G.W. Bush once said “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Bush Co. fooled a lot of people in 2000 and 2004. That said, a Bush dropped out of the Republican primary race last night after Republican voters spanked Jeb in three primary states. Donald Trump is their man. But caution should prevail. For Jeb’s son, George P., the recently elected Texas Land Commissioner, will no doubt rear the ugly Bush head in the future. Keep your eyes on P., Texas.
Moving along, I have witnessed more than a fair share of poo throwing fights on Facebook and Twitter between the supporters for both Democratic candidates for President. Not to mention the number of diaries posted from both sides here on the Recommended and Most Shared pages. Some of the brawls between the Hillary and Bernie camps are almost as bad as the GOP Presidential debates in which a cast of lying liars spout lies while calling their opponents liars. Everyone is a liar except for the liar whose turn it is to speak.
Fortunately, our party’s combatants haven’t sunk this low. Yet. Or, if they have and I missed it, it could be because some supporters have been bamboozled by one of dirtiest political tricksters in recent memory and his right wing trolls.
On my Twitter feed a Bernie supporter recently tweeted she and her group would vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein if Bernie is not the Democratic nominee. Fine. The Bernie supporter is in essence throwing away her vote by implicitly voting R. This means fewer votes for the Democratic candidate. Would a true Democrat really enable any of the truly frightening, dangerous corporate fascists that are running on the Republican Presidential ticket? For spite alone? Or because one fell for the decades of lies told about Hillary Clinton?
In the heat of the primary Presidential campaign I’d like to suggest to my fellow Democrats that while it’s perfectly normal and expected to feel passionately about and dug in on one’s candidate, (been there, done that more than once), one should be mindful of the outcome if a Republican is elected in November.
Our disagreements should not distract us from the big prize ahead. The ultimate goal is to elect a Democrat into the White House and for the top of our ticket to sweep in Democrats on the ballot. For this is the path to the governance that will best serve most of us. Down ballot candidates apply to national, state and local elections.
Do you want free or affordable college tuition, $15.00 minimum hour pay and strengthened social security benefits? Sulking at home or voting Green will guarantee that neither will happen if our candidates lose.
It is that simple.
It should be reasonable to assume that if one is a Democrat one should be OK with either Hillary or Bernie as our Party’s nominee. For both are infinitely more likely to work on behalf of most of us instead of merely sucking up to the 1%.
Hillary and Bernie have different approaches to achieving similar results whether it is more affordable, expanded health care, free or reduced college tuition, an increase in the minimum wage, a more tightly regulated Wall St., increasing taxes for the 1-2%, closing corporate loopholes and leaving no stone unturned in repealing the perversion called Citizen’s United. Imposed on us by a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, thank you.
A Republican win wouldn’t be pretty. Imagine 3-4 Scalia like justices sitting on the Supreme Court bench. We would kiss away hard fought civil rights, voting rights, LBGT and women’s reproductive rights. Roe V. Wade would be overturned.
By the way, remember who stuck us w/W. and Cheney in 2000 instead of Al Gore? Presidents Reagan, H.W. Bush and W. Bush’s Supreme Court appointees.
Look at what happened to our country as a result.
In 2001-2009 Bush/Cheney imposed unfunded tax cuts for the rich, two wars, and unfettered Wall St. gambling casino practices that spiraled downward to the worse recession since 1929. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and life long retirement savings.
While millions of Americans lost everything in 2007-2008, the Bush/Cheney Administration emptied $700 billion of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of Wall St. in order to bail out the reckless gamblers. Then Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, warned that a rescue was imminent to prevent a global financial meltdown.
Which brings up a valid point tweeted by David Sirota the other day. If we could bail out Wall St., why is free or reduced tuition for college unrealistic? I agree with Mr. Sirota.
And I can promise you that no Republican would ever consider free college tuition as reasonable. But every Republican, whether moderate or right wing, would bail out the Wall St. bank robbers again in a NYC nano second. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, each and every one of them would protect Wall St. first and foremost. Preserving the rich is the Republican way. For money and greed always trump country.
Do we want a replay of the Bush/Cheney disaster? Do we want to kiss our planet goodbye, too? Think about how many willfully ignorant, climate change deniers pervade the Republican Party. Most of all Republican lawmakers live in the back pockets of the Koch brothers and the oil and gas industries. None have a vision for the future except for getting themselves re-elected.
Climate change is unleashing devastating consequences to our planet that will impact us, our children and grandchildren for decades to come. Inaction is not an option. If inaction prevails, you and I will pay for it. Dearly.
Republican Governors have already attacked some of our precious liberties. The Texas Jim Crow Voter ID law stripped over 600,000 registered voters of their right in 2014. A federal judge ruled this law is unconstitutional but it continues to languish in the court because of Republican challenges. Hundreds of thousands of Texas citizens will likely be disenfranchised again as I type. For Texas is in the middle of its early voting period.
It is also next to impossible for poor women and those in rural areas to obtain an abortion in the state because of the Texas GOP war on Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive rights. Women and men have also lost access to affordable contraceptives and cancer screenings.
It is the Republican way.
Imagine living in states where regulatory agencies cease to exist. Those of us who live in red states, ruled by free market obsessed Republican Governors, already know what doom lies ahead. Because death and doom has already happened. And it will happen again because of the Republican Party’s unholy aversion to regulation of any sort.
Think about Citizen’s United remaining in place indefinitely. For no Republican will ever right this travesty to our democracy. Why? Because most of the dark, corporate and secret money flows to Republicans candidates. Like Russia, the U.S. will become an oligarchy. Our country has already been heading in this direction thanks to Citizen’s United, Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economics and the Bush/Cheney tax cuts to billion and millionaires.
Indeed, the stakes of this election are so high that none other than W.’s Turd Blossom, Karl Rove, W.’s go to smear artist, himself, crawled out of his rat hole. For the sole purpose of ratf*cking Hillary Clinton. Apparently Rove has a comeback plan to re-invent himself after the GOP losses in 2012.
Why is Karl Rove trying to help Bernie Sanders win the Democratic nomination?
Four years after Karl Rove wasted over $300 million from establishment GOP donors in his unsuccessful attempt to use his Super PAC American Crossroads to elect Mitt Romney president, he’s started running ads in the Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Why?
Back in 2012, Rove raised all that money to run anti-Obama and pro-Romney ads. This year Crossroads is probably finding it hard to make an argument for investing in its efforts, because donors are still smarting from 2012’s failed campaign, and they are feeling fleeced again after giving to Jeb Bush’s lackluster 2016 presidential campaign and Super PAC.
W.’s Turd Blossom lost credibility with the GOP fat cat donors in 2012 and he is apparently desperate to appear relevant to the donor base. Though no amount of money could bring love to Jeb.
Now, Rove is likely making the case to the big GOP donors, who are a little Super PAC shy, that he’s the only one who can stop Hillary from being elected president. More specifically, they have to stop her in the Democratic primary because the leading GOP candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, can’t beat her in the general election. The old socialist from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is an easier opponent for Trump or Cruz in November. So don’t waste your money with Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Christie. Send it to Crossroads. That’s the best investment. Rove will beat Clinton in the primary, so we will have a chance of winning in the general. That’s the pitch from Rove, and it’s just got to be the motivation behind the anti-Clinton ads.
Of course it is not a given that Bernie Sanders would lose to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or John Kasich. Nor is it a given that Senator Sanders is more unelectable than Mrs. Clinton. That said, Rove would paint Mr. Sanders as an evil doing socialist who palls around with Putin. And he vacations in Cuba with top communists there or some other hateful nonsense.
Fortunately, thanks to social media, laser focused microscopes are trained on Rovian campaigns of hatred.
Speaking of Ted Cruz, the dude is perceived as so wretchedly vile that two of the biggest newspapers in Texas have not endorsed his candidacy for President.
The Dallas Morning News went as far as to explain why it would not endorse Cruz.
Cruz has held elective public office for just over three years. He’s passed little legislation of significance. Such inexperience was one of the reasons we didn’t recommend Barack Obama for president in the 2008 general election.
The Texan’s singular Senate achievement was a 21-hour quasi-filibuster in 2013 to blast the Affordable Care Act. We opposed the act at its inception, but it is now the law of the land, and as such we’ve argued it should be made to work. Cruz’s talkfest led to a government shutdown that drew the ire even of fellow Republicans who complained he was showboating, and that the whole effort was doomed to failure.
The editorial board also discussed Cruz’s temperament. Last summer, Cruz stood on the Senate floor and called Mitch McConnell, the presiding leader of his own party, a liar. He has compared those who are reluctant to defund the Affordable Care Act to Nazi placaters.
Cruz has declared that “the whole world is on fire,” that the U.S. is heading off “the cliff into oblivion” and that he expects President Barack Obama to “start quartering soldiers in people’s homes soon.”
Cruz happens to be a GOP frontrunner. The Houston Chronicle did not endorse him either. Would you vote for this guy? I didn’t think so. Would you want him for your next president? I didn’t think so. Ted Cruz is more dangerous than his opponents because he tacitly co-mingles religion with government and politics.
That said, though Ted Cruz might be the scariest Republican running for President, his opponents are not far behind. All share corporate fascism in common and all will serve the 1-2%. The needs of the rest of us will be ignored. Except in campaign stump speeches, of course.
So, Democrats and fellow Kossacks let’s agree to disagree. But let’s also shake hands and wish ourselves the best. We are the Party for, of and by the 99% and we should be damned proud of it. We cannot afford to get bamboozled by right wing trolls who have nothing but greed, misery and mayhem in mind as their long-term vision. We are far better than that. We deserve the strongest leader that our Party can elect.
If Bernie is our Party’s nominee I will vote for him in a NYC nanosecond. The same is true if Hillary is our Party’s nominee. Either will do us proud and just.
So, yesterday when I visited my local hair salon in Houston, I asked the 24 year old young lady who cuts my hair if she had voted in the Texas primary election. Early voting started on Monday. S looked down and said “actually I am not registered to vote.”
Several months ago S had asked me why Republican Governors hated refugees. Because we were alone at the time I gave her a crash course on right wing xenophobia and Jim Crow laws. I told her that my grandparents were immigrants. I reassured her that we are a nation of immigrants and refugees.
When S was one year old, her parents fled Cambodia for the U.S. Her family first settled in California where they had a relative, and then on to Maine where S grew up. Her parents moved to San Angelo, TX later for business purposes. S is confused about Texas politics. She is a naturalized American citizen who works very hard. I have work to do.
We all do. So, let’s get on with it and stop fighting among ourselves.