The Zeitgeist

The Race for President: I’m With No One.

Stuck in the Middle with You, Wondering What It is I Should Do.

This column appeared originally on The Huffington Post on August 1, 2016 and in several newsppaers around the country that week.

After having watched both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions I’m solidly convinced that the political world has been sent to a paradoxical dimension not tethered to any of the familiar signposts of the past 80-plus years.

Just as the Internet and mobile devices have disrupted traditional media, traditional shopping and even traditional dating and social mores, the brave new world created by technology seems to be having a tsunami effect on every aspect of American life up to and including presidential politics.

Millions are reached with withering tweets in nanoseconds that obviate the impact of hour-long speeches and lengthy policy analyses. Tens of millions of dollars are raised from millions of donors almost in real time with the touch of fingers on a mobile screen that obviates the need for big money from big donors. And we are now in the midst of a presidential campaign that would have been unimaginable even four years ago.

Hillary Clinton gave the speech of her life on Thursday night, July 28^th to end the Democratic Convention. Up until that speech I harbored a solid and visceral hatred for this woman. Now, thanks to her oratory I now only have a solid ambivalence – which is progress because there are millions of Americans out there just like me.

The gradual transformation from hate to ambivalence is possible partly because the Republican standard-bearer is so utterly repugnant to me in just about every which way. Donald Trump does not represent my morals or mores. His predilection for Don Rickles-esque insult and endless pejorative politics is repugnant to my sense of civility and decency. (And, please, I don’t mean to insult Mr. Rickles who does put-downs in jest, not with intent as does Mr. Trump). He attacks people’s wives. His business practices don’t jibe with caring for the working man. His impulsive temperament and thin skin and his complete inability to accept criticism scare me witless. He’s the first Republican since 1940 to run on an isolationist platform. He wants to eviscerate global free trade which could cause a worldwide recession and who knows how much military tension, especially with China.

He wants to undermine NATO and he’s an enabler of Vladimir Putin’s adventurism and he goes on “ABC This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, July 31^st and lies about his Putin relationship, contradicting a half dozen video clips from the past three years of him saying the opposite. He wants to raise taxes. He has no plan to cut the deficit. He actually takes the National Enquirer seriously. Hardly anyone of any consequence in the GOP backs him. Still.

Hillary Clinton also makes me queasy. I don’t like her poor judgment with her emails while Secretary of State. I don’t like that she lied for a full year about the emails. I really don’t like that she went on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace on July 31^st and lied about it again, to the point that The Washington Post gave her performance “Four Pinocchios.” I don’t like what she and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz did to Berne Sanders and that Hillary hired Wasserman-Shultz immediately on her resignation as Chair of the DNC.

I don’t like that she and her husband knowingly raised tens of millions for their foundation from foreign interests while she was Secretary of State and the lush speaking fees they both got personally over the past eight years. I can only imagine how much fruit will be shaken from the trees by Bill if Hillary is elected President. I don’t like that the worldwide radical Islamist terror epidemic is given low priority by the Democrats; that she was part and parcel of the massive pressure on Israel which went so far as to interfere in Israel’s elections on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents. I don’t feel the Iran nuclear deal will keep the world safe because the Iranians have been flouting their violations of the agreement in the world’s face day in and day out. She also fails to take the federal deficit seriously. It’s blossomed to $19 trillion and growing.

She absolutely came across as more human and less power-hungry in her acceptance speech and made some good points but like many Americans I don’t completely trust her and the sound of her voice is like nails on a chalkboard, so the likeability factor is sorely lacking. That she is the pro-NATO anti-Putin candidate as a Democrat is the world put upside down.

I’d probably have voted for Bernie Sanders had he won the Democratic nomination even though I disagree with most of his policies, primarily because he’s likeable because of his honesty, integrity and consistency. (For me and millions of Americans character does matter).

So, like many Americans, right now I’m at “none of the above,” meaning I can’t vote for Trump and I’m not ready to vote for Hillary. This will be a wild ride over the next three months leading up until Election Day. It may be that voter turnout in November will be very low owing to so many Americans’ discomfort with either candidate and many will just sit on their hands and stay home. Right now, many of us are in limbo with nowhere to go – so I’m stuck like so many folks I know in the void for the first time since I started voting in 1980.

The Zeitgeist

It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.

(Note: This appeared originally on The Huffington Post on the eve of the Republican National Convention which started on July 18, 2016)

In what very likely may look like a derivation of the Miss Universe Pageant (a former Trump Production) the Republican Party convenes from July 18-21^st in Cleveland, home of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. The upcoming event portends the antithesis of dull and formal conventions past. Look (metaphorically) for a fusion of a glam rock/heavy metal concert with dollops of The Apprentice, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, WWE and Baywatch covered with a light dusting of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, or the will of Trump wherein the GOP “Establishment” will be formally “fired.”

In what can be termed “The Great Leap Backward,” Donald Trump will be leading the GOP into a pre-Eisenhower policy mélange of isolationism, tariffs and economic protectionism (rejection of international free trade) mixed with a noxious whiff of nativism which manifests itself in draconian restrictions on travel and immigration, particularly for ethnic groups that are non-white and non-Christian. It’s no small wonder then that neither Bush the Elder or Bush the Younger will be in attendance. Neither will the “losers” John McCain and Mitt Romney. Trump just doesn’t throw their kind of a party.

In 1963 Leslie Gore had a number one hit with “It’s My Party (and I’ll cry if I want to)” The great Quincy Jones produced it. In this famous single, Gore asserts that “you would cry too if it happened to you,” especially because “Judy’s smile is so mean.” There’s a lot of weeping and bawling in both mainstream and even Tea Party Republican circles because Trump and Trumpism are so antithetical to GOP ideology, ethos and even style that many of us feel dumped after a lifetime of going steady and this is a cause of great vexation, consternation and lamentation – so much so that I’ll probably not watch much of the convention and may not even vote for a presidential candidate in November for the first time in my adult life.

The Party of Lincoln and Reagan arrives at Cleveland with a presidential nominee that most Republicans don’t want and in fact that a solid plurality loathe. Trump got the nod from an invasion of the party snatchers – those open primary voters who crashed the Republican Party by either legitimately crossing party lines, becoming a Republican at the polling station or were allowed to vote Republican even as Independents. A lot of key states permitted this. Trump touts all the millions he brought into the Party – what he really did was bring them in to vote for Trump. The ridiculously fractured field of 17 wannabees, enabled by a debate practically every week allowed Trump to trump the professional politicians with a brew of outrageousness and insults that most media enabled in a shameless pandering for ratings.

Unlike the Democrats who have a “Super Delegate” mechanism to keep the party from getting too wild and out of hand (and which gives some say to party leaders and activists), the Republicans have no “great wall” to fend off the invading wildlings and figurative Mongol hordes. The Democratic Party got tired of nominating implausible candidates and taking a drubbing on election day so they made it virtually impossible for a total outsider to snatch their nomination unless that person swept every primary, much to Bernie Sanders’ dismay.

Both parties need to revise their primary and party membership criteria. It’s not enough to just say you’re a Democrat or Republican and then be able to select the nominee for the highest office in the land and leader of the free world on a whim in whatever party even if you don’t belong to one.

First, the GOP needs to abolish open primaries – they’re a Trojan horse that will always portend danger to viable mainstream candidates because populists like Trump can bring in the wackadoo crowd or Democratic activists can torpedo a candidacy by driving a lot of their members to the polls to vote Republican as spoilers. This can also happen to Democrats too in reverse in an open primary. To vote in a party primary one should be a member of that party for at least 45 days prior and more significantly, there should be a membership fee so that there is some level of serious commitment to the party and skin in the game. I recommend a charge of $10 to join a party with the proceeds being split down the middle between the state and national party organizations. That way the parties pick-up some important revenue (and not from special interests) and voters can’t drop in on a whim. This would seriously limit “spam voters” and “malware candidacies.”

Next, the Republicans have to catch their tongues – no weekly debates for a year with 17 people. There should be a total of six debates, one per month prior to the California primary in June and to participate in the debates a candidate should be polling at least 15 percent, not one percent.

But this is all looking to the future. Meanwhile I, along with millions of other Republicans will absolutely be crying over all the spilled milk and wasted opportunities that a Trump nomination brings and the very real dangers looming for the country if he wins because of his immaturity, irrationality, bellicosity, belligerence and braggadocio.

The Zeitgeist

Strange Bedfellows: This Florida Republican Agrees with Bernie and Hillary. Trump Must be Stopped So America and the GOP Can Be Saved.

Note: This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post and InauguralClock.com on March 14, 2016, the day prior to the Florida Primary.

It’s an odd day indeed when a lifelong Republican finds himself in agreement with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It’s the very definition of “politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Over the weekend Hillary said “Donald Trump is not who we are” and Bernie Sanders asserted that “Donald Trump is a pathological liar.” I wholeheartedly agree with both statements.

Donald Trump has conjured a witches brew of ignorance, belligerence, insults, racism, misogyny and xenophobic jingoism along with quite a (forgive the pun) liberal sprinkling of bald-faced mendacity that is so outrageous that it boggles the mind and the senses.

The Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbles was famous for saying that “the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.” In the case of Donald Trump, he lies almost all of the time. (when he’s not busy flip-flopping his positions on the issues) Big lies, little lies, sweet lies, mean lies, white lies.

Zombie voters have crept out of their usual stupefied beer-fueled crypts and are reveling in a candidate who appears as ignorant as they are on the issues and is actually proud and unapologetic about it. It’s as though every sweat hog and slacker from high school gathered together to violently expel the principal, faculty and all the honors students from campus and then still expected to graduate and get good jobs.

Intelligence, intellect, accomplishments, facts, manners and even polite speech are derided as pejorative characteristics of “The Establishment,” all those bright Poindexter types who’ve hijacked the country and conspired to keep the average Joe down for their own gain. It’s time for the revolution of the ignorant.

That Trump is a privileged Ivy League graduate born to wealth and privilege is irrelevant to this voter so long as Trump talks the talk of blaming anyone and everyone for the county’s failures – naming scapegoats both foreign and domestic and offering not one coherent, logical or practical solution to what may ail the nation.

All the polls in Florida have Trump beating Senator Marco Rubio by double digits. It just doesn’t matter to me. On Tuesday, this Florida Republican will cast his vote for Rubio to try and stop Trump. In reality, I lean towards Ohio Governor John Kasich but he doesn’t stand a chance in the Sunshine State so I’ll go with the native son. I’ll also be voting for Rubio because I have a conscience, I have to sleep at night, I have to live with myself.

It must be remembered that the Nazis were elected to power in Germany in 1933. All that’s necessary for evil to triumph in Florida is for good Republicans to split their vote between Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz and Kasich. I urge all Florida Republicans to put aside their personal preferences and coalesce around Rubio. If most Cruz and Kasich voters go for Rubio he can beat Trump and beating Trump is the duty of all Republicans who still cherish the values of Abraham Lincoln, of U.S. Grant, of Theodore Roosevelt, of Calvin Coolidge, of Dwight Eisenhower, of Ronald Reagan and of the Constitution. Don’t let Trump be inevitable. Get out and vote. Make your vote stand for something and stand for something right, noble and good.