Explaining the Republican Crazy Talk: You Don’t Need the Truth to Win in the GOP Primaries

Facts clearly don’t matter if you want to lead in the polls.

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Source: AlterNet

Author:Marth Kaplan

Emphasis Mine

Did you make it through Sunday’s lunar eclipse OK?

When the moon turned blood red, I bet you didn’t shake spears at it or beat your dogs to make them bark, as the Incas did to scare away the jaguar that had swallowed the moon. I also bet you didn’t shoot off cannons or bang your pots and drums, as the Chinese did to frighten the dragon that had swallowed the moon. I’m pretty sure you didn’t offer your utensils, rice and weapons to the demon Dhanko, as India’s Munda tribesmen do, to bail the moon out of debtor’s prison, where Dhanko threw it for failing to repay his loan.  And it’s dollars to donuts you didn’t believe that the eclipse announced the end of the world, or buy Pastor John Hagee’s best-selling Four Blood Moons, let alone the Four Blood Moons Companion Study Guide and Journal (Includes Full-Color Foldout Timeline, $11.69 on Amazon).

The reason you didn’t swallow any of those stories is that you know the truth about a lunar eclipse: It happens because the earth comes between the sun and the moon. If truth can protect us from jaguars, dragons, demons and preachers, why can’t it protect us from presidential candidates whose cock-and-bull stories rank right up there with the Incas’ and the Mundas’?

Consider Carly Fiorina. She effortlessly reels off the benchmarks of her success as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, including doubling revenues. But HP’s revenues rose largely because of her disastrous acquisition of Compaq. What counts isn’t revenues, but net earnings, which dropped from $3.1 billion to $2.4 billion. What also counts is the stock price, which lost half of its value over the same period, while the stock price of its competitors, despite the dot-com bust, fell at half that rate (IBM), stayed flat (Dell) or rose (printer-maker Lexmark went up 30 percent).

How will voters decide whether Fiorina is fit for the presidency? It could hinge on if they decide she’s telling the truth about her HP tenure—or about a Planned Parenthood video she said she saw but which no one can produce, or about her Horatio Alger-like rise from secretary to CEO, a claim that the Washington Post’s fact-checker called “bogus.”

Facts turn out not to matter much in American politics. It’s as if the Dhanko myth were to have the same standing as an astronomer’s explanation of a lunar eclipse. Journalists can fact check Fiorina all they want, and political rivals can ding her from dawn to dusk. The public’s trust goes not to the best truth-teller but to the best storyteller. As Brad Whitworth, an 18-year HP veteran and former senior communications and marketing manager, told the Post, “Carly has never let facts get in the way of her being able to tell a story.” We don’t want a commander-in-chief. We want a narrator-in-chief.

(N.B.:See George Lakoff)

In the post-Reagan era, the grand narrative of the Republican Party is unfettered capitalism. Government is the villain. Business is the hero. In this epic there is no place for the misery caused by the deregulated financial sector, or for people who falter through no fault of their own. Tax cuts for the captains of capitalism and spending cuts for public goods like education and infrastructure have made the United States one of the most unequal countries in the world, but that fact gets no narrative traction. No matter how much money the fossil fuel industry spends on a sham counter-narrative that denies climate change, no matter how many thousands of percentage points some hedge fund bro jacks up the price of a life-saving drug, no matter how cravenly General Motors covered up defective and sometimes deadly ignition switches in 2 million vehicles, the story remains the same: Overreach by government regulators is the root of all evil.  

That’s the story Mitt Romney told. If he hadn’t been caught on video writing off 47 percent of the country as freeloading rabble addicted to government handouts, he might have become president. Instead, the Obama counter-narrative gained power. Its heroes are people of modest means who are still paying for the moral hazard of the billionaire class.  This is also the story that Bernie Sanders is telling to huge and enthusiastic crowds. Perhaps because of that, Hillary Clinton has been telling it, too, though her effectiveness as its messenger may be compromised by her dependence on Wall Street money.

This counter-narrative has the facts going for it. Practically every Paul Krugman column is a trove of economic evidence for it. But evidence doesn’t win elections. Is that any way to run a democracy? Jefferson said that the success of our system depends on an educated citizenry. The goal of education is critical thinking, but in one of the most critical decisions we make—the presidential vote—we defer to our inner cave-dweller, spellbound by the saga unfolding around the fire. Why do we accept the primacy of stories over facts?

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that two systems govern our brains. One of them—System 1, the fast one—is emotional, comes from the gut and is ingenious at turning anything that happens into a pattern, a story. Slow-thinking System 2 is logical, resides in the prefrontal cortex, is wary of facile narratives. Fiorina’s HP fable is catnip to System 1.  Fact-checking is the job of System 2, and by the time it turns up for work, the race is over.

Couple that with the way a pluralistic democracy handles differences. In a secular, multicultural society, truth is just someone’s, or some group’s, point of view. Everything is relative. Under the surface, everything is political. Facts are just opinions backed by the power to enforce them. Objectivity is just oppression dressed up as science. You’ve got your fact-checkers; I’ve got mine.

You can spin Fiorina’s HP record one way, or you can spin it another. Was she a good CEO or a nightmare? It depends on whose tribe you ask, how many members it has and what story they tell—in other words, an election, not an analysis. But imagine putting the meaning of Sunday’s blood moon to a plebiscite. In some parts of the country, judging by the number of books he’s sold, Pastor Hagee’s apocalyptic account might win, beating the scientific explanation (and the odd write-in for a jaguar, dragon or demon).

Voting would of course be an absurd way to pick the truth from a barrel of balderdash. On the other hand, it bears a discomfiting resemblance to the way we pick presidents.    

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

A Psychologist Puts Trump and the GOP on the Couch

What’s going on in the Republican mind?

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Source:AlterNet

Author:Michael Bader

Emphasis Mine

Rather than simply reacting with self-righteous contempt for the current crop of GOP presidential candidates, liberals like myself should try to also understand their appeal, however much we might believe it’s not strong enough to put any of them in the White House. The pre-scripted kabuki dances on display in their debates have made them easy targets for disdain, so easy that it’s a bit like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with your eyes open. Trump is an obviously racist bloviator, the creepiest and most blatantly disturbed of the bunch, for sure, but the lot of them come across as empty suits projecting poll-driven personas that their handlers believe will resonate with their base of angry and/or older white men. Moments of “authenticity” (e.g., they love their parents, spouses and children—imagine that!) are, themselves, always wooden, overly-crafted and ginned up with phony emotion and reported breathlessly by a media itself unable to stand on its own two feet and tell truth from fiction when it comes from these conservative wind-up dolls.

The Democrats will stage manage their personalities and manipulate their messages, too. Sanders is by far the most authentic, but he had to pivot in order to re-emphasize his record on race and women’s rights. Hillary will try to “present” herself as a human being (she’s a grandmother, after all), and the other guys—whoever they are—will do something similar when they can.

All of this is politics as usual, dutifully but cynically covered by a press corps that has surrendered even the pretense of critical thinking, instead sucking up to what they see as the basest cravings of their readers and viewers for the political version of reality television.

But while all politicians pander and throw authenticity under the bus of political expediency, the current plague of high-visibility GOP candidates project two especially pathological themes that they’ve decided will resonate with the feelings of millions of voters: paranoia and grandiosity.

As a liberal and a psychologist, I think it’s important to understand the nature and meaning of this resonance. The fears and insecurities that paranoia and grandiosity seek to diminish are feelings that a liberal agenda should be better able to address. Undecided voters can be drawn to the left or the right, and the more we understand the appeal of the American Right, the better able we might be to counter it with a more progressive and healthy message and platform. But we will never know if that’s possible or how to do it if we don’t understand the psychological dynamics behind the appeal of right-wing paranoia and grandiosity.

Let’s start with grandiosity, a term familiar to psychologists in our work with patients who need to inflate their self-esteem and self-assessments in order to ward off feelings of inferiority or helplessness. But just as individuals identify with, say, a sports team, so too do individuals identify with their nation—e.g., Team America. In our case, the political or collective version of personal grandiosity is what is known as “American Exceptionalism,” namely the tapestry of stories about the specialness of the United States when it comes to personal freedom, economic opportunity and growth, and military superiority. These stories have gained mythic proportions. They’re all captured by one unquestioned assumption: We are the greatest country in the history of the world. Period. This is a core part of the relentless drumbeat we hear from the conservative echo chamber.

But this braggadocio—what former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright called “The Arrogance of Power”—requires that the ideal of American “greatness” be cleansed of any blemishes, just as a grandiose or narcissistic patient has to deny his or her human frailty and fallibility. This is where paranoia comes in handy. It’s easier to believe you are exceptional if you are comparing yourself with others and if you are proving your remarkable strength against naysayers or challengers. It helps, in other words, to have an enemy who is threatening your greatness.

Thus, the rhetoric of the current crop of Republican politicians, including, especially, the GOP clowns running for president, combines grandiosity and paranoia. Our nation’s greatness isn’t threatened by simple human fallibility but by Obama, Muslims, immigrants, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Big Government. The second Republican presidential debate was laced with echoes of these beliefs, sometimes baldly stated, other times expressed as Obama-bashing. According to Carly Fiorina, “The United States of America is back in the leadership business.” Trump coughed up this hairball:  “We’ll make our country rich again, and we’ll have a great life all together.”

In other words, we’re in danger of losing our place in the front of the line, and only a Republican president has enough sinew and muscular confidence in American greatness to make sure that doesn’t happen. Grandiosity and paranoia—we’re the greatest, but we have to vigilantly remind ourselves and everyone else of that fact because we’re also threatened. A great “us” has to be continually reinforced by invoking threats from a demeaned “them.”

The current frontrunners for a “them” that threatens our perfect national collective are immigrants and radical Islamic extremists. Like the Red scares of the 1950s, our current xenophobia is based on the same paranoid view of ourselves and the world. The first thing Ted Cruz would apparently do as president is to “shred Obama’s catastrophic Iran deal.” Trump is the poster child for paranoia with his dumb “we’ll build a wall but put in a beautiful gate” through which we’ll ostensibly let in only beautiful people, and keep out the “bad dudes.” And, of course, his racist demagoguery reached a peak recently when he appeared to welcome a statement from a man in the audience who asserted: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. You know, our President is one. You know he’s not even an American.”

What does psychology tell us about the origins of paranoia and grandiosity? It tells us that pathological attitudes and states of mind are best understood as attempts, however irrational they may seem, to feel safe and secure.

All of us seek safety and security.

Paranoia, for example, simply reflects an attempt to locate a frightening or painful thought outside the self, to get rid of threatening feelings, project them onto others, and then turn an internal struggle with bad feelings into an external struggle with bad people. For example, if I’m suffering from feelings of weakness or worthlessness, the belief, however false, that someone else is causing me to feel this way can temporarily help restore my sense of innocence and self-respect. There’s nothing wrong with me that getting rid of you won’t cure. In fact, in this paranoid version of reality, I’m a good or even great guy defending himself against an external danger. What emerges in the therapist’s consulting room is that paranoia solves an internal problem by making it an external one, even at the price of denying reality.

For example, Donald Trump is actually a balding misogynist, but he doesn’t have to feel like one if he wears a toupee (allegedly made from the hair of the critically-endangered Brown Spider Monkey) and tells himself and others that Megyn Kelly was menstruating and had it out for him.

In this sense, Trump shows us what happens when the personal becomes political. Like the United States itself, he is great and good, not declining and mean. Paranoia works pretty well when you’re feeling off your game.

Grandiosity works similarly as a defense against painful internal states. Thus, the grandiosity inherent in the axiomatic assertion that “we are the greatest nation in the history of the world” uses stories and images of American perfection, greatness and omnipotence to counteract narratives that we might be a nation in decline, or reeking on the inside from toxic inequality and a callous indifference to the welfare of the unfortunate. Combine grandiosity and paranoia and you have the current Republican talking points.

When individual psychopathology becomes a collective filter for understanding the political world, we see—as we do in the rhetoric and vision of today’s GOP—a pathological set of values guaranteed to lead to pathological policies. If I were to try to list the essential psychological dynamics underlying grandiosity and paranoia in the patients I see, and you were to simply replace the personal pronoun “I” with “America” or “the American people” and “you” and “them” with one of the scapegoats demonized by the GOP (e.g., people with darker skins, the wrong religion or different sexual orientation), the symmetry between crazy individuals and crazy politics becomes clearer. Again, to oversimplify:

“I’m not small; I’m big.” (American is not small; it’s/we’re big, etc.)

“I’m not bad; I’m the essence of goodness.”

“I’m not hurting others; I’m always helping them.”

“I’m not failing or losing; I’m a successful winner.”

“The problem isn’t in me; it’s in you.”

“If I could get rid of you; I’d be great and perfect and happy again.”

You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the adolescent tough-guy primping we see on the GOP presidential debate stages is the political manifestation of commonplace psychological mechanisms regularly seen in individuals, namely, desperate attempts to defend against dangerous and painful feelings and fears. And just as in therapy, the important challenge is to understand those feelings and fears, because when a Donald Trump wants to build a wall to protect America, he is subliminally playing to a wish in his supporters to protect themselves. But, again, the question is: protect themselves from what? What is being denied or defended against?

The answer is that the threats that grandiose and paranoid attitudes defend against involve feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and self-hatred—all of which are arguably greater now than ever in our culture. American exceptionalism and xenophobia offer symbolic antidotes in the political world to the more personal distress of millions of Americans today. Trump and the other airheads on the GOP stage today offer a distorted vision of the world that, like the Donald’s orange wig, helps to cover up genuine feelings of vulnerability and impotence.

For many people, the Great Recession of 2008 dashed the American Dream to which they had come to aspire or which they believed they were actually living. Millions of people lost their homes, their IRAs and other savings that were allocated for retirement and for their children’s education. These losses—the result of financial shenanigans far, far away—were accompanied by great feelings of helplessness that caused stress levels to go through the ceiling. Mortgages went underwater and people took on second or third jobs, reinforcing a sense of insecurity along with feelings of helplessness and depression. And while being overwhelmed and powerless to stop the feeling of losing ground, people saw hedge fund managers and bankers getting bailed out. Because we think we live in a meritocracy in which rewards are distributed according to ability, people blamed themselves for not being able to make ends meet, or hold on to their jobs, or for losing money in the stock market, or for having tapped into their home equity too much. I heard these self-criticisms and doubts in my consulting room every day—feelings of helplessness, pessimism, isolation and self-blame.

In 1990, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 50% of Americans thought their children would be better off in 20 years. In 2015, a full 76% of Americans expressed skepticism that their children’s lives would be better off than their own. Even though millions of Americans were in the same boat, feelings of isolation and self-blame became more prevalent and debilitating. The ethic of individualism in our culture invariably leads people to blame themselves for their “lot” in life, even if that lot was caused by forces beyond their control. So, as the quality of life has deteriorated, the amount of depression and self-blaming has increased.

Further, as researchers such as John Cacioppo and Robert Putnam have documented, the breakdown of community organizations and bonds has resulted in increased social isolation, especially among the elderly (an important part of the Republican base, of course). In 2009, a study by Kodak revealed that most Americans felt that “we have fewer meaningful relationships than we had five years ago.” This trend has only worsened.

So we have a social landscape in which people feel increasingly pessimistic, helpless, isolated and self-blaming—feelings perfectly addressed by GOP platitudes intended to reassure us that we’re really great, all-powerful, and that it’s someone else’s fault if we’re not.

Ultimately, the appeal to an imaginary but reassuring sense of community undergirds all of these platitudes about American greatness, strength and antipathy toward the “other.” The latent message is: there is an “us” here, a great “us” full of power and noble intentions, an “us” to which everyone can belong as long as we keep “them” away or subjugated in ways that render them non-threatening (bombing them, building walls, deportation, etc.). Who doesn’t want to belong? To be part of an “us?”

The myths of American greatness serve this purpose perfectly. What is a better tonic to the pain of isolation and helplessness brought on by our market-driven and pathological ethos of individualism than to belong to Dream Team America, the greatest and most powerful nation that ever existed in the history of the world?

That the GOP has been instrumental in creating the conditions that it then seeks to heal with its so-called “muscular” foreign and military policy and jingoistic attacks on immigrants is an inconvenient truth that isn’t mentioned, but has been thoroughly described and discussed by progressive political analysts and sociologists. The Right helped create the problems that their racist warmongering and so-called patriotism aim to remedy. Psychology can’t fix these problems, but it can hopefully help us understand the mindset behind a system in which victims support their victimizers.

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco who has written extensively on issues found at the intersection of psychology, culture, and progressive politics. His recent book, More Than Bread and Butter: A Psychologist Speaks to Progressives About What People Really Need in Order to Win an Change the World is available on Amazon.com and on his website: www.michaelbader.com

See: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/psychologist-puts-trump-and-gop-couch?akid=13536.123424.-bDFYQ&rd=1&src=newsletter1043311&t=2

The GOP still has nothing to show for its anti-Planned Parenthood campaign

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Source:WashPost

Author:Dana Milbank

Emphasis Mine

At this point Republicans may wish to consider aborting to protect the health of the party.

They have been going after Planned Parenthood over the past few months like so many Captain Ahabs. They threatened to shut down the government to defund the group. Their insistence on a Planned Parenthood showdown drove House Speaker John Boehner to resign. They’re about to appoint a special committee to investigate Planned Parenthood. The party’s presidential candidates have made Planned Parenthood a central part of the campaign, and House Republicans are manufacturing new legislative vehicles to cut off the group.

And what do they have to show for it?

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that Americans have a more favorable view of Planned Parenthood than of any other entity tested, including the Republican Party and presidential candidates. The group’s favorable/unfavorable impression, 47 percent to 31 percent, is actually up slightly from July. What’s more, 61 percent oppose eliminating federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Even among the 35 percent who support defunding, only9 percent favor shutting down the government to do it.

Yet House Republicans pressed ahead with their quest Tuesday, hauling Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for more than five hours of hectoring and finger-wagging about, among other things, her salary and the group’s travel expenses.

The hearing came about because of videos released in July purporting to show that Planned Parenthood was harvesting body parts from aborted fetuses for profit. In their memo announcing the hearing, committee Republicans proclaimed that the “disturbing content” of the recently released videos “raises questions about [Planned Parenthood’s] use of taxpayer funding.” But the videos turned out to be doctored, and committee Republicans declined Democrats’ requests to have the video maker, David Daleiden, appear before the panel. The committee didn’t get the full unedited videos, Chairman Jason Chaffetz (Utah) said, because of California court proceedings.

Two hours into the hearing, Chaffetz made the startling confession that “without the videos, we can’t have a good discussion about them.”

But we can shut down the federal government over them?

Dispensing with the videos, members of the panel got down to the larger purpose of the hearing: harassing Richards and her group.

Chaffetz flashed a chart on the screens showing that since 2010, the number of abortions at Planned Parenthood has surpassed the number of its “cancer screenings and prevention services.”

But no such shift occurred. The fine print on the chart showed that the number of abortions (327,000 in 2013) never came close to reaching the number of cancer screenings (935,573 in 2013) at any point.

The bogus graph didn’t seem to matter to Chaffetz, who drew the witness’s attention to the crossing lines showing abortions overtaking screenings.

Richards said the chart “absolutely does not reflect what’s happening.”

“I pulled those numbers directly out of your corporate reports,” the chairman said.

In fact, the chart said the source was the antiabortion group Americans United for Life — which Richards pointed out to Chaffetz.

“Then we will get to the bottom of the truth of that,” the chairman said.

The truth? Planned Parenthood gets money for women’s birth control, STD screenings and the like, not abortions — which Richards calmly reminded her inquisitors. She left it to Democratic lawmakers to proclaim their (exaggerated) outrage. “The misogyny!” wailed Rep. Gerald Connolly (Va.).

Republicans tried to inoculate themselves against the inevitable “war on women” charges. Chaffetz admitted three Republican women to participate in the hearing (there is only one GOP woman on the panel) and he started his own remarks by emotionally invoking his wife’s work with breast-cancer patients. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) thought it helpful to say that “I’m wearing a pink tie in solidarity with women’s health issues.” The majority dodged an awkward moment when Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), a pro-life lawmaker who, according to court records,encouraged his wife and mistress to have abortions, yielded his time to a colleague.

That colleague, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), told Richards “you’re profiting off death.” Likewise, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) proclaimed himself a “champion for the unborn,” while Walberg said “we’ve been brought into a frenzy and a concern about what happens to our babies,” and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) asked what happens if “a child survives an abortion attempt.”

This would appear to justify Richards’s contention that the controversy “isn’t about Planned Parenthood. It’s about allowing women in this country . . . to make other decisions about their pregnancies.”

As if to confirm Richards’s suspicion, 28 minutes after the hearing ended, lawmakers went to the House floor to vote on legislation restricting abortion — for the 14th time this year.

See:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-still-has-nothing-to-show-for-its-anti-planned-parenthood-campaign/2015/09/29/1c79bd02-66e9-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions

Conservative Economists Agree Trump’s Tax Plan Would Cost $12 Trillion, Bankrupt America

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Source:OccupyDemocrats.com

Author:Jessie Rappaport

Emphasis Mine

Although Donald Trump’s experience in government is non-existent, the Republican front-runner prides himself on his alleged business savvy. But a report from the Tax Foundation shows that Trump’s newly-unveiled tax plan would increase the national debt by more than $10 trillion over the next decade, by lowering taxes for the super-rich.

Trump revealed his plans for tax reform on Monday. The plans include massive tax cuts, which he claims will be off-set by closing loopholes for wealthy corporations. But those who have analyzed the plan have found that the numbers just don’t add up. An analyst from the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, said of the proposal:

“The much lower top marginal rate of 25 percent will mean a large cut for the top, even with the limitation on itemized deductions… Trump is claiming a tax increase on wealthy individuals, but I do not believe this will be the case.”

According to NBC News, the new report shows that Trump’s economic “vision” would in fact end up costing the country $12 trillion in total. In addition to increasing the debt by over $10 trillion from individual tax reform, Trump’s corporate tax cuts would add $1.54 trillion, and eliminating the estate tax would mean another $238 billion.

Given Trump’s dubious financial history, the depressing reality of his tax plan should come as no surprise. Trump’s businesses have filed for bankruptcy four times, making Trump the “top filer” of bankruptcy in recent decades. Trump has proudly stated his abuse of bankruptcy laws as showing good business sense, but while it may be a good strategy for lining the pockets of rich CEOs, it’s no way to run a country.

Despite threatening to drive the country into bankruptcy, just like his business ventures, Trump is living up to the Republican tradition of increasing the national debt with tax cuts for the wealthy. The Tax Foundation has shown that Trump’s competitors’ tax proposals would also drive the country further into debt. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul all offer plans that would cost $3 trillion or more. In a recent interview, Bush was dumbstruck when asked to explain the projected deficit increase.

Trump has claimed his tax plan would be a “rocket ship” for the economy, but real economic analysis shows that it would only blow up on the launchpad. This once again proves that the image that Trump tries to project does not correspond to reality. It’s important to keep these facts in mind as the Republicans attempt to strike fear into the public about the cost of expanding necessary social programs such as education and healthcare. The fact is, the Republicans want to reduce such programs, but their plans leave us more and more in debt, while reducing taxes for the super-rich. Trump’s plan would increase their incomes by 21.6%, while leaving millions of Americans to wallow in poverty. It looks like Trump has finally picked up a few ideas from the Republican establishment he fights against so hard.

See:http://wp.me/p3h8WX-5eT

Trump Tax “plan”

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Source:ThinkProgress

Author:Bryce Covert

Emphasis Mine

On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will unveil a detailed tax reform plan — and he is already positioning it as a populist proposal. In a press alert about the plan, the campaign states, “Essentially, the plan is a major tax reduction for almost all citizens and corporations, in particular, those in the middle and lower income classes.”

And already, the portion of the plan that affects low-income Americans, which would impose a zero percent tax rate on individuals who make less than $25,000 and married couples who make less than $50,000, is generating headlines. “Trump promises a ZERO per cent tax rate for millions: He plans to cut tax for the poor, middle classes and corporations, soak the rich,” the Daily Mail headline reads. “Mr. Trump’s plan appears designed to help him, as the GOP front-runner, cement his standing as a populist,” the Wall Street Journal article previewing the details states.

But the plan has a number of provisions that will overwhelmingly help the already well off.

Lower taxes for corporations

Trump proposes the lowest corporate tax rate of the entire Republican presidential field so far. He would reduce the rate to just 15 percent; by contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) would reduce it to 25 percent, while Jeb Bush would impose a top 20 percent corporate rate. That would be the on-paper tax rate; American companies already pay relatively low tax rates in reality, however. Thanks to their ability to take advantage of loopholes, tax breaks, and aggressive accounting schemes, the effective rate they pay is already under 20 percent. Meanwhile, although Trump says his tax reform plan will “create jobs and incentives of all kinds while simultaneously growing the economy,” lower corporate taxes don’t tend to go hand in hand with higher growth. There is no evidence that high rates hurt the economy; rather, those that pay the highest effective rates actually create more jobs than those that find ways to pay less.

And he would also impose a one-time, mandatory 10 percent tax on the profits American corporations hold overseas, which could be paid over a few years, to entice them to bring them back here and in theory create more jobs. A similar although slightly different plan, called a “repatriation holiday,” has been tried before, where corporations were offered a low, temporary tax rate on offshore profits to bring them home. When it was imposed in 2004, companies largely used the profits they brought back to give money to shareholders, rather than invest it in hiring or equipment, and many laid off large number of workers at the same time.

Lower taxes for the rich

It’s not just the poorest who would get a tax cut under Trump’s plan. The wealthy would get a hefty reduction too. The highest individual tax bracket, which would apply to married couples who make more than $300,000, would be lowered from the current 39.6 percent rate to 25 percent. That’s an even lower top tax rate than under Bush’s plan, which proposes a top 28 percent on income; yet analysis of Bush’s plan found that the top 1 percent of earners would get the overwhelming benefit of his tax cuts, with an 11.6 percent increase in after-tax income compared to 1.8 percent more for the poorest and between 2.3 and 3.1 percent for the middle class. As with lowering the top corporate tax rate, there’s little evidence that lower income taxes help spur job growth, as it’s historically been stronger under higher rates. Some economists have found that the optimal tax rate for the wealthiest is closer to 90 percent.

Giveaways to the wealthiest

Trump’s plan would also get rid of the estate tax, which only affects the wealthiest 0.14 percent of Americans. Thanks to reductions in the rate over the years and creative methods of getting around it, those who owe it only pay an effective 16.6 percent rate, and less than 10 percent of the $60 trillion that will get passed down to wealthy heirs and charities over the next half century will be paid in estate tax. Nevertheless, it is a significant and progressive source of government revenue, since it only impacts those most able to pay yet will generate $246 billion over the next decade.

And while Trump would follow through with his rhetoric calling out the lower tax rate hedge fund managers pay on the income they earn from doing their jobs by ending the carried interest loophole, he would also cut the top capital gains tax rate to 20 percent. The current code already means that income made from investments enjoys a much lower 23.8 percent rate than income made from work, which is taxed at a top 39.6 rate. And those who enjoy the benefits of a lower capital gains rate are mostly the rich: 70 percent of the money saved through a lower rate goes to the top 1 percent of earners, while just 7 percent goes to the bottom 80 percent. The lower capital gains tax rate is one of the biggest contributors to growing income inequality.

See: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/09/28/3706197/trump-tax-proposal/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&utm_term=4&utm_content=5

Carly Fiorina and the GOP Outsider Boom

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Carly Fiorina’s rise, Scott Walker’s fall, and Donald Trump being Donald Trump.

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Source:New York Magazine, via RSN

Author:Frank Rich

Emphasis Mine

arly Fiorina has risen faster than anyone in the Republican field since the last debate, while making a series of statements that have some commentators describing her “willful disregard … or ignorance of reality.” How do you explain her rise?

A willful disregard or ignorance of reality is hardly disqualifying in the GOP presidential sweepstakes! If nothing else, Fiorina’s fictional Planned Parenthood video suggests she might have more success cooking up gory B-movie scenarios in the San Fernando Valley than she had running Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley. In that real-life business horror story, Fiorina slashed 30,000 employees, not to mention shareholder value, while mismanaging what had been one of the most fabled corporations in American business.

Fiorina’s rise after the last debate is coming at the expense of the previous “skyrocketing” Republican contender, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson. The theory had been that Carson was the kinder, gentler “outsider” who would finally usurp Donald Trump. But, as it happened, the good doctor proved to have all the pep on-camera that one of his patients might exhibit shortly after being given anesthesia. Worse, despite his ostensible prowess as a man of medicine, Carson waffled when confronted with Trump’s debate fiction about a link between vaccines and autism. That both Fiorina and Carson have enjoyed booms, however transitory they may prove to be, makes one thing clear. The base would prefer almost anyone, and so far Trump most of all, to Jeb Bush or any of the other choices that the GOP Establishment has put its big bets on. In new polls out over the past couple of days, from Fox News and Quinnipiac, the results are markedly similar in the spreads separating Trump from Carson and Fiorina, and show that a majority of Republicans favor one of these three outsiders over the rest of the field combined.

Fiorina may be impaled by the Washington shutdown, should it happen; she endorsed what Karl Rove has called the “suicide” strategy of holding the government hostage to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Should she crater, be assured that she has a strong understudy waiting in the wings: Meg Whitman, the current CEO at HP, who just announced her plan to lay off another 30,000 workers. The similarities don’t end there: Like Fiorina, who ran for Senate against Barbara Boxer, Whitman ran as a Republican for statewide office in California in 2010 (for governor, against Jerry Brown) and lost by double digits. Should she, too, get fired by HP, she’ll have the perfect résumé for entering the Republican presidential race.

Scott Walker, who started his run for the GOP nomination as the reported favorite of the Koch brothers, now says he’s been “called to lead by helping clear the field” of candidates — starting with himself. Does his campaign’s failure show the limits of super-pac politics?

Not necessarily. Walker was a ridiculous candidate and would remain so no matter how much money any billionaires poured into his super-pac. Back in early July, a few days before Walker announced his run, I was at a small gathering in Washington where a prominent Republican political operative (not affiliated with any of the 2016 campaigns, and not speaking for attribution) gave a rollicking tour of the field. Of Walker, he said, “There are two reasons he can’t win. First, he has a bald spot. Second, he’s stupid.”

Suffice it to say that Walker’s presidential run was farce from start to finish, from his three different positions on the issue of “birthright citizenship” to his calling Reagan’s busting of the air-traffic controllers’ strike of 1981 “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime.” At the CNN debate, he had all the charisma of a department-store mannequin. Yet not long ago he was a rock star. He’s “the one guy in the race who has shown how to defeat the media and Democrat coordinated attacks on conservatives,” said Rush Limbaugh as Walker entered the race. He’s “a truly impressive individual,” effused the right-wing Washington Post pundit Marc Thiessen. Fox News hosts fell over themselves to boost him as a union-busting “hero.” At FiveThirtyEight in March, Nate Silver used what he called “totally subjective odds” to rate the first-tier Republican candidates on the likelihood of their getting the nomination and deduced that Walker was on top (at 26 percent), ahead of Bush (24 percent) and Marco Rubio (16 percent).

This week, after Walker dropped out, The Wall Street Journal ran a news story explaining that Rubio would benefit by inheriting much of Walker’s fund-raising apparatus and donors, since he, too, is a “fresh face ready to shake up Washington.” Never mind that Rubio, unlike Walker, is already in Washington (where his strategy for shaking things up seems to have been to miss more Senatorial votes than anyone else in the race). Or that the voters Rubio might inherit from Walker do not even amount to a rounding error; Walker was polling at less than 0.5 percent at the end. In any case, Rubio’s candidacy is almost uniformly described by the press and Republican pols as more substantive than most (especially on foreign policy), and he’s been widely judged as one of the strongest contenders — if not the strongest — at both debates. But with recent polling numbers still averaging at roughly 10 percent, Rubio, like Bush, is thus far a candidate who looks theoretically great on paper to all the professionals in the media-political complex, but not so much to Republican primary voters who are the actual deciders.

Donald Trump again played the (barely) coded racism card when he didn’t contradict a supporter’s birther canards about President Obama. Can he keep doing this without paying a price?

Seems so. The true answer to this question can be found not in Trump’s various outrages — whether the latest or all those that came before — but in the fact that most of his rivals respond to his slurs by either agreeing with him or refusing to take a stand altogether. The only three candidates who immediately criticized Trump this time — Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, and Bush — had nothing to lose by coming out against bigotry. Two of them aren’t polling any better than Walker was, and Bush, though faring somewhat better, is fighting for his political life. The other candidates are cowering as usual or, in Carson’s case, going Trump one better by saying that Muslims should be barred from the presidency.

In 1961, Barry Goldwater advised Republicans that they should “go hunting where the ducks are” by currying favor with segregationist voters in the Deep South. Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, was similarly unapologetic about his candidate’s intentions in playing the Islamophobia card, telling the Associated Press this week that “Republican primary voters are with us at least 80-20.” Let’s not pretend otherwise.

 

See:http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/32646-focus-carly-fiorina-and-the-gop-outsider-boom

Jeb Bush Insults Black Voters: All They Want Is ‘Free Stuff’

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Source: Occupy Democrats

Author: Sharon Argueta

Emphasis Mine

The Republican Party establishment has said that their party has a new message of “inclusiveness” and claimed that they really “care” about all voters, not just the wealthy, white, Christian males. After the Mitt Romney trainwreck derailed, the Chairman of the Republican National Convention, Reince Preibus told the GOP that they had to engage minority communities full-time — not just during an election season. Unfortunately, the right-wing doesn’t seem to understand that “engage” doesn’t meant to repeatedly insult them and the candidates are quickly dashing any hopes of ever seeing the inside of the Oval Office again. During a campaign stop in South Carolina on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, channeled his Mitt Romney and told the crowd that he would not appeal to African-American voters by promising “free stuff.”

During the question and answer portion of his event Bush responded to a white man who asked him how he would appeal to African-American voters by saying:

“Our message is one of hope and aspiration,” Mr. Bush said. “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.”

Apparently Jeb Bush is just another Republican who believes that the black community are a bunch of lazy moochers who are only interested in taking. This erroneous belief has no basis in reality and ignored the fact that white people make up the largest group of welfare recipients. Even though the statistics are widely available, the GOP continues to perpetuate the stereotypical “black welfare queen” myth. It was the same tactic Mitt Romney deployed during his 2012 election when he told a crowd at a N.A.A.C.P. event:

“Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this: If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”

It was no surprise when President Obama trounced Romney at the polls and received 90 percent of the African-American vote and 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. Romney, of course, blamed his loss on Obama giving “gifts” to black people, women and young voters.

Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for Bush, said that the candidate “talks constantly about the need for Republicans to reach out to all voters,” but failed to address the “free stuff” comment specifically. She also said:

“We will never be successful in elections without communicating that conservative principles and conservative policies are the only path to restoring the right to rise for every single American.”

She is absolutely right- the GOP will never be successful if they do not broaden their appeal, but, as usual, they are doing it wrong. The Republican Party has made it very clear that they believe all of the insulting stereotypes that their extremely racist base puts forth. They do absolutely nothing to help these voters and everything they can to trample their rights. The party has consistently passed laws to disenfranchise minority and low-income voters, they support institutional racism, gutted the Voting Rights Act, fought to keep a symbol of racism flying in South Carolina after nine African-American churchgoers were massacred and when the police murder minority citizens, they support the officers. Is it any wonder the vast majority of minority voters are Democrats? 

The Republican Party, including Bush, are not a party of inclusiveness. They are a party of hate and vitriol, filled with politicians who do not care about anyone who isn’t part of the wealthy elite.

 

See: http://www.occupydemocrats.com/jeb-bush-insults-black-voters-all-they-want-is-free-stuff/

5 Amazing Ways Pope Francis Made Republicans Squirm Yesterday

In his speech to Congress, the pope made one thing very clear: Republicans aren’t acting very Christian.

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Source: AlterNet

Author:Patricia Miller

Emphasis Mine

Despite all the talk that Pope Francis’ address to Congress wouldn’t be political or partisan, it turns out it was both. And, as I predicted here in Salon, it definitely leaned to one side of the aisle. In fact, if you were a conservative Republican, Thursday morning in the Congress was not your finest moment, as Pope Francis laid bare all the ways that the Republican agenda counters Catholic social teaching, from its harsh treatment of immigrants to its fossil fuel-burning disdain for the natural world.

And Francis’ call for politicians to work for the common good was an implicit rebuke to the do-nothing, obstructionist GOP agenda that’s in service to their corporatist, Chamber of Commerce overlords. “Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. …You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics,” he said.

Here are the five key moments in Francis’ speech that made conservatives squirm more than any others:

The shout-out to Dorothy Day.Francis commended four Americans in particular, whom he held up as examples of pursuing the common good: Abraham Lincoln, for his pursuit of liberty; Martin Luther King Jr., for his commitment to nonviolence and pluralism; Trappist monk Thomas Merton, for his commitment to dialogue and peace; and Dorothy Day, for her “social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed.”

None of them are exactly conservative, but Day in particular is noted as a radical social activist. She founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which took root during the Great Depression, and urged Catholics to form small, autonomous communities to lead simple lives devoted to the gospel and serving the poor. In addition to being a socialist, Day was outspoken in her support of pacifism and labor rights. “I think it was extraordinary that he cited her as one of the most important people in recent American history. This would be one of the very, very few times that somebody as radical as Dorothy Day was mentioned,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told the Washington Post.

The abortion switcheroo. In defiance of the specific guidance not to try to score political points by clapping at partisan applause lines in Francis’ speech, congressional conservatives leapt to their feet the moment Francis delivered the Vatican’s standard coded language about abortion, mentioning “our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” Imagine their shock when he immediately followed that with, “This conviction had led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.” Psych.

Catholic social teaching has long put opposition to the death penalty on the same plane as opposition to abortion, most famously with Chicago Archbishop Joseph Bernardin’s “seamless garment” doctrine, which held sway in the mid-1980s as progressive bishops reminded Catholics that opposition to the death penalty and nuclear war was just as important as abortion.

Calling arms deals “money drenched in blood.” Speaking of death, what about all those arms deals the Republicans are so fond of? Francis wanted to know who is selling the bad guys all these weapons and why: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” The answer, according to the pontiff, is “money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.” I’m sure the GOP and all the defense contractors who give them money will get right on that.

Reminding the GOP we’re all foreigners. As in his speech at the White House on Tuesday, Francis felt the need to once again remind those who are making intolerance toward immigrants their political stock-in-trade that they, like him, are likely the descendants of immigrant families. “[M]illions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom,” he said, adding, “We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants.”

Catholic social teaching reminds Catholics of their duty to “welcome the stranger.”

In one of the most moving passages of his speech, Francis said, “Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.”

Confronting the climate naysayers. Francis made it clear that combating climate change, development and technology can coexist. He explicitly rebuked many conservative critics of his climate change encyclical “Laudato si,” who claim that he is anti-commerce and wants to stifle development or reduce the world to subsistence-level farming to stop climate change. “The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable,” he said, adding, “In this regard, I am confident that America’s outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.”

On the plus for conservatives side, Francis did talk about the need for “the voice of faith to continue to be heard,” but in the case of this particular voice, conservatives probably wish he would just be quiet.

Patricia Miller is the author of “Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion in the Catholic Church.” Her work on politics, sex and religion has appeared in the Atlantic, the Nation, Huffington Post, and Ms. Magazine.

 

See:http://www.alternet.org/5-amazing-ways-pope-francis-made-republicans-squirm-yesterday?akid=13519.123424.ixFPZ6&rd=1&src=newsletter1043006&t=10

The 10 Most Important Lines From Pope Francis’ Historic Speech to Congress

Taking several progressive stances, the pope did not shy away from the politically divisive issues of the day.

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Source: Mother Jones

Author:Pema Levy

Emphasis Mine

In a powerful speech to a joint session of Congress Thursday morning, Pope Francis pushed the United States to confront several political issues that tend to divide Republicans and Democrats, including immigration, climate change, the Iran deal, Cuba, poverty, and the death penalty. His speech noted that politics “cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.” He didn’t chastise any political party, and he, not surprisingly, had a clear but brief reference to opposing abortion. But overall, his address had a progressive cast.

Here are the most powerful quotes, according to the prepared text:

On climate change: “I call for a courageous and responsible effort to redirect our steps and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity. I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States—and this Congress—have an important role to play. Now is the time for courageous actions and strategies, aimed at implementing a culture of care and an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.” (Democrats stood to applaud the pope’s remarks on climate change, while many Republicans remained seated. The pope’s message was more muted than his remarks on the issue Wednesday when he spoke at the White House.”

On abolishing the death penalty: “I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes. Recently my brother bishops here in the United States renewed their call for the abolition of the death penalty. Not only do I support them, but I also offer encouragement to all those who are convinced that a just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation.”

On abortion: “The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” (This was his only direct reference to abortion in the speech.)

On same-sex marriage: The closest he came to addressing same-sex marriage was in a passage about the importance of family. “I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. “Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.” (This did not appear to be an explicit denouncement of marriage equality.)

On Iran and Cuba: “When countries which have been at odds resume the path of dialogue—a dialogue which may have been interrupted for the most legitimate of reasons—new opportunities open up for all. This has required, and requires, courage and daring, which is not the same as irresponsibility. A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism. A good political leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces.”

On the refugee crisis: “Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions. On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.”

On immigration: “We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants…Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our ‘neighbors’ and everything around us. Building a nation calls us to recognize that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility in order to adopt one of reciprocal solidarity, in a constant effort to do our best. I am confident that we can do this.”

On poverty: “I would encourage you to keep in mind all those people around us who are trapped in a cycle of poverty. They too need to be given hope. The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes. I know that many Americans today, as in the past, are working to deal with this problem.”

On the arms trade: “Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.”

On religious fundamentalism: “We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.” 

 

 

 

See: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/pope-francis-congress-best-lines-climate-abortion

The media’s big Bernie Sanders myth: Here’s how we build the coalition that shatters Clintonism, neoliberalism

Hillary-bots argue that Sanders only appeals to white Iowa & New Hampshire voters. Here’s how he proves that wrong

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Source:Salon.com

Author:Anis Shivani

Emphasis Mine

Bernie Sanders is showing swift-footedness in making all the moves necessary to not only establish but consolidate his new front-runner position in Iowa and New Hampshire. Some in the media may not yet have caught on to the way the momentum continues to shift, but eventually the reality will sink in.

There are three things Sanders needs to do—and has already started doing in a noticeable way—to move clearly and permanently ahead of Hillary Clinton at the national level: a) dramatic emphasis on minority outreach; b) expansion of his economic message to one of social harmony; and c) delegitimization of the negative populism pervasive in the Republican primary.

Already, Cornel West has given a rousing introduction to Sanders in South Carolina. Sanders has been trying to reach out to the Congressional Black Caucus, though not yet with much luck. They might as this message becomes clearer: Sanders is a much better deal for minorities of every stripe—from embattled African-Americans to Hispanics and Asians and others—because of what his policies of economic justice represent compared to the neoliberal repressiveness of Clinton and the establishment Democratic Party.

The Clintons talk a good game when it comes to African-Americans (Bill, after all, was supposed to be our first black president before the real first black president showed up) but the truth is that Clintonian neoliberalism really tightened the screws on African-Americans by legitimizing extreme income inequality as the normal course of things—smashing, in effect, the Democratic Party’s bargain with minorities since the New Deal.

The Clintons ended welfare as we knew it, for example, by delusionally hoping that technology-driven productivity would somehow make poverty cease to exist, or by expanding the surveillance, prosecution and incarceration capacities of the state, building on the war on drugs initiated by Ronald Reagan to impose a stark omnipotence much less forgiving of mistakes made by poor people. Rhetorically—and emptily—the Clintons may align themselves with African-Americans, and claim some sort of honorary status with that community, but their policies have been death—literal death on the streets—for African-Americans.

It is a myth created by the establishment media that Sanders’ appeal is limited to well-educated white coastal liberals, particularly males, and that he has a natural barrier to how far and deep his support can extend. The claim is that South Carolina—and then Nevada with its Hispanic population—will be the firewalls that will break Sanders’ momentum if he wins in mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire.

But the truth is that Sanders’ potential appeal to minorities is unlimited—unlike Clinton’s upper limits due to the nature of her past and present policies and her utter incapacity to enunciate anything real that resonates with people beyond recycled neoliberal micro-platitudes. Therefore, Sanders must go for broke in reaching out to African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians as their natural candidate, and in the process rewrite the whole script for how the Democratic Party courts voters. New, and unprecedented, promises must be made to shatter the silence around issues that neoliberal candidates have zero interest in highlighting.

Secondly, while it has so far been a necessary and indeed winning strategy for Sanders to emphasize a straightforward recital of agenda items—especially single-payer healthcare, free college tuition and a $15 minimum wage (outlined by Jonathan Tasini in “The Essential Bernie Sanders and his Vision for America“)—Sanders needs to open this up to a message of optimism that reaches well beyond the listing of economic policy items. Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn has already shown how to do this.

Of course, these need to continue being hammered into consciousness until they became accepted parts of liberal discourse again (as the necessary antidote to Reaganite social darwinism that we never got from the Democratic Party), but I’m sure that Sanders will also figure out a way to connect these policy prescriptions to a radically expansive vision of the good life, part of which must involve reimagining America as an honest and responsible citizen in the world community.

There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton—like Tony Blair in Britain—has always been utterly incapable of humor. It is not a character flaw, per se, as it wasn’t for Blair, but the fact that neoliberalism demands a pure administrative outlook, managing at the margins with faith in private enterprise as the only salvation, that simply does not allow any glimpse of humor—by which I really mean humanity—to peek through.

Young people everywhere are looking for this streak of humanity in an increasingly robotic, unforgiving, rules-based world. Perhaps Sanders, despite his age, or perhaps because of it, can tap into his bona fide countercultural heritage to establish new norms for millennial liberal discourse, making a rousing case for old-fashioned liberty based in economic justice.

This is the ideal Martin Luther King Jr. and other visionaries at the time were beginning to fashion when we got sidelined, for nearly half a century, by an entirely different vision—Nixonian and ruthless and divisive (Donald Trump is playing from the same script). Neoliberals, it should be noted, will continue to indulge in the false bromides of the culture wars when pressed to the wall; they remain immersed in this methodology of false attack and counterattack, rather than seeking the roots of liberty in economic fairness.

Finally, Trump has gifted almost the perfect platform for Sanders to work against: a dark populism rooted in xenophobia and protectionism, a Machiavellian worldview pitting true Americans versus the racially unacceptable other, setting the stage for Sanders’ authentic populism, rooted in participatory democracy, to make all the more sense. The contrast with Trump is one big reason why Sanders has had so much resonance.

Here, Sanders’ outreach, such as when he spoke at Liberty University and was introduced by Jerry Falwell Jr., is a longer-term investment, and it will be more difficult to gain traction with this voting constituency than with African-Americans and other minorities. But fascistic populism of the talk radio variety needs a strong counterweight, which neoliberalism for the past quarter-century, coinciding with the rise of the Clintons, has refused to provide.

See: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/20/the_medias_big_bernie_sanders_myth_heres_how_we_build_the_coalition_that_shatters_clintonism_neoliberalism/