016, hiring aides committed to “left-wing factionalism,” espousing “hard-core socialist politics” and “vaguely Marxist concepts, by which he means “describing most issues as being driven by an economic divide between the people and ‘the billionaire class.’” This would apply also to Obama in his rhetorically populist 2012 reelection campaign). Chait scorned Sanders’s followers as an “irrational cult,” packed with “schismatic Bernie diehards.” He accused them of not realizing that the primary contest should be viewed as a question of “which Democrat can beat Trump,” as opposed to a battle of ideas and direction. Sanders, he argued, has to choose whether he is a “partisan Democrat” or a “schismatic leftist using the Democratic Party.”

This ugly rant reflects the venom of those who fear losing control. In reality, Sanders is now part of the leadership of the Senate Democratic caucus. He ran and won on both the independent and the Democratic line for the Senate in Vermont. He ran a powerful 2016 campaign for the presidency in the Democratic primaries-- and then helped fashion the party’s platform, while endorsing its nominee, and working harder for her election than virtually any other ally. He now is the most popular senator in America, trailing only Joe Biden in the polls of Democratic voters. He’s already pledged to work for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, arguing that beating Trump is imperative. He’s vowed to run-- as he always does-- focused on issues, not on personal attacks. He’s pledged not to run a negative ad. He’s issued statements urging his followers not to engage in personal attacks on other primary contenders.



Running with a bold agenda, fueled by small contributions, opposed by the establishment of the party and legions of embittered Clinton devotees, facing a skeptical mainstream media, he will have a difficult road to the nomination. Were he to win it, he could be well suited to expose Trump’s betrayal of working people and take him down.

Democrats are remarkably united about basic propositions: Beating Trump is vital, and unity behind the eventual nominee is essential. Democrats should not allow a bitter primary to divide them. Yet even these commonsense propositions are being wielded to mug the left.

The civility police suggest that the differences between Democrats are relatively insignificant as opposed to those with Trump and Republicans. This somehow coexists with the argument that if Democrats embrace candidates espousing bold reforms that Eizenstat scorns as “demanding the moon,” or Chait poisonously labels “hard-core socialist politics,” the party will crash and burn.

The reality is that Democrats are in the midst of a fundamental argument about the future in the wake of the abject failure-- in policy and in politics-- of the established center of the party. The differences between candidates calling for a return to Obama and those who seek a fundamental change in course are significant and should spark a fierce debate. The difference between those financed by big-money contributions and those relying on small donations goes to the heart of our politics. If they are serious, the civility police should start focusing their attention and concern on the center, which is losing its hold, not the left, which is rising.

Dance With The One That Brought You-- BERNIE! But Brace, NPR Will Red-Bait Your Dance Card

Bernie 2020 by Nancy Ohanian

by Skip Kaltenheuser

Dance with the one that brought you-- BERNIE! As Bernie changed the national dialogue on critical issues and transformed large swaths of the Democratic Party, that’s my bid for his slogan.

It won’t be NPR’s. NPR political reporting isn’t evolving, it’s devolving, already tipping its hand that it’s out to sink Bernie, as it did its best to in 2016, taking every opportunity then to slip in the knives of Hillary talking points. When Bernie announced last week, I heard a public radio newscaster remind us that Bernie ran in 2016, winning several primaries. Several? Somebody must have jumped him, I didn’t hear that repeated. Now something more insidious than dopey has come along.

A friend, Elliott Negin, knows the treacherous territory of Washington. You can catch samples of his splendid insights, for the Union of Concerned Scientists here, and for the Huff Post here.

After hearing this politics segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, Elliott wrote a social media post I’d like to share:

DID NPR REDBAIT BERNIE SANDERS THIS MORNING?

I just sent this email to host Scott Simon and reporter Ron Elving:

Ron and Scott: In a two-way between the two of you this morning, Ron confused socialism with communism.

Referencing Bernie Sanders announcing his presidential bid, Ron said: "The phrase democratic socialist that Sanders uses a lot-- that has quite a few fans, especially among younger voters, who seem to take this word socialist in stride. Older voters still remember the years when to be a socialist was to be on the wrong side of the Cold War in many people's minds. And voters of all ages will be taking part in those primaries and caucuses starting in less than a year."

Older voters still remember the years when a COMMUNIST was to be on the wrong side of the Cold War, not a socialist. Sanders' socialism has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or China and everything to do with the social democracies of Europe and Canada.

In the mid- to late-1980s, I was the editor of Nuclear Times, a peace and disarmament magazine that covered the Cold War face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union, and we would never call the USSR a "socialist" country. Sweden, da. Russia, nyet. After my stint at Nuclear Times, I joined the NPR foreign desk as an editor.

Either you guys don't know your history or you are deliberately redbaiting Sanders.

Unfortunately other reporters and columnists have done the same thing. In October 2015, for example, the Washington Post ran a front page story on Sanders that included this passage:

"Twenty-four years after the end of the Cold War, many Americans no longer associate socialism with fear or missiles-- or with failure, food lines or empty Soviet supermarkets. A word that their elders saw as a slur had become a blank, open for Sanders to define."

I wrote a letter to the editor to correct the record, pointing out that the "Soviet system of government was communism, not socialism." My letter went on to explain that the residents of social democracies in Europe and Canada on average fare better than Americans.

It is critical for news organizations to accurately define what Sanders is talking about when he says that he is a democratic socialist, especially since President Trump and other Republicans are now associating socialism with the debacle in Venezuela.

It's shocking that NPR could get this wrong. I expect more from you guys.

Analyze the points packed into the Sanders portion of the NPR segment below and the packaged propaganda shines through.

SIMON: Senator Bernie Sanders entered the 2020 race for president this week - I think $6 million he raised within 48 hours or something. But he touched off a recurrent question about if he's really a Democrat in all ways, maybe. This week, he refused to call Nicolas Maduro a dictator.

Everyone knows Bernie raised nearly 6 million, mostly small contributions, in 24 hours, with 600 grand of that in monthly pledges. Except Simon, who waters that impressive feat down, to “forty-eight hours or something.” Then he trots out the murky strawman of whether Bernie’s “really a democrat in all ways, maybe.” Simon elevates that to “a recurrent question”, nevermind Bernie’s pledge to run as a Democrat, his position in the Democratic leadership, his stumping like a circus trooper for Democratic Party candidates, and everything else in his history, not least his 2016 campaign. Simon then parrots the criticism of Floridians like Clintonite Donna Shalala that Bernie didn’t call Venezuela's Maduro a dictator, as if Bernie secretly supports Maduro. There’s no elaboration that while Bernie is not beating the drum for opening the Pandora’s Box of military intervention, he is calling for free and fair elections in Venezuela. That’s hardly a subversive position, particularly when the mouths of the slippery axis of Trump, Bolton and Abrams publicly water for Venezuela crude. But Simon won’t even attempt such basic and responsible nuance. He just lets the smear float freely.

Does Simon really believe his own bullshit, or is it flowing from an NPR edict from top down? Is Simon auditioning for Chuck Todd and his merry band of Sabbath Gasbags? Inquiring minds want to know.

And now Elving takes the cue, undermining Berne’s prospects by implying Bernie is disingenuous and only feigning to be a Democrat because he’d like to be President. And, he’s been an independent! Never mind that he always caucused with the Democrats, and be sure to ignore he’s in the Democratic leadership. Just keep up the Orwellian suggestions of uncertainty about who Bernie really is, that he’s just playing the Democrats. Does Elving think the largest group of voters, self-identified independents, will take offense at independent labels?

ELVING: You know, terminology and labels are not ultimately where people live, but they can have meaning and effect when it comes to campaigns. We certainly saw that in 2016. Sanders only calls himself a Democrat when he's seeking to be the party nominee for president. The rest of the time and in Congress, he calls himself an independent. And that may be more accurate.

Elliott already nicely addressed the red-baiting below, but also note the attempt to undercut Bernie’s prospects by driving an electorate age wedge on Bernie’s secret identity. I think much of that age wedge is a work in progress by pundits in search of a comment. If enough say it, it must be true.

The phrase "democratic socialist" that Sanders uses a lot-- that has quite a few fans, especially among younger voters, who seem to take this word socialist in stride. Older voters still remember the years when to be a socialist was to be on the wrong side of the Cold War in many people's minds. And voters of all ages will be taking part in those primaries and caucuses starting in less than a year.

Christ on a bicycle! Trump’s writers are moonlighting at NPR! They at least seem kissing cousins. Their common purpose ultimately juices the risks of getting the same result as the 2016 fiasco.

Part of Last Conversation Piece by Juan Munoz, by the Hirshhorn Museum. Its conspiratorial feel, with panicked outsiders, seems apt for Washington.

Elving caught my attention a while back when an NPR correspondent described newly elected Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema as a moderate. Elving went that foolishness one better, calling Sinema a progressive. As Howie has pointed out, when Sinema was in the House she had the worst voting record of any Democrat. Sinema, a bought and paid for Wall Street minion, was chair of the Blue Dogs. Would someone please explain to Ron Elving that the Blue Dogs are not a posse of progressive pooches? And perhaps NPR analysts might want to study up on the analyses of Progressive Punch, which awards Sinema an F as she battles it out with Nevada’s Jacky Rosen for worst Democrat in the Senate. Spell-check keeps changing Sinema to Cinema. Perhaps it’s right. Her image embraced by NPR is quite a show.

NPR’s bias drifts about. In December I watched a seminar, Undermining the Courts and the Media: The Consequences for American Democracy at the National Press Club. Bob Garfield, a host of NPR’s On the Media was the moderator of a panel of journalists. About five hours and eight minutes into this video, here’s Garfield. "As an institution, we are almost as equally distrusted by the Left. I mean, there is nothing quite like the lip curl of a Bernie Bro using the words mainstream media. I mean, it’s really such a sight to behold. Because obviously we are just such whores to The Man…. especially the Times, James, I mean, what does your inbox look like? …Your job is to have a diversity of opinion and balance and yet you have to deal with these sometimes quite astonishing accusations that you are just a shill for big capital or you name it.”

With his affinity for lip curls, I’m surprised Garfield didn’t just reveal Bernie as Snidley Whiplash. I’ll resist the temptation to mention the Times drumbeat to invade Iraq, its continued backing of the mythology that Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with the economic debacle bequeathed by bankers behaving badly, and the gatling gun Times columnists trained on Bernie during the 2016 primaries. Well, my resistance is weak.

To his credit, James Bennet, now editor of the Times editorial page, said a lot of the criticism is deserved, and that the editorial page needs to have its feet held to the fire, that it aims to have a wide variety of opinions needed while arguing its way toward the truth at a time a lot of big questions are in play, and conventional answers aren’t adequate. A number of the journalists’ comments on challenges facing journalism are worth a listen.

Is On the Media looking for topic suggestions? Probably not this one. How about a serious soul-searching on the bias of mainstream media, including NPR, specifically against Bernie during the 2016 primaries? And maybe keep an eye on it during the 2020 primary season. Have Thomas Frank on as a guest, revisiting the points he made about he Washington Post and other media coverage of the 2016 primaries in his excellent Harper’s essay, Swat Team, by Thomas. It ought to be required reading for journalism students rolling the dice that a career might await. WaPo is already preparing its editorial gauntlet for Bernie. Here’s a silly early entrant, pushing the notion that Bernie was a flash in the pan Bernie, your moment has come-- and gone. After Amazon had to pony up 15 beans an hour, is the world’s richest man running scared from Bernie?

I imagine we’ll see NPR-- including focused shows like On the Media and 1A, Speak Freely-- honestly tackle that topic about the time we’ll see in-depth coverage of the proposals for anti-boycott laws that seek to throw America’s First Amendment under the bus on behalf of a foreign power. Or for that matter, on the systematic repression, often violent and sometimes fatal, of Palestinian journalists, as the American government averts its gaze and opens its treasury to unquestioned support of Israel’s far and farther right.

Appropriately, NPR never misses the chance to mention the Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It does miss the chance to discuss the Israeli spy technology the Saudi regime uses to monitor dissidents like Khashoggi. Selective critiques are the difference between earning sanctioned merit badges and attempting a journalistic profile in courage.

Bernie is more apt to call Middle East injustices as he sees them, which is a profile in courage by Washington standards. It earns him the ready-made enmity of groups that want no such clear-eyed views and that seek to marginalize him. Other groups that realize Bernie is as unbuyable as the late Wisconsin Senator Willam Proxmire was also want to define Bernie in ways that diminish him. They know people who can’t be bought pose a danger. Bernie’s deep in the pockets of hordes of small donors. Pretty damn dangerous, that.

Irritation by NPR’s political coverage of the 2016 primaries prompted this piece: Reflections on an Election Year When It Finally Hit the Fan.

"Frustrations on the coverage of the Democratic primaries have been slow-cooking quite awhile. Not just with the networks, I’m also looking at you, National Public Radio. Does NPR have a clue as to how badly it's damaged its brand from reporters and commentators chirping regurgitations of Hillary talking points from the outset? For that matter do the NY Times and the Washington Post? They’ve sounded so long like self-appointed gatekeepers, queen-makers, charges of media malpractice now abound. Now brace for articles, already appearing, on how Bernie blew it, too little too late. Never mind media putting him in a box and for so long paying scant attention beyond socialist snowball in hell status.

We can take solace that the public’s collective tin ear to media fixes is well on its way to repair, but that doesn’t cure the frustration. I listened to NPR’s Scott Simon Saturday, interviewing (lecturing) RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, over her group’s support of Bernie Sanders.

Ms. DeMoro acquitted herself well, plowing past Simon’s condescending entreaties to party unity, to getting the inevitability of math, to what’s really practical for health care in the political system, and to every other point he could squeeze in to call the game before the clock runs out. In his mindset there's only one game in town. Never mind pushing the party where it needs to go, never mind concern over game-changers that might wait in the wings. But I assure you in Washington there’s ample trepidation over what might next waltz out of the wings, and on its impact on voter turnout for down-ballot races.

Simon’s comments typify the drumbeat to make Bernie the fall guy for Hilary’s troubles. Apparently it’s now against the law to point out that occasionally the empress strolls buck-naked. And the commentariat now infuses Bernie with mystical powers to demand his supporters rise up for Hillary. If not, Bernie’s fault Hillary loses…

...Here’s a thought. If you want Bernie’s supporters to come around for Hillary, quit trying to stifle their voice at every opportunity, quit telling them from the outset their aspirations are hopeless, their efforts pointless, that they’re naive as to what’s possible, that if we end up in Trumpville it’s their fault for not folding early."

Fortunately, the unwavering support of media champions like Simon glided Hillary over the top and into the White House. What?

I’ve been wondering what fears and long term bets resonate at NPR during these days of shifting political fortunes, what it looks for when it looks over its shoulder.

Elliott told me, “In the mid-1990s, some NPR editors were worried about being perceived as ‘too liberal.’ Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house, and he was harassing NPR. If I remember correctly, Gingrich was threatening to cut off federal funds for NPR and asked the network to produce a list of all its employees who had previously worked for Pacifica radio stations. NPR refused to honor his request.”

Well, good for NPR on that refusal. But another topic for On the Media might be the influence of NPR donors, including donor demographics and particularly corporate donors, on topics and coverage.

Personally, I’d like to see increasing government funding of public radio that strengthens confidence in the independence of its political reporting. But until my confidence returns, I’m just glancing online to see if there are offerings of interest, usually arts and culture and science. Otherwise I’m spending more time perusing the BBC and Pacifica. And with apologies to Garfield, what I might call alternative media.

I thought it quite telling that NPR didn’t bother to cover Bernie’s town hall on inequality last Spring, with guests including Elizabeth Warren and Michael Moore. Despite an overflow crowd and nearly two million watching online, it got the NPR cold shoulder. It was held in the US Capitol building, a short walk from NPR headquarters.

To be fair, it was a crowded news day at NPR. A gorilla in Philly walked upright to keep his hands clean. You can still catch Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and the Collapse of the Middle Class, here.

The Breadline by sculptor Georg Segal, part of the expansive FDR Memorial. One of FDR’s quotes there, “THEY WHO SEEK TO ESTABLISH SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT BASED ON THE REGIMENTATION OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS BY A HANDFUL OF INDIVIDUAL RULERS… CALL THIS A NEW ORDER. IT IS NOT NEW AND IT IS NOT ORDER.”

Voters in the 2020 primaries, from the early states like Iowa to the ones that ice the cake, are well-advised to be as judicious parsing for objective news sources, and as wary of media herd instinct, as they are selecting their preferred candidates.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Over the years, I've encountered a ton of Republicans who wail and whine about their taxes and socialism. A lot of them come from red states that take more federal money than any blue state ever did. I've had these lost souls tell me that they voted for Trump because "Socialism doesn't work." I've seen their eyes glaze over and felt their palpable anxiety at the mere mention of President Obama's name. Some of them "like that Affordable Care Act" and tell you that it's much better than "that socialistic Obamacare." They lack the intellect to discern that the two are one and the same. Critical thinking is foreign to them and we know how they feel about anything foreign. Even the simplest things make their brains hurt and are too difficult for them to grasp. So, if you say anything positive about "Obamacare" out screams the word "Socialism!" From my experience, at least half of them still think Obama got into this country due to lax border security and made it all the way to president. FOX "News" has done a good job of programming these suckers and fools. There's really no point in speaking with them further. I mean, you have to be pretty far gone if you think Obama was a socialist president from a foreign land; so far gone that you're never coming back, in fact. So why bother. "What a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind..."

Ah, but now they want us all to pay for their big, shiny border wall, their monument to their own xenophobia and racism. More than once, I have had to explain to them what the word xenophobia means. Usually, they don't care though. Perhaps they just think it's one of their better qualities, just like that little red hat makes a fashion statement they take pride in. At this point, they would place a pile of doggie shit on top of their heads if Sean Hannity or Alex Jones told them it was the best way to express their support for Trump. That's how I see Rudy Giuliani now anyway. I see him on FOX "News" and I see him with a big, steamy pile on top of his head; flies buzzing 'round his bug eyes like they're returning home.

But here's what I do every time the conversation about "the evils of socialism" comes up when I run into someone from the Trump Party: I tell them "Fine. It's a free country and people died for your freedom. But, if you don't like socialism, then don't drive on Ike Eisenhower's Interstates that our tax dollars built and still care for. The traffic situation will be better. And, They are a monument to the advantages of socialism." I also tell them, "Don't drink the water from the reservoirs that socialism built and that socialism protects. And don't call the township, county, or state police if you're upstairs sleeping one night and you hear a burglar downstairs, unless you have a privately contracted police force, of course. Ditto the fire department. Oh, and don't fly on a plane as long as the government is funding the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority)." I also tell them they'd better not ever think about applying for Social Security and that those of us who aren't so hypocritical and admit to wanting Social Security will push for having their unclaimed funds go to a better use, like being divided up amongst those of us who are in favor of Social Security. If the fool I'm talking to comes from a farm state, I tell them to have their state reject the additional billions in farm subsidies that are headed their way to offset their boy Trump's tariffs on things like soybeans. I might even explain to them that our dreaded tax-funded socialism pays for some of our food protection, the TSA, Homeland Security, the FBI, and other police agencies that protect them from groups like MS-13. That last particular irony is lost on such limited minds of course. To them, I am some kind of commie liberal elitist just because I have a functioning brain. It doesn't matter. I lost them at the word interstate.