Palin wasn’t “drunk” and her Trump speech wasn’t “stupid”: She’s playing right into the heart of twisted Republican politics

Palin’s impressionistic pro-Trump speech shows how Republicans are getting past the “problem” of logic or evidence

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palinapSource:Salon

Author: Amanda Marcotte

Emphasis Mine

Sarah Palin knows what she’s doing. I know this is not a popular opinion on the left in the wake of her lengthy roller coaster of a speech that she gave to endorse Donald Trump on Tuesday in Ames, Iowa, but Palin’s speech was actually a bit of political genius. And not just because she got the hated media to spend two days making fun of it, reinforcing her bitter, gun-clinging audience’s victim complex. (Not that this should stop you from making fun of them. It’s not like condescendingly pretending to respect them wins any favors, either.)

No, Palin is the vanguard of a new way of right-wing speechifying, a surprisingly avant-garde method of political outreach for people who think of themselves as the protectors of tradition. Her methods are the most outrageous, but as with most artistic revolutionaries (in this case, with the art of making political speeches), what seems iconoclastic now will swiftly become the norm for those who follow. Her speech was, for Republican politicians, the “Rite of Spring” or the “Salon des Refusés.” And we can already see the signs that other Republicans are walking the trail that Palin blazed.

Right now, the standard reaction, especially on the left, is to make fun of Palin, wondering if she’s an imbecile or merely just drunk. (She could be! Many innovative artists are, though.) The New York Daily News called her “stupid” in a cover that received many accolades in liberal circles.

Sure, Palin isn’t winning any intelligence contests or even junior leagues “Jeopardy!” any time soon, and yet, I don’t think her speech can be dismissed so easily. The main objection to her speech is it doesn’t fit into the traditional norms of political speech-making.

Traditionally, a political speec h is an argument. It has a thesis, which is backed up with examples and organized in a coherent structure so that it has, or at least feels like it has, a logical flow to it. Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate argued that Western capitalism was the best protector of freedom, and was backed up by the example that was West Berlin. Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” speech argued that liberal values of equality and diversity were our nation’s strength, and he backed this up with many examples, including his own biography.

It is true that anyone trying to cram Palin’s speech into these traditional forms will be lost forever. It’s hard, at times, to even know what she was trying to say, as her speech careened around, touching on often unconnected seeming points. Even those trying to argue that her speech was substantive have to do so through heavy annotation and interpretation.

The thing is, Palin isn’t trying to make an argument. That’s not her strong suit, and that’s not what audiences want from her. Her speech was more impressionistic than argumentative. She was there to push buttons and arouse passions, not get people thinking.

Palin understands, probably better than anyone besides Donald Trump, how thinking is the enemy of the conservative populist mission. What she wants is to make you feel, to have those feelings of bitterness and misplaced entitlement wash over the crowds until they are screaming for more blood. In this, she succeeded.

It’s not a surprise, then, that some folks out there are comparing her speech to poetry, with its rhythms and internal rhymes. One blogger broke down notable parts of her speech into free form poetry.

Who are they to say that?

 

Oh tell somebody like Phyllis Schlafly,

 

she is the Republican, conservative movement icon

 

and hero and a Trump supporter.

 

Tell her she’s not conservative.

 

How ‘bout the rest of us?

Right wingin’,

bitter clingin’,

 

proud clingers of our guns,

 

our god, and our religions,

 

and our Constitution.

 

Tell us that we’re not red enough?

 

Yeah, coming from the establishment.

 

Right.

Or, if you prefer more modern forms, her words have already been matched with hip-hop beats:

“You farm families, and teachers, and teamsters, and cops, and cooks. You rockin’ rollers. And holy rollers!” may not be Walt Whitman singing of “mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong” or the “wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,” but you know, it’s the same gist.

Palin understands what other Republicans are just beginning to get, which is that the conservative base is an audience that is post-argument. Conservatism of the 21st century is an ideology built on sand. Its arguments fall apart upon the briefest of examination and the supposed “evidence” for their beliefs are mostly lies and self-delusions. Sticking with the argument and evidence-based structure in the era of climate change denialism and creationism is a fool’s game and Palin knows it. Better instead to focus strictly on emotions and tribal identity, eschewing not just argument but even structuring your speeches to resemble arguments. Imagistic speeches that arouse passions while silencing doubts is not stupid, but brilliant.

And while Palin is the vanguard of this movement, a careful observer will notice that other Republicans are quickly following on her heels. During the sixth Republican debate, for instance, there was a noticeable scramble away from trying to make actual policy claims and promises, especially with regards to foreign policy, and an embrace of this content-free imagistic language. Like Cruz’s opening statements:

Today, many of us picked up our newspapers, and we were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees, with their hands on their heads.

In that State of the Union, President Obama didn’t so much as mention the 10 sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama’s preparing to send $100 billion or more to the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I’ll tell you, it was heartbreaking.

Obviously, the President cannot actually free prisoners by mentioning them in the State of the Union—he freed them by negotiations. But freeing them or not freeing them was not the point of this. The point of this was to invoke an image—soldiers on their knees—to arouse conservative audiences and then slam the President for not trying to rile people up.

While it doesn’t reach the heights of imagistic riffing that Palin reaches, this does come close a Palin-esque non-argument. Cruz riles people up, because riling people up is good, because they enjoy being riled up, and Obama fails at the task of riling you up (because he doesn’t want to rile you up over a non-issue like this, of course). Issues like diplomatic relations or even effectiveness at getting the soldiers back —places where Republicans are weak — are ignored completely. All that matters is the image and the feeling that it provokes. You are invited to ignore all other questions.  (N.B.: framing – invoke images – George Lakoff…)

To be clear, emotion is not always or even usually the enemy of logic. In the traditional political speech, audiences are encouraged to tie their emotions to argument. You are angry, here is the solution. You want hope, these policies will provide it.

But Palin, by eliding the argument-based structure of traditional speeches, is getting past this altogether. Anger is turned into hate is turned into more anger, until it spins off, completely unmoored from any considerations like “why” or “how.” Her innovation helps Republicans get over the logic and evidence problems that plague them. And so we can expect her methods to become more, not less prevalent over time.

Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. She’s on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte

See:http://www.salon.com/2016/01/21/palin_wasnt_drunk_and_her_trump_speech_wasnt_stupid_shes_playing_right_into_the_heart_of_twisted_republican_politics/

Is Sanders’ Striking Success in New Hampshire a Sign of a National Political Shocker in the Making?

Polling continues to show the more people get to know Bernie, the more popular he becomes; and he whips Trump.

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Source: AlterNet

Author:Eric Zuesse

Emphasis Mine

The latest New Hampshire Democratic primary poll indicates not only a current reality in that state, but an underlying and far more important national trend, a trend exhibited in N.H. that has bearing more broadly throughout the country, and that shows U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders already well on the road toward locking up the Democratic nomination, barring any future game-changing disclosures about one or both candidates, which are always possibilities in any political contest, and can never be ruled out. The same poll also shows Sanders performing more strongly against any Republican than Hillary Clinton would. This is not the way things looked to most prognosticators back on April 30th when Sanders started his campaign. On June 1st, I bannered, “My Prediction: Bernie Sanders Will Win the White House,” based upon the early indications being clear, even then, that he would have a higher net-favorability rating from likely Democratic Presidential primary voters than Hillary Clinton. (The same analysis, from many polls, indicated also that Sanders would likely beat any Republican candidate in the general election.) Whereas far more Democrats at that time were familiar with Clinton than with Sanders, and therefore Clinton scored far higher in the national polls then than he did (and so she was presumed to be the contest’s front-runner), the determinant of the future trendline  for any candidate is net-favorability ratings, especially comparing “strongly approve” versus “strongly disapprove,” which ratios tend to be, especially at such an early stage in a contest, a far better predictor of the contest’s ultimate winner than are the sheer poll-numbers at such a time. (N.B.: Nate Silver wrote this week that Bernie has the highest net approval rating (approve – disapprove), and Trump the lowest.) What the latest New Hampshire poll, taken now near the end of the contest in N.H., shows, is that the campaign in New Hampshire, as it is nearing its end, is increasingly displaying a strong edge over Clinton that Sanders has on this most crucial of all ratios, which is propelling him toward a substantial margin of victory in this, the first, primary state.

The CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV and CNN, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, randomly surveyed New Hampshire adults and found 420 who indicated that they intended to vote in the Democratic Presidential primary on February 9th. Here are the results:

More than nine in ten (91%) likely Democratic Primary voters have a favorable opinion of Sanders, only 7% have an unfavorable opinion of him, 2% are neutral, and 1% don’t know enough about him to say. Sanders’ net favorability rating is an almost unheard of +84%. 

Former Secretary of State and 2008 New Hampshire Primary winner Hillary Clinton also continues to be popular in the state – 65% of likely Democratic Primary voters have a favorable opinion of Clinton, 26% have an unfavorable opinion of her, 9% are neutral, and 1% don’t know enough about her to say. Clinton’s net favorability rating is +39%. 

Sanders’ net favorability rating has steadily increased over 2015 from +34% in February to +67% in September to +84% in the most recent poll. Clinton’s has eroded through the same period, from +74% in February to +44% in September, and remaining at +39% in the latest CNN/WMUR poll. 

The trendlines are starkly indicated in the following, from this N.H. poll:

“Sanders is the most electable Democrat as measured by net electability, the percentage who support a candidate minus the percentage who would not vote for that candidate under any circumstances. Sanders net electability score is +56%, while Clinton’s net electability score is +19%, and O’Malley’s is -26%. Clinton’s net electability rating has been declining over the past year while Sanders’ has continued to increase.”

What this crucial fact means is: the more that voters get to know about Sanders, the more they approve of him, whereas the more that they get to know about Clinton, the less they approve of her. (As regards O’Malley, voters still can’t see any reason for him to be running, other than self-aggrandizement.)

Regarding the general-election contest in N.H., a later headline that same day, January 20th, was based upon the same poll, but included the results also from Republican voters, the 413 who were planning to vote on February 9th in the Republican primary, and the headline was “WMUR poll: Sanders is New Hampshire’s favorite general election candidate: Vermont Democrat fares better against top Republicans than Hillary Clinton.” That result showed:

In a match-up of the current New Hampshire frontrunners in each party, Sanders leads Republican businessman Donald Trump, 57 percent to 34 percent, with 6 percent favoring another candidate and 3 percent undecided. Independents favor Sanders, 55 percent to 33 percent.

Clinton leads Trump, 48 percent to 39 percent, with 10 percent supporting another candidate and 3 percent undecided. Independents favor Clinton 43 percent to 34 percent.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who jumped to second place in the latest WMUR/CNN New Hampshire Primary Poll of Republican candidates, trails Sanders, 56 percent to 33 percent, with independents favoring Sanders, 56 percent to 24 percent. Clinton has a much smaller lead over Cruz, 47 percent to 41 percent, with independents slightly favoring Cruz, 39 percent to 33 percent.

Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of “They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010” and “Christ’s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.”

See:http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/sanders-striking-success-new-hampshire-sign-national-political-shocker-making?akid=13911.123424.hwbR_f&rd=1&src=newsletter1049468&t=2

As Bernie Sanders Is Showing, This Country Is Much More Progressive Than You Think

It’s true. Even as we descend into an election year defined by right-wing extremism, the numbers simply don’t lie.

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Source: AlterNet

Author: Eliza A. Webb

Emphasis Mine

With the races for the presidential nominations heating up, and Iowa and New Hampshire just a stone’s throw away, it is time for Americans to come to terms with the undeniable truth: We are a country of equality-loving, regulation-supporting, bleeding-blue liberals.

Despite the political division in Washington, the far-right rancor being spewed by G.O.P. candidates, and the contention in the Democratic race over Wall Street, campaign finance reform, universal health care, and how to handle ISIS, poll after poll shows that the people of this country strongly support progressive, liberal and democratic socialist ideas.

We just don’t like the linguistic packaging.

On wealth inequality, polls find that “a strong majority” of U.S. citizens believe the current situation is an urgent problem (including one-half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents), and think the current income and wealth distribution is unfair.

Despite Republican fear-mongering about big government, Americans “favor taxing the wealthy to expand aid to the poor,” and want Congress to rectify this inequality by levying “heavy taxes on [the] rich” and increasing rates on people making over $1 million a year.

Americans also support steep progressive reform on Wall Street, with 50% to 58% of likely voters in favor of breaking up the big financial institutions.

Concerning the infusion of money in politics, Americans want campaign finance reform “with near unanimity,” and half would personally vote for a law establishing the government funding of federal campaigns. The support for reform is strong across party lines, with a prodigious 80% of Republicans, 84% of independents, and 90% of Democrats believing money plays too large a role in the political process. Other polls show three in four Americans think there is too much money in politics and disagree with the concept of unregulated campaign finance.

Americans also support a substantial raise for low-wage workers, with 63% in favor of a $15 minimum wage by 2020, and 75% in favor of $12.50 by the same year. Other polls show that a majority of swing-state Republican voters support an increase, and 69% of working people favor an increase to $15. Concerning workers’ rights, a majority also want to improve scheduling for chain-store and fast-food restaurant employees.

On the power of money and big business in general, 75% of Americans think large corporations have too much influence in the country. With top CEOs making 373 times what their workers do, Americans think the government should take action to narrow the gap: one-third of Republicans want to cap the income of corporate executives, and 59% of Americans support government restriction of CEO pay.

Likewise, there is very strong support for universal health care. Just over 50% of Americans support a single-payer system, and 65% of voters think every American should have access to quality healthcare. Most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have care, and put more faith in the government’s ability to hold down health-care costs than the private sector’s. 58% of Americans support a Medicare-for-all system, and a majority of Americans think the government should ensure coverage. A majority of voters in Republican states support Medicaid expansion as well, as do 56% of Virginians, including 55% of Republicans. A majority of Americans also support Social Security, with 65% of Americans in favor of its expansion.

On paid family and sick leave, four in five Americans support legislation requiring employers to offer paid parental leave (and even more support paid sick leave). Other polls have similar findings: 70% support paid sick leave, 67% support paid maternal leave, and 55% support paid paternity leave.

On ISIS, Americans oppose military action, with 65% of Americans against sending special forces to the Middle East, and 76% against sending conventional ground troops.Other polls show that a majority of Americans support the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, with over half of all parties — Democrats (80%), Republicans (54%), Independents (60%) — in agreement.

U.S. citizens also want better trade policies, with almost two-thirds favoring some form of trade restriction.

And on police reform, 86% of Americans think police should be required to use body cameras, and 87% are in favor of independent, outside investigations when police kill unarmed civilians.

Americans are hemorrhaging democratic socialism!

We are a people who idolize Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa — individuals who represent solidarity, kinship and empathy. We respect and agree with the teachings that call us to revolution; to fight for all our fellow human beings; to deeply, truly transform the injustice and corruption long imbedded in human society; to eliminate such a tragic non-necessity as poverty with the institution of fair pay, health care, equal education, decent working conditions and financial reform.

We are a people who lionize the 1776 revolution, who look up to and admire those who stood strong against inequality.

We support Robin Hood-like taxes for the rich and the de-infestation of money from politics. We want a hike in pay for working-class people and health care for all humans sick and injured. We are in favor of destroying the vise-like grip corporations and their owners wield over our economy, regulations on the ghastly melting fumes we are spraying on the protector-bubble surrounding our planet, and heavy oversight of the people bestowed with murderous power and the grave duty of protecting others.

This slew of ideas have come to be known as liberal, as progressive, as democratic socialist, when, in reality, they are simply what we teach our children: don’t be greedy, treat others as you want to be treated, and speak up when you see injustice.

Who cares what they’re called?

As poll after poll shows, we like them.

Americans concur: a compassionate, fair land where babies grow up in equality and human beings are treated with respect and dignity is the country for us.

To make our values fit our reality, all we have to do is vote.Because, after all, as studies show, when people vote, liberals win.

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-showing-country-much-more-progressive-you-think?akid=13893.123424.0yRbD9&rd=1&src=newsletter1049167&t=8

Report: Black Lives Don’t Matter To White Christians

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Source:Pathos.com

Author:Michael Stone

Emphasis Mine

White Christians are less likely to believe and value the experiences of black Americans than non-Christian whites, according to a recently released Public Religion Research Institute survey.

Huffington Post reports the survey shows that while about 80 percent of black Christians believe police-involved killings – like the ones that killed Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, and so many more — are part of a larger pattern of police treatment of African Americans, around 70 percent of white Christians believe the opposite – that they are simply isolated incidents.

The Public Religion Research Institute reports:

White Christians are more likely than members of other religious groups – or whites as a whole – to say that the recent killings are not part of a broader pattern. More than seven in ten white evangelical Protestants (72 percent), white mainline Protestants (73 percent), and white Catholics (71 percent) believe that the killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents.

More to the point, the survey shows the numbers drop to around 65 percent when all whites, Christians and non-Christians, are surveyed. Thus, white Christians are as a whole less likely to believe the experiences of black Americans than non-Christian whites.

In his new book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, Jim Wallis, a progressive Christian writer and political activist, notes that racism is truly our nation’s original sin, declaring:

It’s time we right this unacceptable wrong.

In his new book, Wallis offers a call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. In so doing Wallis speaks candidly to Christians – particularly white Christians – urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing.

And while it is significant that white non-Christians are more likely to believe and value the experience of black Americans, the numbers for all whites are still too high.

The rampant abuse and killing of black people by law enforcement officers, and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system, continues to haunt the nation, and go far deeper than religious affiliation.

Bottom line: Black lives matter. The extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger problem of police corruption and abuse that systematically targets African Americans.

See:http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/01/report-black-lives-dont-matter-to-white-christians/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=progressivesecularhumanist_011716UTC010108_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=50481244&spUserID=MTIxNzQwMzMwMDkyS0&spJobID=842216159&spReportId=ODQyMjE2MTU5S0#sthash.ndMqb7qE.dpuf

We Haven’t Scratched the Surface of What Bernie Is Capable Of

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Source:RSN

Author: Charles Pierce

Emphasis Mine

OK,it’s starting to get real on the Democratic side of things.

As the countdown to the caucuses continues, 40 percent of Democrats say they could be persuaded to change their minds about their first choice candidate. Sanders is running strong with young voters and with those who say they plan to attend their first caucus on February 1—the same type of coalition that helped Barack Obama surge to victory over Clinton in Iowa in 2008. Among those younger than 45, Sanders bests Clinton 59 percent to 27 percent. And among those who say they plan to attend their first caucus, he leads 52 percent to 34 percent. Clinton wins with older Democrats (56 percent to 26 percent) and women (49 percent to 32 percent). Both candidates remain popular with Democrats in the state. Eighty-nine percent said they view Sanders favorably, while 86 percent said the same of the former secretary of state.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, polling numbers as they relate to the screwy Iowa caucus system are completely meaningless, since so much depends on your campaign’s ability to get enough white people to the local middle school. But the race has tightened in New Hampshire as well, and that leaves us to ponder what the week of free media is going to be like if Hillary Rodham Clinton, the consensus frontrunner, comes out of the beginning of the actual process at 0-2.

(I think cable news would be rendered a nightmare and/or a bloodbath. But I also think she’s the only candidate alive who could survive those early losses. What she would have to do to survive them—raise even more big money, get physical with the TV ads, move toward a more Bill-type—likely would alienate further the party’s activist base.)

And, if you want some more evidence that it’s getting real on the Democratic side, consider that the Clinton campaign has unlimbered Chelsea Clinton to rip Sanders on health care, and consider that HRC herself has decided to appear on Squint and the Meat Puppet on Friday in what appears to be a desperate attempt to re-establish some Green Room cred. (S. & M.P. are “on the scene” in Iowa, probably because cattle mutilations have fallen off.) The simple fact is that, if HRC has lost her lead at the moment, she has lost it to a superior campaign.

And it’s not as simple as the “populist anger” narrative would have you believe. Sanders has been running a 50-state campaign since before he formally declared his candidacy. He went to South Carolina. He went to Mississippi. He drew large and approving crowds in both places. He has stayed doggedly on message, directly refusing to help the elite political class in its pursuit of shiny objects. He repeatedly has emphasized that the pursuit of his policy goals, which all have to do with breaking the power of impending oligarchy and its threat to self-government, cannot be limited simply to electing him. And that’s where the easy narrative falls apart.

The basic appeal of He, Trump is that he is Donald Trump, and you’re not, and neither are the rest of those losers on stage with him. He’s a down-punching bully basking in the mindless adulation of people looking for someone close at hand to blame for what they believe has gone wrong with their lives and their country. The very strange thing is that Trump asks almost nothing from the people at his rallies except that they love him. He doesn’t appeal to sacrifice or common purpose. All the problems will be solved because he’s Trump and you’re not, and he knows all the Top Men in their fields. But enough about him, let’s talk about you. What do you think of him? He looks at his audience and he sees little more than a faceless mirror. He’s not a democratic politician. He’s freaking Napoleon.

Meanwhile, Sanders punches up at the elites that, frankly, have more power in our politics than he does, or than you do, or than any politician does. He tells his audiences that he can’t do it alone, that the money power has grown too great for any one person to combat. He needs them more than they need him. He is not Napoleon, he is a democratic politician. And that makes all the difference and that’s why the “populist anger” narrative is a shuck. Anyone who says they could vote for either Bernie Sanders or He, Trump has been living for the last nine months with their head in a laundry bag.

The respective appeals of the two men are similar only on the simplest and least consequential levels. On the most profound levels, the two campaigns couldn’t be more different. Bernie Sanders is where he is because the positions and the policies he has been championing all his career have come back somewhat into favor ever since some grifters broke the world economy and then made off with the rubble. That is why he’s different from Donald Trump and that is why Hillary Rodham Clinton is noticing that things in the rear-view window are closer than they appear.

See:http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34626-focus-we-havent-scratched-the-surface-of-what-bernie-is-capable-of

Why Trump’s Feverish Doom-Talk Makes Literally Zero Sense

The GOP frontrunner is lying to his fans about the state of the economy, something Obama pointed out in his State of the Union address.

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Source: AlterNet

Author:Bob Cesca/Salon

Emphasis Mine

The Republicans, and especially the frontrunners for the GOP nomination, really want the economy to suck.  After all, if the economy is strong then all of Donald Trump’s demagoguing about “making America great again” begins to feel a tad unnecessary.

During his final State of the Union address, President Obama made sure to hammer the Republicans on this very point. Said Obama: “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” Also: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

That second one is especially accurate, as illustrated by a sampling of quotes from one of the recent Republican presidential debates:

Ted Cruz: “From 2008 to today, our economy has grown 1.2 percent a year on average. The Obama economy is a disaster…”

Marco Rubio: “I mean, this economy is nothing like what it was like five years ago, not to mention 15 or 20 years ago.”

Jeb Bush: “My worry is that the real economy has been hurt by the vast overreach of the Obama administration.”

And then there’s serial fiction-peddler Donald Trump, who told CNN:

“We have to take our country back. We’ve lost our jobs, we’ve lost our money. We’re a third world nation and we’re a debtor nation at the same time, you need somebody with the kind of thinking — I built a great company. I have some of the great assets of the world. And I talk about only form- not bragging- I talk about it because that’s the kind of mentality that this country needs. We need that mentality now and we need it fast.”

Plus:

“A lot of people up there can’t get jobs. They can’t get jobs. Because there are no jobs.”

And:

“Last quarter, it was just announced, our gross domestic product -– a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Who ever heard of this? It’s never below zero.” Before we continue, let’s correct the record about, “It’s never below zero.” Whopper lie. Economic growth has dipped below zero many, many times! 42 times since 1946. But Trump is counting on his supporters not paying very close attention to such things.

Finally, here’s Trump on the labor participation rate:

“I saw a chart the other day, our real unemployment — because you have ninety million people that aren’t working. Ninety-three million to be exact.”

It’s all fiction. The reason we know this is because numbers don’t lie. But Trump and the Republicans clearly do.

Let’s take a look by starting with that last quote first, regarding the labor participation rate, which Trump was hamfistedly referencing here. This is an often cited statistic that Obama critics like to wheel out in order to undermine the reality that unemployment has been cut in half under Obama, from more than 10 percent to exactly five percent today. The participation rate measures the number of people who’ve dropped out of the workforce, and the Republicans suggest it’s because they simply can’t find work in Obama’s allegedly disastrous economy.

They’re lying.

Here’s the truth. The labor participation rate has indeed dropped under Obama. Bad news, right? Well, only if you believe what Trump says, and why the hell would you do that? Yes, the number has descended from 65.7 in 2009 to 62 percent today. But let’s suppose it was a larger five percent drop, or a 10 percent drop. Does it matter in terms of evaluating the Obama economy? Not a chance.

FactCheck.org released the site’s most recent scorecard for the Obama’s presidency and noted the following on the labor participation rate:

Contrary to many of Obama’s critics, however, that decline is due mostly to factors outside the control of any president — factors such as the post-World War II baby boomers reaching retirement age. Survey data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in December show that those outside the labor force in 2014 said their reasons for not working were retirement (44 percent), illness or disability (19 percent), school attendance (18 percent) or home responsibilities (15 percent). Only 3 percent said they couldn’t find a job, or gave some other reason.

So, sure, Trump might be able to blame three percent of a total 3.7 percent decline in the rate as maybe Obama’s fault. But most of the workers who’ve dropped out of the labor force have done so for reasons other than the state of the economy. Do the math.

Along those lines, Trump also said the “real” unemployment rate is 42 percent with 93 million workers unable to find a job. Again, fiction.

Per the Washington Post:

Trump may have seen a chart, but he misread it. Yes, the BLS shows that there are 93.7 million people “not in the work force,” but the vast majority of those people do not want to work. Most are retired or simply are not interested in working, such as stay-at-home parents.

Here’s more bad news for the Republicans. According to FactCheck.org, the Obama economy has added 9.2 million jobs. For the sake of reference, the Reagan economy added 16 million jobs, but job growth during Obama’s second term, which was more or less untethered from the Great Recession, exceeded Reagan’s first term job growth. Furthermore, the unemployment rate under Obama has declined more rapidly to a lower level than the rate under Reagan. Either way, it’s not the unmitigated disaster Trump’s talking about by any stretch of his bewigged imagination.

Elsewhere, per FactCheck.org, since the beginning of his first term when he inherited an economy strangled by an nearly unprecedented recession, the Obama economy has seen the number of long-term unemployed drop by 614,000 workers. Job openings are up 97 percent. The S&P has grown by 139 percent. Weekly earnings are up (though not up enough, admittedly). Crude oil production is up 87 percent and oil imports are down by 62 percent. Alternative energy sources are up by 273 percent. Exports are up by 31 percent. The number of uninsured Americans has dropped by 15 million, due mainly to the dreaded Obamacare. And federal spending is only up by 11 percent, the lowest rate climb of any modern president. The budget deficit has dropped by more than a trillion dollars. And the economy has grown for 79 consecutive months.

Is everything perfect? No way. But, again, we’re only a few years out from an economic disaster of biblical proportions, and it would’ve been foolish to expect rapid economic growth in the wake of a recession that nearly crushed the world economy.

Just as foolish would be to expect that Donald Trump could do any better. Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics observed this week,

“If Trump’s policies were enacted it would be some form of disaster for the economy. If you force 11 million undocumented immigrants to leave in a year, you would be looking at a depression. It would not help the people he is talking to, they would be the first to go down.”

That’s reality. And yet too many Americans think he’s going to “make America great again.”

See:http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-trumps-feverish-doom-talk-makes-literally-zero-sense

The Donald and the Chump Factor

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Source: NY Times

Author: Paul Krugman

Date:2015-15-12

Emphasis Mine

I suppose there are still some people waiting for Trump’s bubble to burst — any day now! But it keeps not happening. And it’s becoming increasingly plausible that he will go all the way. Why?

One answer — probably the most important — is what Greg Sargent has been emphasizing: the majority of Republican voters actually support Trump’s policy positions. After all, he’s just saying outright what mainstream candidates have implied through innuendo; how are voters supposed to know that this isn’t what you do?

I would, however, add a casual observation: at this point Trump has been the front-runner for long enough that it’s very hard to imagine his supporters suddenly losing faith, because it would be too embarrassing.

Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. Consider, as a weird, self-aggrandizing, but I think relevant observation, what has happened to supposedly smart guys who predicted soaring interest rates and runaway inflation 6 or 7 years ago. Almost none of them have conceded that they were wrong, and should have done more homework. Instead, many of them — especially the academics — have become ever more obsessed with claiming that they were somehow right, and/or trying to tear down the reputations of those of us who were in fact right. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.

Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”

And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.

To make another analogy, it’s a “When Prophecy Fails” sort of situation.

And this also suggests that even if Trump does finally decline, his support is likely to flow not to an establishment candidate but to another outsider figure. Everyone who knows Ted Cruz well hates him; in this environment that probably enhances his appeal.

The general election will, of course, be quite different. But it’s getting really hard to see how the GOP establishment reasserts control.

See: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-the-chump-factor/?_r=1

American Medical Association: Obamacare Is A HUGE Success, GOP Is Wrong

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Source: Occupy Democrats

Author: Colin Taylor

Emphasis Mine

As of July 2015…

If the jury wasn’t in already, it definitely is now. The Journal of the American Medical Association has just released a report declaring the Affordable Care Act a rousing success, especially for minorities without healthcare.

Over the first two enrollment periods, 10.2 million Americans have received private coverage through Obamacare, and another 12.2 million have been covered by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Program- and thanks to Obamacare, costs for Medicaid have dropped dramatically and the program is fully funded for the next thirty years.

Six measures were used to survey the pre-ACA respondents: Self-reported rates of being uninsured, lacking a personal physician, lacking easy access to medicine, inability to afford needed care, overall health status, and health-related activity limitations.

The AMA ‘s report found that “all but one of those measures—days limited by poor health—improved significantly after Obamacare plans went on sale,” reports CNBC.

There was an 11.9% decrease in uninsured Latinos and a 10.8% decrease in uninsured African-Americans. The study concluded that “As states continue to debate whether to expand Medicaid under the ACA, these results add to the growing body of research indicating that such expansions are associated with significant benefits for low-income populations.” If there’s any proof that the Republican Party lives in a reality entirely of their own creation, where the truth is made up and facts don’t matter, it’s their reaction to the Obamacare program. No matter how many times they attempt to repeal it, every one is met with another report trumpeting the program’s success. Which is obviously why it makes sense for the Senate to waste even more taxpayer money on yet another attempt to repeal the law. President Obama’s healthcare law has changed the face of America for the better, and it is here to stay.

See: http://www.occupydemocrats.com/american-medical-association-obamacare-is-a-huge-success-gop-is-wrong/

Terrorism Expert: We’re Too Focused On Muslims While Ignoring Domestic “Militia” Threat

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11896117_10206397582751186_7636156920747422504_nSource:occupy democrats

Author: Shannon Argueta

Emphasis Mine

We’ve all heard the Republican Party tell us over and over that the biggest threat to our national security is Islamic terrorism. To listen to them, you would believe that we are all in constant danger of being blown up by Muslims two continents away who “hate America” and spend every waking moment plotting death to America. However, multiple government and private agencies have disputed the severity of those claims and instead warn that domestic terrorism by anti-government extremists is a bigger threat to our nation. In fact, once upon a time, there was an entire branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that was charged with studying homegrown terrorists, specifically anti-government groups, to provide the federal government with analysis about the groups — until Republicans decided it was unnecessary.

Daryl Johnson is a former federal analyst for the Extremism and Radicalization Branch (ERB) of the DHS. In 2009, the branch released a report, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, that warned federal authorities that right-wing extremists had capitalized on the election of the first African-American president to fuel new recruitment. It also found:

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.

This mention of returning veterans caused the Republican Party to lash out and condemn the report. According to Johnson, the analysis of the groups was retracted after GOP lawmakers and right-wing media called it unfair while applauding the anti-Obama conspiracy theories that circulate among the paranoid militia groups, including their belief that the military’s Jade Helm 15 exercises was actually an attempt to impose martial law upon Texas.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was forced to respond to the backlash by dismantling the ERB and apologizing to veterans, whom conservatives said were targeted in the report, while it is common knowledge that veterans make up a large population of the militiamen. Johnson said that in the years after his job was yanked away from him by Republicans, there has been no replacement for the branch; instead, the right has focused all their money and resources on fighting Muslims.

“The D.H.S. is scoffing at the mission of doing domestic counterterrorism,” Mr. Johnson said. “The same patterns that led to the growth of the antigovernment groups in the 1990s is being played out today. D.H.S should be doing more.”

Since President Obama’s 2008 election, right-wing extremism has exploded. Before Obama took office, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that there were just forty-two anti-government groups but by 2011, that had mushroomed to 334.

One of those groups, the Sovereign Citizen Movement — which Cliven Bundy and his sons belong to — was deemed America’s biggest terrorist threat by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism. In 2014, 364 law enforcement were surveyed and eighty-six percent of them agreed that the movement is a tremendous threat to law enforcement and citizen alike. Last year, the elder Bundy and a bunch of his radical friends pointed automatic weapons at federal officers during a standoff at his Nevada ranch. Republican politicians heavily supported these actions and blamed law enforcement for the stand-off. A year later, his sons, emboldened by their father’s success at forcing the Fed’s to retreat, have taken over a federal wildlife sanctuary. While this is happening in Oregon, GOP lawmakers are pouring money into efforts to fight ISIS and resist resettling Syrian refugees.

Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) joined fifteen lawmakers and signed a letter asking President Obama to reopen the branch of the DHS that analyzes and watches these dangerous groups. Ellison said:

“The Department of Homeland Security needs to deal with Muslim extremists, but don’t ignore every other kind of threat…Right-wing extremists have launched an average of 330 attacks a year and killed about 250 people between 2002 and 2011. These are dangerous people.”

In spite of the overwhelming evidence, Republicans refuse to acknowledge that right-wing terrorists are a threat to the safety of our country. Instead, they roll out their usual inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims, immigrants, African-Americans, the president, women, minorities, et cetera, in order to appeal to the base and appease their supporters. The fact is, it is no surprise that there has been an explosion of violent attacks from the right when the GOP actively fans the flames of hate for the government. Their party has been hijacked over by Tea Party nutjobs who literally hate the federal branch and want to do everything they possibly can to destroy it. In 2013, Teahadists shut the government down and proved exactly how much they loathe our democracy.   President Obama and Democrats are called “tyrants” every single time they attempt to pass any law to make the country better. Obama has been accused of all kinds of outlandish thing, conservative voters regularly threaten to kill the president while groups like the Bundy militia idly talk about overthrowing the government by force and the GOP encourages this behavior with their vile, anti-American talking points and their assertions that the president wants to hurt their families. They’d rather spend taxpayer dollars on the mythical Syrian refugee terrorists, disguised as widows and children, than focusing on the real threat to this country: their voters.

See:http://www.occupydemocrats.com/terrorism-expert-were-too-focused-on-muslims-while-ignoring-domestic-militia-threat/

Cruz, Trump Could Crater the GOP: A History Lesson for a Party on the Brink of Disaster

From the beginning of the campaign, far-right nativism has defined the agenda. Here’s why it could backfire—badly.

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11896117_10206397582751186_7636156920747422504_nSource: AlterNet

Author: Heather Digby Parton/Salon

Emphasis Mine

It’s been a while since anyone said “As California goes, so goes the nation” and that’s probably since that moldy old saw was never very accurate to begin with. Sure, newspaperman Horace Greely’s “go west young man” was once a common exhortation and from the time of the gold rush through the “Mad Men” era, California was seen as a place for cutting edge social change. Its politics were often in the vanguard too from leftwing Upton Sinclair’s run for governor in the 1930s to the right wing Ronald Reagan’s run 30 years later. Howard Jarvis passed Proposition 13 in California in 1978 setting off a national crusade to cut taxes and drown the government in the bathtub which continues to this day.

But in a country that is dramatically polarized between blue and red, the only thing deep blue California leads these days is fellow travelers. Still, there are some lessons to be learned by Republicans from California’s recent experiences in one specific area: immigration. If there’s one thing the golden state knows about it’s Republican politicians scapegoating undocumented workers for political gain — and what happens when Latino voters decide to fight back.

You may recall that 1994 was a big Republican year nationally. For the first time in decades, the GOP gained a majority of seats in Congress, largely running on a doctrinaire conservative message as illustrated by Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. When the cycle started, California Republican Governor Pete Wilson was far down in the polls with little chance of recovery. But California Republicans in 1994 were a lot like Trump voters all over the country are today. That is: They were utterly convinced that a vast wave of immigrants from Mexico were pouring over the border to obtain free medical care, welfare benefits and schooling, even as they stole all the good paying jobs from real Americans. They allegedly did all this while stubbornly refusing to learn English.

 The Republicans were so worked up, they put an initiative on the ballot now known as the notorious Proposition 187. The initiative was officially called SOS for “save our state,” and the opening words of it read:

The People of California find and declare as follows: That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal immigrants in this state. That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal immigrants in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.

The initiative was draconian, even requiring police to verify citizenship of anyone they detain and forcing school districts to verify citizenship of all students and their families. Pete Wilson ran an ad supporting it that has become one of the most famous political ads in history, in which an ominous voiceover intoned: “They keep coming: 2 million illegal immigrants in California,” over grainy black and white footage of figures scurrying across the screen like insects exposed to the light.

Prop 187 won overwhelmingly with 59 percent of the vote. And Pete Wilson won re-election handily, as did Senator Dianne Feinstein who had run on a promise to crack down on immigration when she got back to Washington. It seemed to be a rousing success.

But while Republicans were high-fiving each other over their great victory, the court issued an immediate stay of the proposition and the Latino community in California began to protest and organize. And they also began, in great numbers, to vote Democratic. The fallout from Prop 187 and a few subsequent anti-immigrant proposals decimated the Republican Party in California. In 1994 the GOP held 26 of 52 (50 percent) U.S. House seats in the California delegation. Today they hold just 15 of 53 (28 percent). The Republican nominee has not won California in the last 6 presidential elections.

According to research by Latino Decisions this is why:

Prop 187 and the Pete Wilson years had two effects that

shifted the state dramatically to the Democrats. First, the number of Latino voters grew quickly in response to perceived attacks on the Latino community. In comparison to other states that did not experience the same anti-immigrant environment such as Texas or New York, the research clearly demonstrates that Latino voter registration in California increased must faster than anticipated by population growth alone. Second, during the mid-1990s extensive research documents a increase in Latino votes for the Democratic party in California that was sustained throughout the 2000s. Not only did more Latinos start voting, they started voting heavily against the Republican Party.

 

Political observers tend to characterize the term “backlash” as applying to white voters upset by equal rights being extended to women and minorities. But California’s experience shows that backlash can also come from minorities in reaction to bigotry. California’s Latinos knew where the hostility was coming from and fully understood the political cynicism which led Republican politicians to exploit the prejudices of their voters and the result is that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only Republican to win a California gubernatorial, senatorial, or presidential election since 1994.

This lesson has not been lost on the national GOP. Having no chance to win the nation’s largest bundle of electoral votes in California is an ongoing frustration. But the danger posed by a base that is hostile to the growing national Latino constituency is a problem of epic proportions — the political equivalent of climate change. It’s not that Latinos have the kind of electoral clout across the nation that they have in California as yet. But there are some very important states in which they are pivotal, like Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida and Colorado. Indeed, won’t be long before even Texas could become a challenge.

The GOP “autopsy” after the 2012 campaign was explicit on this point. As Florida GOP strategist Sally Bradshaw, one of the authors of the report said:

“The GOP is continually marginalizing itself and unless changes are made it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future…Many minorities think Republicans don’t like them or don’t want them in our country.”

Another said:

“If Hispanic Americans hear the GOP doesn’t want them in the U.S.A.,they won’t pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy. If Hispanics think we don’t want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.”

But the party’s grassroots didn’t care about any stinkin’ autopsy report. They obstructed Comprehensive Immigration Reform and scare the hell out of any GOP office holder who seemed to even consider a path to citizenship. Just to make sure they were understood, they even took out the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, in 2014, for the crime of whispering one time that he thought some undocumented workers might someday be worthy of citizenship.

And then came Donald Trump with his wall and his deportation raids and his approval of “Operation Wetback” and his assertion that Mexico is “sending us their worst” and insisting that the undocumented workers are rapists and murderers. The rest of the field has followed with increasingly harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. What was supposed to be a race between two youthful Hispanic Senators and a seasoned Spanish speaking ex-Governor who is married to a Mexican immigrant has turned into an ugly panderfest for the votes of bigots and xenophobes.

This week Trump outdid himself by releasing to great fanfare his first ad — an homage to Pete Wilson’s greatest hit: A grainy, black and white television spot showing people scurrying across the screen like insects. (The footage was of Morocco rather than the Mexican border, but nobody cares.) Ted Cruz followed with a more stylized,  pretentious version of the same, pretending the issue is all about jobs and not about bigotry.

Nobody knows how this will play out in the election. It’s always possible that the Democrats will fail to turn out the Latino vote in those places where it can make the difference. But you can also be pretty sure the Republicans won’t be able to do it, and according to the autopsy report, they need to attract over 40 percent of the Latino vote nationally to win.

Meanwhile in California, Cruz and Trump are neck and neck in the polls. It’s been 20 years and California Republicans still haven’t learned their lesson. If the old saying, “How California goes, so goes the nation,” has any truth in it today,  that means the national Republican Party may spend years in the wilderness before its voters realize this toxic anti-immigrant sentiment is killing them.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

 

See:http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/cruz-trump-could-crater-gop-history-lesson-party-brink-disaster?akid=13860.123424.6IROpA&rd=1&src=newsletter1048604&t=6