US Constitutional Issues – Page 17

“Read the Constitution” – A Trump Wake Up Call

By now, most have seen the short speech that packed a wallop by Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The speech by Mr. Khan was one of the most difficult/beautiful/gut wrenching 15 minutes of this long campaign season.

When Khan pulled his copy of the Constitution out of his pocket and waved it at Donald Trump, it was only a matter of time before the Pant Load responded. You can count on the Donald. Trump said:

If you look at his wife, she was standing there…She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe, she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.

Khan shot back on CNN’s”State of the Union” :

For this candidate for presidency to not be aware of the respect of a Gold Star mother standing there, and he had to take that shot at her, this is height of ignorance…

Trump then went on to say that he had made a lot of sacrifices by, ya know, hiring people and stuff. That led to a twitter storm carried on the hashtag: #TrumpSacrifices. While there are many funny tweets, Paul Begala, CNN commentator and advisor to a pro-Clinton Super PAC, wrote:

Once survived an entire weekend at Mar-a-Lago with just one can of hairspray.

Or this, Wrongo’s favorite:

Rob Woodyard tweet

OMG, THAT’s what Trump wants to get out of this: He wants to be Kevin Spacey with a comb-over!

Thank you, Khizr Khan for reminding our country that we are founded on what should be a sacred document that lays out how we should live in a society based on justice. And thanks for the sacrifice of your son Humayun, lost while taking part in an ill-advised war:

Humayun Khan

Donald Trump needs a wake-up call for his shocking lack of knowledge of the US Constitution. Let’s start with a list from the WaPo that shows Trump doesn’t know the Constitution:

He wants to “loosen” libel laws, so he could more easily sue news organizations who write “nasty” articles about him. There are centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence that would restrict his ability to do this.
He’s said he would push military commanders to go further than water boarding, even though it has been banned by federal law.
Many scholars believe Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims would be struck down as unconstitutional (due process, equal protection, religious freedom, etc.).
He insisted on “Meet the Press” earlier this year that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee birthright citizenship.
His attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his Mexican heritage show his lack of respect for an independent judiciary.
Trump has at times suggested that he might somehow be able to initiate the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her emails if he’s elected. In March, asked about the kind of Justice he’d name to the Supreme Court, he said he’d:

Probably appoint people that would look very seriously at [Clinton’s] email disaster because it’s criminal activity.

A signal he doesn’t understand the role of each branch.

To help wake up the Donald, here is a hip hop tune about the Constitution by Smart Songs, an organization that provides kids and teachers with positive, educational hip hop, to help make learning fun. We chose this because Trump needs to start with an elementary education about the US Constitution, and work up from there:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 10, 2105

Our Havanese dog Bandit lost his fight with an autoimmune disease at age 15 this past Tuesday:

DSCN5103

Gonna miss him terribly.

Turning to other news, what does the Dallas attack against police mean for the rest of this American summer? As Mark Shields said on PBS, “events are in the saddle”, and there is a distinct feeling that our leadership is not only not in control, but they have no answers.

No one knows what the reaction will be to New Orleans, Minneapolis and Dallas:

COW Dallas Reaction 2

Despite all we know, we can’t escape our need for Gunz:

Culture of Violence

Some truths demand an explanation:

COW Broken Tail Light

Our satellite in orbit around the giant gas planet Jupiter found something horrifying:

COW Gaseous Titan

The Brits waited seven years for the Chilcot report on Tony Blair’s role in the Iraq War:

COW Chillicot Report.gif

Really, is W. sorry? Maybe he’s sorry he got 4500 American soldiers killed, and another 32,000 wounded. And unknown numbers of American military damaged mentally. Or, that the Middle East is totally destabilized. Or, that our economy crashed. Or, that the country is totally polarized. Maybe he’s sorry, but that’s highly doubtful.

You know, it was OKAY because a Republican did it.

That’s the mission he accomplished.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 3, 2016

The presidential choices for 2016 are Clinton or Trump. You could write-in Bernie, or Jill Stein, or one of the fringe candidates, but not all write-in votes are counted for Electoral College purposes. 43 states, representing 494 electoral votes, count write-in votes, although the candidate has to have registered electors in some of those states to be counted. So you could be throwing your vote away by writing in someone.

And this year, we can’t afford any wasted votes. If you doubt that, check out this rockin ‘n rollin’ week.

SCOTUS redefined “Undue Burden” for Texas:

COW Undue Burden

Scalia opined from beyond the grave:

COW Scalia in Hell.gif

The GOP Benghazi strategy focused on the wrong fire:

COW Benghazi Fire

The non-event called the Benghazi Congressional Report was issued:

COW Benghazi Mud

Why can’t the GOP move on from Benghazi? Please don’t say it’s because 4 people died. Think about how many have died from shootings in America since Benghazi, without any GOP interest in holding hearings on Gunz. We deserve better from these birds we elect.

Loretta Lynch knew better than to meet with the Big Dog:

Schmooze 2

Loretta Lynch used to be a prosecutor. She knows better than to speak with the spouse of someone under an active investigation. As an officer of the court, she should have told Bill that talking together was improper, and had someone else on her staff speak with him. She has tarnished the credibility of the investigation and should resign. OTOH, Mr. Bill drop kicked his wife’s good news on the Benghazi investigation to the curb, making her the story again. And he is (was) a lawyer, and ought to know the protocol as well as Lynch.

Of course, Bill denied it:

COW Bills Denial

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 10, 2016

This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tore her Republican colleagues a new one in the pages of the Boston Globe:

For seven years, through artificial debt ceiling crises, deliberate government shutdowns, and intentional confirmation blockades, Senate Republicans have acted as though the election and reelection of Obama relieved them of any responsibility to do their jobs. Senate Republicans embraced the idea that government shouldn’t work at all unless it works only for themselves and their friends. The campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the next logical outgrowth of the same attitude — if you can’t get what you want, just ignore the obligations of governing, then divert attention and responsibility by wallowing in a toxic stew of attacks on Muslims, women, Latinos, and each other.

If Senate Republicans don’t like being forced to pick between a bullet and poison, then here’s some advice: Stand up to extremists in the Senate bent on sabotaging our government whenever things don’t go their way.

Warren’s anger is righteous anger, it is well directed and well-spoken. But, politicians who make it in our political system are those who hide most of their anger (righteous or not) under a veneer of unctuous civility. She chooses to give as good as she gets from the frat boys in the GOP. Maybe, after another 4 or 8 years of federal failure, that kind of anger will resonate with the American electorate.

Cartoons this week reflected the general coarsening of our society and politics. The bathroom habits of certain minorities made news in North Carolina. Apparently, they should pee in Virginia:

COW NC Bathrooms

Mississippi made similar news:

COW Miss Church

The NY Dem primary will be fought out on the sidewalks of NY:

COW Sidewalks of NY

The NY primaries have both parties looking for some room:

COW NY Primary

The Panama Papers tell us once again that we live in two Americas:

COW Panama Papers

Of course, Tax Day this week is mostly for the little people:

COW Tax Day2

Congress Can’t Get Its Responsibilities Right

It is always good to know why and how we got where we are. Here is a little history about our military position in the Middle East. From Steve Coll in the New Yorker:

In 1967, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave up on the remnants of Pax Britannica. His Labour Government pulled British forces from Malaysia, Singapore, Yemen, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and other Persian Gulf emirates.

At the time, Denis Healey, the British Defense Secretary, said England should not:

Become mercenaries for people who would like to have a few British troops around.

And since nature doesn’t tolerate a vacuum, the US decided to leave a few American troops stationed permanently in the Gulf.

Now, 49 years later, American warships still patrol the Middle East. US fighter jets fly from a massive base in Qatar. Over the decades, Republican and Democratic administrations (and Congresses) have colluded to give a blank-check to successive presidents, keeping our troops deeply involved in the ME.

Andrew Bacevich has a new book, “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History,” which highlights the inexplicable passivity of Congress in our ME wars. He points out that from the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Middle East, while since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except the ME.

After the Cold War wound down in the 1980s, the US began what Bacevich calls the “War for the Greater Middle East”. As this new war unfolded, hostilities became persistent: From the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, US forces embarked upon a seemingly endless series of campaigns in the Islamic world, without conclusive success.

Actions undertaken with expectations of promoting peace and stability produced just the opposite. As a consequence, phrases like “war on terrorism,” “permanent war” and “open-ended war” have become part of our everyday politics. When it came to the ME, despite Congress having the Constitutional duty to declare war, they stopped offering any check or balance to America’s continuing ME wars.

It wasn’t always that way.

In 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The Congress urged President Lyndon Johnson “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” across the length and breadth of Southeast Asia. LBJ used it as legal cover to ramp up in Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia and Laos.

Fast forward to 2001, and Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). We can consider it to be the grandchild of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This directed President George W. Bush:

To use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.

In plain language, it was a blank check. Now, nearly 15 years later, the AUMF remains operative, and has become the basis for military actions against innumerable individuals, organizations, and nations with no involvement whatsoever with the events of September 11, 2001.

And in 2015, when Obama asked Congress for a new AUMF addressing the specific threat posed by ISIS, asking that they rubber-stamp what he had already launched in Syria and Iraq, Senator Mitch McConnell worried that a new AUMF might constrain his successor. The Majority Leader remarked that the next president will:

Have to clean up this mess, created by all of this passivity over the last eight years…an authorization to use military force that ties the president’s hands behind his back is not something I would want to do.

So, Republicans think the proper role for Congress was to give this commander-in-chief carte blanche so that the next one would enjoy similar unlimited prerogatives. The GOP-controlled Congress thereby has transformed the post-9/11 AUMF into what has now become, in effect, permission for permanent armed conflict.

The illogic astounds: On ME warfare, Republicans collaborate with a president they despise, implicitly concurring with Obama’s claim that “existing statutes [already] provide me with the authority I need” to make war on ISIS.

Something that is at best, extra-Constitutional.

Yet, when Obama is clearly acting in accordance with the Constitution, nominating a new Justice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, they spare no effort to thwart him, concocting bizarre arguments to justify their obstructionism.

How does Congress square shirking its responsibilities in our ME war with its activism against Merrick Gardner?

We’ve Had Threats To Our Constitutional Rights Before

“The Past Is Never Dead, It Is Not Even Past” – Faulkner

Does this sound familiar?

They called for imprisonment of Americans who came from a foreign country. They called for shutting down immigration from certain countries and deporting the immigrants already here. They were for stifling dissent against a looming foreign war by calling the anti-war protestors traitors. They passed laws that curtailed several rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

An administration worked hard to “sell” a war to the American people.

This is not America in the post-9/11 period, it was during World War I, not during Iraq, or our current battle against ISIS.

And it occurred while a progressive Democrat was in the White House.

On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message to Congress. The US, Wilson said, was to embark upon a crusade to “make the world safe for democracy“. Unfortunately, Wilson’s administration gave rise to the greatest attack upon civil liberties (up to that time) since the passage of the Sedition Act in 1798.

Wilson had two problems. First, the citizenry had to be mobilized behind a war effort that did not involve a direct attack on the US. Second, he felt a need to guarantee our internal security against both real and imagined enemies. To solve the first problem, in April, 1917, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI), under the leadership of George Creel, a respected progressive. The Committee’s job was to convince citizens that the war was righteous, and to educate all Americans about American war goals.

Writers turned out “true” stories concerning what the Germans planned to do to America; speakers toured the nation delivering anti-German talks. Movie audiences thrilled to “Pershing’s Crusaders” and came by the thousands to hate the enemy by watching dramas such as “The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin.”

Congress also enacted laws that curtailed our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and press. Shortly after Wilson’s war message, in June, 1917, the Espionage Act was passed. This made it a crime to make false reports which would aid the enemy, incite rebellion among the armed forces, or obstruct recruiting or the draft. In practice, it was used to stifle dissent and radical criticism.

In October, 1917, another law required foreign language newspapers to submit translations of all war-related stories or editorials before distribution to local readers.

In May, 1918, the Sedition Act bolstered the Espionage Act. It provided penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for the willful writing, uttering, or publication of material abusing the government, showing contempt for the Constitution, or inciting others to resist the government. Under this Act, it was unnecessary to prove that the language in question had affected anyone or had produced injurious consequences. In addition, the Postmaster General was empowered to deny use of the mails to anyone who, in his opinion, used them to violate the Act.

In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, by which any alien who, at any time after entering the US was found to have been a member of any anarchist organization, could be deported.

Volunteer organizations sprung up, dedicated to discovering alleged traitors, saboteurs, and slackers. The volunteer groups were hyper-patriotic, and were often responsible for violations of civil liberties, although the government made no real attempt to discourage or limit their activities.

With the quiet consent of the Department of Justice, the American Protective League’s 250,000 civilian members—many of whom wore official-looking badges reading “Secret Service”—undertook vigilante actions against supposedly disloyal socialists, pacifists, and immigrants; they engaged in domestic surveillance operations; and raided businesses, meeting halls, and private homes in an effort to uncover pro-German sympathizers. As a result, force became the order of the day.

Somewhere during the fight to make the world safe for democracy, Americans lost their tolerance, compassion and mercy, and much of their democratic ideals.

Does this sound familiar?

The various Acts of 1917 and 1918 helped destroy what remained of the left wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hindering the war effort. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an anti-war speech.

On November 11, 1918, the Allies and Germany signed an armistice: the war was over.

The American public had shown a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in censorship, mugging, imprisoning, harassment, and forced deportation of Americans who didn’t agree with them.

Given where we are today, it could easily happen again.

Don’t bet against it.

Bonus Cartoon Thursday – March 3, 2016

How about an extra helping of political cartoons in honor of the silly season? After Super Tuesday, you might need some Bernie Crème:

COW Bernie Creme

Instead of “Yes we can,” Democrats have adopted a new slogan this election year: “Why try?” In spite of Hillary’s Miami victory speech, which sounded like it was written by Bernie, Clinton supporters believe we shouldn’t aim high, that we shouldn’t try for broad fundamental change, because we might fall short. Why is it better to proceed incrementally, to settle for less than we deserve because we might not get everything we want? Why do the establishment Dems proceed from the presumption that settling for incremental change is the only way to real change? Didn’t they learn anything from the 2014 mid-term elections?

Justice Scalia non-nomination creates GOP euphemisms:

COW GOP euphamisms.png

The Parties have selective views of what is realistic when choosing a candidate:

COW Trump Bern

Why is a huge corporation protecting us from our government? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

COW Hal Phone

The Battle to Replace Scalia

With the death of Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court has become even more of a BFD than it usually is in our politics. Republicans are setting the terms of the current battle by saying that Mr. Obama should not even bring forward a candidate for the Senate’s Advise and Consent process.

The Republicans fought for 40 years to get a Conservative majority, and will not give that up without a fight. This is the first time since Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991 that the ideological balance on the Court could actually change. In the last six cases, from Ginsberg through Kagan, either a Republican president filled the seat of a conservative justice, or a Democratic president filled the seat of a liberal justice.

So the stakes are very high, both substantively and politically.

On the other hand, the voters might rediscover that presidential elections should be about serious issues. At the top of the list: Who will pick the justice that creates a new Supreme Court majority?

A brief history from Paul Waldman at the WaPo:

The Senate…used to approach nominations to the Supreme Court with a simple standard: If the nominee was qualified and wasn’t a criminal or a drunk, he or she would probably get confirmed with the support of both the president’s party and the opposition…But we may have entered an era with an entirely different starting presumption: not that a well-qualified nominee deserves confirmation, but that senators ought to oppose any nomination from a president of the other party.

Waldman provides this list of recent nominees and how the Senate voted:

Antonin Scalia (1986): 98-0
Anthony Kennedy (1987): 97-0
Clarence Thomas (1991): 52-48
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993): 96-3
Stephen Breyer (1994): 87-9
John Roberts (2005): 78-22, 20 of 42 Democrats in favor
Samuel Alito (2005): 58-42, 4 of 45 Democrats in favor
Sonia Sotomayor (2009): 68-31, 9 of 40 Republicans in favor
Elena Kagan (2010): 63-37, 5 of 40 Republicans in favor

Since Chief Justice Roberts in 2005, we see that our political divide is not simply about Congress and the President, the Supreme Court is now also entrenched in the polarization. Justice Kagan’s approval is instructive. She was well-qualified, (a former dean of Harvard Law School and Solicitor General), and had no absurd legal views. Nevertheless, only five Republicans voted to confirm her. Three of those senators — Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, and Judd Gregg — were moderates who are no longer in the Senate.

In the case of a Scalia replacement, every Republican senator trying to decide what to do will know that if they vote to confirm any Democratic nominee for this seat, a primary challenge from the right will probably happen whenever they run for re-election.

But the GOP-controlled Senate ignores its responsibilities at its peril. 24 GOP-held Senate seats are up for election this cycle to just 10 held by Democrats. A few (enough) of those GOP Senators are in states that were won in 2012 by Barack Obama including: Kirk in Illinois, Toomey in Pennsylvania, Portman in Ohio, Ayotte in New Hampshire, Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rubio’s open seat of Florida. Since Republicans hold 54 seats, losing 4 of them could flip Senate control.

But, this is a situation where the Democrats really need to get control of their message machine, or they’ll risk getting overrun again in the perception battle.

The best guess is that is unlikely that control of the Senate changes hands in 2016, so divided government will likely remain with us, assuming a presidential win for the Democrats. As Scott Lemieux says in the New Republic:

As the stakes of Supreme Court nominations get ever higher, getting Court vacancies filled during periods of divided government is going to become increasingly difficult. Depending on the results of the 2016 elections, this dysfunctional future could very soon become our present.

Could a non-functioning Supreme Court finally be the last straw? We might soon find out.

We know that Chief Justice Roberts is concerned with the public perception of SCOTUS as an institution. Perhaps if the White House and the Chief Justice held discussions about the President nominating a moderate, and then Roberts spoke publicly about the need for quick consideration, the political logjam might be broken.

Absent that, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we are heading towards a breaking point in this country as the polarization stretches the functioning of our government in every arena.

Our Constitution gives the Senate veto power over executive and judicial branch appointments with no mechanism for resolving a deadlock. That is a bug, not a feature.

It’s amazing that the system has remained functional for as long as it has.

The Last Election You’ll Ever Need

“The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do, and what a man can’t do” − Captain Jack Sparrow

Some may have seen Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson. The movie came out in 1974, a time of increasing fear of random crime, creeping distrust of life in our cities, and growing frustration with what the Right called the moral relativity of liberalism. The film resonated with the US public, and had four sequels over the next 20 years.

The context for Death Wish was New York City’s decline after the fallout from years of redlining, blockbusting, and failed urban renewal. The city’s crime stats began to rise. Son of Sam would arrive in three years, a Republican president would tell a bankrupt NYC to drop dead, and Reagan’s morning in America would usher in a decade of anti-city films bookended by Escape from New York and New Jack City.

So, the question for 2016 is: Does America have a death wish? Are we about to start another period when our cities are declining, and our fears are growing? There is plenty of evidence to support both, from urban decay in Detroit and Flint, Michigan to our fears of Muslims and immigrants, to the distressingly difficult geopolitical landscape for which we have no clear strategy.

In the case of Flint’s need to replace its water pipes, no government – local, state or federal, has any idea where the money will come to fix the problem.

And in the case of geopolitics, we chose to spend $trillions on defense and homeland security, while willingly giving up some of our Constitutional rights out of fear, but are still failing to stem the tide of persistent conflict.

And no candidate from either party is offering a coherent set of policy positions that will solve these issues. Consider that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two front-runners, offer a similar pitch: Trump’s “I know how to get things done” is the same as Hillary Clinton’s.

But what can get done?

Whenever we talk about a solving a big problem, what we say is: “We can’t do that.” But in politics-speak, “can’t,” doesn’t mean: “That’s impossible” or, “We don’t have the skills or money”. What we really mean is: “It’s too hard”.

Or the solution is outside our ideological comfort zone. Ian Welsh said in 2009:

While there are no problems that America has that America can’t fix, it also appears that there are no problems America has that America is willing to fix properly. And it doesn’t matter why.

The world won’t grade us on a curve. You need to jump the fence, and you can’t. You’re running away from a bear, and you don’t run fast enough, and you’re dead. You wanted to get into a good grad school, but you don’t have the grades or test scores.

As we enter the 2016 election process, this is where America is:

• We have been shipping our real economy overseas for 30 years
• Ordinary families have had wage stagnation for the same 30 years
• We’ve voted for lower taxes
• We’ve not paid for infrastructure reinvestment, or education, or much of our domestic needs

This is where America is, and we continue to struggle to find our way in both domestic and foreign policy, despite the growing criticality of our problems.

In 2001, we elected a president who had a conservative ideology, and under his watch, we had disastrous foreign wars and the Great Recession. So, in 2008, we elected a president who we thought had a vision for the future. Someone who spoke to our better angels, who would drag us out of a near-depression, who would focus on our domestic problems and get us out of war in the Middle East.

Like Jack Sparrow says, after 16 years of presidents with very different ideologies, neither could do most of the things they promised. And we are the worse for that.

Now it is time to elect a new savior, and no candidate looks ready for the job. But choose we must, and one of them will be the next president. If, after we make our next choice, our political divisions again prevent progress for another eight years, it may be the last presidential election we ever need.

Collapse of the state is not an event, it is a process. A process that we are in.

We are right on schedule.

Will Hillary’s Campaign Strategy Win?

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

The primary season clown show has moved on to New Hampshire. Republicans will see more mud wrestling between Cruz and Trump, while Rubio, Kasich and Christie try to elbow their way in to be one of the top two by next Wednesday.

Iowa showed that the Democrats will have a tough time choosing between the candidates, both of whom will struggle to refine the message(s) they need to take to South Carolina and beyond in order to win the nomination. Like that great philosopher Mike Tyson says, now the top two in each party need to present a plan that connects with voters nationally.

Think for a minute about the messages that Hillary and Bernie have been running with:

Bernie is saying we should have (and can get):

• A single-payer health care system
• Universal pre-K and free college tuition at our state universities
• Guaranteed sick leave and vacation for every employee
• A minimum wage of $15/hour
• The big banks broken up, and Glass-Steagall reconstituted
• Our campaign finance system is reformed
• The super-wealthy should pay for it all

Hillary is saying we can’t get all that:

• We must focus on what can be accomplished, not what Sanders is proposing
• Single-payer is a nice idea, but is too politically toxic to be viable
• She agrees with Sanders about sick and maternity leave
• College shouldn’t be free for all, some should pay, mostly because their parents can afford it
• Breaking up the big banks isn’t the best way to address financial market risk
• $15/hour is too high a minimum wage, $12/hour is realistic
• Since Republicans will control at least one house of Congress next year, they’ll never vote for what Sanders proposes

Hillary is in a difficult position. She’s telling people that they can’t have the things they want. Every parent understands this, but Clinton is also saying: “his policies can’t win”, all the while she is thinking: “I can get some of this through Congress.”

That may not be a winning message, particularly if Sanders is still running in a dead heat with Clinton in April. His charm is that he’s not willing to settle for campaigning on a platform that is calibrated to work in our gridlocked politics.

So, will Hillary change if she can’t shake Bernie? And what would her new message be?

She needs to start by finding a way to relate to an electorate that has limited interest in politicians like her who speak for the status quo.

Today’s voters say that the status quo is unacceptable. In fact, that’s the only thing everyone in America seems to agree about right now. And since 60% of the Democratic delegates actually get selected in March, Clinton needs a message better calibrated to meet today’s political realities, or she risks losing the nomination, or winning it only after a fight that weakens her party.

It is true that if elected, either Clinton or Sanders will be in virtually the same place regarding what they can actually achieve. The big difference today is in the vision they are laying out, and whether the voters will buy it. Will they buy a president who articulates unobtainable goals and blames the .01%, or do they want a president who articulates modest, but still unobtainable goals?

Would the electorate buy that her insider status would bring about some (or all) of her goals?

Candidate Clinton is running primarily on her resume. She presents us with a CV of job titles, not accomplishments, and if there is a campaign persona that she is embracing, it is the idea of being a lifelong fighter. But will that be enough? From the 2/2 NYT:

…she still faces an authenticity problem, even among Democrats. Some 47% of likely Democratic primary voters said that they felt Mrs. Clinton said what voters wanted to hear, rather than what she believed. 62% said they believed Mr. Sanders said what he thought…

Clinton’s liabilities as a campaigner could be lessened by treating the campaign more like a struggle between opposing parties instead of one between political celebrities. Overall, she performs well enough as a candidate. She debates well, she interviews well.

Her argument should be: if you want to see the incomes of the middle class grow, if you want to retain Constitutional freedoms that are under attack by a conservative Supreme Court, if you want to keep Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs like Obamacare, if you want less foreign adventurism, then you have to vote Democratic regardless of what you think of Hillary Clinton.

It’s sort of a vision.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: US Constitutional Issues