The Zeitgeist

Donald and Melania Trump voting in New York on November 8, 2016

Trump Win Proves the Election and System isn’t “Rigged”

Note: This appeared originally on The Huffington Post on November 9, 2016

The election wasn’t rigged.

Confounding the pollsters, the pundits, the media and conventional wisdom, Donald J. Trump, entertainer, entrepreneur and real estate developer was elected as the next President of the United States.

Improbably, a billionaire became the voice of the common man having run a populist campaign pledging to give voice to the ignored, the dispossessed and disenfranchised – those left behind in the high tech revolution, those passed over in the massive cultural changes of the past dozen years, those who felt palpable insecurity with the evaporation of much manufacturing, the explosion in health care costs and those who tired of accommodation and appeasement of violent Islamic extremists.

Trump put together a victory without the benefit of carrying the Northeast or the West Coast – the Trump win was a win for the “Flyover States,” as the middle of the country is sometimes derisively dismissed by the coastal elites. It was also a win for Texas and Dixie – the South rose up to repudiate an increasingly liberal and progressive vision of America as embodied by eight years of President Obama. Even Florida narrowly slipped out of the Democrats’ grasp. This is the first presidential election in perhaps a century that was accomplished without winning New York, Illinois or California.

The Trump win can be compared in to Richard Nixon’s in 1969 when Spiro Agnew’s “Silent Majority,” the everyday folks ignored by the media ushered in GOP rule as a reset to America’s “cultural revolution” of the 1960s. Trump’s victory also has echoes of Andrew Jackson – a sometimes vulgar and coarse blunt-speaking, hard-charging guy who eventually also overcame the disgust of the entrenched elites of his day and the dynastic entitlements of the Adams (John and John Quincey) family.

A majority of American voters were just not that into Hillary. Never an especially likeable figure and never an especially good retail politician, Hillary oozed aristocratic entitlement and fixed, smoke-filled room inevitability, which is why Obama was able to beat her in 2008 and why Bernie Sanders came awfully close in this primary season. That it was “her time” and “her turn” didn’t resonate with most folks.

In a sense it really was FBI Director James Comey who put Trump over the top. With his campaign swooning in the polls just two weeks ago, Comey’s letter to Congress about Huma Abedin’s laptop and more Clinton emails was the tipping point for many Americans. No matter that just before balloting Mr. Comey cleared Hillary yet again, the sense of many people was that Hillary was slippery, untrustworthy and dishonest. That Trump was able to maintain two weeks of self-discipline, stay on message and not go off the cliff on irrational Twitterized tangents made a big difference for many undecided voters.

Finally, the Trump victory also shows that the path for Republican majorities is in part paved with stifling discourse about people’s bodies and people’s bedrooms. Trump was heavily reticent on abortion and highly tolerant of the LBGT community, two areas of often strident posturing by GOP candidates in the past. People just want more tolerance and want candidates focused on big picture issues, not what goes on in their boudoirs.

Mr. Trump gets a solid GOP majority in the House and a secure one in the Senate along with winning The White House. A big mandate to roll-back much of the past eight years. Now all the kids have to play well together to get things done for the American people and we all have to hope and pray that Trump is capable of rising to the august office of the presidency so his late parents, his family, the GOP and the American people will be proud to have elected him.

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

Joe Lhota (left) and Bill de Blasio mix it up on WABC debate

Lhota Dead on Arrival for Televised Mayoral Debate;

Historic GOP Loss in the Offing.

On Tuesday evening October 15^th Bill de Blasio hammered in the nails on Joe Lhota’s coffin. In a televised debate on WABC Channel 7, de Blasio was animated, forceful and forthright while continually tarring Lhota with the brush of “Republican trickle-down economics,” “Tea Party extremism,” “Giuliani Administration divisiveness” and as a shill for “Bloombergian corporate welfare.” De Blasio continually rebutted anything Lhota had to say even if de Blasio wasn’t supposed to be speaking. Lhota was so painfully polite that de Blasio always got in the last word and the last jab.

Joe Lhota, the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York never once turned to look de Blasio in the eye, allowed all charges, slights and insults to go un-refuted and unchallenged and never went on the offensive calling de Blasio a continuation of the David Dinkins administration since de Blasio’s City Hall experience was working for that former mayor. Lhota never raised the ominous specter of a return to those crime-filled days nor did he ridicule any of de Blasio’s proposals.

Lhota went out of his way to portray himself as the candidate of change while de Blasio successfully boxed him in as the candidate of continuity. Instead of vigorously defending the last 20 years of Republican control of City Hall, Lhota was trying to have his cake and eat it too, distancing himself while gingerly embracing a few GOP policies. A lot of New Yorkers are happy with how things have gone since 1993 but the only way you’d know Lhota was the Republican standard-bearer was hearing it from de Blasio.

Back in 2009, 1,550,000 of the more than eight million residents of New York City came out to vote in that year’s mayoral contest between the incumbent Michael Bloomberg and his Democratic challenger Bill Thompson.  The Board of Elections shows 4,366,746 registered voters in the city limits as of April 1, 2012.    Not a particularly high turnout last time around. Back in 1993 in the supercharged race between the incumbent David Dinkins and his challenger Rudy Giuliani nearly 1.9 million people voted. Voter apathy tends to breed low turnouts as in 2009. Turnout has been declining steadily for decades. From 1932 until 1969 well over 2.2 million people voted each time.

Thanks to the perception that the 2013 race is a fait accompli it is fair to assume that New Yorkers won’t be streaming to the voting booths. By “fait accompli,” I mean all the recent polls showing GOP candidate Joe Lhota getting trounced by the Democratic nominee Bill de Blasio. In the last Quinnipiac poll conducted at the end of September int margin that points to a mauling of historic proportions. If we take the 2009 voter turnout as an estimate for 2013 that would mean more than 1.1 million votes for de Blasio and a mere 325,000 for Lhota. For Lhota that would be fewer votes than there are registered Republicans, a rare feat given how few admitted Republicans there are in Gotham.

You’d have to go back all the way to the Koch years where Ed slaughtered the placeholder GOP candidates to find a more dismal looking picture for the GOP. In 1977 Roy Goodman only garnered 59,000 votes (Mario Cuomo got 588,000 on the Liberal Party line). In 1981 Koch ran as both a Democrat and Republican and in 1985 his Republican challenger only took 102,000 votes. That Joe Lhota seems to be OK with doing little better than Roy Goodman in ’77 rather than winning is a big part of the problem. No fight. No passion. Lhota just wants to be loved and cuddled. His pushing of himself so far away from the embrace and legacy of Rudy Giuliani is reminiscent of Al Gore’s similar strategy vis-à-vis Bill Clinton in 2000. We know how well that worked out for Gore.

The Lhota people are running a “sunny day in the Emerald City” type of ad campaign. There’s nothing to fear, nothing to worry about because like de Blasio, Lhota is pro-Choice. De Blasio is for Gay marriage, so is Joe; lo and behold, like de Blasio, Lhota supports decriminalizing marijuana. Candidate differentiation? Lhota wants to cut spending and not raise taxes but in the Lhota TV spot that got ridiculed by media critics everywhere, this one policy difference comes more than halfway into the commercial. At the end of his spots it’s all about “Democrats agree that Joe is New York.” The problem here is that you can really be a bona fide New Yorker and even be liked for it but yet give the voters no reason to support you. That you’re portraying yourself as a moderate Democrat? There already is a candidate from that party. That you “are New York”? So what, so are eight million other people. Is de Blasio not a New Yorker? Who cares?

Being pro-choice or pro-marijuana are not even issues that might mean something to Democrats and Independents to help sway their votes. The issues that matter are first and foremost public safety, then schools, then jobs. In the safety sphere, two cases in point are that of retaining Ray Kelly as Police Commissioner and Stop and Frisk. Lhota would keep Kelly, de Blasio would dump him but there’s nary a peep from the Lhota people about it. Stop and Frisk? Again on different sides of that issue but you’d never know it. Charter Schools? Lhota wants to keep them, de Blasio is opposed to them as elitist and diverting resources away from the general school population. Jobs? De Blasio wants to stop subsidizing businesses that locate or agree to stay here via tax breaks and subsidies. Lhota is on the other side of this, but, again, Lhota makes no forceful case for its necessity in attracting and retaining jobs. Is there any campaign targeted to public school parents? Nope. In Lhota-land the predominantly Democratic electorate can’t handle the tough issues. It’s more important that “Joe is New York,” whatever that means.

A kid-glove campaign without being in the least bit pugnacious won’t work in a tough town like New York. For the last 20 years New Yorkers elected Republican mayors, but Guiliani and Bloomberg were alpha dogs (although different stylistically). Absent a campaign that portends a return to the 1989-1993 chaos when New York was careening towards becoming Detroit if a “Democrat with a capital D” is put in Gracie Mansion, there is nothing to motivate “Democrats with a lower-case D” to vote GOP. And make no mistake, fear is a powerful motivator. New Yorkers also respect attitude, not passivity and Mr. Lhota’s full court press of passivity was on full display in Tuesday evening’s debate which is why the candidate with more passion, a clearer sense of who he is and a bigger vision will undoubtedly triumph on November 5^th and right now that isn’t Mr. Lhota.