Over Doesn't Mean Forever; It Just Feels Like It!

When I was a young volunteer working on my first political campaign a wonderful old hack told me that the rewards for getting politically involved were great. “You meet terrific people and make life long friends while working on campaigns,” he said. “And the more charismatic the candidate is the more likely you are to get laid. I know that might sound ridiculous but the excitement for the candidate rubs off onto the people around the candidate.” After working on several other campaigns I concluded that he was right.

The important thing to remember here is not that an eager young man got laid but that the excitement for the candidate rubs off onto the people around the candidate. What I am talking about here is not necessarily a physical proximity to the candidate either it is an ideological proximity; it is the sharing of a cause, a purpose, and a hope. A corollary to this is that the more charismatic the candidate at the top of the ticket the longer the coat tails will be. Enthusiasm for the cause(s) defined by a charismatic candidate will extend to the people who are helping to advance the cause(s). It is this dynamic this ability to get people excited about a vision or cause that allows charismatic leaders to start and advance social and political movements. Along with that dynamic, however, there is often the problematic perception that the leader and the cause are not just inseparable but are the same. The dangers there are two fold: The first is that this perception is too likely to evolve into the great man syndrome which makes a political movement vulnerable to fascism or some other form of despotism (No to Trump please). The second problem is that if the cause and the man are viewed as synonymous their fates become intertwined making it all too likely that the demise of one will result in the demise of the other.

The more effort you put into a campaign the more emotionally vested you become in the candidate and the cause. The sharing of a cause, a purpose, and a hope with other highly motivated people is an inspirational experience, and, at least on an unconscious level, you do not want it to end. If your charismatic candidate is successful there is the popping of champagne corks and an elation that ends all too abruptly with a hangover and the feeling that something is missing. Gone is the sense of urgency and purpose that have been such a driving force. There is no campaign headquarters to go to, and you miss the closeness of the comrades with whom you shared the dream and the struggle. Getting back to the routine of your normal life is not a passive thing. It takes a real effort to start working on all of the tasks you have been neglecting. Left, left! Your left, right, left! You struggle to fall in step with the humdrum drum. How mundane your life becomes depends... I do not know anything about your family, your friends or how rewarding you find your profession. What I can tell you is that the more committed you are to the cause the more likely you are to stay involved and to help build a political base to advance the cause rather than naively depending on the newly elected candidate to make it happen.

If your candidate does not succeed the end of the campaign hangover and sense of loss is even more painful. But whether it is a question of whither thou or wither thou depends on you. Bear in mind that during the early stages of most revolutions there are setbacks and the movements appear to falter before they pick up momentum. Fight for every advancement of the cause no matter how small it may appear to be. It is not a matter of settling for less it is a matter of positioning! As disappointed as I am about Hillary Clinton, I do not want to waste all the valuable time it would take to clean up the disastrous mess of a Trump Presidency. Do not forget about congressional or local candidates; they are important and mid-terms are only two years away. As Bernie Sanders has been trying to tell us revolutions move from the bottom up! Stay committed and help build and expand the base. The rewards of being involved are still greater than the disappointments. Far from being over, the revolution Bernie Sanders envisions has just begun!

How Bad Is It?

Hillary Clinton is not so bad by the standards we have come to expect; it is the standards we have come to expect that are so bad. “Everyone does it” is her excuse for accepting the huge speaking fees paid to her by Wall Street as well as the large contributions to her campaign and to the super paks supporting her, not to mention the donations large financial institutions made to the Clinton Global initiative. When my mother taught me that “everyone does it” is not an acceptable rationale for bad acts I guess she forgot to add “unless you are a politician.” It took the Roberts Court to add that caveat, and the court did it in a manner that encouraged the corporations to shout it with money – lots and lots of money!

If you want to see why donations or contributions paid to or for the benefit of politicians matter I strongly recommend "Wall Street Fraud Of The Month Club" by Richard Eskow. As Mr. Eskow points out there was “[a] $5.1 billion fraud settlement from Goldman Sachs, a $1.2 billion fraud agreement with Wells Fargo – and that’s just from the past week. Over the last several years banks have paid an estimated $200 billion in fraud fines and settlements.”

Mr. Eskow asks a question we should all be asking: “How many settlements, how many billions, will it take to convince some fact-resistant pundits and politicians that there is an epidemic of fraud on Wall Street?”

“A lot of people must have colluded in the frauds,” Mr. Eskow said, “but no executives have been indicted at Goldman Sachs. Nor have its leaders exhibited any shame. They have participated in charity events (including the Clinton Global Initiative), and Goldman has a strong presence in the presidential race. One candidate was paid six-figure sums to give speeches at Goldman Sachs. Another received a Goldman Sachs loan for his Senate campaign and is married to one of its executives.”

I might add that Bernie Sanders is not one of the candidates alluded to in the above paragraph. In fact Bernie Sanders is insisting that the executives of companies committing frauds must be held criminally responsible for those frauds, and that we must break up too big to fail companies and banks in order to do that! Bernie can afford to advance those reforms because he is not accepting any contributions directly or indirectly from Wall Street, the mega-banks, or other giant corporations! The only other candidate making that claim is Donald Trump who is a billionaire that will continue to look after his business interests if elected. So unless you believe dogs do bite the people that feed them, I think you will find it easy to understand why we feel the Bern!

Enough Of The Damn “Unqualified!”

During an interview with the New York Daily News Bernie Sanders said he did not know if the Fed could break up the mega-banks but that the President could break them up under the authority of Dodd-Frank. The media pounced: Vanity Fair and the Washington Post published articles that made it sound like Bernie Sanders did not know what he was talking about. The Atlantic went one step further by questioning Bernie Sander's knowledge of policy. On April 6 Robert Reich said this criticism of Bernie Sanders was "bonkers."  Mr. Reich went on to say that:

“Bernie was absolutely correct when he said the President has the authority to break up the big banks under Dodd-Frank. He repeatedly specified exactly how he'd use that Dodd-Frank authority to do so. His critics are confusing the Dodd-Frank Act with the Federal Reserve. Whether the Fed has the authority on its own to break up the biggest banks is irrelevant.”

If Hillary Clinton and her wonks are as good as they want us to believe, she and her campaign are being very disingenuous to say the least; as Mr. Reich points out Hillary's campaign sent out a fund raising e-mail saying that:

“... on his [Bernie Sanders'] signature issue of breaking up the banks, he is unable to answer basic questions about how he would go about doing it, and even seems uncertain about whether a president does or doesn't already have that authority under existing law.”

This is a case of the media undermining Bernie Sanders in an apparent attempt to benefit Hillary Clinton who is obviously more palatable to the plutocratic news media moguls. She is playing it for all it is worth to her and it gets worse! One of the problems fact checkers have is how to treat a statement that may not be a lie in the strictest sense of the word but is so deceptive that no one can doubt that it has the same purpose and effect as a lie! And this brings us to the question of whether Hillary Clinton said Bernie Sanders was not qualified to be president.

For the sake of convenience I am presenting below the string facts cited by Politifact:

1. CNN's senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny wrote that "Hillary Clinton's campaign is taking new steps to try and disqualify Bernie Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters."
2. The headline of the Washington Post story reporting on Hillary Clinton's interview with MSNBC Joe Scarborough was “Clinton Questions Whether Sanders Is Qualified To Be President.”
3. While Hillary Clinton did not directly answer Joe Scarborough's question about whether she thought Bernie Sanders was “qualified and ready” to be president she said Bernie's interview with the New York Daily News “raised a lot of really serious questions.”

Politifact rated Bernie's contention that Hillary said he was not qualified as mostly false because she did not explicitly say he was not qualified. With all due respect this is a distinction without much of a difference. No one said Sarah Palin was not legally qualified to be Vice President, but her demonstrated ignorance sure called her qualifications into question. Are you ready? Does your experience and your knowledge make you qualified to do the job? These are common questions based on the plain meaning of the word “qualified,” which Merriam Webster defines in part as “fitted (as by training or experience) for a given purpose: competent.” Is there really anyone out there who would deny that Hillary Clinton was questioning the qualifications of Bernie Sanders as Webster defines the word qualification?

The Washington Post obviously interpreted the statements of Hillary Clinton and her campaign as questioning Bernie Sanders' qualifications to be president, and so did Bernie Sanders. But when Bernie Sanders questioned Hillary Clinton's qualifications on the grounds of the money she and/or the super pacs supporting her take from Wall Street and other special interests all of the media types characterized his statement as the horror of all political horrors. “Hillary did not say Bernie Sanders was not qualified to be president, but he said she was not qualified to be president,” they wailed with as much righteous indignation as it is possible to show through the television makeup they wear!”

Let us all wring our hands and wet our pants over the assertion of the media that the Democratic Party cannot survive Bernie Sanders saying Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be President. Oh, pardon me! The media minions did not explicitly say that did they. They just accused Bernie of splitting up the party, and invited you to fear worst! And they will continue to do so because drama sells soap, and the media moguls are not real fond of socialists. Frankly I am now calling into question the qualifications of the pundits to be pundits when they obviously pander so shamelessly to their corporate masters! Enough of the phony qualification issue! Find something real and informative to report even if you think it is not exciting.