The Strange Face of 21st Century Democracy

The Perils of Proceeding Without a Name

US oligarchs are attempting to imitate the tiger that changed its stripes.

[It's understandable that they don't wish to continue in their present image...]

History is littered with exciting anecdotes describing the transition from one form of governance to the next. Some of these accounts are a record of years or decades filled with unrest or unrealized ambitions, but others, usually with much briefer time spans, record events which unfolded rapidly -- and usually quite violently.

In each case "once the smoke cleared," the rubble had been tidied up, the dead had been buried and a "fresh, sparkling" new name was painstakingly coined to "identify" whatever had emerged from the transition. Of course both these "alterations" themselves and the "sparkling" new name were far more palatable as "matured" historical concepts than in the immediate reality of what had actually "happened on the ground."

In most cases these "high born struggles of conflicting ideals" were, when viewed in the cold light of day, painful episodes of mass chaos where thousands or millions of cases of "getting even" unfolded in the bloody wreckage once the stopper had been removed from the bottle. No matter. In the end happy destiny rose from the blood and ashes to provide "absolutely every fact" required to justify the next generation of history texts [even if  they bore a "not a too accurate" account of the events], and that is also, of course, history books written by the victors.

There are plenty of exquisitely painful examples. 

The Reich movement transformed Germany into a war hungry national socialist state. Hungry Russians rejected Nicholas' gold plated sink faucets and transitioned the country from a Czarist autocracy into the USSR. More recently, Ukraine, Thailand, Arab states, Serbia, Egypt and a dozen others have violently abandoned the "old thing" and adopted a "new thing." Each of these transformations included more than a few violent missteps along the way.

However, and it is an important point for this post, these transitions all emerged from the blood, dust and wreckage to embrace a new name, that is, there were already names handily awaiting what emerged from the process. The particular bunch of the involved parties who managed to scratch and claw their way up to the top of these brand new, blood soaked things which had been created had names already prepared for them, too, names such as the NAZIs or the Soviets.

In no time newspaper reporters and other "experts" on such matters were able to refer to the NAZIs or the Soviets, and everyone who read their newspapers knew not only exactly what they meant but also had a pretty good idea about what they intended to do -- all this because of these shiny new names.

In the United States, the Russian Federation and a good number of "quieter" countries, the parameters and players in the modern types of transition are freshly empowered oligarchs who are, predictably, validating their machinations as necessary measures to "unleash free enterprise," "unfetter the captains of industry" or simply to obliterate troublesome, profit gobbling laws and regulations. Historically, raw, parasitic oligarchies are usually not christened with the formal name "oligarchy" until much later, decades after they have actually "conquered" their host economies.

Nonetheless, once the establishment of these oligarchies has been completely accomplished, the name, "oligarchy," is all ready on hand to name such amazing "new things" the moment they have been created. Of course, right up to the very last moment prior to the full "live birth" of such dynasties of avarice, the official  new title necessarily remains obscured. This is not too much the case in the US where education has faltered to the extent that 98% of the newly created "servant class" has no idea what such a word might even mean.

This post is about the latest form of such "transitions" or "take overs." This introduction is necessary because this most modern bunch...has no name! Worse, it also lacks any particular "validating" principle or mission which might, more or less, automatically provide even the foggiest insight into its intentions.

Well, yes. Now that we're here, we would all like some sort of "forward glimpse" of what we can expect from "rule by party elites." After all, the take over and transition of our post-democracy government is, apparently, now complete.

The history written to describe this episode will leave students wondering "Wait! Why did they do THAT? This is so confusing that I can only hope that this isn't on the test!"

The History of Screwing Over 

Constitutional Elections for Fun and Profit

Not much has changed except that the myth

 that they weren't always screwed over is now collapsing.

We're Americans, so if we do it, it's democracy, right?
(Don't start with the "divine right" stuff until she passes out.)
[image]

We can quite confidently count on US political seasons to "bring out the worst" in us. The stakes are high, and the system through which the decisions will be made is leakier than the beer keg after a shoot out at a cowboy bar.

The part of the US Constitution which sets the structure for elections, although really dated, did a fairly good job of designing the process and explaining how it was to be done. What it has morphed into through the years is a grisly mix of shockingly outdated measures to accommodate the technology of the 1700's and a relentless deluge of annual intercessions in favor of everything from comforting desolated ex-slave owners to modern industrialists with a penchant for dumping their pollution into rivers providing drinking water.

Since the Constitution was originally written there has been a constant stream of chicanery, deceit and other Constitutional mischief made in efforts to twist the thing into something which could be looted. This effort has exploded into a "sperm frenzy" in the last few years as the emboldened oligarchs have finally felt safe publicly displayed their insane sociopathy. This began to surface quite openly after they purchased majority control of the Congress and the Supremes. Now that one of their staunchest, most dependable servants on the Court has dropped dead, they are panicked with the prospect of losing the rather vast profits they've enjoyed to date.

Bilderberg Group - Logan Act Violations
Don't worry about us, we own the DOJ. [image]

Still, in the past, the Owners of the Republican Party have all been creepy but identifiable billionaires as they gathered for a quick one in the bar downstairs from their annual Bilderberg Conferences. US voters are grudgingly accustomed to the expectation that these well heeled, not particularly stable, trust fund children will, in fact, probably decide the outcome of the next election -- except for the White House. "Loading the dice" for the Presidential election has, at least until recently, been too visible and too risky. [This is, obviously, changing -- in both Parties.]

These rich ones have always concluded previously that meddling with democracy while everyone was watching simply exposed them to an unacceptable level of danger. As for conducting such sabotage on the Constitutional system "from behind the curtains," however, the ROI [return on investment] for such schemes easily outweighed the risks. This is not an exaggeration. The visible parts of this "return on the George W. Bush investment" saw $600 billion dollars flow into the pockets of the 400 top income earners in the country during that disastrous 8 years.

For the mathematically challenged, $600 Bn is $100 Bn more than half a trillion.

This time around is apparently going to be even worse. The Koch brothers have already announced their plan to "invest" $900 million in the 2016 race in the pursuit of electing a Republican President.

[The brothers -- their father financed the John Birch Society and the Heritage Foundation -- while quite comfortable with a crack pot religious Dominionist such as Rafael Cruz, aren't quite reactionary enough to back the Trumpy. Perhaps they'll just have to go shopping and buy something else with their $900 million. Perhaps, say, Argentina.]

Now, Eat the Nice Dog Food

No Need To Bother Voting

It's Time For democratic Rule By the "Party Elites"

Crushing democracy from behind the curtain

[The lower case "d" is necessary because both parties are hard at it.]

No, no, no.
All this voting only confuses things. Plus, elections
 cost money. Right now,we clearly
need to focus on our "gift" list. [image]

Party Elites. Who are they? 
Where'd they come from?

Don't worry. This is the way we always do it.

And besides, we promise that they're definitely not oligarchs, okay? So just relax.

Let's take a look at exactly what is confronting the Republic, that is, voter registration "mysteries" in numerous US states. This has become necessary because both sides of this 2016 election are vaporizing the democratic process before our very eyes.

When MeanMesa states that "both Parties are hard at this electoral mischief," don't assume that it is simply another case of overly dramatic geriatric rambling. They are. They REALLY are.

1. The Republican Party elite are planning to trash the democratic process during the Republican National Convention.

With the previously troubling "Voters Rights Act" nicely trashed by the oligarchs' men in Supreme Black, and unlimited cash intervention in elections ruled to be a "free speech right" by the same Supremes, 2016 really, REALLY is going to amount to a drunk in the clown car headed for the well lubricated political whore house of looted money and power. Don't be shocked. It's basically been this way for most of the time since Reagan.

In the 31 states currently suffering under GOP control, there has been a similar systematic attack on voter enfranchisement by every possible method -- restrictive voter identification requirements at polling places, extensive gerrymandering of Congressional election districts and suspiciously targeted purges of non-GOP voter registration records.

It's "yesterday's news" that sold out Republican candidates can't even come close to holding their own in national election, and that all the anti-democracy moves by these red state governments, actually, amount to an embarrassing display of frantic political desperation. In the US it is widely assumed that most of these red state governments were only able to gain control with the "generous" contributions to state campaigns by the Republican Party's billionaire Owners. A few million dollar "contributions" funneled through ALEC to state level GOP candidates can usually deliver an election.

The Republicans discovered that state legislatures and governors' mansions can be purchased at a bargain price in the US.

Even today, Republican "policies" are being exposed by these red state basket cases -- in bankrupt Kansas, in violently bankrupt Louisiana, in the festering wreckage of anti-union Wisconsin and elsewhere. These examples alone should present an essentially insurmountable political obstacle to the Party's ambitions for national office.

Nonetheless, the GOP "elites" are publicly exposing their now quite insatiable appetite for even more wealth. Terrified with the prospect of nominating Trump and, hence, utterly losing the 2016 Presidential race, the billionaires in charge are now laying out their scheme to sabotage the nominating process at the GOP National Convention.

Happily, even though this scheme of theirs could have a variety of final outcomes at the Convention, none of the specific outcomes contained in that list of possibilities even remotely portends an optimistic result. The billionaires in charge are, apparently, so incredibly out of touch with current attitude of the Party's foot soldiers that they are still assuming Trumpy's already unstable followers -- even after they have watched these aristocratic power brokers from the hated Republican establishment ignore the electoral results of Trump's primary victories -- will simply calm down and eat the dog food.

If the GOP base were more educated or more informed, this Convention subterfuge might prove to be sufficiently outrageous and incendiary to actually even initiate some sort of civil war -- Duck Dynasty-style, of course. Don't count on. The GOP's expendable, brain modified foot soldiers are now lining up in hordes to head for the polling stations to elect The Donald.

2. The Democratic Party elites are also planning to trash the democratic process during the Democratic National Convention

The Democratic Party "danced with this devil" at the Chicago Convention in 1968 -- with politically disastrous results. [MeanMesa was there -- in the streets.] The "burning question of the day" concerned the conflict between Democratic primary victors solidly proposing an end to the Vietnam War and Democratic Party elites just as firmly committed to continuing with the wildly profitable southeast Asian "meat grinder." There had already been tens of thousands of Americans killed by this time, and no end was in sight. Neither was there any sign of progress, making the question quite political.

In this case the Democratic Party elites -- after effortlessly dumping the anti-war primary victors at the 1968 Convention -- shoe horned pro-war Hubert Humphrey into the nomination even though he had not won a single delegate in the Party's primaries or caucuses. The results were so explosively destructive that the Democratic Party modified their nominating rules within months after losing the election.

Unhappily, these labyrinthine modifications were essentially only cosmetic. For the 2016 contest the arcane "rules" provided Bill Clinton with every sort of dirty trick needed to secure the nomination for his wife -- and once again place him in the Oval Office.

Even though it would require cleverly subverting the safeguards installed after 1968, the Democratic Party elites are already scheming to guarantee the nomination of Ms. Clinton -- probably regardless of the primary election cycle's outcomes. Although the progressive media is focusing on the Convention nominating mischief made possible by the Party's poorly lit, ultra-fickle and ultra-sinister "super delegates," there has been plenty of mischief already inflicted upon the primary outcomes.

These shadowy super delegates are, indeed, ultra-fickle and ultra-sinister, and they are that way by design. They represent the last "fortification" of the Party elites to retain control of the nominating process, and they are hardly the product of an innocent oversight -- the provisions in the Democratic Party nominating process which created them were originally written in 1968 with precisely this future situation in mind.

Still, MeanMesa is seeing a much wider and much more sinister "Party Elite" scheme unfolding in state primaries. In case you're not up with the latest progressive reporting, what went on with the Democratic primary in Arizona and Nevada is an excellent case in point. It is evidence of a "multi-pronged," albeit regulation conformable, political attack on what is, at least cosmetically, a representative process. It seems that even the previously credible 538 is now in on the scheme. Have a look at Hillary's claim to have 3 million more primary votes than Sanders: Counting Up Sanders' Votes - Hillary Style.

Fighting For Air in The Democracy's Election

Yes, it's rigged, and, yes, you lose.

The new rule: No dreaming allowed.

As democracy loving Americans we've probably lost this one, but the dreams of the Democratic Primary voters were not crushed in time by the Clinton dog food salesmen. Don't be discouraged. When the American dreams are left to mature with the scars and bruises added, it marks a dangerous time for the political dinosaurs.

Of course this mischief isn't limited to the Clinton machine on the Democratic Party side of things. The wholly owned Republicans simply take care of this same dirty business in the cold light of day. Afterward, standing among the dung they've just created from the old democracy, the billionaire owners of the Republican Party aren't even embarrassed, but this time, they do seem a little concerned. 

However, the Democratic Party's meat handed involvement in skewing primary election results in favor of Bill's wife are becoming as equally "difficult to ignore" as the proverbial red headed step child. Of course this animosity is most visible between supporters for the respective candidates, but the electoral mischief referenced here has been occurring as a rather shockingly brazen conspiracy undertaken by the "old style" Clinton loyalists and orchestrated by "someone" situated extremely close to the Clinton campaign. 

[MeanMesa cannot avoid the almost automatic impulse to direct this suspicion to powerful DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. She was Clinton's campaign manager back in the Clinton/Obama contest. Debbie had already been placed squarely on the "usual suspects" list when the DNC forbade candidates from debating in unsanctioned debates and intentionally scheduled the official, sanctioned debates for the darkest, loneliest, late weekend hours offering hardly any television viewers -- all of which benefited the Clinton campaign unfairly.]

When we cool off enough to have a glimpse at the big picture of the 2016 election, we see two very likely, equally unappealing candidates with roughly equal "unfavorable ratings" in the 60's to 70's. Before you resign yourself to a stoic groan, try to remember. This is a democracy. That means that we theoretically elect leaders whom we want -- that is, leaders who are popular because we think they would be effective, successful Presidents.

Most Americans are disgusted with the conduct of the paralytic government we have now. Yet, we seem doggedly determined to continue with an almost exact replica of the current catastrophe.

Don't bet on a high voter turn out for this one. We CAN bet on this, though. The lower the general election turn out, the more likely that Donald Trump will be our next President. The lunatics are already planning to show up at the polls.

And, here's a secret.

All those nameless delegates who are preparing to deliver the respective nominations are thinly disguised tools of the same oligarchs who are already firmly in charge of running everything. 

2016 - A Glimpse Into The Political Future

Facing Facts About the 2016 Election

No, these are NOT the "facts"

we have usually been hearing about

Sanders, Clinton and Trump.

While we're on the subject, we should also "clear up" any lingering confusion about the opinions to be found in "Current Affairs." The very best possible way to accomplish this is read the article quoted [in its entirety] below.

MeanMesa sometimes hears a bit of Norman Goldman's afternoon radio show. Norman has, of late, been utterly transfixed with his ambition to paint Clinton's Presidential chances as essentially a political inevitability. Goldman is an old, experienced trial lawyer, so he's quite familiar with the "ins and outs" of presenting his case. The radio show is full of the predictable back and forth between Norm an Sanders supporters, but this host's unrelenting admonition to "face the facts" of the "reality of the situation" have been wearing a little thin.

Goldman is NOT a single focus Hillary fan. His claim to credibility is almost entirely based on what he sincerely and realistically considers to be the electability of Sanders -- odds Goldman considers extremely unlikely.

MeanMesa doesn't have a three hour, nationally syndicated radio show, but this is not a reason to "hold back" when it comes to sizing up Sanders' chances at the Presidency. Goldman's assessment notwithstanding, MeanMesa considers the highly realistic prospects for Sanders to become the next President to be very good.

This is no time to begin quivering in hopeless despair.

Go Ahead. Treat Yourself to 5 Minutes of Stark Realism

It will take the average visitor to the blog about five minutes to read this article.

Current Affairs

A Magazine of Politics & Culture

[Visit the original article here CURRENT AFFAIRS]

Democrats need to seriously and pragmatically assess their strategy for defeating Trump. A Clinton run would be disastrous; Bernie Sanders is their only hope.

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON

With Donald Trump looking increasingly likely to actually be the Republican nominee for President, it’s long past time for the Democrats to start working on a pragmatic strategy to defeat him. Months of complacent, wishful insistences that Trump will disappear have proven false, and with a firm commanding lead in polls and several major primary victories, predictions are increasingly favoring Trump to win the nomination. If Democrats honestly believe, as they say they do, that Trump poses a serious threat to the well being of the country and the lives of minority citizens, that means doing everything possible to keep him out of office. To do that will require them to very quickly unite around a single goal, albeit a counter intuitive one: they must make absolutely sure that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee for President.

The electability question should be at the center of the Democratic primary. After all, elections are about winning, and high-minded liberal principles mean nothing if one has no chance of actually triumphing in a general election. Hillary Clinton has been right to emphasize that the pragmatic achievement of goals should be the central concern of a presidential candidate, and that Bernie Sanders’s supporters often behave as if this is immaterial.

Instinctively, Hillary Clinton has long seemed by far the more electable of the two Democratic candidates. She is, after all, an experienced, pragmatic moderate, whereas Sanders is a raving, arm-flapping elderly Jewish socialist from Vermont. Clinton is simply closer to the American mainstream, thus she is more attractive to a broader swath of voters. Sanders campaigners have grown used to hearing the heavy-hearted lament “I like Bernie, I just don’t think he can win.” And in typical previous American elections, this would be perfectly accurate.

But this is far from a typical previous American election. And recently, everything about the electability calculus has changed, due to one simple fact: Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for President. Given this reality, every Democratic strategic question must operate not on the basis of abstract electability against a hypothetical candidate, but specific electability against the actual Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Here, a Clinton match-up is highly likely to be an unmitigated electoral disaster, whereas a Sanders candidacy stands a far better chance. Every one of Clinton’s (considerable) weaknesses plays to every one of Trump’s strengths, whereas every one of Trump’s (few) weaknesses plays to every one of Sanders’s strengths. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, running Clinton against Trump is a disastrous, suicidal proposition.

Sanders supporters have lately been arguing that their candidate is more electable than people think, and they have some support from the available polling. In a number of hypotheticals, Sanders does better than Clinton at beating Trump, and his “unfavorable” ratings among voters are a good deal lower than Clinton’s. In response to this, however, Clinton supporters insist that polling at this stage means very little, and since Bernie is not well known and there has not been a national attack campaign directed at him from the right yet, his supporters do not account for the drop in support that will occur when voters realize he is on the fringes. Imagine, they say, how viciously the right will attack Sanders’s liberal record.

Clinton’s people are right to point out that these polls mean very little; after all, Sanders’s entire campaign success is a caution against placing too much weight on early polling. And they are especially right to emphasize that we should visualize how the campaign by conservatives will realistically play out, rather than attempting to divine the future from highly fallible polling numbers. But it’s precisely when we try to envision how the real dynamics of the campaign will transpire that we see just how disastrous a Clinton-Trump fight will be for Clinton.

Her supporters insist that she has already been “tried and tested” against all the attacks that can be thrown at her. But this is not the case; she has never been subjected to the full brunt of attacks that come in a general presidential election. Bernie Sanders has ignored most tabloid dirt, treating it as a sensationalist distraction from real issues (“Enough with the damned emails!”) But for Donald Trump, sensationalist distractions are the whole game. He will attempt to crucify her. And it is very, very likely that he will succeed.

Trump’s political dominance is highly dependent on his idiosyncratic, audacious method of campaigning. He deals almost entirely in amusing, outrageous, below-the-belt personal attacks, and is skilled at turning public discussions away from the issues and toward personalities (He/she’s a “loser,” “phony,” “nervous,” “hypocrite,” “incompetent.”) If Trump does have to speak about the issues, he makes himself sound foolish, because he doesn’t know very much. Thus he requires the media not to ask him difficult questions, and depends on his opponents’ having personal weaknesses and scandals that he can merrily, mercilessly exploit.

This campaigning style makes Hillary Clinton Donald Trump’s dream opponent. She gives him an endless amount to work with. The emails, Benghazi, Whitewater, Iraq, the Lewinsky scandal, Chinagate, Travelgate, the missing law firm records, Jeffrey Epstein, Kissinger, Marc Rich, Haiti, Clinton Foundation tax errors, Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest, “We were broke when we left the White House,” Goldman Sachs… There is enough material in Hillary Clinton’s background for Donald Trump to run with six times over.

The defense offered by Clinton supporters is that none of these issues actually amount to anything once you look at them carefully. But this is completely irrelevant; all that matters is the fodder they would provide for the Trump machine. Who is going to be looking carefully? In the time you spend trying to clear up the basic facts of Whitewater, Trump will have made five more allegations.

Even a skilled campaigner would have a very difficult time parrying such endless attacks by Trump. Even the best campaigner would find it impossible to draw attention back to actual substantive policy issues, and would spend their every moment on the defensive. But Hillary Clinton is neither the best campaigner nor even a skilled one. In fact, she is a dreadful campaigner. She may be a skilled policymaker, but on the campaign trail she makes constant missteps and never realizes things have gone wrong until it’s too late.

Everyone knows this. Even among Democratic party operatives, she’s acknowledged as “awkward and uninspiring on the stump,” carrying “Bill’s baggage with none of Bill’s warmth.” New York magazine described her “failing to demonstrate the most elementary political skills, much less those learned at Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie.” Last year the White House was panicking at her levels of electoral incompetence, her questionable decision making, and her inclination for taking sleazy shortcuts. More recently, noting Sanders’s catch-up in the polls, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin said that she was a “rotten candidate” whose attacks on Sanders made no sense, and that “at some point, you cannot blame the national mood or a poor staff or a brilliant opponent for Hillary Clinton’s campaign woes.” Yet in a race against Trump, Hillary will be handicapped not only by her feeble campaigning skills, but the fact that she will have a sour national mood, a poor staff, and a brilliant opponent.

Every Democrat should take some time to fairly, dispassionately examine Clinton’s track record as a campaigner. Study how the ‘08 campaign was handled, and how this one has gone. Assess her strengths and weaknesses with as little bias or prejudice as possible. Then picture the race against Trump, and think about how it will unfold.

It’s easy to see that Trump has every single advantage. Because the Republican primary will be over, he can come at her from both right and left as he pleases. As the candidate who thundered against the Iraq War at the Republican debate, he can taunt Clinton over her support for it. He will paint her as a member of the corrupt political establishment, and will even offer proof: “Well, I know you can buy politicians, because I bought Senator Clinton. I gave her money, she came to my wedding.” He can make it appear that Hillary Clinton can be bought, that he can’t, and that he is in charge. It’s also hard to defend against, because it appears to be partly true. Any denial looks like a lie, thus making Hillary’s situation look even worse. And then, when she stumbles, he will mock her as incompetent.

Charges of misogyny against Trump won’t work. He is going to fill the press with the rape and harassment allegations against Bill Clinton and Hillary’s role in discrediting the victims (something that made even Lena Dunham deeply queasy.) He can always remind people that Hillary Clinton referred to Monica Lewinsky as a “narcissistic loony toon.” Furthermore, since Trump is not an anti-Planned Parenthood zealot (being the only one willing to stick up for women’s health in a room full of Republicans), it will be hard for Clinton to paint him as the usual anti-feminist right-winger.

Trump will capitalize on his reputation as a truth-teller, and be vicious about both Clinton’s sudden changes of position (e.g. the switch on gay marriage, plus the affected economic populism of her run against Sanders) and her perceived dishonesty. One can already imagine the monologue:

“She lies so much. Everything she says is a lie. I’ve never seen someone who lies so much in my life. Let me tell you three lies she’s told. She made up a story about how she was ducking sniper fire! There was no sniper fire. She made it up! How do you forget a thing like that? She said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the guy who climbed Mount Everest. He hadn’t even climbed it when she was born! Total lie! She lied about the emails, of course, as we all know, and is probably going to be indicted. You know she said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! It was a lie! Thousands of American soldiers are dead because of her. Not only does she lie, her lies kill people. That’s four lies, I said I’d give you three. You can’t even count them. You want to go on PolitiFact, see how many lies she has? It takes you an hour to read them all! In fact, they ask her, she doesn’t even say she hasn’t lied. They asked her straight up, she says she usually tries to tell the truth! Ooooh, she tries! Come on! This is a person, every single word out of her mouth is a lie. Nobody trusts her. Check the polls, nobody trusts her. Yuge liar.”

Where does she even begin to respond to this? Some of it’s true, some of it isn’t, but the more she tries to defensively parse it (“There’s been no suggestion I’m going to be indicted! And I didn’t say I usually tried to tell the truth, I said I always tried and usually succeeded”) the deeper she sinks into the hole.

Trump will bob, weave, jab, and hook. He won’t let up. And because Clinton actually has lied, and actually did vote for the Iraq War, and actually is hyper-cosy with Wall Street, and actually does change her positions based on expediency, all she can do is issue further implausible denials, which will further embolden Trump. Nor does she have a single offensive weapon at her disposal, since every legitimate criticism of Trump’s background (inconsistent political positions, shady financial dealings, pattern of deception) is equally applicable to Clinton, and he knows how to make such things slide off him, whereas she does not.

The whole Clinton campaign has been unraveling from its inception. It fell apart completely in 2008, and has barely held together against the longest of long shot candidates. No matter how likely she may be to win the primary, things do not bode well for a general election, whomever the nominee may be. As H.A. Goodman put it in Salon:

Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party.

The “contempt” bit of this is obviously silly; we all know levels of contempt have reached their world-historic high point in the Republican attitude toward Obama. But the rest is true: it’s incredibly hard to run somebody very few people like and expect to win. With the jocular, shrewd Donald Trump as an opponent, that holds true a million times over.

Nor are the demographics going to be as favorable to Clinton as she thinks. Trump’s populism will have huge resonance among the white working class in both red and blue states; he might even peel away her black support. And Trump has already proven false the prediction that he would alienate Evangelicals through his vulgarity and his self-deification. Democrats are insistently repeating their belief that a Trump nomination will mobilize liberals to head to the polls like never before, but with nobody particularly enthusiastic for Clinton’s candidacy, it’s not implausible that a large number of people will find both options so unappealing that they stay home.

A Clinton/Trump match should therefore not just worry Democrats. It should terrify them. They should be doing everything possible to avoid it. A Trump/Sanders contest, however, looks very different indeed.

Trump’s various unique methods of attack would instantly be made far less useful in a run against Sanders. All of the most personal charges (untrustworthiness, corruption, rank hypocrisy) are much more difficult to make stick. The rich history of dubious business dealings is nonexistent. None of the sleaze in which Trump traffics can be found clinging to Bernie. Trump’s stand up routine just has much less obvious personal material to work with. Sanders is a fairly transparent guy; he likes the social safety net, he doesn’t like oligarchy, he’s a workaholic who sometimes takes a break to play basketball, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Contrast that with the above-noted list of juicy Clinton tidbits.

Trump can’t clown around nearly as much at a debate with Sanders, for the simple reason that Sanders is dead set on keeping every conversation about the plight of America’s poor under the present economic system. If Trump tells jokes and goofs off here, he looks as if he’s belittling poor people, not a magnificent idea for an Ivy League trust fund billionaire running against a working class public servant and veteran of the Civil Rights movement. Instead, Trump will be forced to do what Hillary Clinton has been forced to do during the primary, namely to make himself sound as much like Bernie Sanders as possible. For Trump, having to get serious and take the Trump Show off the air will be devastating to his unique charismatic appeal.

Against Trump, Bernie can play the same “experience” card that Hillary plays. After all, while Sanders may look like a policy amateur next to Clinton, next to Trump he looks positively statesmanlike. Sanders can point to his successful mayoralty and long history as Congress’s “Amendment King” as evidence of his administrative bona fides. And Sanders’s lack of foreign policy knowledge won’t hurt him when facing someone with even less. Sanders will be enough of an outsider for Trump’s populist anti-Washington appeal to be powerless, but enough of an insider to appear an experienced hand at governance.

Trump is an attention-craving parasite, and such creatures are powerful only when indulged and paid attention to. Clinton will be forced to pay attention to Trump because of his constant evocation of her scandals. She will attempt to go after him. She will, in other words, feed the troll. Sanders, by contrast, will almost certainly behave as if Trump isn’t even there. He is unlikely to rise to Trump’s bait, because Sanders doesn’t even care to listen to anything that’s not about saving social security or the disappearing middle class. He will almost certainly seem as if he barely knows who Trump is. Sanders’s commercials will be similar to those he has run in the primary, featuring uplifting images of America, aspirational sentiments about what we can be together, and moving testimonies from ordinary Americans. Putting such genuine dignity and good feeling against Trump’s race-baiting clownishness will be like finally pouring water on the Wicked Witch. Hillary Clinton cannot do this; with her, the campaign will inevitably descend into the gutter, and the unstoppable bloated Trump menace will continue to grow ever larger.

Sanders is thus an almost perfect secret weapon against Trump. He can pull off the only maneuver that is capable of neutralizing Trump: ignoring him and actually keeping the focus on the issues. Further, Sanders will have the advantage of an enthusiastic army of young volunteers, who will be strongly dedicated to the mission of stalling Trump’s quest for the presidency. The Sanders team is extremely technically skilled; everything from their television commercials to their rally organizing to their inspired teasing is pulled off well. The Sanders team is slick and adaptable, the Clinton team is ropey and fumbling.

There’s only one real way to attack Bernie Sanders, and we all know it: he’s a socialist fantasist out of touch with the Realities of Economics. But Trump in the worst possible position to make this criticism. Economists have savaged Trump’s own proposals as sheer lunacy, using every word deployed against Bernie and then some. And while from a D.C. policy veteran like Clinton, charges of a failure to understand how political decision making works may sound reasonable, Sanders is a successful legislator who has run a city; the host of The Apprentice may have a more difficult time portraying a long-serving congressman as being unfamiliar with how Washington works.

Of course, the American people are still jittery about socialism. But they’re less jittery than they used to be, and Bernie does a good job portraying socialism as being about little more than paid family leave and sick days (a debatable proposition, but one beside the point.) His policies are popular and appeal to the prevailing national sentiment. It’s a risk, certainly. But the Soviet Union bogeyman is long gone, and everyone gets called a socialist these days no matter what their politics. It’s possible that swing voters dislike socialism more than they dislike Hillary Clinton, but in a time of economic discontent one probably shouldn’t bet on it.

One thing that should be noted is that all of this analysis applies solely to a race against Trump; the situation changes drastically and unpredictably if Marco Rubio is the nominee or Michael Bloomberg enters the race. Yet the moment, it doesn’t look like Marco Rubio will be nominated, but that Donald Trump will be. And in that case, Clinton is toast.

Some in the media have rushed to declare Sanders’s campaign moribund in the wake of his recent loss in Nevada. This is absurd; after all, out of 50 states, only three have voted, one being a tie, one being a major Sanders win, and one being a small Clinton win. The media has dishonestly pointed to Hillary Clinton’s higher superdelegate count as evidence of her strong lead, despite knowing full well that superdelegates are highly unlikely to risk tearing the party apart by taking the nomination out of voters’ hands, and are thus mostly a formality. The press has also crafted a narrative about Sanders “slipping behind,” ignoring the fact that Sanders has been behind from the very start; not for a moment has he been in front.

But even if it was correct to say that Sanders was “starting to” lose (instead of progressively losing less and less), this should only motivate all Democrats to work harder to make sure he is nominated. One’s support for Sanders should increase in direct proportion to one’s fear of Trump. And if Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race and throw her every ounce of energy into supporting Sanders. If this does not occur, the resulting consequences for Muslims and Mexican immigrants of a Trump presidency will be fully the responsibility of Clinton and the Democratic Party. To run a candidate who can’t win, or who is a very high-risk proposition, is to recklessly play with the lives of millions of people. So much depends on stopping Trump; a principled defeat will mean nothing to the deported, or to those being roughed up by Trump’s goon squads or executed with pigs’ blood-dipped bullets.

Donald Trump is one of the most formidable opponents in the history of American politics. He is sharp, shameless, and likable. If he is going to be the nominee, Democrats need to think very seriously about how to defeat him. If they don’t, he will be the President of the United States, which will have disastrous repercussions for religious and racial minorities and likely for everyone else, too. Democrats should consider carefully how a Trump/Clinton matchup would develop, and how a Trump/Sanders matchup would. For their sake, hopefully they will realize that the only way to prevent a Trump presidency is the nomination of Bernie Sanders.

Nathan J. Robinson is a Social Policy PhD student at Harvard University, as well as an attorney and children's book author. He is the editor of Current Affairs.

Sanders/Clinton: The Embarrassment of Riches

The Glorious Companion 

Progressive AM Radio in the High Desert:

KABQ Albuquerque

A chance to connect with the REAL sentiment of America's vast majority

It should be no surprise that this old blogger has the typical geriatric habit of listening to the radio.

Here in Albuquerque we are blessed with our own progressive station, KABQ AM 1350. This is mentioned here because plenty of other cities much more populous than Albuquerque are virtually "progressive radio deserts" in which every progressive station which has ever attempted to gain a foot hold has been ruthlessly murdered by the "big money boys."  

Thanks to KABQ, MeanMesa enjoys broadcast access to a very robust collection of progressive talk shows every week day. Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Bill Press and so on. [A late night favorite, Mike Malloy, finally threw in the towel and began selling subscription pod casts. Unhappily, the household budget won't quite stretch far enough to include them in MeanMesa's daily fare. On a positive note, however, it is now being hinted that another of MeanMesa's all time favorites, Randi Rhodes, may be returning to the airwaves after her well earned sabbatical.]

MeanMesa has slowly realized that listening to an unending litany of citizens trying to validate either a Sanders or a Clinton decision has induced a rather stubbornly unpleasant episode of "gastric disturbance." These stuttering "debates" are now the "meat and potatoes" of most of these favorite talk shows. Predictably, each of the respective hosts of these shows from time to time is accused by some breathless partisan of "being biased" in favor of one or the other of these candidates.

All this was mildly interesting for a while, but when presented in an unending, glacial flow of such petulant rantings, it has become tiresome indeed.

Come on, folks. THIS IS WHY WE HAVE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTIONS! So, relax. Campaign if it pleases you, but acknowledge the fact that WE KNOW HOW THIS IS GOING TO TURN OUT! SOMEONE is going to win these primaries and become the Democratic nominee at the convention.

There is no possible reason for us to be so eagerly "hoisting ourselves on our own petards" with this

Remember? We're DEMOCRATS!
[image fB]

 endless bickering and name calling. Let's save all this energy to make sure that the oligarchs don't capture the White House simply because we were so exhausted that we couldn't fight.

Finally, there should be a short "disclaimer." MeanMesa will be voting for Sanders in the New Mexico primary. However, there are both a Sanders and a Clinton bumper sticker on Galactic Headquarters' front apartment window. Tomorrow morning MeanMesa will be at the Democratic Party ward meeting at a near by high school selecting a nominating delegate for the NM State Democratic Convention. AND, MeanMesa will be voting for THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY Candidate in the 2016 election.

THAT is where we are.

Given all this, have a look at MeanMesa's modest little graphic statement.

[MeanMesa]

US Billionaires: Free to a Good Home

 Conscience and the Rich

Yeh, it's "camels through the eye of a needle" again...

Any American with political awareness at the 20% level or greater has already spent too many moments of a lifetime complaining about the democracy's injuries at the hands of the relentless billionaires. MeanMesa should probably sign that list at the very top. 

Relax. Neither a single word of this post nor a single thought behind a single word of it will encourage anybody to stop complaining. Just the opposite -- raising hell -- protesting in the streets, rabble rousing and good old fashioned, overly loud griping -- has always been a great way to release otherwise depressing emotions.

Those techniques have successfully demonstrated their political inertia many times in the past, but the sad fact is that in those past cases the "targets" of such action have always previously had consciences. In those traditional cases when the "voices" reached a certain "persuasive" crescendo, those "consciences" compelled the miscreants to reconsider their corresponding actions, and beneficial change followed shortly behind.

However, in the case of today's American billionaires there is no "conscience" there at the "receiving end" of such complaints -- perhaps an occasional moment of fear -- but never a moment of conscience. At this juncture we can agree that there are no "matters of conscience" which seem to bother these savage little trust fund babies even briefly.

Given this depressing analysis, this post can turn to "the next question," and perhaps that "next question" is, in fact for us today, "the burning question of the day."

Can't Live With Them and

 Can't Live Without Them

It's probably time to think about living without them.

Permanently.

Most likely somewhere in the dark abyss of anti-Soviet propaganda from the Cold War days our nation's oligarchs, still in their infant stages [at least compared to now...], were already obsessed with unilaterally promoting the idea that the US should, necessarily, be "run" by elites -- particularly what came to be called "business magnates" or "captains of industry."

The pitch was quite straightforward. If these "shining stars of the free market" did not, somehow, absolutely represent the ultimate genetics among all those walking around in the "free market democracy," why, then, had they become so incredibly rich?

Setting aside the biblical explanation of them "being the chosen ones," what was left became an urban myth of, shall we say, intrinsic superiority. In no time the "smelly masses" became completely convinced that, inevitably, "the sweetest oil always floated to the very top of the cess pool."

To the "thought bending" delight of these anxiously self-proclaimed "masters of the universe," there was a very convenient historical precedent available to support their scam. While, at the time, their almost mystically sacred role models may have been the vicious "Robber Barons" from a few decades before them, the essential "spark" which could validate their craven ambitions was to be found in the "righteous economic philosophy" of an 18th Century Scottish nobleman.

The "Tytler Irony"

It wasn't the poor we had to fear after all.

Alexander Fraser Tytler [1747-1813] was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, [FRSE] and a member of the old landed nobility [Lord Woodhouselee].

Lord Tytler [image]

Although Tytler was a prolific author and teacher, the "masters of the universe" were most attracted to a certain idea which Tytler expressed in the following excerpt:

Welfare - "18th Century Scotland-style"

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler

[Visit the site here.]

Tytler's dark, prophetic promise of inevitable national bankruptcy followed by dictatorship fit the needs of the "self justification seeking" billionaires like a hand in a glove. In practically no time this dire prognosis had saturated the US electorate. It began to "show up" -- always disguised as some sort of valuable 'ancient wisdom' -- in political party platforms to underwrite the then contemporary, anti-Stalinist, anti-collectivist propaganda glacier which was, conveniently for the ambitious domestic oligarchs, inundating the US.

Further, in a perhaps more even minded -- if not prescient -- moment, Tytler gave us an interesting concept of the "cycle of time" describing the development of what he considered the fundamentals of an economic social culture. It, too, is relevant to this post. The graphic below shows how this idea has been effectively "show horned" into today's stage of the US class war.

Tytler: Social Dominionism - Virtue in America [source Gardinersright]

The point here is that Tytler presumed these "engines of capitalism" would be hard working fellows who started from scratch and clawed their way to the top of the pile, garnering wealth for themselves while also spewing energy and abundance elsewhere in society. There are still an abundance of these types. GOOGLE, APPLE, TESLA and even Face Book are great examples of the results of such efforts. [Although it is unavoidably painful, go ahead and add MicroSoft.]

MeanMesa holds these innovative, risk taking, entrepreneurial creators of such things in high regard -- regardless of their apparent politics. They have more than "earned" a place to be as progressive or reactionary as they feel fit.

Importantly, in almost every case of such "ascensions" to the free market's top, there have been moments or doubt and insecurity. MeanMesa wishes to think that even a passing experience of self-doubt, pangs of conscience or a shudder of insecurity gives these contemporary successes a durable memory of their humanity -- a memory allowing them to identify with the challenges faced by the less wealthy.

So far as the current crop of billionaires is concerned, these types with such a "human memory" are not the "problem children." MeanMesa suspects that the precise reason that these types are not the "problem children" is because they worked and gambled for their success. 

The problem with the "problem children" in this sense was that they were already firmly endowed with "their success" before their little umbilical cords were cut. Victims of an eerie alienation, they have never experienced so much as a single moment of insecurity -- and generally, not so much as a single moment of hard work, either.

Herein lies the irony. 

In our modern case Tytler's "descent into bankruptcy and dictatorship" is  much more the primary result of these billionaire "problem children" than the "grumbling, voting poor" who frightened and disgusted him so much.

Although Tytler may have, in a sense, "lucked out" with his vision of the social economic cycle, he clearly misplaced the various roles the rich and the poor would play in its "cycle of rotational development." The only trick remaining to make Tytler's model "fit" today's situation is to equate the inability of a crippled, looted economy to provide jobs as evidence of laziness.

The billionaires' think tanks sailed through this one without breaking a sweat. An obedient media has now planted this "equation" so deeply in the minds of Americans that is widely accepted as fact. Citizens who, only a few years ago, were strongly convinced of the "virtue" of the, say, "Eisenhower model" of the US economy now march in a grotesque lock step to blindly transform the nation into an essentially illiterate, "anything goes" oligarchic paradise ruled by dynastic wealth.

By the way, this bunch of billionaires purchased the Republican Party at about the same time they were purchasing the corporate media and the Congress.

A Vision of "Life After Billionaires"

Maybe not all of them,

 just the ones that chew up your shoes.

Of course we must accept the idea that there will, in our future, still be billionaires. Further, we needn't presume that the mere existence of such successful people is anything we should never tolerate because we imagine them to simply be some sort of evidence of "sinister forces" thriving among us.

This leaves the "problem" of formulating some remedial strategy which can restore the representative democracy and end the anti-democratic maneuvering of some billionaires while leaving open the possibility of leaving the more rational types with all this wealth the opportunity to enjoy happy, productive lives so long as they avoid the temptation of becoming reactionary sociopaths.

This is not a "small" problem.

As for the really bad ones in this present crop, we can't -- unfortunately -- simply "wish them away into the corn field."

"You're a bad man." [image source]

Many of the dynastic fortunes we find supporting and defending these modern day "parasitic problem plutocrats" have been passively "tolerated" in our society for generations. Although this class of our society "took a hit" in the recovery from the great Republican Depression of the 1930's, they haven't changed their ways.

Rather than seeking out a new, more co-existent social role for themselves, they have been resentfully scheming while patiently working to restore their futures to the oligarchic "wet dream" which has hardly changed at all. Now, they believe --- possibly accurately -- that this is their day. This explains their current behavior which has become so unexpectedly reckless and strident.

It's not surprising that the billionaire denizens of the lowest levels continue to host an abiding, cordial hatred for FDR and his policies. Events now upon us, on the other hand, present FDR and his determination to control and limit the oligarchs of his day for a fresh, starkly modern appreciation. Roosevelt actually succeeded in overcoming what appeared at the time to be just as intractable as what we currently face.

Hope springs eternal.

If the Republic is to be, once again, salvaged from grip of these overly ambitious billionaires, the task will not be an easy one. The miscreant fortunes now threatening the democracy have the same character, but they have increased exponentially compared to those facing FDR in the darkest days. The modern oligarchs enjoy all the tactical assets that come with dynastic fortunes. The carefully constructed meme is now that nothing is strong enough to challenge their grip.

A mere handful of these billionaires dreaming of oligarchy now control around 85% of the entire United States. They can, apparently, start or stop wars benefiting their interests at will. The Congress will do nothing. There is good reason to suspect that, having already descended into the corruption this far, no future Congress will ever stand up to them, either. 

They are anxious to convince us that elections amount to simply replacing their old servants in Washington with equally corrupt new ones. Thanks to the work of their think tanks and media, most Americans now believe that the corruption of democracy has become perpetual.

Today, we see exceptions to this which hold faint promise. Senators such as Sanders [I-Vt] and Warren [D-Ma] are speaking quite frankly about the mess, but these are two of one hundred. They are surrounded by deep crowds of the sold out dead enders who have ushered in the calamity we now face.

MeanMesa see violence "floating forth from the woods as if a morning fog."