Lock ’em Up

Posted on September 10, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 10, 2024

There are many things dictators and wannabe-dictators do to stay in power. The most common is the use of political arrests. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all do it, and Hungary, which is still technically a democracy almost matches them. In 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban forced a law through his parliament making it illegal to speak out against the government. In 2023, the same Orban forced the same parliament to pass a law making it illegal for any Hungarian to be involved with a foreign power attempting to influence Hungarian policy. Both laws were excuses to imprison anyone Orban considered a threat to him.

Russia and China have never been shy about incarcerating their opponents to keep them quiet, and if that doesn’t work, they tend to turn up dead in the tradition of Josef Stalin who is considered responsible for killing more than eight million of his own people. North Korea seems to have a tradition that murdering a relative is the most effective form of governmental succession. Iran’s intolerance for opposition figures explains why the families of thousands of people connected to the former Shah’s royal family now reside in Europe and North America.

If it’s not obvious where this is headed, look at what Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro did to remain in power. He declared victory in last July’s presidential election, although independent vote recounts showed that he had lost to opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez by a significant margin. With the possibility of massive unrest or civil war looming, Gonzalez had to be rescued from Venezuela by Spain where he was granted asylum.

If this doesn’t remind you of Donald Trump, we don’t live on the same planet. In 2016, Trump instigated crowds to chant, “Lock her up!” in response to the highly exaggerated Hillary Clinton email scandal. Someone on Clinton’s staff had clearly used poor judgment in allowing her to use her personal email account for government business, as her counterpart in George W. Bush’s cabinet, Colin Powell had admitted doing.

What Clinton inadvertently did wasn’t a crime, and compared to Trump claiming he had a right to retain classified documents after leaving office in clear violation of federal law, it was a trivial matter. By contrast, when the crowd at one of Kamala Harris’s rallies chanted, “Lock Him Up” over the federal indictments and convictions Trump faces, she quieted the crowd and said, “No, we don’t do that.”

Trump believes that the President should have the power to lock up anyone he perceives as a political enemy (if and only if he is the president.) This one minute video shows him insisting that Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all be imprisoned, and includes a 2016 clip in which he raises the horrifying possibility that if Clinton defeated him we might have a sitting president under criminal indictment who would have to stand trial.

In recent days, Trump has expanded his threats. He says he plans to cast a wide net and prosecute everyone he perceives as disloyal to him. As he has demonstrated repeatedly, Trump makes no distinction between supporting the Constitution and the president and personal loyalty to him.

People used to refer to President Reagan as “teflon Reagan” because none of the scandals or missteps in his administration ever hurt him politically. But Reagan, like Harry Truman, understood that the buck stopped with him, and he always stood up and accepted responsibility for his actions and those of his subordinates. He understood that Americans are forgiving of people who admit their errors. But Trump is neither Ronald Reagan nor a principled Conservative. In the fight for the minds of the several thousand undecided voters in battleground states, I’m betting those voters will see the difference.

Trump has benefitted from a different form of teflon coating than Reagan’s. Known everywhere as a serial liar, and somehow, not paying a price for it, he now winks at us when he tells us his plans to become a dictator and tear up the Constitution, as though it’s all just a big joke. But it’s not. As the majority of his former cabinet and top military leaders, including his ultra-Conservative Vice President, Mike Pence have assured us, Trump’s plans to undermine our democracy aren’t lies. He means every word of it, and he is unfit to ever wield power again.

As tonight’s debate looms, for the sake of our future, I hope Kamala Harris is able to drive the point home. As Hillary Clinton advised her, the surest way to defeat Trump is to give him enough rope to self-destruct, and I believe Harris will.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Debate 2.0

Posted on September 4, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 4, 2024

Debate 2.0 is a direct consequence of Debate 1.0, in which Donald Trump put on a shameless display of ignoring every rule and shot gunning President Biden with a nonstop assault of lies, exaggerations, and complete fabrications. At the time, we who believe that re-electing Trump would have catastrophic consequences for America could only hang our heads. In retrospect, it’s doubtful that any of us, expecting a rational debate and unprepared for the kind of attack Trump launched would have handled it well, but for the nearly 82-year-old president who was still weakened from a bout with COVID, Debate 1.0 raised questions like – what if Putin or Xi went after him with the same tactics?

Those questions may or may not have been fair. Backed by talented aides and the best minds available, facing off in the Situation Room in a crisis or at a G7 or summit meeting is something Biden has been doing for decades – he could still do it in his sleep. But perception is everything in politics, and younger voters who think older people should be content to be grandparents had lost confidence in him. Since a Trump victory in November would be the worst possible outcome for America, the Democrats turned lemons into lemonade posturing Biden’s withdrawal as passing the torch to the next generation.

If his behavior since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee is a good indicator, Debate 2.0, which will be aired Tuesday, September 10th on ABC, will feature Trump trying to make it a replay of Debate 1.0. He’ll try but he won’t succeed. The reason Trump has been so successful at destroying the traditional Conservative movement and the Republican Party is that until Trump, no one had encountered a politician who possessed his unique combination of shameless narcissism, willingness to lie and pander about every issue to anyone who could help him win, and the personality of a vicious predator. Trump turned the political arena into a Roman gladiator stage.

While it’s shocking to recall Trump knocking off every contender in 2016 like a bunch of dominoes, we’ve seen his magic wane since then. He lost in 2020, and he is generally seen as the reason Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in 2020 and regained only the barest majority in 2022. What we learned from all that is that women, people of color, and other educated suburbanites reject the core of who Trump is, and they’re wise to the fact that there is no policy substance in anything he says. It’s really simple – Trump will flip on a dime if he sees an opportunity to increase his wealth or power. The health and security of the United States matters to him only in that if the country fails it will take Trump’s fortune down with it.

The message today is that forewarned is forearmed, and Kamala Harris is younger, healthier, smarter, and quicker on her feet than Trump. Imagine the kind of mind it takes to be a successful prosecutor and to have worked her way up from law clerk to state’s attorney to California Attorney General to U. S. Senator to Vice President, and then increase that by an order of magnitude because Harris did all that as a mixed-race woman. Watching her for the last six weeks, I was most impressed by how calm and cool she was. She hasn’t missed a beat or misspoken; she hasn’t seemed the least bit nervous or flustered; and she has demonstrated that she can work a crowd almost as well as Barack Obama. When she speaks, whether in a packed basketball arena or a stadium, she has them eating out of her hand. And when the crowd is mostly black, she has them in such thrall they sound like a revival meeting.

On September 10th, when Harris and Trump face off, not only will she not be flustered or intimidated by him, she will be the one who appears calm and controlled. If he interrupts or talks over her (muted microphones can’t prevent that) she will smile sweetly and say, “I’m speaking, Donald.” When he attempts to insult or denigrate her, she will simply repeat his list of indictments and convictions, perhaps going back to some of Donald’s best known rip-offs like Trump University. She will remind him that she is a respected prosecutor while he is a convicted felon guilty of fraud and sexually assaulting women. And all Trump will see and hear is that a black/Indian woman is stripping him naked in front of a hundred million viewers.

Debate 2.0 may not have the disastrous immediate impact Debate 1.0 had, but it will leave no doubt in the minds of undecided voters that Donald Trump is a grifter and a bitter old man desperate to stay out of prison. He doesn’t belong on the same stage as Kamala Harris.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Media and the Election

Posted on August 31, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 31, 2024

During this election season, traditional news organizations like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have generally provided Americans with responsible journalism. Fifty years ago, that would have been enough, but in today’s world, most Americans get their news and opinions, often indistinguishable from each other, from commercial news outlets, social media, and online entities like Talking Points, The Drudge Report, and The Huffington Post that represent a broad spectrum of political views.

There was a time when Americans trusted their local newspapers. As elections approached, the endorsement of a major newspaper was an intensely sought-after commodity. Today, not so much due to the influence of our video and internet-oriented culture. That’s a problem, because it represents a new paradigm in journalistic integrity. There isn’t much of the latter anymore, and the culprit, as usual, is money.

Social media companies are unregulated in the United States. They are infested with bots and fake actors that are allowed to say whatever they wish until public outrage forces them to take a step back. Foreign adversaries and criminal organizations use Facebook, X, Telegram, Tik Tok, and others to sew discord among Americans and influence our elections. These platforms are safe homes for racists, terrorists, scammers, and revolutionaries, and much of the billions they earn is fed back into the political system by people with extreme views, like Elon Musk.

Cable news networks, with the exception of PBS and NPR, are commercial entities that depend on the largesse of sponsors for their survival. Aside from not offending the hands that feed them, there is nothing regulating the content they stream, and no way for consumers to know whether what they see and hear is true.

Fox News unabashedly brags that despite its name, it is not a news network, but a politically skewed entertainment network, although, since they were punished with a nearly billion dollar fine for supporting election fraud allegations, they’re likely to be more restrained this cycle. With less self-consciousness, networks like Newsmax and America One are even more outrageous in peddling conspiracy theories and promoting the reactionary fringe elements of our society. On the left, MSNBC makes no bones about its progressive bias, and CNN, more than anything, seems uncertain of its identity.

Accused of a liberal bias, and serving both a domestic and international audience, I believe the network attempts to take a centrist approach, but if their recent efforts are the best their industry can do, the public will not be well-served during the 2024 election cycle. The Trump-Biden debate that forced President Biden to drop out of the race was one example. I don’t doubt that CNN tried to present a meaningful debate, but all they did was demonstrate that traditional debate formats are useless when moderators are powerless to enforce the rules. There will never be a meaningful debate in which Donald Trump is a principal until and unless someone figures out a way to convincingly fact check in real time and force participants to debate issues rather than engage in gladiator matches.

We might have expected CNN to put its best foot forward for last Thursday’s interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Prospective voters hoped and expected to see what the candidates were made of under intensive questioning about their policies. We thought we were tuning in to an hour-long, live interview. What we got was an edited version of an interview that occurred earlier in the day, liberally seasoned with commercials. Dana Bash, who conducted the interview for CNN, sounded more like a colleague chatting with candidates than someone pressing them with tough questions.

It wasn’t Harris’ or Walz’ fault – they generally answered the questions put to them with more specificity than we ever hear from Trump. When Harris was asked about her change in position on banning fracking, she explained that her values hadn’t changed, but as she learned more about new technologies, she’d concluded that the nation’s climate mitigation goals could be met without the need for a ban. I thought that was an excellent answer that should have been followed up with probing questions that gave us more insight into what Harris meant, but that didn’t happen. CNN gave us a half-baked excuse for an interview.

Since 2015, the media have been culpable in allowing candidates to lie, distort, and mislead voters, and create an atmosphere of divisiveness, fear, and uncertainty. Factual reporting and truth have suffered one mortal blow after another, and if the media don’t clean up their acts, we’ll all suffer. We can’t prevent candidates from lying and spreading hate, but we don’t have to give them a free ride when they do so. And if the media don’t collectively fight against fraudulent allegations of rigged elections, next January could be more deadly and violent than January 2021 was.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Equal Scrutiny

Posted on August 29, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 29, 2024

The first half of 2024 was marked by constant attacks on Joe Biden’s fitness to serve as president for another four years. Were he re-elected, he would have been 86 when his second term ended. Love him or hate him, most people accept that dropping out of the race was the right thing for him to do. They may disagree about whether his decision to withdraw from the race was a noble act of self-sacrifice for the greater good of the country, or an action he was forced to take against his will, but history will likely view it as a fitting coda to his legacy, as will I.

The tell is how he responded afterward. He never said it was unfair, never whined about being forced out. Instead, he has behaved like the classy politician and leader he is, offering full-throated support to his successor for the nomination, Kamala Harris. Whenever he’s asked, he reminds us that the first and only priority in November is protecting the country from a second Trump administration and Project 2025.

Let’s put Donald Trump through the same wringer of public opinion and see how he fares. Despite more than sixty court rulings debunking his claim that the 2020 was stolen from him by a Democratic conspiracy, and dozens of investigations and recounts that found no evidence of the fraud Trump claims occurred, he is so obsessed with his defeat that he repeats his lies and complaints every time he has an audience. Most Republicans are appalled by his behavior, publicly begging him to stay on script.

His 2016 campaign playbook was to seize on the anger and grievances of everyone who was envious of people who were more successful or who had more money and expensive toys. Trump’s history tells us his primary talent is predation; he senses other people’s vulnerability and pounces on it, not letting go until they swear personal allegiance to him. He claims that’s just his style, and campaigning that way offers him the best chance of victory, but is it?

It’s time Trump supporters realized that style has nothing to do with his behavior. His dismal, frightening performances at campaign rallies since Kamala Harris was anointed as his opponent were driven by two things, both of which make him the worst possible choice to govern the United States. One is his inability to control his feelings, particularly his anger and his desperate need for power and adulation. These are well-established symptoms of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) he suffers from.

Make no mistake, NPD is a very serious mental illness. What would a competent source that has no political ax to grind tell us? The Mayo Clinic says, “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.” If I didn’t know better, I might think that was intended as a description of Donald Trump. Is that the kind of unstable, filterless, irrational person we want leading us?

On top of his NPD, Donald Trump is 78. Biden’s undoing was a ninety-minute high-speed assault by Trump in his most vicious predator mode. At 81, while still competent to do his job, Biden didn’t have the physical or emotional stamina to withstand the kind of attack that Trump used to take down everyone who opposed him in either party. Biden attended what he thought was a debate. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t that.

Biden’s moment of truth occurred quickly, but Trump exhibits similar limitations and shortcomings more subtly. Critics all over the political spectrum are noting that Trump, who always hated having to obey laws and follow rules, no longer has any guardrails or boundaries. That’s a classical sign of cognitive decline. Consider: a former president of the United States who is running for re-election as much to avoid a prison sentence as to lead, who is in desperate legal trouble and plummeting in the polls, is told by every advisor and supporter that he must run a disciplined campaign. Yet, he shows no ability to do so. Is that style or is it a symptom of a self-absorbed decline into madness?

Do you really want a president who posts that his opponent accomplished what she has by offering blowjobs to powerful people? Or, depending on the moment, that she is stupid, a Communist, or not as pretty as he is? Is it not obvious by now that Trump is beyond dangerous, and our country might not survive another four years of autocratic ambitions?

One thing I will never understand about the last nine years is how people cannot see and understand what is right there in plain sight. Donald Trump is severely mentally ill, sociopathic, and completely lacking a moral center. He cannot ever be allowed near the White House again.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Presidential Immunity

Posted on August 23, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 23, 2024

When Donald Trump took his claim of immunity to the Supreme Court, his intentions were clear. He was under indictment in two federal cases, for mishandling classified documents and inciting an insurrection; he was under indictment in Georgia for attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election; and he was awaiting sentencing on thirty-four felony convictions in New York. It sounds like the rap sheet of a career criminal, except that this career criminal is a former president of the United States who wants to be re-elected in November.

When the Court ruled that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for any actions taken as part of their official duties, it appeared that that might let Trump off the hook in those pending criminal cases. The only remaining issue was how each lower court defined presidential duties. It has been widely assumed by people on all sides, that Trump’s primary goal in running for re-election was to stay out of prison, and given the Court’s ruling, he would then have a free rein to continue his quest to undermine the Constitution if he won. Some people close to Trump have whispered that he really has no desire to be president again, but he’s driven by desperation and his need for adulation.

There is another way to look at presidential immunity, however. I’m surprised none of the highly paid media pundits have addressed it. Given the chaos Trump has caused in our politics and the discord and lack of confidence in our legal system he has fostered, Donald seems to have forgotten about The Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s an error we all make when we’re caught up in the fervor of battle – sometimes what at first seems like a victory can be our undoing, and an egomaniac like Trump is exactly the kind of person who would get caught in his own trap.

Trump has been clear, both from his past actions and his explicitly stated intentions about the future. He will only accept the result of the 2024 election if he wins. He showed us the lengths he’s prepared to go to if he loses in 2020 – more than sixty motions and lawsuits, all either thrown out of court or denied by the presiding judge; the creation of teams of fake electors, and attempts to intimidate state election officials to replace the real electors with them; arousing and enabling heavily armed, right-wing militias to be prepared for anything from coup to revolution; and the final act of desperation: insurrection.

We’ve watched the slow-motion avalanche he created develop, and one way or another, it might crush whomever is in its path this November. Trump knows his magic is waning and that his antics cost him votes with independents, women, immigrants, and people of color. The groundswell of love and support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is something Trump neither understands nor knows how to combat. He may not know a thing about history, but his advisors understand that voting trends run in cycles, and American voters have always rejected extremism once they’ve seen it metastasize into a threat to our nation.

Let’s consider what might happen in November. Harris defeats Trump resoundingly in the popular vote and comfortably in the Electoral College. With the likelihood of incarceration staring at him, Trump will be even more driven to win by any means necessary than he was in 2020, and with the brazenness shown by his allies in Project 2025, I wouldn’t attempt to predict their actions. But there will be no guardrails or filters, no lines he won’t cross to try to win. If his past is a valid predictor, he will act purely out of self-interest without regard for federal or local laws or the Constitution. He will force the country into a crisis more serious than even the outbreak of the Civil War.

And that is when his “victory” in the fight for presidential immunity will come back to bite him. When the Supreme Court issued its decision, it addressed acts by a sitting president. Trump’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in their decision. But until January 20, 2025, the president will be Joe Biden, and Trump will simply be a private citizen guilty of treason and dozens of other serious felonies. It will be Joe Biden who suddenly has the power granted by the Courts to lock Trump up as a clear and present danger to the nation. Trump’s lawyers can scream to high heaven, and down the road, they might even prevail in some kangaroo court. But Biden could go as far as declaring marital law and keep Trump incommunicado in solitary confinement, and as long as he was perceived as acting in his official duties to defend the Constitution, he will have the full protection of the Supreme Court.

If that’s not enough, we’ll have a tough-as-nails prosecutor as President Elect, who won’t flinch from doing whatever is necessary to silence the Trump menace once and for all.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Michelle and Barrack Obama

Posted on August 21, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 20, 2024

Either I had forgotten what wonderful communicators Michelle and Barrack Obama were, or they’ve gotten better with age. The combined hour they spent addressing the Democratic National Convention was a case study in how to control and influence a crowd. They were both brilliant.

Michelle had an advantage – the crowd adored her. I’ve lost count of how many people have said they wished she would run for office. She lived up to their adulation, addressing the delegates with elegance and respect. Her speech wasn’t just cheerleading for Kamala Harris, however. She warned the crowd that the euphoria they were feeling at that moment, seductive as it was, would end in a couple of days, and the seventy-five that followed before the election were going to be hard.

She also took some pointed shots at Donald Trump, which had to make him crazy. Consider this: while Trump was addressing a small group of people in Wisconsin, Michelle Obama had a crowd of thousands eating out of her hand and cheering at every pause. A black woman, the wife of a two-term president whose values and moral character are respected by most of the country stood at a microphone recounting Trump’s crimes and painting a picture of him as the Devil incarnate. She was beautiful and she was elegant, and exactly the right voice at the right time.

Then came Barrack. Commentators kept reminding us that it was almost exactly twenty years since his speech at the 2004 DNC that introduced him to America and launched his political career. That speech probably cemented his election as a U. S. Senator from Illinois. It definitely established him as one of the great orators of our generation, and last night’s speech did nothing to dispute that. Michelle had won over the audience, but she was addressing people who already loved her. No one  envied Barrack having to speak after his wife has mesmerized the crowd.

While Michelle aroused the crowd’s emotions, Barrack Obama addressed them like a father, mentor, teacher, and conscience. His speech was a series of skillful cadences, and the emotions of the delegates rose and fell like ship a bobbing on ocean waves. He was a brilliant showman, too, far better at it than Trump. But his best moment was reminding the crowd that winning in November would require everyone’s maximum effort, because the other side started out with a huge advantage.

Obama reminded us that Trump and his minions understand that the easiest way to arouse a crowd is by playing on its hatreds and fears, seizing on latent prejudices and convincing them that everyone else is their enemy. He took some shots at Trump, but it was different from the way Trump attacks people. Trump’s attacks are meant to belittle and intimidate. He is so brazen with his lies and insults, his opponents are often set back on their heels, because they’ve never had to deal with his sick, unfiltered, self-absorbed madness.

Obama spoke, not like a Klansman riling up a lynch mob, but like someone who really cares about America and all of us, warning us of a terrible danger in our midst. He reminded us that democracy is about each of us treating each other with humility, respect, and love. I was reminded of his first inaugural address as president in Grant Park, not far from where he spoke last night. The hope, joy, and love he showed that night, and the eloquence of his words made us believe we had matured as a nation and the road ahead would be better.

It didn’t turn out that way because Obama’s election also awakened and aroused the forces of hate and greed we thought he had defeated. Unfortunately, Donald Trump and Fox News realized that they’d simply gone underground to plan their revenge, and their greed and cynicism created the MAGA movement before anyone knew it was happening.

Mitch McConnell unwittingly made the situation worse when, in his first speech as Senate Minority Leader he said, “My job is to assure that Obama is a one-term president,” and set about obstructing everything the new administration attempted.
It wasn’t about policy or what was best for the country. It was the beginning of sixteen years of obstructionism motivated by nothing but lust for power and revenge. McConnell has since showed nothing but disdain and horror for the monster he helped create, yet he has never had the courage to openly break from the harm he enabled. If he truly cares about his own legacy, he’ll join the other Republicans who believe in democracy and the Constitution, and denounce Trump before the election.

Last night, Barrack Obama never mentioned the way Republicans impeded him as President. He didn’t whine about how unfair it was, didn’t say a single self-aggrandizing word about his own accomplishments, and welcomed any Republican who saw the danger Trump posed to join the coalition to assure he’s defeated. He lauded Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but that wasn’t the point of his speech. Obama showed the world what true leadership, unfettered by obsessions with power, wealth, and crowd size really is.

His message was twofold. Democracy thrives on inclusion and love, on Americans working together and picking each other up when they’re down, and its mortal enemy is the hate and divisiveness that Trump thrives on. He risked bursting the balloon of optimism that has characterized the DNC by warning that fighting against hate and dissolution makes Harris and Walz underdogs, no matter that the polls seem to show them ahead. Obama’s message was clear. If we love our country, Trump must be defeated, and he must lose by a margin large enough to remove all doubt about the future Americans want.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ode to Joy

Posted on August 19, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 19, 2024

Today might have been very different if President Joe Biden hadn’t had the class and dignity to step aside. Four weeks ago, the 2024 election was shaping up to look like the 1980 election. Back then, a Democratic president who had been elected because Watergate, Vietnam, and the new energy reality caused by the Arab oil embargo had made America nostalgic for a progressive re-awakening and the youthful exuberance of John F. Kennedy. I was seventeen in 1960, an impressionable age, a year I divided between Brooklyn Tech High School and Columbia University. It was a heady time to be approaching adulthood made more so by the sheer joy Kennedy had brought back to politics.

The Democrats tried to revive that feeling with someone who was a nuclear engineer, peanut farmer, and Governor of Georgia. No more scowling Richard Nixon or body bags, or presidents for whom staying in power was more important than the rule of law and our Constitution. And while Gerald Ford was a genuine Conservative and a decent man who we needed to steer the ship while we recovered from the trauma of a horrible war and a genuine threat to our democracy, in 1976, Jimmy Carter seemed like someone who could get us back on track as the undisputed leader of the free world.

Too bad It didn’t turn out that way. As president, Carter’s first official act was signing the Hyde Amendment. Less than five years after Rowe v. Wade, the amendment assured that no federal funds would ever be used to pay for abortions. With a looming recession, serious drug problems and major cities looking at bankruptcy, and the highest interest rates we’d even known, Carter’s presidency was dealt a fatal blow when our puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by radical Muslim Ayotollahs who attacked and occupied the American embassy in Tehran – all of which resulted in the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Grover Norquist.

They ushered in the era of supply side economics and the beginning of a backward-looking political philosophy that sought to reverse the progressive gains of the New Deal and create an oligarchy of billionaires. That gave birth to the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus, which masqueraded as attempts to return to fiscal conservatism, but were really ideologies based on racism, misogyny, and greed. That brought us divisiveness, palpable anger and hate, and the realization that America wasn’t the country we thought it was. It couldn’t be if it produced a monster like Donald Trump. It couldn’t be if it revealed that at least a third of us preferred an immoral, power-mad narcissist who threatened to disembowel the institutions and values that America was based on.

America and the world have been in shock for nine years. Friends and families became divided, and the mood in our country went steadily downhill. COVID was part of that, but Trump’s incompetence, the deaths of more than a million Americans and his clear intent to remain in power even at the cost of destroying our democracy elevated Joe Biden to the presidency. Biden saved us from the worst economic consequences of COVID and shepherded the strongest recovery of any major nation, included a three-year struggle to control the inflation that resulted from need to shut down our economy during COVID and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that spiked energy prices.

Biden brought back a sense of cautious optimism, but as the MAGA movement prepared its final assault on democracy and our Constitution, and Biden’s age and apparent loss of cognitive function caused Americans to lose confidence in his ability to serve a second term, the despair we felt in 2016 as Hillary Clinton was brought down by a barrage of hate and unbridled attacks based on Trump’s lies and power-crazy fantasies returned.

That’s where we were four months ago. But while the Republicans fell on their swords for Donald Trump, despite the obvious fact that he has destroyed their party and tarnished its proud history, the Democrats swallowed a bitter bill and did what was necessary. A month ago, I didn’t believe Kamala Harris had what it took to bring us back, but her first public appearance as candidate for president in Atlanta convinced me. She is the Hegelian hero of our time. Fighting the glass ceiling that all women have to fight and struggling against the double-whammy of racism and xenophobia that her biracial heritage arouses in some of us, she transformed the mood of America.

Ms. Harris has brought joy back. Trump used to hold massive rallies, filling stadia with angry people looking for a scapegoat for their own problems. Now it’s Harris who fills stadia, but her crowds are joyous. They rock and roll and sing and dance. She has already inspired enough of us that she now has the edge for November, and her momentum is still growing as her positive presence shines a harsh light on the reality of the nasty old man she’s running against.

I love that the entertainment world is out in force in support of her. Trump mocks her because her convention will likely be a joyous songfest and celebration. Voting for someone because Beyonce and George Clooney love her is absurd, but if they can elevate the mood of the country and re-enable its aspirations, I’m completely on board with it. I have no idea how the Democrats are choreographing the Convention, but for me, the perfect climax would be Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ushered on stage by the Chicgo Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from his triumphant Ninth Symphony.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump in Declension

Posted on August 16, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 16, 2024

Suppose we go back over the first half of 2024 and review the attacks leveled against President Biden’s perceived inability to win a second term as president, much less be able to perform effectively for four more years. Then we’ll apply them to Donald Trump’s attempt to become the second president in history to be re-elected after being defeated as an incumbent, and see what that tells us.

For months, those of us who revere and respect Biden, who have followed his career of public service for more than fifty years, struggled to convince ourselves that he could still do the job, until it became clear that that was no longer the issue. The priority was doing whatever was necessary to assure that Donald Trump never got near the White House again. Biden did exactly that, and he showed us yesterday that he is still the man we knew now that the pressure of running a re-election campaign is off the table. His joint appearance with Kamala Harris in Maryland displayed a stronger, healthier-looking Biden who spoke effectively and clearly.

That he was the same man who stumbled so badly during his debate with Trump in June makes the case that serving as president while running for re-election against someone who turned the debate into a full-on assault is too much to expect of someone who will be 82 before Election Day. But Biden showed us something else, yesterday, as well. Having to drop out of the race was a terribly humbling and humiliating experience. He was angry and frustrated, and felt betrayed by people like Nancy Pelosi with whom he’d be allied for decades. Yet, the Biden we saw yesterday had clearly overcome all that and accepted the reality that Harris will likely win where he probably wouldn’t have.

Like the Biden we’ve known all these years, it took him only a few weeks to overcome his fury and disappointment, and once again put his country and party ahead of his own needs. His appearance with Harris was filled with genuine love and palpable optimism which brought the crowd of about 2,500 to its feet cheering, “Thank you, Joe.” He showed the class, integrity, and humility he’s always been known for, and in doing so, unintentionally cast an unforgiving spotlight on Trump.

Trump’s press conference from his New Jersey golf resort, the same day, was a stark, shocking contrast with Biden’s appearance in Maryland. Where Biden was fully engaged and coherent, and showed no signs of the torment he experienced for several months, Trump appeared to have almost completely unraveled. His act was old and tired. There wasn’t a single thing that was new about it, except that he was even more undisciplined and incoherent than usual.

I’m at an age at which I see cognitive and physical decline all around me. We all recognize the symptoms: inability to remain focused, constant repetition, misremembering names, dates, and places, irrational flashes of rage, a complete lack of behavioral filters, and most sadly, the lack of recognition and acceptance of what’s happening by the persons in decline themselves.

That’s what I and millions of other Americans see every day in Trump. I wonder if even his committed base sees it, if they wring their hands hoping he’ll improve the way the rest of us agonized over Biden’s decline last Spring. We accepted reality before it was too late, and in Kamala Harris, we have a candidate we can vigorously support. But Trump’s base is more like a cult of true believers, because that’s what he demands them to be. As Trump declines, they interpret his deranged rants and inability to focus on the things that could still win the election for him as just another act in his unconventional approach to politics. Now they’re stuck with him to the end.

Trump, at 78, walks better than Biden and doesn’t stutter. He doesn’t trip over words the way Biden sometimes does, but his cognitive decline is apparent in other ways. His command of the language is pitiful for a man in his position, and that’s clearly a sign of age, because speeches given by a younger Trump were mostly intelligible and coherent, where today’s Trump seems unable to finish a sentence without veering off into craziness. He lies so routinely that even people close to him question whether he’s even aware that he’s lying or he’s simply losing touch with reality.

In his remarks at his so-called press conference, yesterday, he raved about how unintelligent he thinks Harris is and claimed he had every right to attack her. He admitted that he was angry at her for upsetting his campaign against Biden and turning the tables on him. But he concluded his attack by saying, “and she’ll be a terrible president.” Clearly, he meant she would be if she were elected, but as Trump is wont to do from time to time, his uncontrolled anger allowed his inner truth to show.

Trump knows he’s going to lose and it’s driving him to a very dark place.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Christian Nationalism – Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on August 13, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 13, 2024

Donald Trump, his MAGA supporters, and the hundred and forty or so current or former Trump staffers who helped write Project 2025 are vocal supporters of Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s governing philosophy of White Christian Nationalism. There is a rapidly growing far-right cult in the United States that touts Christian Nationalism as the way to “make America great again.” As a result, our upcoming presidential election has been framed as a struggle between democracy and our Constitution against Fascism.

I believe that’s true, and it should be the first priority of everyone who casts a vote in November. Trump’s MAGA movement has created a real existential crisis for America, but their obsession with Orban’s Hungary may be their undoing when the rank and file of their base realize exactly what Orban’s version of White Christian Nationalism consists of.

The main points on which Viktor Orban and Donald Trump agree are that immigrants, especially non-Christian, dark-skinned immigrants and free access to information are both dangerous things that need to be controlled by a fascist-like autocracy. Orban’s Christian Nationalism Constitution specifically refers to Christianity’s key role in preserving nationhood and “preserving the intellectual and spiritual unity of our nation.”

Historian Jemar Tisby defines white Christian Nationalism as “an ethnocultural ideology that uses Christian symbolism to create a permission structure for the acquisition of political power and social control.” That definition applied to those excerpts from Hungary’s Constitution makes it sounds chillingly like the Nazis’ attempt to purify the Aryan race.

That doesn’t seem to bother the MAGA extremists, because, as Tisby said, all they care about is acquiring the power to control everyone else. But do they really understand what they’ve bought into? Let’s compare their implied platform with the way Hungary actually functions. Trump’s base may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Hungary’s and Orban’s approach to gun ownership is the complete opposite of what MAGA supporters demand. Hungary has the strictest gun ownership laws in Europe, which include most of the proposals that the majority of Americans support but the National Rifle Association and right-wing politicians hate. Anyone wishing to own a firearm must undergo both physical and psychological exams every four years, and demonstrate gun safety and use proficiency before being licensed. Because of its rigorous gun laws, only 3% of Hungarians are permitted to own weapons, and those must be frequently inspected. Hungary has virtually no illegal gun ownership. By comparison, about a third of American adults legally own guns, while the number of illegal weapons is in the tens of millions. Good luck selling Christian Nationalism gun policy, Donald.

Although Hungary is largely Roman Catholic, abortion has been legal throughout the country since 1953, within the first twelve to twenty-four weeks of a pregnancy depending on the woman’s specific circumstances. Anyone wishing to terminate a pregnancy must first undergo counseling and a three-day waiting period, and obtain a certificate verifying the pregnancy from a midwife or gynecologist. Hungary’s Christian Nationalism is not concerned with questions like the rights of a fetus. Do you think all those evangelists you duped would buy into that, Donald?

Hungary has a universal health care system that is free to all citizens, and the government subsidizes procedures not fully paid for by the national system. Hungary provides free education through university to all citizens, but Donald Trump doesn’t support free lunches for school kids. And Hungary provides retirement salaries for all citizens.

When we look at the “Hungarian model” for MAGA and Project 2025 carefully, we see a mixture of political extremes. On one hand, the government functions like a fascist autocracy set up to benefit an elite oligarchy of powerful people. But it’s also a socialist welfare state that Bernie Sanders would be proud to support.

The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that Project 2025 and Trump’s worship of Viktor Orban are as phoney as everything else Trump says. For Trump, Christian Nationalism is nothing more than an excuse to grab and hold power. All of the noise and bluster about Kamala Harris being a Communist aside, Viktor Orban’s government is simply the same socialist template employed by most of Europe. Like everything else Trump touches, the philosophy he’s touting is a fraud. All he cares about is power and staying out of prison for his previous crimes.

I’m not an expert in political science, but I understand human nature. Orban has figured out what many dictators before him learned. If he keeps his citizens fed, housed, and cared for when they’re sick, they’re less concerned when rights like free speech and the right to vote are compromised. But the United States isn’t Hungary, and White Christian Nationalism won’t work here. Trump doesn’t understand the subtle dynamics that keep a ruler in power. It’s all just a power play for him.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Donald Trump and the Press

Posted on August 9, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 9, 2024

When Donald Trump was asked by a reporter why he wasn’t campaigning in battleground states, he did two things a politician should never do. First, he attacked the reporter, calling the question stupid in his uniquely hateful way. It was an entirely reasonable question, but one Trump didn’t like, as his second answer clearly showed. He claimed he didn’t need to campaign because he’s way ahead, and he was waiting until the Democratic Convention was over.

One thing we all know about Donald Trump is that he can’t stand being out of the limelight. If we count from Trump’s rally in Atlanta, waiting until after the Democratic Convention ends would mean that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will have the media to themselves for a full month. That doesn’t compute, but maybe it will when we consider the first part of what Trump said. I looked at 538.com, the generally accepted, nonpartisan gold standard for polling data. What I found surprised me.

Polls in June and July had shown Trump up nationally by two to six points. Between July 30th and August 8th, sixteen respected polls across the political spectrum showed that Harris has reversed that completely. Trump was ahead in only one, by 2 points and two had them even. In the other thirteen, Harris was ahead by 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 1, 2, 5, 1, and 2 points. That’s stunning, and it makes his answer to the reporter he insulted a lie.

Trump’s not out campaigning for several reasons. One is that his narcissistic bubble of confidence has been punctured by Harris’ meteoric rise in popularity. Many who know him well, including most recently, Vincent Scaramucci, report Trump is scared. He has never been able to face a strong, competent woman, and the idea of having to compete with a biracial woman whose parents were nonwhite immigrants has him unhinged.

Harris has taken the age issue away from him – he’s nineteen years older than she is, and as his rants are becoming more detached from reality, his age is showing. It’s the same Trump we’ve seen for nine years, but his act is stale, and few outside his base are buying it. Calling Harris incompetent, claiming she’s not smart enough to be interviewed by the press, and referring to her as stupid is as counterproductive as it is offensive. He also warned that America is on the precipice of both a second 1929-style Great Depression and nuclear war. The first assertion is too absurd to merit a response; the second might contain a grain of truth, but the blame belongs to Iran and Russia, not Harris or Joe Biden.

Trump lost any perceived advantage on the southern border issue thru his own action when he forced House Speaker Mike Johnson to scuttle the bipartisan Senate bill that satisfied almost every Republican demand. With Mark Kelly, whose stance on the border is popular in Arizona, behind her and strong positive statements by both Harris and Walz, Trump’s talking points are vapid. Everyone who tracks border happenings has reported that illegal crossings and the number of asylum seekers have dropped dramatically since President Biden’s Executive Order on the border. Phoenix’s mayor, Kate Gallego told CNN that it’s safer in Arizona than it’s been in years, and she loves the idea of a former prosecutor and State Attorney General who has prosecuted illegal border crossers running for president against someone who talks about it but has no record of accomplishment.

About those poll numbers, I have previously suggested that polls cannot be trusted to be accurate in 2024 because there is no evidence that their sampling universes are representative of registered voters. That’s still true, but whatever bias exists in the sampled populations has far less impact on month-to-month trends in the data. Even a skewed, unrepresentative sample that shows a massive swing in momentum like what Harris has generated in less than three weeks has credibility, as was proven in the final weeks of the 2016 election when Trump overcame Hillary Clinton’s lead and shocked the country.

Trump had his press conference, and the result was that his handlers and supporters are in complete disarray because he can’t or won’t control what comes out of his mouth. They’re terrified of putting him out in public – what might he say next? Mr. Scaramucci made an interesting comment about that during his interview. He said he doesn’t believe Trump is intentionally lying most of the time. Rather, the problem is that he’s mentally ill, and he distorts the truth in his own mind. I’d ask which is worse, a president who has no respect for truth or one who invents his own truth and isn’t even aware he’s doing it?

Kamala Harris must love watching Trump self-destruct and salivate over debating him.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment