Diatribes of Jay: The Dems Shoot Themselves in their Feet

For suggestions on how to improve multi-candidate debates, click here. For a general discussion of how to improve debates, click here. For a review of the first Democratic Debate, click here. For seven reasons not to make war on Iran, click here. For a discussion of Warren’s ability to defend science, click here. For comment on the value of Elizabeth Warren’s intelligence, click here. For an essay on her qualifications for the presidency, click here. For brief descriptions of and links to recent posts, click here. For an inverse-chronological list with links to all posts after January 23, 2017, click here. For a subject-matter index to posts before that date, click here.

It’s been over 24 hours since the second televised Democratic debate, and I haven’t posted anything. There are personal reasons for the delay: I just returned home after an absence and have lots of chores to do and home-self-improvement projects to finish. But there are substantive reasons, too. I just haven’t had the enthusiasm that usually propels me to my keyboard.

This evening, conservative pundit David Brooks named the reason for me. [Set the timer at 00:39] The Dems are strong on goals and enthusiasm and weak on strategy. (I don’t agree with Brooks that moving leftward is the problem; that’s what Dems do. The problem is failing to think strategically and go for every vote.) So weak are the Dems now that there’s a good chance our nation may have to suffer another four years of Trump—a catastrophe beyond measure.

Let’s briefly review the reasons for my despond. First, let’s look at the “front-runner,” Joe Biden.

What appalled me most about him was something nobody, to my knowledge, has yet pointed out. He’s inarticulate. He sounds like Dubya. He can’t put a coherent sentence together, especially when he’s excited. Not having heard him “live” for decades, I was horrified. Is this what a president sounds like?

Maybe Biden is a “nice guy,” with whom non-college educated workers can identify. But so was Dubya. I shouldn’t have to remind Democrats that Dubya presided over the Crash of 2008, bailed out the bankers, brought us two—count ‘em, two—unnecessary “forever” wars (both of which are still going on), and, together with McConnell, established the precedent of “hazing” Obama for doing good things like broadening health insurance.

With that kind of precedent, we don’t need “good guys” in the White House. We need smart and honest people, who could be women or minorities.

The second depressing thing about Biden also touches Harris, who challenged Biden for once opposing busing for the purpose of integrating schools. Biden can’t lie like Trump; he has too much residual honesty. So while Biden was tying himself up in knots trying to prove his bona fides on busing decades ago, Harris was busy recounting, passionately, how she had been bused to school in California.

Harris is good at pulling the heartstrings. I’ll give her that. But think about strategy. I don’t think Harris did.

Harris’ invidious comparison could have only one effect: discouraging black and perhaps other minority voters from voting for Biden, and perhaps for any other old white man who might get nominated, like Bernie. In fact, I think that was her purpose: to disqualify Biden and, by comparison, improve Harris’ own look, in the eyes of younger, modern minorities who can see the prize more clearly now because they stand on the shoulders of giants, namely, King, Marshall and Johnson. But these men didn’t win because they were passionate. They won because they were experienced, strategic and wicked smart.

But the issue is not credit; it’s effect. The only way we win this thing against Trump with a truly progressive candidate is by putting together a new and durable coalition of minorities, progressives, soccer moms who are fed up (with pols trying to control their bodies and practicing atrocities on families at the border), and college-educated voters, including old white guys like me.

Minorities are essential to this effort. In fact, in the South they are the linchpin. If the Dems can get enough blacks and Hispanics to vote for their candidate in just three states—Florida, Georgia and North Carolina—they need never worry about the upper Midwest again. But to do that, they can’t lose a single minority vote.

Harris risked losing many just to differentiate herself in the primary. That kind of thinking was Hillary’s trick, and that’s a major reason why she ultimately lost. Every Dem running should be thinking of the general election right now, and not just about her or his role in it. Sure, it’s hard, but that’s what you have to do to win. Obama won twice because he was and is capable of playing that kind of three-dimensional chess.

Yet the most appalling self-inflicted strategic wound was made by the most progressive candidates, Sanders and Warren. Both of them confess to supporting “Medicare for All,” which means wiping out the private health insurance that a majority of voters already has. That’s not even necessary: private insurance will mostly wipe out by itself when patients and employers find out how much simpler, fairer and cheaper federally administered insurance is. And every one of last night’s candidates (if not Warren, who was not present) raised her or his hand in support of giving undocumented immigrants some sort of health coverage.

Can’t you just see it, day after day on Fox? The lupine, half-witted pundit will sneer and ask, “Did you know the Dems want to take away your private health insurance and give coverage to illegal immigrants?” And in asking that question he won’t be lying; he won’t even be misleading very much.

Then there’s the transgender issue. Did any Dem candidate ever think what it sounds like to a guy who lost his job and home in the Crash, and his wife and his town when his factory went to China, when he hears that Dems want to provide federal money for sex-change operations?

Yes, equality is our national value. Yes, nondiscrimination is proper. But can’t the Dems keep this stuff off the front pages until they’ve won? You would be hard pressed to find any minority in America less numerous than transgender folk, and Fox and the right wing will demagogue any support for them, every time. Can the Dems be smart, as well as good?

I know, I know. The moderators brought the LGBTQ issue up. That’s just one of many reasons why the Dems should jettison professional newscasters as debate moderators. But some Dems salted their words with the issue without being asked. The only good reason to do that is to practice being true to your values without spooking every religious, high-school-educated skilled worker in the land.

Was the whole second debate depressing for abysmal strategy? Not entirely. Mayor Pete Buttigieg distinguished himself with his consistently clear, polished and articulate speech and his candor. When asked about the recent racial troubles in his city he leads, he confessed he has not been able to solve them but is still trying hard.

What refreshing honesty! If all our pols would take responsibility like that, we might even have a Congress that could protect its own constitutional power and begin impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Buttigieg was also the only candidate who had ever served our nation in combat. Remember when that used to be the norm, before Clinton, Obama and “bone spurs” Trump, and before Dubya, who sat out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard? Buttigieg is absolutely right that we need a president who knows the cost of war, if only because we’re still involved in the two longest in our history and we’re thinking about starting another with Iran.

Apart from Buttigieg, there were some ringing words about climate change and (from Gillibrand) on women’s rights. But I’m sorry. This is not a single-issue campaign. It was never going to be one. We Americans are accelerating downhill in almost every dimension that can be conceived or measured. So our next president has to be a generalist, if only because there are plenty of talented experts, even among the twenty candidates in the first two debates, to form a superb Cabinet.

So I hate to say it, but Day 2 of the First Dem Debates was mostly amateur night. It was so from the speeches and policies formulated without regard to how they would “play” to the electorate, to the professional author’s closing peroration that love would conquer all. (What were Williamson and Yang doing there, anyway? Filling out the career “rainbow”?) And the one candidate who is least of all an amateur—Biden—put his age and the sources of his many gaffes on clear display.

So it was not a good night for Democrats. What was missing was strategic thinking, without which the Dems can’t win. How in Hell can pols who don’t think in advance about the effects of their words and their policies on all voters win against a crooked man who thinks only of his “base” and keeps it in his pocket with clever lies?

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For suggestions on how to improve multi-candidate debates, click here.
For a more general discussion of how to improve debates, click here.
For a review of the first Democratic Debate, click here.
For a third, simpler look at why Trump won in 2016, click here.
For seven reasons not to make war on Iran, click here.
For discussion of Warren’s ability to defend science, and why it matters, click here.
For comment on the quality of Elizabeth Warren’s mind and its relevance to our current circumstances, click here.
For analysis of the disastrous effect of our leaders’ failure to take personal responsibility, click here.
For brief comment on China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre and its significance for our species, click here.
For reasons why the Democratic House should pass a big infrastructure bill ASAP, click here.
For an analysis why Nancy Pelosi is right on impeachment, click here.
For an explanation how demagoguing the issue of abortion has ruined our national politics and brought us our two worst presidents, and how we could recover, click here.
For analysis of the Huawei Tech Block and its necessity for maintaining our innovative infrastructure, click here.
For ten reasons, besides global warming, to dump oil as a fuel for ground transportation, click here.
For discussion why we must cooperate with China and how we can compete successfully with China, click here.
For reasons why Trump’s haphazard trade war will not win the competition with China, click here.
For a deeper discussion of how badly we Americans have failed to plan our future, click here.
For an essay on Elizabeth Warren’s qualifications for the presidency, click here.
For comment on how not doing our jobs has brought us Americans low, click here.
To see how modern politics has come to resemble the Game of Thrones, click here.
For a discussion of the waste of energy and fossil fuels caused by unneeded long-range batteries in electric cars, click here.
For a discussion why Democrats should embrace the long campaign season and make no premature moves, click here.
For a discussion how Trump and Brexit have put the tree world into free fall, click here.
For a review of how our own American acts help create our president’s claimed “invasion” of Central American migrants, click here.
For a review of basic facts that must inform any type of universal health insurance, click here.
For a discussion of how the West’s fall and China’s rise affect the chances of our species’ survival, click here.
For a discussion of what the Mueller Report is and how its release could affect American politics, click here.
For a note on the Mueller Report as the beginning of a process, click here.
For comment on the special candidacies of Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, click here.
For reasons why the twin 737 Max 8 disasters should inspire skepticism and caution with regard to potentially lethal uses of software and AI, click here.
For my message to Southwest Airlines on grounding the 737 Maxes, click here.
For an example of even the New York Times spewing propaganda, click here.
For means by which high-school teachers could help save American democracy, click here.
For a modern team of rivals that might comprise a dream Cabinet in 2021, click here.
For an analysis of the global decline of rules-based civilization, click here. For a brief note on avoiding health lobbying Armageddon, click here.
For analysis of how to save real news and America’s ability to see straight, click here.
For an update on how Zuckerberg scams advertisers, click here.
For analysis of how Facebook scams voters and society, click here.
For the consequences of Trump’s manufactured border emergency, click here.
For a brief note on Colin Kaepernick’s good work and settlement with the NFL, click here.
For an outline of universal health insurance without coercion, disruption of satisfactory private insurance, or a trace of “socialism,” click here.
For analysis of the Virginia blackface debacle, click here. For an update on how Twitter subverts politics, click here.
For analysis of women’s chances to take the presidency in 2020, click here.
For brief comment on Trump’s State of the Union Speech and Stacey Abrams’ response for the Dems, click here.
For reasons why the Huawei affair requires diplomacy, not criminal prosecution, click here. For how Speaker Pelosi has become a new sheriff in town, click here.
For how Trump’s misrule could kill your kids, click here.
For comment on MLK Day 2019 and the structural legacies of slavery, click here.
For reasons why the partial government shutdown helps Dems the longer it lasts, click here.
For a discussion of how our national openness hurts us and what we really need from China, click here.
For a brief explanation of how badly both Trump and his opposition are failing at “the art of the deal,” click here.
For a deep dive into how Apple tries to thwart Google’s capture of the web-browser market, click here.
For a review of Speaker Pelosi’s superb qualifications to lead the Democratic Party, click here.
For reasons why natural-gas and electric cars are essential to national security, click here.
For additional reasons, click here.
For the source of Facebook’s discontents and how to save democracy from it, click here.
For Democrats’ core values, click here.
The Last Adult is Leaving the White House. Who will Shut Off the Lights?
For how our two parties lost their souls, click here.
For the dire portent of Putin’s high-fiving the Saudi Crown Prince, click here.
For updated advice on how to drive on the Sun’s power alone, or without fossil fuels, click here.
For a 2018 Thanksgiving Message, click here.

Diatribes of Jay

29 June 2019

The Dems Shoot Themselves in their Feet

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