UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING

Watching the preparations for this year's Democratic Convention in Chicago, I am taken back to the famous one that occurred exactly 56 years ago--1968.  I was there and I enjoyed a particularly advantageous view of these tumultuous proceedings--for two reasons.  First I was attached in a minor way to the rump George McGovern campaign.  This gave me a floor pass to the Convention proceedings and I was there on Tuesday, the most significant day of the proceedings, standing close enough to Mayor Richard Daley to him clearly call Sen. Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut a "Kike."  No one ever accused Daley of classiness--or lack of bigotry.

Second, I was also able, thanks to my friendship with Esquireeditor John Berendt, to spend some fascinating time with the various important figures John had cleverly arranged to send to Chicago to cover the Convention.  At dinner in a flossy near-Northside restaurant on the evening before the Convention opened, I had the remarkable opportunity to join John and his carefully-selected correspondents--Terry Southern, William Burroughs (who has been accurately described as closely resembling a "Kansas City Butter & Egg Man"), Jean Genet (insert circumflex) and Richard Seaver of Grove Press, who interpreted for M. Genet.  Norman Mailer was also in town, but otherwise occupied.

At one point, apropos of nothing, Terry Southern shouted "Viet Nam, hot damn!" to the startled restaurant goers.  We later repaired to a diner, one filled with Chicago police, where--per Mr. Seaver--Genet expressed his fascination with the "les cuisses" of various Chicago policemen.  He also stated his aesthetic appreciation of the blue and white helmets of the Chicago cops.  This gave me the inspiration (and the courage) to swipe one of those helmets hanging near the exit, hotfoot it out the door and present it to Genet.  (In various writings, Genet expressed his erotic fascination with both the police and criminals; what happened to this memorable souvenir piece of headgear I of course have no idea.)

We then sat in a grotty office overlooking the Chicago El with Democratic activist Dave Dellinger, hearing him expound on the Viet Nam War, the evils of LBJ and other issues.  I later repaired to the lovely Chicago apartment belonging to my absent Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Bob, which gave me a bird's-eye view of the cops bashing the heads of the long-haired protestors in Lincoln Park.  (I then impulsively offered refuge for the night to several bloodied combatants, which horrified my Aunt and Uncle, when they returned unexpectedly early from a trip to his fishing camp on the Central American island on Roatan.)

I have had, for most of my life, the remarkable good fortune--aided by my innate pushiness--to be in interesting places at critical moments with some extraordinary people.  Those days are long past for me now, but my acute recollections have left me with a multitude of rich remembrances.

Roger

Alabama on my mind

The first sentence of this essay from the estimable Joyce Vance says it all.  But the rest of her Civil Discourse essay is well worth reading.  The Deep Red states have chosen to become de facto Christian theocracies in direct violation of the US Constitution.  We can all hope (I could have said "pray" but I didn't) that a clear majority of Americans nationwide as well as the majority of states will clearly reject this ahistorical and unconstitutional approach to civil legal issues.   But the key operative word is "hope" and, while my usual optimistic bent remains steady, that belief remains dependent on no seriously negative events for the good guys occurring.  

Call me nervously optimistic, as I remember when in the Obama era just ten years ago the concern was a Democrat being seen as not sufficiently pro-Israel.  The noisy Right now seeks to tag Biden as being in Bibi's pocket.  I am not sure this is, on net, a political liability.  (Cable news will automatically interview two Arab-Americans in Dearborn MI.) But if it is truly is a political drag, I take comfort in the fact that Biden can remove this potential problem with a simple statement creating genuine daylight between him and the odious Netanyahu.  Doing so would, IMHO, be both good policy and good politics--leave blind support of Bibi (who is one election away from being out of office and maybe in prison) to Mr. Trump (who shares that same nervous status with Bibi.)  Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.  

Roger

When SCOTUS leaves it up to the States…
by Joy Vance

In Alabama, women can now be forced to have babies they don't want and can’t have babies that they do. Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the same status as living children in wrongful death lawsuits. The decision was 8-1. All nine of the justices on the Alabama Supreme Court are Republicans. You can find the 131-page opinion here.

Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote a concurring opinion focused on what Alabama’s super-majority Republican legislature meant in 2018 when it adopted the so-called Sanctity of Unborn Life Amendment, Alabama’s fetal personhood law. [Full disclosure: my husband, Bob, ran against Parker and lost in 2018.] “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Parker wrote. Taking the penchant of U.S. Supreme Court Justices like Sam Alito to search in the far reaches of English history for commentators to justify importing medieval views into our modern-day laws, Parker seized upon 17th Century commentator Petrus Van Mastricht.

The iconic "Go to Church" sign just north of Montgomery Alabama on I-65

Parker concludes Van Mastricht’s views are consistent with those of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas before moving on to quote Genesis (the King James version) for the proposition that “Man's creation in God's image is the basis of the general prohibition on the intentional taking of human life.” He notes that taking a life without justification would incur “the wrath of a holy God” and that the Sanctity of Unborn Life Amendment to the Alabama Constitution “recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life.” Quite a heady brew of authority for a secular court.

Perhaps the strangest part of this decision is that all of the parties accepted the view that embryos prepared for in vitro fertilization (IVF) proceedings qualify as “lives.” The question that the court set out to decide was whether those “lives” were protected by the state’s wrongful death statute so that people could sue for negligence by a hospital or clinic in the disposal of embryos. The decision permits three couples to bring suit after their frozen embryos were destroyed when another patient removed them from a cryogenic freezer and dropped them on the ground.

It only took five days for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a major university medical hospital in Alabama, to shut down its IVF program. That happened because although this case is only about civil liability under the Wrongful Death statute, by analogy, it could be applied in other legal contexts, perhaps even extending to criminal prosecutions. The decision makes IVF too risky for providers to continue. The prospect of doctors and other medical personnel finding themselves subjected to civil lawsuits or criminal prosecution has shut down, at least temporarily, access to medical care for women who want to become pregnant and have children. The irony is rich. It turns out that the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision isn’t pro-life at all.

No one on the court can say they didn’t understand the risks the decision would bring to IVF availability. The Medical Association of the State of Alabama filed an amicus brief advising the court that if it held that embryos were children for purposes of wrongful death lawsuits, access to fertility treatments could become severely limited.

Chief Justice Parker has an answer for this. He wrote, “For decades, IVF has been largely unregulated in the United States, with some commentators even comparing it to the Wild West.” He suggested that it would be up to the industry to adopt practices that would “drastically reduce the chances of embryos being killed, whether in the creation process, the implantation process, the freezing process, or by willful killing when they become inconvenient.”

Judge Greg Cook, a jurist with impeccable conservative credentials, was the lone dissenter on the court. Even in dissent, he wrote about his “sympathy with the plaintiffs and my deeply held personal views on the sanctity of life.” But he made a textual argument that the court was expanding the meaning of the Wrongful Death Act beyond what the legislature intended, since “the Wrongful Death Act does not address frozen embryos.”

What are the frozen embryos that the Justices and all of the parties agreed were “lives” in this case? The medical experts at Johns Hopkins explain:

Justice Cook wrote that he was dissenting not because the embryos weren’t lives, but because as a textualist, he was bound by the strict language of the wrongful death law under consideration, which did not include them: “I specifically asked the defendants at oral argument: ‘[s]o, is it your position that … these were lives?’ And they responded: ‘It is, Justice Cook. I think that the … embryo is a life, but the issue today is whether an embryo is a child protected under the [Wrongful Death Act].’"

If you’re depressed, you’re not alone. This is the post-Dobbs world, where personhood bills that mean fetuses are people from the moment of conception can have consequences far beyond those even people who worked for Roe v. Wade to be reversed anticipated. Other litigants will undoubtedly cite the Alabama decision as good law that should be adopted in their states, as they did when Alabama adopted measures that made it more difficult for people to vote or for immigrants to obtain medical care, schooling, and access to services in the state. Alabama has often been a proving ground for the conservative legal agenda.

The National Council of Jewish Women issued a statement that said: “This weekend’s decision from Alabama’s highest court classifying frozen embryos as children is wildly outrageous and sets a harmful precedent that violates separation of church and state and will make it nearly impossible for families in Alabama to access fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) …Religious freedom exists as a shield to protect religious minorities, and should never be used as a sword to discriminate. Weaponizing a personal religious belief to create law for millions is not just unconscionable, but unconstitutional.”

The decision includes the word “Bible” three times. “God,” “godliness,” or a similar word appears 41 times. The word “sacred,” five times. None of this is accidental. During a recent interview that you can read all about here, Chief Justice Parker said he is in favor of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theological approach that calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life. Parker said that “God created government” and that it’s “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”

The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a national religion, and that same prohibition applies to the states through the 14th Amendment. What’s heartbreaking in Alabama this week is its Supreme Court Justices’ decision to abandon the Constitution and laws they took an oath to serve, in favor of advancing a religious agenda.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

French Addressing

To my French friends and my fellow Francophiles: 

My failure to acquire any real fluency speaking French (beyond limited conversation with waiters and shopkeepers) is perhaps one of the single greatest regrets of my life. That's overly dramatic but not necessarily inaccurate, as I don't regard my failure to get seriously rich as any terrible omission, given the total comfort and moderate degree of luxury I have enjoyed nearly all my life (my two years in the US Army the prime exception to that.)  My inability to speak French beyond the level of a fairly dull six-year old child is sadly true despite many years of American school French classes. 

This would presumably not be a major problem were it not for my being a devoted Francophile my entire adult life--ever since I first set foot in Paris slightly more than sixty years ago.  I adore French food, French history, French style and French literature --in translation malheureusement.  (I had to use Google to check that spelling!)  Unlike many Americans, I even like most French people that I have met over the years--including numerous lengthy vacations in La Belle France and the three lovely years I spent working for a French company, which happily required frequent extended stays in Paris. This affection even survives once I get past their ill-concealed disappointment when I force them to speak English.  (I am far too wise to make any French person of even the most modest English fluency suffer hearing me mangle their beautiful language.)  

My Francophilia has been greatly enhanced by my corresponding love for the cinema, especially French films.  This has been a part of me since my mother took me to the local "art house" in Indianapolis at age eleven to see "The Sheep Has Five legs" with the great Fernandel.  My taste in French films has, over the years, become somewhat more sophisticated.  When I recently had occasion to list my personal All-Time Favorite Films, I was not surprised to find that so many of them were French--"La Grande Illusion," "The Earrings of Mme. de," "Jules and Jim," "Les Enfants du Paradis," "Marius," "Elevator to the Gallows," "Le Boucher," "Mon Oncle," "Le Jour Se Leve" "L'Atalante," "Contempt," and "Napoleon"--both the versions by Abel Gance and that by Sasha Guitry are among the classics.  In addition, I have numerous somewhat more idiosyncratic personal favorites such as "Cinge en Hiver," Louis Malle's "The Lovers," "Leon Morin, Pretre," "The Army of Shadows" "Capitaine Conan" and Alain Resnais' "Stavisky."

Just today, I went through my stack of DVD's and found Marcel Carne's sublime "Hotel du Nord" and watching it again confirmed my love for the "poetic realism" period of French film.  It presents ordinary people in extraordinary situations that illuminate the human condition in ways that American films rarely do.  This brief snatch of dialogue, as translated in the subtitles, supports that view.  A French couple of the petit-bourgeois variety are emerging from the shabby hotel of the title, she with a black eye courtesy of her brusque boyfriend.  They have this delicious conversation:  She: "Don't you like our life?"  He: "I have to.  I got used to it."  She: "Despite my black eye, you're a good fella." He: "We may quarrel, but we get along fine when we hit the sheets."  This is the sort of casual sophistication that American films, other than those by Ernst Lubitsch, rarely achieve.

I will spare you a recitation of my love for French food, except to say that I had the sublime experience of being personally conducted on a tour of three-star temples of gastronomy in the 1980s by none other than Henri Gault and Christian Millau, authors of the OTHER highly-respected guide to restaurants in France.  I suspect I should be embarrassed to say that I can recount course-by-course great meals they took me to--but I'm not.

What began in my mind as a simple email to my French friends and a few fellow Francophiles has emerged as something more elaborate which I will be posting to this podcast.

And to all of you A' Bientot.  

"Monsieur" Roger Smith 

P.S. I'm told the new Juliette Binoche film "The Taste Of Things" is quite "bon" and this year's French entry for Oscar consideration. My podcast moderator Bill McCuddy has seen it and says it's a shoo-in for the Foreign Film win. We shall see. 

Everyone Remembers Where They Were On 9/11

Dear Friends,

On the night of 9/11, I happened to be sleeping soundly and very comfortably on an overnight train trip—“The Spirit of the Outback”through Western Queensland Australia, ending in the sleepy—and aptly-named—town of Longreach.  This was when, due to a 13-hour time difference, the attack occurred. Thus I didn’t learn of it until a full 12 hours after its occurrence.  So I lack the vivid real-time memories of it possessed by nearly all New Yorkers, and indeed by most Americans.  I didn’t even get to see any television coverage (and then only 30 minutes on CNN) of it and its immediate aftermath until I spent the following night at a rustic motel in remote western Queensland.

But I understood what a shock it was to every NYC resident—and indeed to the whole country.  America had made it through all of WW II without suffering a single direct attack on what we now disturbingly call “the Homeland.”  With 9/11, Americans got—for the first time—a relatively small taste of what the citizens of London, Coventry, Rotterdam and Warsaw (and I could add Hamburg, Berlin and Tokyo) had experienced night after night for months during WW II.

If one were to revisit accounts of the 9/11 act of terrorism written right after its occurrence, you would find a great deal of speculation as to when the next such attack might happen.  But I doubt that any commentator—even the most perceptive—predicted that not even one remotely similar attack would occur over the next 20+ years.  

But that is what has happened, with the threat of Islamic terrorism, indeed any other kind of foreign attack, having diminished to the vanishing point.  I further doubt that anyone back then predicted, after the shock of 9/11, that the danger to our society would now be coming almost exclusively from homegrown terrorists, almost entirely those on the political Right.  Nor might anyone have surmised that those anti-democracy forces would have a fearless champion in a former President of the United States—one who shockingly is seen as having a pretty fair chance of being returned to office.

But that is the case unless we all practice—each in our own way—eternal vigilance in the face of those who would severely damage, if not outright destroy, our 234-year old democracy.  While I regard the return of Trump or some form of Trumpism as unlikely, I realize it is nowhere close to impossible.  My guess is that it’s re-emergence would require the decent, democracy-loving majority of Americans to be asleep at the switch, as Hillary Clinton was in 2016, with disastrous—if not yet tragic—results.

Preventing its reoccurrence is up to all of us non-Kool Aid drinkers

Roger

Follow The Money

”Some thoughts on the contemporary version of capitalism.”

Unlike my many friends who are writers, artists and engaged in non-profit activities, I have toiled in the vineyards of capitalism for roughly 50 years.  This experience has led me to think of capitalism in the way that Winston Churchill described democracy: “The worst system—except all the others.”

The ideal system, to me, is therefore a carefully and intelligently regulated capitalism.  This is precisely what most “conservatives” oppose, as they want companies freed of any marketplace limitations on their ability to maximize profits.  That key word is “maximize.”  For tax and PR reasons, the vast bulk of the compensation of C-suite executives these days comes in the form of “incentive” pay—stock options and bonuses tied to “performance.”  This performance is often carefully designed to be ridiculously easy to achieved.  

This has resulted in the average total compensation of the CEO of an S&P 500 company today earning 384 times(!) that of their median employee.  Way back in the late 1960s, I was an aerospace analyst at a respected Wall Street firm.  I remember to this day that the annual report of one of the leading such companies—McDonnell-Douglas—posted in its annual report the total compensation of its CEO and its comparison to—not their median employee —but their lowest-paid employee (amusingly identified as a “floor sweeper.”) My rough recall is that company founder and CEO was paid 14X that lowly floorsweeper.  

Reliable data as to just how this has escalated over the past four or five decades is a bit elusive.  And defenders of this system (mostly its beneficiaries and those paid to defend the system) will argue that the current compensation figures are the product of assumptions about the future performance of their stock grants.  These form the vast preponderance of the total compensation of today’s executives. 

There is of course the possibility that subsequent declines in the stock price could diminish these projections.  However, given the performance of the stock market over the past fifteen years (roughly a quadruple) these projections far more frequently underestimate the value of stock-based compensation. This makes the typical CEO (who may hold that position for no more than five years) incentivized to drive short-run profits, and thus the stock price, as opposed to investing in activities with a greater long-term promise but with potentially negative effects on current profitability.

The inherent flaw I find in the system is the elevation of the profit motive above all other considerations.  Those corporate executives and their Wall Street cheerleaders who talk of “maximizing shareholder values” as the near-total focus of their efforts, are taking—for self-interested reasons, a seriously narrow view.

There was a striking moment for me when the dangers—to society at large—of just such a narrow view was driven home to me back in the early 1990s, when AIDS was a raging epidemic.  I had a very nice young man working for me as a summer intern.  One day his father, a fairly senior executive at Pfizer, came to the office to pick up his son.

Making well-intentioned small talk, I told this gentleman “I assume Pfizer is hard at work trying to find a cure for AIDS.” He replied, “Well, actually a treatment.”  Of course a treatment, unlike a cure, held the promise of decades of profits, unlike the possibly major but one-time benefit of a cure.

And this is how, I suspect, we got to the wildly expensive AIDS “cocktail.”  I have no idea if an actual cure was feasible in a similar timeframe as their “treatment.”  But I am reasonably certain that no subsequent effort was made to find a cure at any of the for-profit drug companies, i.e., nearly all such companies.  Rather they also sought a competitive treatment that might outsell—and out earn— Pfizer’s.

Perhaps I am naive to think it might ever have been otherwise.  But I sincerely believe a genuine search for a cure could have been undertaken while also seeking a quite handsome profit from such an effort.

I have been fortunate in the long-ago past to work for CEOs who understood that employees, suppliers and the larger community are also important constituents of a public—or even a private—corporation.  I was able to argue, often successfully, for such societally beneficial policies, that the long-term interests of the company—and thus its shareholders—are enhanced by taking a broader view of a corporation’s responsibilities.  

Hoping such an attitude might be found in the upper ranks of major corporate managements is, I sadly suspect, a fool’s errand.  Fortunately there has been a major increase in the number of richly- endowed foundations that do seek the public good.  And the Federal government can make an enormous contribution to such efforts, either directly or by incentivizing private industry to create the means to achieve socially desirable goals. Numerous provisions in several of the Biden administration’s major pieces of legislation seek precisely this with regard to climate control.

That the GOP uniformly and vehemently opposes all such efforts is why I believe that the Democratic Party, whatever its flaws may be, must be supported—at least until the GOP abjures its current devotion to its Neanderthal positions on almost every significant issue.  And certainly as long as Donald Trump has even the remotest chance of being elected.

75th Anniversary of Desegregation of the US Armed Forces

Today is the 75th anniversary of Harry Truman’s order to desegregate the US Armed Forces.

This was, at that time, a cataclysmic event in American social history, one previously unimaginable, given the close—indeed intimate—conditions under which members of the military lived.  The magnitude of this change was driven home to me almost exactly 60 years ago when I began basic training as an Army draftee at Ft. Leonard Wood MO.  I was assigned a platoon leader named Sgt. Cleveland, a towering Black man with a commanding voice and a gently commanding manner.  

As I was back then already a committed liberal supporter of civil rights, I loved watching my white Southern fellow Company members muttering under their breath as they were given orders by this impressive Black man—orders they had to follow.  

At that time, the military was the ONLY portion of American society where African-Americans enjoyed a substantial degree of equality, with the serviceman’s RANK the one true determinant of his/her authority. Indeed, at this time—1962—the Army had its first Black General, Benjamin O. Davis. That I remember his name sixty years on speaks to the degree of my amazement at this nearly unique situation in America. (The openly racist US Navy would not have its first Black Lieutenant 

for many years.)

It is hard today to understand how in 1948–several years after the end of WW II—the US Armed Forces were still segregated into different units based on RACE.  But they were.  This is what made Truman’s unilateral action so brave—and so risky.

Harry Truman was heading into a very difficult—many thought impossible—campaign to be elected President after he had succeeded to the presidency upon FDR’s death in 1945.  He was facing opposition within the Democratic Party—still then largely in the grasp of white pro-segregationist Southerners in Congress. Even FDR had been unwilling to take such a step for fear of angering the large segregationist wing of the Party.

Yet Truman—a Missourian and the grandson of slave owners—took this bold step.  It led directly to the formation of the States Rights Party (the “Dixiecrats”) that splintered the formerly “Solid South,”whose votes had traditionally underpinned Democratic victories in Presidential races. This splinter group, under Strom Thurmond, ended up taking five Southern states in the November election.  

Just to make things worse for Truman, the left wing of the Party had the option of voting for the Progressive Party under former FDR VP Henry Wallace.  While Wallace ended up taking only 2.4% of the total vote, he did get meaningful chunks of the popular vote in a number of key states.

Although Wallace didn’t carry any states, his candidacy did cut into the normal Democratic margin in key Northern states in a very tight 1948 race.  All in all, most observers prior to the voting thought that Truman was a certain loser to Republican Tom Dewey, the popular NY Governor. Indeed in the fall election Truman narrowly lost traditionally Democratic NY’s Electoral Votes (then 45 to today’s 27!) to Dewey, after Wallace peeled off 8% of the vote in NY State.

The story of how Truman pulled off his victory against almost insuperable odds in 1948 makes for fascinating reading in one of the best books ever written on practical American politics, with the ironic title of “Dewey Wins.”  It reads more like a thriller, even though one knows the basic outcome.

Back in 1948, the idea that, 75 years later, racial issues would still be key determinants of our politics would have been—and should have been—unthinkable.  But sadly it is the reality, with Donald Trump having resurrected those issues in barely disguised form—as a key element of his appeal to angry whites. Fortunately those “angry whites” do NOT form a majority, but sadly a large minority.  Fortunately the number of those racist voters is shrinking for both demographic and ideological reasons. 

Should Donald Trump be nominated by the GOP, as appears likely despite multiple indictments, the Republicans will learn they are playing a losing hand.  My strong conviction re this prediction stems from the near-unanimous polling that shows voters 18-29 dividing 68/32 in favor of the Democrats.  Roughly 16,000,000 Americans will have turned 18 between 2020 and November 2024. Even though fewer than 50% of this demo are likely to actually turn up to vote, they are almost certain to add meaningfully to the 7,000,000 vote-margin enjoyed by Biden in 2020.

This is true if Trump is the ‘24 GOP nominee but it is also true if he isn’t, given the permanent damage Trump has done to the Republican brand AND the large chunk of voters who would show up for Trump but stay home if the party has rejected their Tin God.  The 2024 election will, IMHO, demonstrate the wisdom of the title of Rick Wilson’s brilliant 2017 book “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”

Most of my left-leaning friends call me “an optimist.”  I respond by saying that, absent a meaningfully negative future event for Biden and/or the Democratic Party, the numbers speak volumes.  While it is commonplace to observe that multiple indictments have NOT so far damaged Trump’s brand, that is ONLY true among REPUBLICANS.  These legal cases only strengthen the determination of Democrats to show up and VOTE if Trump is the GOP nominee next year. 

As for Independents, it is inconceivable that credible allegations of criminality against Trump will increase their likelihood of voting for DJT.  So it is irrelevant, from an electoral standpoint, that the MAGA-wing of the GOP is even more stridently in thrall to Orange Man.

Thus the GOP finds itself between, in the classic formulation, a rock and a hard place.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Action Packed

The Scotus decision re Affirmative Action was just one of a trio of rulings where the six Justices appointed by Republican Presidents used illogical and tendentious thinking to arrive at their preferred ideological outcomes.  They ruled it “unconstitutional” to use race as even just ONE of a range of factors in the delicate issue of college admission.  

The practice, labeled “Affirmative Action,” had, over the past several decades, greatly increased the number of Black and Hispanic enrollees at America’s most selective colleges and universities.  This had the highly beneficial, not-so-incidental effects of dramatically increasing minority representation in such professions as law, medicine, finance and journalism.  

However, this further had the inevitable effect of reducing the former 90+% of spots taken up by white non-Hispanics to something closer to their 60% of the overall population. This struck some white male ideologues as an unacceptable incursion on their God-given dominance. 

Of course they were far too clever than to storm the gates of Academia hoisting signs demanding “More whites, please.” So they used Asians as their preferred stalking horse, claiming that strict adherence to anything other than pure EPA’s and test scores meant unfair—indeed unconstitutional—harm to Asians. 

The numerical realities of the standards for college admissions meant that strict reliance on performance metrics, with no portion of the judging allocated to any more subjective factors such as extra-curriculars or “personality,” would reduce the members admitted of certain ethnic groups—particularly Asians and not-so-incidentally whites. 

Arguing that Asians were effectively discriminated against by any attempts to increase Black and Hispanic enrollment allowed the white plaintiffs to avoid revealing that they were seeking to maintain the long-established advantages held by whites, white men in particular. The lead plaintiff in the Affirmative Action case the Court agreed to review—one Edward Blum—was in my view thus able to cloak his overt pro-white stance with the appearance of favoring a different racial minority—Asians.  

This sophistry was only too eagerly embraced by the six Justices who had been appointed by Republican Presidents. FIVE of them came to the Court courtesy of GOP Presidents who had never received an actual popular vote majority.  This might seem a coincidence, as might the fact that ALL six members of that unbreakable Right-wing majority are Roman Catholics.  Might to some, but not to me.  

But the raw politics of Affirmative Action strongly suggest that there is not a majority of voters who wish to see it preserved.  A majority of Americans have NOT attended college, and certainly not the elite institutions at the core of this issue.  Indeed most of the country’s college attendees went to non-selective schools where none of this is an issue.

Further, there is at least a superficial appeal to the Right’s argument that the way to end racial discrimination is to END racial discrimination on any basis.  There is in my opinion a reasonable “slippery slope” argument to be made against using race as an overt factor in college admissions.  Substituting preference to those candidates who can show they have been economically disadvantaged is an available alternative that doesn’t bring the toxic politics of race bubbling to the surface, one that IMHO Democrats should grab on to post haste.

That tiresome old saw about real estate—location, location and location—has a striking correlative about America: race, race and race.  Scratch below the surface of nearly any issue bedeviling American politics and I believe race will rapidly bubble up to the surface.  

Cong. Kweisi Mfume, on MSNBC on Sunday, offered this brutal but I think essentially accurate assessment of America: “A nation built on race, conceived in hypocrisy, and dedicated to the false proposition that white men were superior to all others.”  He further delineated America’s racial underpinnings in these words:  “A country built on the enslavement of the negro, the annexation of the Hispanic and the extermination of the Native American.”

The spate of Supreme Court rulings on Affirmative Action, on Student Loan forgiveness and on an LGBTQ issue ALL had the not-so-accidental effect of diminishing opportunities for ethnic and sexual minorities and preserving the pride of place enjoyed in America in these matters by white males since the founding of Harvard in 1636.

MLK’s famous arc of justice had been slowly bending in a more favorable direction.  But with these decisions, six Supreme Court Justices have thrown that arc into reverse, at least for now.  It will take many years and monumental effort by millions of good Americans to reverse the effects of what these six benighted jurists have done this week.

Will No One Rid Us of This Troublesome Autocrat?

Below is a link to an important essay from the superb Steve Schmidt, one of the founders of The Lincoln Project, the highly effective aggregation of leaders of the small but potent group of solidly anti-Trump former Republicans, like those also found at The Bulwark.

We will apparently NEVER get a “smoking gun” sufficiently indisputable to dissuade a large enough chunk of Trump’s famous “base” from their blind adherence to their tin God.  He can somehow always manage to present any piece of evidence, however stark, as a falsity by his political enemies contrived to bring him down.  

Trump seems to know just how to cast a sufficiently large smidgen of doubt on any piece of direct EVIDENCE, even that from his own mouth, as the work of those seeking to attack not so much him as his supporters.  “They’re not coming for me—they’re coming for YOU.”

As demagoguery goes, it is brilliant and relatively subtle—for Donald.  It is not convincing to anyone not already a Kool-Aid drinker, but it apparently works for those already happily ensconced at Donald’s version of Jamestown.  

I remain unshakeably convinced that these tactics will NEVER allow Trump to win a general election majority.  But his grip on 60+% of GOP primary voters is apparently unquestionable.  Thus while there is a majority of the electorate—if a sadly narrow one—utterly opposed to Trump, we must await a future election to drive a final and indisputable stake in the myth of Trump’s electability.  

My guess is that this will happen in 2024, but I believe its occurrence will be a certainty by the following electoral cycle—2028.  That year should have found an 82-yr. old Trump brought down by a lifelong diet of McDonald’s and KFC—but so far sadly no sign of that.  Thus Trump’s demise—electoral or otherwise—will have to await the combined effects of ever-increasing signs of his mental imbalance and the inexorable demographic effects of still more members of Gen Z reaching voting age. The second trend is, I believe, immutable and the first—Trump’s growing looniness—almost equally dependable.

However every day we await that ultimate consummation is painful for us in the anti-autocracy MAJORITY to endure.  But we must not just endure it but must work constantly to combat it—by writing, talking, marching and—most of all—voting.

Trump won his Electoral Colege victory in 2016–ever so narrowly—by bringing a large cohort of former non-voters to the polls.  A variety of indices can be advanced that will create, in my opinion (note absence of “humble”), a solid anti-Trump majority among those who have so far remained non-voters.   These potential voters are mostly in the pro-democracy, anti-autocracy camp, and will, I believe, in the future assure defeat for any MAGA Republican in a national elections, not just Trump. 

Remember that the last national election when the GOP achieved a popular vote majority was 2004, and even then it was a narrow one.  And that was when the Republican standard-bearer was a reasonable—if seriously flawed—George W. Bush, buoyed by the post 9/11 wave of ginned-up patriotism. And that was well before the GOP became the tool of a mentally-disturbed would-be autocrat. Before that, to find a Republican majority we must go back to 1988–one that was achieved against a hopeless Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis.

Just before that election, in September of 1988, I found myself at a gathering on the North Shore of Boston where I was introduced to the head of advertising for the Dukakis campaign.  When I besieged him with my lengthy list of complaints about how stupidly Dukakis was conducting the campaign, he silenced me with the following astounding statement:

“Everything you have just said are ideas we have begged Dukakis to implement. But he won’t listen and he stubbornly clings to a gross misunderstanding of the political landscape.”  

I then queried him as to what a reasonable Democrat like me should do. He shot back this:  “Do what I’m doing—vote for Bush!”  This from the head of advertising for the Dukakis campaign.

Fortunately, people on the side of reason, rationality and democracy have grown steadily in number in the ensuing two decades.  Conversely, the GOP has gone from a reasonable and respectable coalition of philosophical “Conservatives” to a group of outright loonies promoting minimally a theocracy and maximally an outright dictatorship.  But, despite these unmistakable trends, Trump’s form of clever demagoguery has also increased the size of the autocracy-friendly voting bloc.  

So time and tide—which we are told never wait for mankind—must be relied on to rid our country of the plague of Donald Trump and his adherents.  It will, I feel certain, happen but seemingly not before still more permanent damage by his sustained attack on the very idea of truth will have been done to our nation’s 234-yr. old democracy.

It is a truism to say that American democracy has never faced such an existential threat since the Civil War.  But the funny thing about truisms is that they are true.

Roger

Rats and Other Assorted Rodents Are Leaving a Rapidly-sinking Ship

In recent weeks, we (the sentient world, that is) are finally seeing a the beginnings of a development that has been long predicted but has strangely failed to materialize to any substantial degree: the abandonment of blind fealty by his supporters to Donald.  As the indisputable evidence of Trump's indictable (if not yet assuredly convictable) behavior has mounted, there has been a veritable tidal wave of defections from Trump and denigrations of him by his former champions in the government, in the press (including even at Fox News) and among at least a measurable if modest portion of his heretofore besotted "base."

But the most striking example of people reversing their previous lapdoggery vis-a-vis Trump has come from people he once highly praised when they were commencing service in his maladministration.  These denigrations of their former Commander-in-Chief typically followed their departure from the Trump train, although they occasionally preceded the break.  The roster of such converts from acolyte to at least mild critic includes Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Mike Esper, John Kelley, Mick Mulvaney, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Kayleigh McInnerney.  As a final fillip from Trump, he has tossed thinly-veiled racial epithets at his former Sec. of Transportation Elaine Ciao, not-so-incidentally the wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell.

But it was his former lickspittle Bill Barr who on "Face the Nation,” made the boldest break, saying the following re his former boss Donald Trump:

“He is a very petty man who has behaved like a defiant nine-year old kid.  He will always put his own interests first.  And he will never concede that is what he is doing.  He is a consummate narcissist who constantly engages in reckless conduct.

"The legal theory he came up with as to why he is entitled to keep these classified documents as his personal possessions is absurd.  It is just as wacky as his theory about why his Vice-President unilaterally gets to determine who won the election.”

With friends like these…Trump is learning the lesson that you can only test the willingness of your co-conspirators to go so far.  

But as far as his “base” goes, the vocal opposition of so many of Trump's former allies apparently only serves to cement their view of Trump as victim, accusing everybody—even supposed friends—of ganging up on poor, beleaguered Donald Trump.

The base may be shrinking in number, but what’s left of it tends to double down on their devotion to the Dear Leader.

As for the electorally-critical Independents, they divide 63% negative on Trump, 37% positive.  Now being “negative” on a politician does not guarantee that such a view translates into VOTING against someone—but it does make a positive vote unlikely.  No one, repeat no one, with such numbers among swing voters can ever be elected President—unless perhaps he were to draw Hillary as his opponent once again.

Donald Trump may not acknowledge this reality, and his vaunted “base” may not either, but Mitch McConnell knows it to be true.  This is also true of almost all Republicans who hold a negative view of Trump (25% of self-identified Republicans): they do NOT want Trump to be re-elected, or even to run.

Can anyone with at least a sixth-grader’s understanding of arithmetic see what 90+% of Dems, 63% of Independents and 25% of Republicans add up to?  My rough calculation is that this totals about 57-59% of Likely Voters.  Such an outcome would put Trump’s vote, absent some bizarre external event, close to Walter Mondale’s and Barry Goldwater‘s 40% territory.  Incidentally, that is what Herbert Hoover got against FDR at the depths of the Depression in 1932.

Like most people of my fairly advanced age, I grew up in a world where we saw the American two-party system as almost entirely a blessing.  We had a Republican Party that encompassed politicians from Barry Goldwater to Jacob Javits.  Conversely, I was an enthusiastic adherent of a Democratic Party that somehow managed to incorporate both arch-segregationist James Eastland and uber-liberal George McGovern.  (I had the privilege of working closely with Sen. McGovern in both 1968 and 1972, and I recognize both his philosophical strengths and his many political weaknesses.  But his character was impeccable.)  

During the 1960s and 1970s, we Americans looked on with amusement bordering on contempt for the constant ideological battles in the fractious democracies of France, Italy et al.  We watched as they produced endlessly changing fragile coalition governments. Seeing parties labeled “Christian Democrats” or “Socialists” or “Radicals” (my favorite as it was essentially a bunch of right-wingers), I along with most Americans failed to understand that each of our two parties was in fact a prefabricated “coalition” of very disparate elements.  

It was the very diversity of those two coalitions that allowed adherents of one to find the victory of their opponents, while perhaps unfortunate, as at least something we could live with.  I accepted the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan in 1984 as upsetting   but the clearly expressed will of an undeniable majority of the nation’s voters.  As an unshakeable adherent of small-d democracy, I did not feel remotely qualified to question the validity of that decision, much as I regretted its actuality.  

Furthermore, I could take comfort in the presence of a small but vocal cadre of “Moderate Republicans” in the strongly Right-leaning governments of either Ronald Reagan or Bush/Cheney.  Similarly the presence of a Joe Manchin or a Kyrsten Sinema (until recently at least) in the Democratic caucus gave some succor to Right-winger's when Biden won a fairly narrow victory.

Now we have neatly divided ourselves into purely ideological factions, producing the bitter divisions of today’s pitched battles.  The effective difference between nutso Marjorie Taylor Greene and, say, reasonable conservative John Cornyn has become nil, when ideologically-based voting purity is forced on all members of the Republican caucus.  As for the Democrats, they also create a version of ideological comity, but by more traditional methods of political horse trading, with decision-making boiling up from below, unlike the GOP’s dirigiste imposition from above.

Bernie Sanders may not see eye-to-eye with Joe Manchin on many issues, but they end up voting the same on nearly all issues (excluding anything fossil-fuel related) because the differences have been more or less ironed out behind closed doors—far more often to Sen. Manchin's satisfaction than to Bernie’s.

Ultimately political realities tend to bend the outcome towards the side most likely to gain majority support among the majority of Americans—but not always and certainly not right away.  The solid majorities in the country favoring both moderate gun legislation and reasonable access to abortion have not sufficed to produce legislation assuring the general populace of their desired outcomes, nor of a Supreme Court that would support those solid majorities.

Yes, we are sharply divided but not IMHO hopelessly so.  What will cause some sort of healing of this wide chasm?  It will take, I believe, a thorough and incontestable electoral drubbing of the MAGA-controlled GOP as it learns the folly of presenting unappealing candidates championing broadly unpopular policies.  Constant devious Republican attempts to rig the playing field via gerrymandering and a variety of impediments to voting, allow by my estimate for an electorate divided 52% Democratic, 48% Republican (roughly where we are now) to wield effective blocking rights, if not outright control.  This has produced the kind of government we have today: a narrowly Republican-controlled House, a narrowly Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democratic President lacking a true mandate.  Oh, and I almost forgot, a total, corruptly-obtained control of the US Supreme Court.

Such a split of governing responsibility leaves the Democrats with nominal control, and this suits the GOP just fine.  They don't have to take responsibility for actual governing, they can generally block measures they consider truly inimical and they get to belittle the minor--and not-so-minor--accomplishments of a nominally Democratic-controlled government.  Nice work if you can get it--and the Republicans have sure got it--for now.  But November 2024 is now just 17 months away.  I can't wait.

When Politics Were Smart

Has It Really Come Down to 2-digits vs 3-digits?

In campaigning for President in 1956, Adlai Stevenson was cheered by a supporter who shouted “Gov. Stevenson, every thinking person will vote for you”:  “Ah, but Madame I need a majority” he retorted.

The witty, urbane Adlai was spot on in his assessment of the perspicacity of the average American voter.  Today, more than 65 years on, Donald Trump has upended virtually every prior assumption about American politics.  However, fortunately it’s no longer entirely a case of the “thinking” vs. the “unthinking.”  If it were that simple, the Dems would never win a majority.  However an intellectual divide clearly remains an element of our politics: 65% of the non-college white voters in 2020 opted for Trump, vs. just 33% of this demographic—equal to 42% of the total electorate—opting for Biden.   

Given the fact that the non-college sector comfortably outweighs the college educated, even after adjusting for the higher rate of voting among those who have attended college, this would be understandable cause for alarm among Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents. Rather it has, thanks to Donald’s extremism in support of autocracy, become much more a matter of supporters of democracy vs. those willing to countenance would-be autocrats.  

This is, in my opinion, the true divide today—not white vs. Black, not college-educated vs. high school graduates, nor rich vs. poor.  Someone has said that our politics has devolved into a battle between those with two-digit IQ’s vs. those whose IQ’s contain three digits. Given the fact that the IQ test was designed to make 100 the precise median IQ, if this were true, it would go a long way to explain why almost all of our elections have shown no greater than a 52/48 divide.  Personality differences between the two-party candidates, more than ideology, have most likely accounted for the slight popular vote deviations from a pure 50/50 divide in both 2016 and 2020.  

Perhaps Hillary’s 2.3 million vote margin in excess of Trump suggests her personality, unappealing as it was, to have been slightly more appealing than that of The Donald.  However, by 2020, one could argue that Biden’s 7.1 million votes greater than Trump’s suggests that Joe’s personality was seriously more appealing than Donald’s.  However, given my unshakeable fondness for facts, I would suggest that Trump’s abysmal four-year performance as Chief Executive just might account for the bulk of Joe’s much greater margin.  

Whether as much as one-half or as little as one-quarter of the 1.1 million Americans who have died from Covid can be attributed to the malfeasance of one Donald J. Trump, I would strenuously assert that the one-quarter estimate is the absolute minimum.  Even the most casual observer of American elections would agree that killing off some 250,000+ of your citizens due to stupidity or carelessness doesn’t exactly endear you to large swaths of the electorate.

Voting in 2018 and 2020 showed a strong increase in turnout, to the highest levels since women gained the franchise in 1920. This has at least put a lie to old assumptions about “apathy” being a major force in American politics.  It is perhaps the one positive aspect of our increasingly internecine political battles.

But I do not believe this simplistic analysis is right, as well as it obviously being bad politics to express it that way.  (Surely Hillary, when she spoke of “deplorables,” learned this too late.)  I believe that staking the battle on these precise grounds will assure an electoral majority for the forces of light vs. the forces of darkness.    Yes, I am well aware that the opposition feels almost exactly the same way about liberals, or progressives, or whatever the Right

thinks believers in traditional American democracy should be called.  

But they are quite simply wrong about where the majority lies.  I believe future elections will only see a widening of the popular-vote majority that the Democrats have enjoyed in every presidential election since 2004.  This is because the 18-21 age demo, the great majority of first-time voters every four years, divides roughly 65/35 in favor of Democrats.

Conversely the 65+ age demo, which includes most people who will have died since the prior election, divides roughly 60/40 in favor of the Republicans.  Approximately 16 million US citizens turn 18 every four years, while about 10 million people 65+ die in that same period—excluding the 2020-22 spike from Covid.  You do the arithmetic.

Now you see why Mitch McConnell experiences so many sleepless nights. I suspect he, more than anyone, understands the existential damage Donald Trump has done to the electoral prospects of the GOP.  If someone could administer sodium pentathol to Sen. McConnell, I am fairly certain we would learn that his most fervent wish is to see the electoral, or even better the actual, demise of Donald J. Trump.  From his lips—and triple chin—to God’s ears.

Rachel Maddow On Trump and Spiro Agnew: Politics As Usual

The always invaluable Rachel Maddow last night once again proved her unique ability to link the current news to historical precedent.  As Trump's unwavering refusal to even consider a plea deal is accepted as gospel, Rachel takes us back to the wild events surrounding Spiro Agnew almost exactly 60 years ago--November 1963.  The Justice Department had incontrovertible evidence of a series of crimes by then VP Agnew--numerous acceptances of bribes and even outright extortion.  Three young deputies in the Department confronted him with this evidence, making it clear that he was facing serious prison (not "jail") time if convicted.

These events were coincident with the rapidly-mounting events we now call Watergate, events that made the prospect of Agnew suddenly acceding to the Presidency upon the removal/resignation of Nixon not exactly remote.  Even though this evidence included proof of Agnew actually having received envelopes of cash in the White House, he made it clear he had no intention of resigning and would fiercely fight these charges if indicted.  He knew that the possibility that he just might suddenly become President as a result of the maelstrom of Watergate greatly strengthened his bargaining position.  He also knew that he had a cadre of fervent supporters, ones determined to see him accede to the presidency should Nixon be brought down.  Thus he appeared to be convinced that he could weather this storm.

Right now, sixty years on, the idea of Donald Trump copping a plea seems anywhere from remote to non-existent.  But should future events make the prospect of an actual stretch in the slammer seem far more possible to TFG, then the self-proclaimed greatest dealmaker in the world just might consider wanting to use his willingness to give up any ability to ever run for--or serve in--Federal office as a bargaining chip.  

Rachel's acute knowledge of history led to her citing a long-forgotten (in America at least) incident in French history, one that was more nearly comparable to January 6th than to these more recent events.  Below is a link to Wikipedia's coverage of a massive February 1934 right-wing riot in the Place de la Concorde.  Of course no Trump supporter should take too much comfort from any comparison, as the riot by the French far right led to the accession to power by France's most left-wing government ever, the Front Populaire under Leon Blum--not merely a leftist, but also a Jew when the echoes of the Dreyfus Affair were still a rallying cry for both the left and the right wings in France.

Read the article linked below, and go on MSNBC.com and find the June 12th episode of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.  It seamlessly links current events re Trump to the past history of both Spiro Agnew and of France in the 1930s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_February_1934_crisis#:~:text=The%206%20February%201934%20crisis,shot%20and%20killed%2015%20demonstrators.

And then read about the Stavisky affair, France's echo of Bernie Madoff.  But unlike Bernie, who mostly stole from his landsmen, Alexandre Stavisky stole from thrifty members of the French petite-bourgeoisie and became the underlying cause of a major increase in French anti-Semitism--with tragic results for France's Jews ten years later under the occupation.

The Stavisky Affair was the subject of a fascinating if imperfect Alain Resnais film, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as the charming crook Stavisky.  Here is a link to this fascinating bit of long-past history:

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavisky_affair

It proves the old adage that history doesn't repeat itself but perhaps rhymes--or I would say more accurately echoes.  I thank the incomparable Ms. Maddow for reminding this long-ago history major of these fascinating linkages.  

Roger

The Vote Is In… And One Side Wins

The greatest canard re American politics is “Both the Left and the Right are equally guilty in the country’s sharp division.”  No, no, and no.

Proof of this can be found in the vote this past week on the compromise to avoid a Federal government default with almost certain cataclysmic consequences.  The Senate voted on a bill painfully hammered out in the House by Pres. Biden and Speaker McCarthy.  It was totally clear that failure by the Senate to approve the measure would lead to an historic and immediate Federal government default with incalculable effects on the US and worldwide financial system.

The vote in the Senate was 63-36, approving it by a comfortable margin. But 31 of those “nay” votes came from Republicans and only 5 from Democrats. The anti Republicans represent nearly 2/3rds of their caucus; the five Dems were just 10% of their cohort.  Further, essentially every Democratic no vote came because those Senators were certain the measure would pass despite their opposition.  This made their votes merely statements of principle.  Had its passage been in actual jeopardy, most if not all of those five nay-voting Democrats would, I strongly believe, have voted aye.

Conversely, most of the far larger number of Republican “no” votes came from Senators fully prepared to see the economy crash and burn to support their extreme ideological point, had they sufficient votes.  Fortunately they didn’t.

While it is a hoary cliche’ to cite Solomon and the baby, America does today have one party fully prepared to see the baby die in preference to seeing its opponents win. The other, the Democrats, accept the necessity of acting responsibly, even if it means occasionally losing ideological ground.

Equating the behavior of America’s two parties as equally partisan is not merely misguided but a conscious lie by most of its proponents.  Those pseudo-centrist groups like No Labels represent, given America’s current political divisions, either a witting or an unwitting attempt to divide the opposition to the Trumpist MAGA vote, with a view to allowing the far Right to win future elections narrowly with a plurality.

The great anthropologist Richard Dawkins once memorably said, “When two people hold diametrically opposed opinions, the truth does not necessarily lie somewhere in between.”

This has never been more true than when one of those two opinions comes from an adherent to today’s MAGA Republican policies.  Americans have traditionally respected the views of their political opponents, even if on occasion vehemently disagreeing with such opinions.  However, the current extremism of the American Right, and the likely consequences should their ghastly views prevail, make it impossible for me to accord them even the tiniest measure of respect.  

Fortunately, there is a highly intelligent, if still relatively small, cohort of anti-Trump Republicans.  They are best represented by the deeply sensible right-of-center but uncompromisingly anti-Trump folks at The Bulwark (thebulwark.com.)  Their highly articulate thought leaders represent a growing contingent, as more and more centrist (and even right-of-center) voters are repelled by the noxious antics of Trump and his camp followers.  (Although the term originally had a broader meaning, “camp follower” has come to mean prostitute.  Just saying, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

Many of these principled conservatives find themselves compelled to vote for Democrats, even if they may find many of their policies a bit too “liberal” for their tastes. But the extremism—bordering on nuttiness—of the dominant elements of today’s Trump-ruled GOP has enabled the formation of a Democrat-led coalition that, barely left of center, includes millions of disenchanted former Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents.

The policies of the Biden administration mirror those of the conservative parties in Britain and most Continental democracies—not their left-leaning opposition.  Try telling the average Tory voter in the UK that “Medicare for all” is a dangerously radical concept, as the GOP roundly dismisses such a proposal in the US.  For that matter, try telling it to the 69% of US voters who support it, including nearly half of Republicans.

The center-slightly left coalition that is today’s Democratic (NOT “Democrat”) party distinguishes itself from the present GOP by being four square in favor of democracy, by opposing excessive voting restrictions and by demonstrating simple good sense.

Some on the right maintain a posture that their opponents espouse “far left” views. But the precepts of nearly all of today’s Democratic officeholders, even including “the Squad,” on such topics as abortion, voting restrictions, gun control and attitudes toward LGBTQ Americans, reflect the expressed views of anywhere from 60-80% of Americans. This makes these views hardly “left wing.”  This even applies to policies identified with the more progressive wing of the Democrats, such as Medicare for All and stringent attempts to prevent further climate damage.

The farther Republicans go in embracing far-right extremism, the more that hordes of former Republicans and self-described Independents vote for Democrats, even if not prepared to change their party self-identification.  Given our binomial system, such voting is seen by them as a necessity, especially among younger voters.  Given the roughly 4,000,000 US citizens who turn 18 every year, given the 65% or so support of Democrats by that age demo, and given their increasing propensity to actually turn out and vote, it is no wonder that the GOP is terrified of the demographic handwriting on the wall.

Strangely, they are only slowly learning that presenting unattractive candidates who shrilly espouse unpopular policies is leading to a shrinking—if still huge—population of voters with the slightest inclination to favor Republican candidates—but nowhere near a majority.

I believe it will require a solid electoral thumping before that gang of right-wing ideologues will accept that adherence to their current views will consign them to permanent minority status.  Unlike most observers, I think that thumping is coming in 2024 if either Trump or DeSantis heads the GOP ticket.

When this occurs (OK, IF it occurs if you insist) the Republican Party will have learned the wisdom of the title of Rick Wilson’s prescient 2017 book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”  It may be a slow death but a death it will be.

If The Good Die Young…

I just read the news that Henry Kissinger has turned 100.  This fact is, in my opinion, living proof that the good die young.  Of course I may change this view as I advance much beyond my current age of 80.  

That this man was awarded, in true Orwellian fashion, the Nobel Peace Prize shows that high-level hypocrisy was not the exclusive province of the US.  Frankly I had expected better of the Scandinavians.  Dr. Kissinger shared the award with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese diplomat, who had the good graces to refuse the honor.  One should, however, recall that the Nobel Peace Prize had previously been awarded to Yassir Arafat and President de Kerk of South Africa, both of whom may have perhaps qualified for the Most Improved award.

Long ago, I was Professor Kissinger's student in Harvard’s Gov 180 course, where we learned more than anyone would want to know about the 1815 Congress of Vienna.  I pride myself for having been able, early on, to see what a dangerously self-important egotist he was. No other Harvard prof, in my experience, was hissed by his students as regularly—and as deservedly—as Henry the K.  But I never would have predicted that he would acquire the opportunity (and the inclination) to be a war criminal—and an unrepentant one at that.

Indeed, sometime in the early 80’s, I was invited to a fancy dinner party given by New York’s then-reigning doyenne of high-level co-op apartment brokering, Alice Mason. She had built her clientele list (and her social status) by hosting charming dinner parties for her clients and, more importantly, would-be clients.  A generous sprinkling of A-List New York somebodies were included as bait for the merely rich.  (I was there mostly due to an excess of unattached women and a shortage of unattached--and relatively presentable--men such as myself.)

One day I received a call from Alice, inviting me to one of her upcoming soirees. She breathlessly divulged the news that among her guests that night would be the estimable Dr. Kissinger.  I responded to this news by saying "Then I suspect you shouldn't invite me."  Alice asked why.  I said that, were I to be in the same room as him, I doubt that I could have resisted standing up and telling your guests they were dining in the company of a war criminal.  She wisely suggested she should perhaps invite me to a different dinner.

And indeed she did.  Some months later, I arrived at her relatively modest apartment to find several rooms crowded with sufficient seating for roughly 40 guests.  As I settled into my seat, I introduced myself to an attractive middle-aged woman on my left who said she was Helen Gurley Brown, a name I of course recognized.  

Now, thanks to my mother who had schooled me in the 1950s in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, I considered myself to be anything but a misogynist--indeed closer to a proto-feminist, male division.  But I was sufficiently snobbish to have dismissed Helen Gurley as a part of pop culture, second division, never having considered reading one of her books.

Well, as we chatted, I found myself totally delighted by this wise, witty woman.  I completely ignored the woman on my right, in thrall to the delightful Ms. Brown.  I left Alice's apartment, chastising myself for making superficial and erroneous judgments. Indeed the very next day I hied myself to the nearest bookstore and inquired if they had any writings by Helen Gurley Brown. I was told, "Yes, just one--'How to Talk to a Man.' " I said that, while it wasn't precisely what I was looking for, it would do.

I opened to Chapter One and read its stern dictum re the best way for a woman to Talk to a Man.  It stated flatly "Don't talk."  The book explained for her presumed female readers that in her long experience, men have no interest in what YOU have to say--they just want to tell you the long, boring story of THEIR lives.

As I read these first few paragraphs, I realized in horror that it contained a near- perfect description of our interaction the previous evening.  I had done probably 90% of the talking and walked away captivated by HER conversational skills.  I vowed to be more of an interlocutor and much less of a monologist in the future--a promise my wife will tell you I have obeyed mostly in the breach.

I spent most of the next ten years living in Los Angeles, where several social occasions and a few business dealings brought me into close contact with Helen's husband, film producer David Brown.  He was one of the rare true gentlemen in the film business, at least in the LA division of it.  He was a man of his word and, incidentally, extremely well-dressed.  We became good friends and enjoyed more than a few lovely luncheons. On the occasion of my semi-casual contact with his wife,  I decided against telling her of my epiphany following our long-ago meeting.  Nor did I speak of my subsequent realization of what a pompous and--worse--judgmental ass I had been.  This was not because I thought it wouldn't please her, but because it would appear to be shameless pandering in the form of a pseudo-confession.

Segue now about five years hence, and I have become engaged to the wonderful woman who became my wife, the lovely and accomplished Terry Steiner.  I was

in the process of moving back to New York, my fiancee having told me, "For better or for worse, but not for Los Angeles."  

One day, about a month prior to our upcoming wedding, I am coming out of a meeting with an executive of the Hearst Corporation about my possibly playing a role in their impending moves in the then-nascent internet space.  As I emerge from the Hearst HQ, I spot Helen coming out of the same building where her magazine Cosmopolitan was headquartered.  She was in fact waiting on the corner for her bus to arrive.  (She was famously cheap.)

When I greet her, she asks if I still live in Los Angeles.  I reply that I do but I will soon be moving back to New York, as I am marrying a lifelong New Yorker.  She says to me, in a  somewhat acid tone, "Let me guess--she's 28."  I say, "No, Helen, she's 40."  She then asks if it is my intended's first marriage, and when I reply in the affirmative, she then says, "And it's your second marriage, yes?"  When I reply, "No I have reached the ripe old age of 51 without having previously married."

At this point, still standing on a crowded street corner, Helen grabs my arm in a vice-like grip and says "An unmarried 40-year old woman is marrying a previously unmarried 50-year old man?  I must have your story for Cosmo."  My perhaps unwise rejoinder was the following: "Helen, please don't take this badly, but one of the reasons I am marrying Terry is my strong belief she has never read a single issue of Cosmopolitan." (I later asked Terry if my supposition about her magazine reading habits was correct.  She confirmed its basic accuracy, saying she had only read Cosmo at the hairdresser's and she thought that didn't count.  I concurred.)

Unsurprisingly, Helen took my needlessly provocative declaration badly--very badly.  On several subsequent encounters, she ostentatiously snubbed me.  Later, her gracious husband persuaded her to forgive me for my smart-ass remark and on our next meetings, she greeted me, but with a studied hauteur.  

Some 15 years later, I read of Helen's death at age 90, two years after her husband's departure.  Her New York Times obit contained one of the rare witticisms found in that section of the Paper of Record.  As I recall it gave Helen’s age at death as 90, but added "Some parts of her were considerably younger."

Ah, but Helen's death doesn't end this anecdote.  At a lovely lunch in a smart Westside apartment about ten years after my marriage, I am seated with about a dozen Bright Young Things, mostly previously unknown to me.  When I hear the name Cosmopolitan spoken, it triggers my telling the group the story of my unwise dismissal of the magazine to its famous former editor.  One of my fellow guests looks at me and says, "I gather, Roger, you didn't catch the name of the lovely lady at the end of the table.  It's Joanna Coles, the current editor of Cosmopolitan."

Oops.

This very attractive blonde British woman a few seats away from me graciously smiles at my chagrined face and says, "Oh, it's all right, I have become used to such remarks."

Going back to Alice Mason, some time after her death news that had only been quietly rumored became openly acknowledged:  Alice, a mover and shaker in New York cafe society, was in fact a very light-skinned African-American.  She was born into a prominent Philadelphia family well-placed in the Black Bourgeoisie.  Alice had "passed" all these years as white, during years when her actual racial identity would have, sadly, been a hindrance to her lofty social ambitions.  Indeed her proudly African-American sister had been a major figure in the mid-century civil rights movement.  But that was not Alice's choice.

This Just In…

CNN is very much in the news today due to its ghastly decision--in search of ratings and a chunk of the Fox News audience--to give Donald Trump a high-visibility platform last night to recycle his ever more shrill and ever more tired lies.  That they presented this convicted sex offender and obsessive liar before a hand-selected audience of Trumpistas made that decision ever worse.  Host/moderator Kaitlin Collins bravely tried to provide some counters to Trump's tirades, but her civility was no match for Trump's firehose of harsh lies.  I only made it through the first ten minutes before my digestive system threatened to rebel and I switched it off.

Those of my podcast adherents who have noticed my Zelig-like qualities will not be surprised to learn that, yes, I have an extended CNN history.  Back in 1980, when CNN had first launched, I pounded the table--as was my wont--as to how my then employer Warner Communications simply MUST develop a competing entrant in what struck me as a soon-to-be inevitably important sector of cable television.  I pointed out that, while we had ample cable TV expertise, we had no significant--or even insignificant--skills in news gathering.

So I went to my valued partner Edward Bleier, Exec. VP of Warner Bros. Television, and a recognized expert on all things broadcasting.  My thought was that we should approach the New York Times and propose a joint venture to create a serious competitor to the then-nascent CNN.  Eddie wisely responded that the Washington Post Company would make a better, less bureaucratic partner, and that he would approach a friend of his there.  As I recall, the concept found serious favor, reaching senior members of the Post's business management. We made them a proposal for a true partnership.  We would combine our significant position in cable television (the Post also had one, but much smaller) with their worldwide prowess in the news business (they owned Newsweek in addition to the Post.)  

The idea received enthusiastic support from both the business and the editorial sides of the Washington Post Company, with a formal proposal bucked all the way to Chairman/CEO Kay Graham herself.  And there, sadly, it died.  We were told that Mrs. Graham was becoming increasingly risk-adverse and, while she saw the upside, she also saw the risk of coming in a distant second to CNN.

For the next twenty years, my involvement with CNN was mostly limited to being a devoted viewer, a relationship only diminished by the advent of smart, sassy MSNBC in the late 1990s.  But professionally I had become a freelance journalist, with my prime outlet my own bi-weekly column in Variety, covering the business side of show business.  I modestly named my column "It's Only Money."  Around 2001, I read an announcement by the management of CNN's parent company, the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner, saying they were concerned by a noticeable softening in CNN's profit margins. (As I recall, CNN's worldwide operating profits that year were "only" about $300 million.)

I then devoted an entire column to a simple question: "WHY does CNN need to make ANY money?"  I reached back into my memory of the broadcast industry in the 1970s when, prior to the emergence of cable, CBS, NBC and ABC commanded 90+% of the total TV viewership. Each of these three networks had a "News Division" which was most definitely NOT a profit center.  The managements of each news division, I explained to Variety's readers, in those days were charged with not LOSING too much money.  Making an actual profit from providing a public service--worldwide news coverage--was simply unimagined.  To be fair, the broadcast networks were obligated to provide news coverage as partial recompense for their having been given access to the publicly-owned airwaves; cable operators, by comparison, had erected their own wired networks at substantial cost to their investors.

AOL Time Warner, in the heady days right after what later proved to be the most ill-fated merger in American business history, sported a combined market cap of $300 billion.  Surely, I argued to the readers of Variety, it could afford to run CNN as a quasi-public service.  Instead its management was threatening major layoffs to buttress the network's already robust profit margins.   I realized that it was rank heresy in the early days of the 21st Century, to suggest that the management of a major division of a public company might have a goal beyond profit maximization.  But I thought tossing out such an idea might cause someone in the upper ranks of the parent company management to at least consider focusing on the quality of the product, and not just on the almighty bottom line.  Silly me.  

However, my modest reward came in the form of a winsome handwritten two-line note from the then newly-appointed CEO of CNN, the brilliant and charming Walter Isaacson.  It read:  "Mr. Smith, After reading your thoughts on CNN, I have just one question--can I work for you?"  

I now sadly reflect on the fact that only 20 years ago, someone of the extraordinary intellectual quality and sterling character of Walter Isaacson could be found running a broadcast network such as CNN.   He must now look on with unadulterated horror at what his former dominion has become.  It has sold its soul for a mess of pottage, as last month CNN's audience share in the prized 25-49 demo for the first time slipped below its rival MSNBC.  

Fox News will likely remain atop the ratings heap for the foreseeable future, even without the odious Tucker Carlson.  But surely CNN's fate will be a permanent third place, no matter how much it genuflects before Donald Trump in what I am certain will be a vain attempt to secure a chunk of the Fox audience.  CNN, once the unquestioned leader in cable news, looks to be permanently mired in third place.  Chasing ratings, and thus profits, by pandering to right-wingers won't IMHO rescue it from its well-earned ignominious fate.

He’s All Ears

Yesterday, along with millions of Americans, I watched a portion of the elaborate ceremony attendant to the coronation of King Charles III. Although in my case about 15 minutes of this anachronistic celebration was all I could handle.  Indeed, when I received a mass email from the BBC soliciting comments on their coverage of the coronation, I was moved to respond with the following:

To the BBC:

I write as an American deeply proud of our Constitutional Democracy, having just now observed a portion of the enactment of the ancient British ritual of a royal coronation. Watching the elevation of these two very ordinary human beings into objects of veneration by the masses of British "subjects" makes me proud that my American founding fathers made me a "citizen" and not a subject.

Indeed, I am amazed by the clear fascination a large percentage of my fellow countrymen (and particularly countrywomen) have for the British royal family.  I realize the Kardashians and Brad Pitt are an imperfect substitute for Charles and Camilla, but at least they attained their position by the presentation of some version of "talent" demonstrated over many years--not effortlessly acquired at the moment of birth or marriage.

I further realize that the British unwritten Constitution has evolved over centuries and that your new King has very carefully circumscribed powers.  But that he has ANY power at all, due to the mere accident of his birth, is a reality I find frightening.  Does he realize that he is one of the few remaining people on earth who owes his lofty position to the luck of their birth?  As for Camilla, I am not sure precisely what skills account for her elevation from ordinary country gentry to Queen of the realm--but Charles's famous tapped phone call gives me a fairly good clue.

I fully realize that America's recent brush with disaster due to the election of one Donald J. Trump in 2016 gives America little room to talk.  But at least we were able to eject Trump from office four years later, and he now faces a multiplicity of legal actions. It is hard to imagine the circumstances under which Charles might be forced from office. Regicide, as his ancestor Charles I suffered nearly 400 years ago, is today inconceivable. However a vote by the British people to adopt a republican form of government, while unlikely, is I believe nonetheless possible at some future date.

Besides a group of relatively small island nations, the only remaining countries of significance that retain King Charles as their Head of State include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica.  I suspect the reign of the new British monarch will over time see some--and perhaps all--of these countries abjure King Charles as their nominal head of state.  

Australia conducted a vote to become a republic about 20 years ago and it lost only narrowly.  Now that the much-loved Queen Elizabeth II is gone, I am fairly certain such a vote today would remove King Charles as the Head of State Down Under.

My much-loved British cousins (by marriage) and my several good British friends wonder why an American would get so exercised about such a purely British topic.  I am also well aware that a clear majority of members of the British public wants to retain its current form of government.  But I suspect that this may not be true twenty years from now, when fond memories of Elizabeth have faded and after two decades under a now 94-yr. old Charles have removed much of the penumbra of mystery and admiration surrounding this anachronistic institution.

- Roger Smith, Proud US CITIZEN

Remembering A Legend

The news today of the death of the great Harry Belafonte at age 96 took me back to my high school years, when this great Calypso singer explosively burst on the scene.  My friends were all singing "Day-O" and "Jamaica Farewell" as these songs represented an entirely new type of music, wholly different from either American folk music or R&B.

No one was more of a Belafonte enthusiast than my early-40's mother, who added an element of sexual frisson to my more strictly musical appreciation.  Indeed, in the spring of 1962, when I was now in my sophomore year at Harvard, I received a postcard from said mother whose text went more or less precisely this way:

"Your father and I are on a wonderful trip to Italy.  We are staying at the Hassler in Rome and I have just discovered that Harry Belafonte is just a few doors down from us.  I am trying to give your father the slip and, with any luck, you will never hear from me again."

My mother was not given to making jokes-- she was, I suspect, only slightly exaggerating.  Also I knew, by age 18, that her devotion to her marriage vows was less than total.  I noted her particularly strong enthusiasm for Mr. Belafonte accordingly.

Segue to nearly ten years later, and I am now working in New York.  Emerging from a rear table at the Russian Tea Room, I spotted my good friend Bobby Short, the brilliant cabaret pianist/ singer, sitting at one of the primo front banquettes with none other than Harry Belafonte.  I stopped to say a brief hello to Bobby, who then introduced me to his lunch guest.

I quickly told him the story of my mother's unrequited (so far) passion for him, quoting her postcard from ten years ago almost word for word.  He listened, flashed his megawatt smile, and said in a sexy intonation, "Tell your mother I am back from Rome!"

Listen for more about Harry Belafonte in an upcoming episode. Stay tuned. 

We're Winning -- and They're Losing Where It Really Counts ...

Dear Friends,

...that is in control of state governments. 

Starting in the 1990's, the GOP made a concerted effort to gain control of states, creating "trifectas" (control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature) wherever possible.  The Republicans created a diabolically clever organization, American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC,  to burrow down at the precinct level to take control of as many state governorships and legislative chambers as possible.  While they were doing this, the Democratic Party organization was totally asleep at the switch.  This was particularly true in the Obama era, when grassroots organizing under such "leaders" as Tom Perez and Debby Wasserman Schultz was either non-existent or woefully weak at the state level.

As a result, by the fateful year of 2016, the GOP held "trifectas" (control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature) in 24 states, compared to a similar Democratic control in just six states.  While some of this control was the direct product of shameless gerrymandering, the Republicans had to first get control of legislatures in order to create such absurd electoral maps.  (Wisconsin and Ohio were the most shameless examples, with 2/3rds of the seats in their legislatures in GOP hands while the two-party voting was nearly 50/50!  This meant that even when states like Wisconsin and North Carolina had Democratic governors, the legislature could override any vetoes.)  

However, following the 2022 election the ratio of GOP to Democratic trifectas came down to a far more reasonable 22 to 17--GOP still in the lead but our team had seriously closed the gap. Unsurprisingly, given our nation's intensely greater partisanship, the number of states with divided government fell from 20 in 2016 to just 11 in 2023.  But the good news for Democrats is that there was movement toward our side--from either a Republican trifecta to divided government or from divided government to a Democratic trifecta--in 17 states, including such critical states as AZ, CO, IL, KS, KY, LA, ME, MA, MD, NJ, NY, NM, WA, and WI.  And the true standout was Michigan, which dramatically has gone from a Republican trifecta in 2016 to now having a Democratic trifecta.  Michigan is the consummate example of how the GOP's combination of bad candidates with unpopular policies spells electoral disaster. 

Meanwhile the GOP notched gains in just five states , including such electoral powerhouses as IA, MO, MT, NH, and WV.  Their negative electoral effect of limiting their appeal to elderly voters, rural voters and non-college graduates is only too clear.  The choice of 2016 as a starting date was not accidental, as it marked the moment when the GOP began to carry the albatross of Donald Trump on its back.  Good luck next year, with either a hopelessly damaged (and possibly convicted) Trump or a candidate like DeSantis, with a six-week abortion ban on his back and an extreme "war on woke," as their leading choices.

It may be too early to gloat, but it is not too soon to take quiet satisfaction in the stupidity, bordering on insanity, of the MAGA crowd.  However, we have to remain vigilant and focus on every state-level race and, increasingly, local races as well.  But it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who should be gnashing their teeth.

Best regards,

Roger

Iowa Politics: Iowa Stops Paying for Plan B, Abortions for Rape Victims

In my slightly bizarre attempt to gather all sorts of information from hither and yon, The Des Moines Register is one of the roughly dozen or so US newspapers to which I maintain an electronic subscription.  I scan them daily for local news of national import.  Keeping abreast of Red State extremism is one of the ancillary benefits of this practice, the origin of which was my desire to provide modest support to America's dwindling roster of serious newspapers.  Today's DM Register brought the following news that Iowa, a formerly progressive state not all that long ago, is now deep crimson.  Its GOP leadership will do almost anything to force any rape victims within its borders to carry their rapist's baby to term.  

They may think that is one way to create future Republican voters, but I suspect its impact will be the opposite--and long before the innocent victims reach voting age.

The issue of Slavery brought the demise of the Whig Party in the 1850s.  Am I being overly optimistic to think that abortion extremism might do the same to today's GOP?   (Gun law extremism is also playing a helpful role.)  A recent poll showed 61% of Iowans thought that abortion should be "legal in most or all cases," only slightly below the 67% nationally who feel that way.  

That 61% of pro-choice Iowans includes 34% of self-identified Republicans, with similar results in such prominently Red States as Tennessee and Florida.  The continual rushing pell mell by Red State Republican officeholders to the most extreme positions on this subject, while unpleasant to observe in the short run, will build ever larger--and ultimately permanent IMHO--Democratic majorities in all but the Reddest of states.  Those roughly 15 states, mostly smaller ones with 3 or 4 Electoral Votes each, will I believe form a shrinking minority in any future national election.

Not long ago, calling Arizona or Georgia a "swing state" would have been laughable.  No longer, with North Carolina, Kansas and--down the road--Texas going from dependably Republican to toss-ups in future elections.  Yes our side has apparently lost any chance at Ohio and Florida, but we have gained Pennsylvania and Michigan as former swing states now fairly consistently voting Democratic.

I know many of my correspondents view my thoughts as overly "optimistic."  I immodestly prefer to call these predictions "realistic."