A Continental Divide

(Part One)

PARTISANSHIP

Some things never change in politics. One is the name-calling. Another is the confluence of issues that can exist following the election of a President.

The name calling is usually about partisanship and wars between the major political parties.

To conservatives, liberals at one time or other have been “government big-spenders”, “bleeding hearts”, “commies and reds”, “soft on crime”, “un-American,” progressives favoring the intellectual and cultural elite, socialists wanting the government to do everything, taxes on the rich to provide free healthcare and education to everyone else.

To liberals, conservatives have always been big business, big money talks, tax-cuts for the rich, disinterested in the little guy and all for the powerful few, accepting of the raw income inequality that has killed the middle class and favoring the overwhelming power of big business

These definitions are especially meaningful today because we are in the midst of a two year-long Presidential campaign in which the incumbent, speaking bluntly and profanely in his fourth grade level-language, makes a daily habit of name-calling including the claim that most of the news is “fake”or a lie or a distortion…especially news about him and his Administration.

But there is more to it this time. The country is divided as it hasn’t been since the Vietnam War sixty years ago. Then as now, the issues were complex and the real reasons for the internal combustion can get blurred.

Was the difficulty of understanding why we went to war in Vietnam the singular cause of mass discontent? Or was it the fact that the young people who have always fought wars were fiercely reluctant to go and rebelled in ways that went far beyond the war issue itself? Their rebellion hadn’t been seen in America for generations. It seemed that the war in American streets against the war in Vietnam was an excuse for a change in the values of young Americans and their protest against the way things were – revolting against the decision-makers whether they be parents or politicians

Hindsight should help us understand what is happening today in a country seemingly torn by partisanship and essentially unable to hear the other side. Why is the division so sharply drawn?

Did it really begin a decade ago after the surprise election of America’s first President of color and the declaration of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader of the Senate, that he and his fellow Republicans would never allow Barack Obama to pass a single piece of legislation on programs that he wanted? No party had ever made such an open statement of total opposition after a Presidential election.

Or was it the first statement by real estate developer/reality show host Donald J. Trump at the very first Republican Presidential debate when he pointed to the Congressmen, Senators and Governors on either side of him on the stage and said none of them gave a damn about the public but simply wanted to be elected and reelected.

Did he hit a universal chord of truth with that statement? Had the public gotten so fed up with the way the government worked? Were we finally so fed up with the wealthy and powerful calling the shots with the legislators they had supported and controlled that we would choose a non-politician as President who clearly had little but scorn for those holding office and those seeking it?

The man America elected was clearly more comfortable in his role as a TV reality star and real estate developer with far more experience in those fields than he could ever be as the head of a government he knows or cares absolutely nothing about. He has used his “starring role” in a stunningly successful way; dominating the news every day by doing nothing more than tweeting out his opinions; using his position in the most personal way ever experienced in American history to establish his legitimacy, his presence, his importance, his success in the endless desire to sell himself as the CEO of America who can do and say anything he wants and who can do no wrong and will never admit it if he does because that’s what CEO’s can do.

He has no knowledge of or interest in the Constitution and nothing but scorn for elected officials and members of the government bureaucracy as well.

It Is within this unique reality that America is being asked to consider those who want to run against him. Traditionally it is their job to explain who they are and what they want to do. But is that enough when running against a man who is willfully destroying all norms of the Presidency because he knows that so many Americans reject what the norms of government have become?

We think not.

THE REALITY GAME

If Donald Trump became President by running against government as we know it, what are the Democrats running against him saying to change the very system which is failing so many Americans and provoked the win for Trump?

In our view nothing. Not a single thing.

As we write this, former Vice President, Joe Biden, has become embroiled in an international controversy about whether his son prospered during his Vice Presidency because of business deals with China and the Ukraine. While no corruption has been proved, the President now has the way to campaign again on his singular theme: that people in government steal from the public because their elite status lets them do whatever they want to do. “Crooked Hillary” was about the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising among foreign governments while she was Secretary of State. Now he’s got Biden helping his son Hunter make significant money while he was Vice President. Biden is a known quantity who is admired as a good and decent man. He once fought admirably for unionism and the middle class but has never succeeded in his desire for elected national office or been considered a thinking man or a speaker of renown. He clearly stands for what we know could be better.

Bernie Sanders came along in 2016 with stark accusations about the moral and policy corruption of the rich, ruling class, the extent of its wealth and its power to demand that its wishes become the governing primer for all America.

His demand for Medicare for All, the end of private health care insurance, the end of the Pharmaceutical industry’s power to set prices and the initiation of free tuition for colleges throughout the nation came in an endless stream, and a ferocious, indignant demeanor that energized and startled the Democratic Party but did not compel it to make him its nominee.

He continues that searing, thunderous approach today on the campaign trail. But his good friend Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has slipped past him in the polls.

Oklahoma-born and raised appearing as an eager, energetic school teacher first and foremost – clothes, glasses and all – she comes from a far different ideology than Sanders even as she agrees with him. She says she is “a capitalist to my bones” but believes in and has presented an amazing series of changes for every major area of American life – from healthcare to government corruption, believing that all of these changes can be funded if America taxes the total wealth of the top one percent of Americans who own 60% of all wealth in the nation. As she puts it, she has a new policy for every problem.

But does America care? Can it absorb all of these new solutions?

Do we vote for ideas and new policies or because of feelings?

Do we believe that a Legislature controlled by big money will simply vote for all of these changes -whether Republicans or Democrats control?

And can any of this change when our system permits men and women to become political careerists, holding office for as long as they can win elections and dependent on big money to help them?

Isn’t that what Trumpism is all about…knowing that Americans no longer believe in the fairness and honesty of government. Fifty years ago Ronald Reagan said government is the problem. It takes a long time for ideas to stick. It seems it has. Unless the Democrats start talking about it we will have four more years of the same.

To be continued…