reflectivepundit

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Risk of Returning Trump to the White House

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Last week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris team should not run again in 2024 listing his age and her inability to gain traction in the American public, not even among fellow Democrats. If Biden and Harris “campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.” Ignatius warned.

As I read the thoughtful column, I agreed with the notion that the Democrats need a changing of the guards on the very top. President Biden’s approval ratings are low, Vice President Harris’s are lower. A series of recent campaign polls had Biden and Trump in dead heats with some showing Trump a few points ahead.

Not surprisingly, voters express their concerns about the presumed top contenders’ age in next year’s election, when asked by pollsters. Joe Biden will be short of 82 years old on Election Day 2024 and Donald Trump 78. The sitting president appears more aged as we see him walking and talking on the screen than his predecessor.

And in today’s world, whether true or false, appearances become reality.

That reality overshadows, in the mind of too many people, President Biden’s good qualities—his commitment to uphold democracy, his sound judgement on policies designed to help the American people, his accomplishment in foreign policy, and his never-ending efforts to reach out for bipartisanship.

For whatever reason, during the Biden presidency Kamala Harris did not get the same opportunities to show leadership qualities as Joe Biden did during the Obama presidency. Also, she has not gotten a fraction of the news coverage that Congresswomen Majorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and similar lightweights receive regularly.

Contrary to many pundits who claim that there are no strong alternatives to the Biden/Harris team among Democrats, I believe there are good choice. On top of my list are Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as presidential candidate and Maryland Governor Wes Moore as second on the ticket—a woman and a Black man both exceptional leaders.

However, as of now, the Biden/Harris team will run for reelection. With Trump on top of the GOP ticket (or someone like Ron DeSantis), perhaps enough Americans will again vote in favor of democracy and Joe Biden.

I will.  

The Criminally Charged Ex-President and the Morally Challenged Would-Be Presidents

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The shamefulness of the positions taken by the majority in Wednesday’s television line-up of GOP hopefuls for their party’s presidential nomination became even more clear, when their idol was arrested in a Georgia prison and forced to pose for a mug shot. A day earlier, with the exception of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson five male competitors (DeSantis, Pence, Ramaswamy, Scott, and Burgum) and the lone female candidate (Haley) had promised to vote for Trump if he becomes their party’s nominee--even if he is criminally convicted in a court of law.  

 

Instead of taking the moral high ground like Christie and Hutchinson, even former vice president Mike Pence, who, along with his family, was physically threatened by the violent crowd invading the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 said that he still would vote for Trump again. Did he forget the rapidly erected gallows and the horrible screams “Hang Mike Pence” by those marching in the name of the then president and waving Trump flags as they launched their violent assaults?

The most obvious Trump clone on the stage, Vivek Ramaswamy, was declared the winner of the debate by Mr. Trump. That was hardly surprising because the young entrepreneur with bully manners declared that “President Trump was the best president of the 21^st century.” Moreover, he promised that as president he would pardon Trump. He then attacked Pence for not making the same commitment.

Pence refused—but left the door open for a pardon--although Trump did not take any action to call off his attack dogs in the Capitol when Pence and others were acutely threatened; moreover, Trump continues to spread the Big Lie about the 2020 election outcome.

Yes, Mike Pence deserves our respect for protecting the US Constitution and our democracy on that infamous day in January 2021. But after that courageous act, he somehow lost the courage to stand up to Trump and Trumpism and the MAGA movement--all enemies of democracy.

Ramaswamy may be auditioning for joining Trump as running mate. He will not succeed. Trump will only accept a low-key person like Pence in his team, not a hotdog like Ramaswamy. Tim Scott may fit the bill.

When asked about Trump’s mug shot, John Bolton, for a while National Security advisor in the Trump White House, said, “He could’ve smiled. He could’ve looked benign. Instead, he looks like a thug!”

Even a mug shot with a thug-like image does not matter to Trump's supporters.  Instead, there are already signs that he and they will treat this picture like a badge of honor.

The question, then, is and remains: How will the American electorate at large react and vote next year?

The Jan. 6 Indictment of Donald J. Trump: Less Shock Value Than New Normalcy—and What Now?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After eight years of Donald Trump’s reality show performances on the political stage, his demagogic hate speech, lies, authoritarian tendencies, corruption, and a violent coup attempt to overturn the 2020 election results--nothing can shock the American public and political class with respect to the former president and current presidential candidate.

Thus, Tuesday’s four count conspiracy and obstruction Jan. 6 indictment did not result in a public shock wave but rather in a business-as-usual perception. It was simply the same as the reaction to Trump’s earlier indictments in the classified documents, hush money illegalities, and sexual assault cases.

To be sure, there was a burst of breaking news coverage in the hours following the release of the Jan. 6 indictment the other day. Talking heads spoke about the first time a former U.S. president was charged with unlawful conspiracies and obstruction to falsify election results to stay in office. What the 45-page indictment describes eloquently were not the actions of a president who respects the Constitution and the traditional democratic rules and values but of a rogue leader and long-time admirer of past and present authoritarian strongmen.

Worse yet, although Trump faces prison, if found guilty, he is the dominant candidate for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. His best bet for beating one or more criminal convictions is a victory in next year’s election and his return to the White House.

The most recent opinion polls show that Trump and President Joe Biden are in a tied race. Of course, these numbers can change in the 15 months to next year’s election day.

But in the first hours after the latest indictment a multitude of Republicans in Washington and around the country attacked the “Biden DOJ” for charging their “innocent” leader. While Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Asa Hutchinson spoke of the serious charges against Trump, the more Far-Right candidates Ron DeSantis blamed the “weaponized [Biden] government and Vivec Ramaswamy called the indictment “un-American.”  Nothing changed.

In the past, political observers wondered why a man like Donald Trump was able to win the 2016 election. I do not want to rehash in detail that Hillary Clinton won the total number of national vote but fell short in the electoral college that is a vestige of the undemocratic features of the US Constitution. One way or the other, some 70 million Americans voted Trump into the White House seven years ago.

Yes, Trump lost in 2020 both in the electoral college and in the nationwide total of votes. But it was not a landslide for Biden but a slim victory.

Today, the support for Trump in his MAGA movement and the Republican Party seems solid and goes up with every new set of criminal charges against him. As the campaign and the various trials approach and begin, Trump will certainly go the mass rally route again and stir his followers hate of “the other side.” Last month, Trump told his supporters already, “I’m being indicted for you!” And he promises that only he can save the country from the evil liberals, socialists, globalists, and the likes.

I think that in today’s America we should no longer focus solely on Trumpism and its threat to democracy but rather on the many Americans who believe in the values of liberal democracy, the mutual agreement on the legitimacy of majority and minority parties, the peaceful transition of power from one party and one leader to the others, and so forth…

Why is it that we do not see a potent pro-democracy movement here? This question occurs to me every time I look at the images of protesting Israelis who try to prevent their state’s fall into illiberal democracy or theocracy. There are a multitude of former Republicans, anti-Trumpers, and PACs that support them; there are the usual groups supporting the campaigns of Democrats. 

We have not seen any efforts to mobilize Americans by organizing pro-democracy rallies and perhaps even a from-below movement.  

Typically, it takes politically skilled leaders to organize grass roots political actions over longer time periods or even social movements. But the story of an Israeli woman, a particle physicist, mother of five daughters, with no political past or ambitions, who became one of the several  organizers for the pro-democracy protests in her country, is inspiring.

Why not similar initiatives in defense of democracy right here and now—before it is too late?

First the Post-Massacre Playbook; Then the Do-Nothing Nation

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Not all of the ten victims of the Buffalo mass shooting were buried, when an 18-year-old gunman killed at least nineteen children and two of their teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Since lethal incidents like those in Buffalo and Uvalde have become as American as apple pie, they are by now followed automatically by the same post-massacre playbook: Flags are flown at half-mast, solemn prayer are services are held, make-shift memorials are established and buried under mountains of flowers, calls to pray for the victims and their families are issued, prominent people visit the venues of grief, shock and anger are expressed.

While the last chapter of the playbook is still open in the aftermath of Buffalo, the first chapter is now devoted to the events in Uvalde. Yes, our hearts and souls hurt. Yes, we are praying for the victims and survivors. Yes, we are angry that within two weeks two 18-year-old adolescents killed a total of thirty-one human beings. And, yes, we are frustrated that both killed with assault weapons, weapons of war, semi-automatic rifles that allowed them to kill a multitude of persons in record time.

The gun lobby and their supporters have a standard slogan: Guns do not kill—people do. What a tragic joke! For the idea that reasonable people with guns can stop crazy people with guns was once again disproven in Buffalo and in Uvalde: In the first case, bullets from the gun of a guard in Tops Friendly Market could not stop the mass-shooter because the latter wore body armor. In the second case, two police officers encountered the shooter before he entered the school but, again, their shots were deflected by perpetrator’s body armor.

No other country in the world makes it as easy as this country to purchase assault weapons and magazines that guarantee the largest number of people killed in the shortest possible time. In the United States, the number of handguns is significantly larger than the total population size. And no other country has as many mass shootings and people killed by handguns than the United States.

Again and again, public figures and regular people will say in response to catastrophic shootings, “This is not what we are!”

Unfortunately, this is what we are.

The Orwellian Truth and Big Brother Trump

By Brigitte L. Nacos

We have heard it all from the White House before. There are no objective facts, there are alternative facts. Think of Donald Trump’s claim that the crowd size at his inauguration was   unprecedented although aerial photos showed clearly far more people at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Facts do not matter for Trump and his staffers who deal a lot in alternative facts and post-truth.

What unfolded in the face of Hurricane Dorian deserves mentioning even though nothing coming out of the White House defying fact and reality is terribly surprising.  

It began with the President tweeting that Alabama was among the states threatened by Dorian--perhaps an unwitting mistake. After weather experts assured the public that there was no threat whatsoever for Alabama, Trump could have easily acknowledged he made a mistake. Instead, he continued to insist that Alabama could be affected.Yesterday, from the Oval Office, he displayed a map issued by the National Hurricane Center that was obviously falsified to show Alabama could have been affected by Dorian.

Challenged by news reports, the President issued yet another tweet this morning insisting,  “What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

This all is so similar to totalitarian alternative reality, fact, and truth as described in George Orwell’s “1984;” it is so strikingly similar to what Big Brother’s voice O’Brien tells Winston who has not yet surrendered to the totalitarian dictate:

“Winston, you believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right...But I tell you, Winston, reality is not external...

Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”

In a moment of dissent Winston wrote in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two make four.”

Big Brother knew.

Following a torturous process overseen by O’Brien, Winston does no longer question Big Brother’s complete control over fact, reality, and truth.

When Big Brother says two plus two equals three—or five—or anything, it is the truth.

As the U.S. President continued to claim that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian against all facts, his message was clear: Whatever Big Brother Trump holds to be truth is truth.

Thankfully, America’s 2019 is not Orwell’s 1984...

Brexit Vote and Populist Failings There and Here

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This weekend, as I was leaving Dublin, the Irish Times’s only front page story was an excellent commentary by Fintan O’Toole  titled “Brexit fantasy is about to come crashing down.” Here are the opening paragraphs of O’Toole’s dissection of the equally surprising as shocking referendum result and its likely consequences:

“Did you ever see a slightly drunk man trying that trick with the tablecloth? He thinks he can whip the cloth off the table with a fast, clean snap, but leave all the crockery perfectly intact. He gives a sharp tug and stands back with a triumphant flourish as the plates and glasses come flying to the ground and shatter all around him.

That’s what Brexit is like. Those who have driven it have successfully pulled the cloth off the table – the underlying fabric of modern Britain has been whipped away with a shocking suddenness.

They stand in triumph, sure that they have pulled off the trick of removing a whole layer of political reality without disturbing all the family tableware. They have yet to notice that so much that was on the table is now at their feet, broken, perhaps irreparably.”

In the Brexit case the imaginary trick that O’Toole describes was not performed by drunkards but by opportunistic populists whose major appeals were not based on fact and truth. The public perceptions they strove for were that an EU exit would mean quick fixes for all the ills in the U.K.--most importantly, a stop of the transfer of huge sums of U.K. taxpayers’ money to Brussels and of the flow of foreigners onto the British isle.

One English woman interviewed by a TV reporter lauded the vote as a return to “normalcy” and to “things like they used to be.”

Ah, well. It took merely hours or days for some leaders of the Exit movement to admit explicitly or implicitly that nothing would change in the near future or perhaps not at all.

As Steven Castle reports in today’s New York Times, the most prominent Brexit populists Boris Johnson, the former London mayor, and Nigel Farage, leader of the far right Independence Party, along with others began to backpedal on their campaign promises that were all along based on misinformation.

The Brexit advocates expected to lose the referendum and win political capital among the divided conservative camp. As their underhanded tricks become increasingly exposed, they are in a pickle. As Castle put it, “Having now ousted Prime Minister David Cameron, they [the Exit leaders] face a political vacuum, with their base demanding that promises be kept. Mr. Johnson, the front-runner to replace Mr. Cameron, has not made any further pronouncements since a subdued statement on Friday that was restricted to generalities. If he does become prime minister, Mr. Johnson will face the task of carrying out a British withdrawal without provoking a backlash from those who believed campaign slogans or sentiments that he certainly appeared to endorse.”

In praising the Brexit decision and comparing its core demands to the fuzzy agenda behind his “Taking Back America” slogan Donald Trump will continue to copy the metaphorical table cloth trick of his British soulmates—regardless of the consequences.

The Shame of a Nation (III): Spineless GOP Does Not Stand Up to Gun-Nuts and the 2. Amendment Myth

By Brigitte L. Nacos

For a moment or two after the mass shooting in Newtown before Christmas I thought that this was a real opportunity to counter the glut of assault weapons in the hands of millions of Americans. Who in heaven would not support reasonable regulations in a nation with far more handguns and far more shooting victims than any other comparable democracy?

I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun industry that fills the NRA’s coffers would change their tune. But in the face of 20 little boys and girls mowed down by a lone gunman in a short shooting spree I hoped for some leaders in the ranks of the Republican Party to ignore the pressures and threats from the gun lobby and its fanatical followers in the militia and Tea Party movements.

It is now clear that I was wrong. Very wrong.

Yesterday, after President Obama introduced his comprehensive but altogether modest gun regulation proposals,  the chairman of the National Republican Committee (NRC) Reince Priebus issued a statement that called the president’s initiative “an executive power grab” and criticized that Obama “paid lip service to our fundamental constitutional rights, but took actions that disregard the 2nd Amendment and the legislative process.”

As head of the NRC Priebus speaks for the GOP. He is the closest to what one would consider the Republican Party’s current leader. And what his comments boil down to is a sanitized version of what the paranoid wingnuts post on their web sites.

There has not been one Republican in the Congress who has refuted Priebus or those colleagues in their midst whose hate speech endears them to the gun rights fanatics. Not even in the face of those who talk about Obama’s impeachment; and not even in response to those who allude to a new revolutionary or civil war—the very nonsense dominant in far-right cyberspace communications.  

This is what Tea Party darling and 2016 GOP presidential hopeful Rand Paul said even before Obama had introduced his gun regulation plan:

"I'm against having a king.  I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress--that's someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch. I've been opposed to executive orders, even with Republican presidents. But one that wants to infringe on the Second Amendment, we will fight tooth and nail.”

Tooth and nail? Sounds like the call to arms in the virtual echo chamber of the militia and Tea Party milieu.  

The Shame of a Nation (II): Outlaw Military Assault Weapons in the Hands of Civilians

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The 20-year old who killed 12 little girls and 8 little boys and six women within a few minutes in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, carried a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle and two semiautomatic pistols, including a .10 mm Glock and a .9 mm Sig Sauer. These three weapons plus two hunting rifles were owned by the shooter’s mother who, according to media reports, was a gun enthusiast, a person fascinated with guns.

Her son used the Buckmaster rifle, an assault weapon used by the military, in his horrific attack. It is not known yet, how many bullets were shot. But according to Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, all victims were hit multiple times. Moreover, as Dr. Carver revealed, the bullets the attacker used were designed “in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in” and therefore resulting in deep damage.

In the renewed gun-control debate, there are demands for background checks, longer waiting times, stricter rules for gun show and online sales.

All of that might help a bit.

But it hardly would have kept the Connecticut mother from buying those weapons and her son from using the most lethal one in his attack.

Therefore, the law provision most urgently needed is the categorical ban of military-type assault weapons in the hands of civilians.

Apart from the military and SWAT teams, nobody has any reason to own killer-weapons that mow down dozens and dozens of targets within minutes.

Later today, President Obama will visit Newtown, the small New England community that experienced the ultimate nightmare.

In the face of unspeakable tragedy, a good president becomes the consoler-in-chief.

But that is not enough. He must now become the attack-dog-in-chief against the National Rifle Association and its allies.

                                                      X

Unless there is a categorical ban of automatic weapons, shootings in public places will be as American as apple pie.

Consider this, in the week of the Connecticut massacre

• a gunman at an Oregon shopping mall killed two people and wounded a third amid a holiday crowd estimated at 10,000 people;
• an 18-year-old student in Oklahoma was arrested for allegedly plotting a shooting and bombing attack at Bartlesville High School the same day the mass shooting occurred in the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown;
• one day after the Connecticut massacre, a man was arrested after firing about 50 shots in the parking lot of a Southern California shopping mall, prompting a lockdown of stores crowded with holiday shoppers. In this case, fortunately, no one was harmed.
• Also on Saturday, a man in Cedar Lake, Indiana, who had 47 guns hidden in his home was arrested after he threatened to "kill as many people as he could" at an elementary school.

And then this latest incident--today: St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Connecticut, was evacuated during noon Mass, after a man had called the church and said, “I’m coming to kill, I’m coming to kill.”

Glenn Beck’s Out of Control Bigotry: If the Labor Party’s Political Youth Camp in Norway “Sounds a Little Like the Hitler Youth,” What about the Political Kids Camps of his Own 9-12 Tea Party Project?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Most of the bodies of the terrorism victims in Oslo were not yet identified, when right-extremist hate monger Glenn Beck shot his mouth off in an unbelievable insult of those victims and their families, friends, and all of Norway.  This is what he told his radio audience:

“Saturday I was following the news of the shooting in Norway and the explosion in Norway, which happened what on Friday…When we heard the explosion everybody was willing to say, it’s Muslim extremists, it’s Muslim extremists. I don’t think we made a comment on it because we didn’t know other than a bombing had happened, and as the thing started to unfold and there was a shooting a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth or you know whatever. Who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.”

Well, Mr. Beck, if you would know more about the world than your narrow but so lucrative niche of divisive demagoguery and hate mongering, you would not insult the long Western European tradition of all kinds of organizations--right, left, and in the middle--, including political parties, to get young people interested in public affairs. This is one reason why the average Europeans tends to be far better informed about public affairs than the average American and would be less likely to be fooled by your tirades.

By comparing the Labor Party’s youth division that organized the camp on the island of Utoya for its members to the Third Reich’s Hitler Youth, Beck wittingly or unwittingly seems to imply a motive for the massacre.

Just as stunning is Beck’s condemnation of camps for kids that are political in nature. He conveniently “forgot” that the 9-12 Project, his own prominent Tea Party initiative, organizes political camps in various state sections for children actually much younger than those participating in the Utoya camp in Norway.

Here is an excerpt from one on-line invitation for such a 9-12 Tea Party camp:

Now It Is Time for the President’s Bully Pulpit: Explaining the Tea-Party-Republican Scheme of Taking from Society’s Weakest and Giving to the Wealthiest

By Brigitte L. Nacos

President Obama can no longer sit on the fence in the battle for America’s short-term and long-term budget priorities. He should no longer speak with a soft voice only but must use the stick. The bully pulpit that the White House provides him with is a powerful and unique stage. And now is the time to use that stage, go public forcefully, and explain in plain language how the Tea-Party-driven Republican budget plan would take from the middle and lower classes and give to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Appealing for sanity, unity, cooperation, and compromise will not work, when dealing with leaders who are held captive by a fanatic minority within their own party and the nation.

Tea Party extremists and their Republican captives in Congress as well as an assortment of presidential hopefuls have intensified their inflammatory rhetoric to sharpen the partisan-ideological divide. They push their radical, reactionary agenda, not equitable and workable policies. When House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin explained his 2012 budget proposal this week, he proclaimed outright, “This isn’t a budget. This is a cause.”

This cause is not for the benefit of the American people as the populist leaders in the unholy alliance of Tea Party movement and Republican Party claim. On the contrary,  the budget plan is in reality a shocking road map to demolish America’s modest social safety net that was woven step by step since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency to provide a modicum of care and security for the old, the disabled, and the poor—especially children.

The war against what the Wall Street Journal and other guardians of the economic and political power elite call with obvious disdain “the entitlement state” is in reality a campaign to make the tiny strata of the richest Americans richer und the most profitable corporations more profitable.

Apart from some hard-hitting editorials, opinion pieces, and talk show hosts, most of the mainstream media and cable talk shows have not exposed the appalling nature of the Republican budget plan. Instead, Congressman Ryan and his proposal received quite a friendly media reception. The discussions of and comments by generously compensated talking heads, for example on MSMBC’s “Morning Joe,” as they discussed Ryan’s budget proposal and the suggested elimination of entitlements, such as Medicaid, Medicare, have been particularly frustrating as has the benign coverage of GOP leaders’ demands that the U.S. Senate and the White House capitulate.

To be sure, reforms are needed to rein in government spending. But the proposals of the President’s bi-partisan Budget Commission, not the agenda of the right-extreme fringe that has taken over the Republican Party should be the starting point of discussions. The budget crisis will never be solved by not tackling both the spending and the revenue side. The Ryan plan is heavily biased against the vast majority of hard-working Americans and the growing number of those families under or barely above the poverty line.