Hillary Veep-Stakes Update

With Hillary a week away from locking up the nomination, focus will start to turn again to who she selects as her running mate. I’m convincing myself that she’s going to select Xavier Becerra, the congressman from Los Angeles and member of the House Democratic Leadership.  The House minority leadership team is not typically a spring board to national office, and Becerra would bring zero national name recognition to the ticket.

But, he is a seasoned and polished performer on television. He’s got the skills to prosecute the case against Trump. He’s been in the House since 1993, knows the issues, and passes the test of someone who could be a heartbeat from the presidency. His lack of national profile means he won’t upstage Hillary on the campaign trail in a way that, say, Elizabeth Warren might, but he would be a fresh new face.

Am I forgetting anything?  Oh, yeah, he’s Latino. His parents were immigrants from Mexico, the place that Trump wants to wall off. Becerra’s candidacy would be a living refutation of Trump’s xenophobia and racism. Democrats would do anything to have a Latino on the ticket for all the obvious reasons. So, much so that people are floating names like Julian Castro—immensely talented, but thin resume: HUD Secretary and former Mayor of San Antonio—and Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez, who’s never run for elective office.

Becerra would be an exciting, historic choice, that helps energize an important part of the Democratic coalition and refutes one of the main rationales for Trump’s dreadful candidacy.

Trump Still Lonely: The Opposite of a Drinking Game

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder today became the latest high-profile Republican to announce that he won’t be endorsing any candidate in this year’s presidential campaign. Meanwhile, most senior Republicans when asked if they are supporting Trump say things like, “well, I said I would support the Republican nominee and so, I am going to support the Republican nominee.” They rarely actually say the word “Trump,” and I’m pretty sure a lot of them are going to vote for Hillary.

Polls are fickle and unreliable at this stage of the contest, but the behavior of senior Republicans, particularly those running for election or re-election this fall, is a great predictor of what’s going to happen in November. Other than the shell-of-a man that is Chris Christie, I don’t think that a single Republican governor or senator or candidate for those offices has appeared on a stage with Trump since he won the nomination. So far, they are taking a walk.

Links

A couple of thoughtful pieces this week:

Rebecca Traister in New York reports on her travels with Hillary on the campaign trail.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/hillary-clinton-candidacy.html

David Frum, former speechwriter to George W. Bush, writes in The Atlantic about everything in our democracy that had to break in order for Trump to be the Republican nominee. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/

In this quiet In(n), I feel safe trying to swim upstream about the angry white man – to humanize him, suggest that just because he’s voting for Trump, he may be something other than racist, sexist, xenophobic – that his vote may stand for more than supporting the most offensive things we hear on the news.  This is old news for reporters like James Fallows, who has been scolding the media to do more than get sound bites from 3 people at a Trump rally, and to actually go to their homes, bars, union halls, and social spots and listen.

But I recently saw a post on FB from a dear friend: “Hey Bernie Sanders and ‪#‎BernieBros‬ I’m begging you to get off your high horse and be sure you do everything you can possibly do to be sure Trump doesn’t win while you’re making a self-righteous Trumpian stink about delegates awarded to whomever wins the nomination fair and square‪#‎MakeAmericaWhiteAgain‬”  It was the intro to a Mother Jones video where they overlaid the horrifying images of whites putting down, beating on, water-cannoning, civil rights protesters on lines from Trump on the stump.  While the statement is kind of incoherent, it represents a line of argument that’s pretty common:  voting for Trump is so clearly racist, that slowing down Hillary is equally racist. Anything not HRC is racist.

As a privileged, reasonably smart, hard-working white man living in Manhattan with a six figure income but still scared as hell about my and my family’s future, perhaps it’s my political mission in mid-life to: 1) reach out to other freaked out and angry white men; and 2) to try and get liberals to stop sh**ting on them long enough to get them to join our cause.  So here goes:

I’ll start with a composite story of union workers I met in Decatur, Illinois in 1994.  Call the guy Jim.  When I met Jim, I was a union organizer and consultant working to help his union put pressure on the AE Staley company to bargain, avoid striking, and to create public support that would keep the company from locking them out.

At the time, Jim was in his mid-20s.  He was a trained and by all accounts skilled machinist, who helped keep a 1000 person corn processing plant running by fixing and replacing parts on highly complex, expensive, custom machines.  When I met him, he had two kids – 6 and 8.  He freely admitted that the first was an accident, but it was clear he enjoyed being a dad and loved his family.

He had been working at the plant for 6 years and was building seniority.  With help from his father (who had also worked in the plant, but was now retired), he made a down payment on a starter house.  He was doing OK:  house, a car that was in good shape, was setting aside money for retirement and for his kids to go to school.  He could take vacations at campgrounds and could afford to take his clan to Pizza Hut or sometimes Cracker Barrel on Friday nights.  The guy was also just a cheerful presence in the union office.  Not many young people were connected to the union, and Jim was active, well-liked, and generated interest from other young union members (many of whom were women or of color).  Jim was a good person to help heal the wounds from when the union leadership acted out of racist and sexist tendencies in earlier days.

The union eventually got locked out for a grueling 18 months.  During that time there were two suicides, several recovering alcoholics fell off the wagon, homes lost, savings drained, broken marriages, deferred medical treatment and doctor visits, cancelled Christmasses, and cancelled college plans for kids who came home from college to help.  Jim eventually went back into the plant – but with reduced pay, less overtime, worse health benefits than before, and lost seniority.

That was a defining moment for him.  As chronicled by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal, the town of Decatur was a war zone:  not only was Jim’s plant (Staley/Tate & Lyle) locked out, but Caterpillar workers were on strike, as were workers at Bridgestone/Firestone and  two other companies.  In Decatur, over a third of the households had a breadwinner walking picket – and nearly all of them lost.  Frank reports, as many of us observed at the time, that the only national Democrat to show support for the working families of Decatur was Jesse Jackson.  The rest were frustratingly absent and unresponsive.

Back to Jim.  His union activism eventually caught up with him and he lost his job at the plant (which continued to weaken the union with each subsequent contract).  He found other jobs as a machinist, but most of them were temporary, none provided access to retirement plans, and his insurance was spotty.  Deferred medical bills and the slow drain on his savings forced him to sell his house in the 2000s, and he often took janitorial and laborer work at construction sites to keep going.  In 2008, as he approached 50, he saw his father’s pension take a hit and he helped his parents move into a smaller place.

Being specific to one Jim rather than the composite: the 6 and the 8 year old didn’t go to college, they went to trade schools, and the older one tried to learn computers but couldn’t find a program that she could afford that went beyond data entry and Microsoft Office.  The daughter’s a secretary – which is as white collar as the family gets now – struggling to stay current and hoping her company stays in business.  The son lives at home and is taking odd jobs as he can find them.

Across 20 years, Jim’s economic condition deteriorated – it never improved.  He didn’t achieve his dream of home ownership or sending his kids to school.  His skills are up to date but outdated by the economy, and his retirement looks grimmer than his father’s.  He doesn’t go to the doctor for fear of co-pays or expensive medication, and is nervous when he takes his wife.  Age is catching up to him.

And now it’s time to vote.

 

 

I wanted to get this up yesterday, but, there are still two days left to the Memorial Day holiday.  Here’s a list of books that I’d recommend for this holiday in which we honor our service men and women. I’m focusing on battles that have mostly been forgotten by the American public, or anyone who’s younger than 85.  I’m also calling out where I believe members of my family served.

 The Coldest Winter, by David Halberstam

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/coldest-winter-david-halberstam/1100538541?ean=9780786888627

David’ Halberstam’s history of the Korean War. This is Halberstam, so it goes without saying that this book is monumental. But, also because it’s Halberstam, it’s both epic history and journalism dramatically rendered and imminently readable. Don’t let the heft of it put you off.  You won’t be able to stop reading.

This is not a military history of the Korean War, though he does cover with great detail and drama the valor of American soldiers in places like the Pusan Perimeter, Incheon, and The Chosin Reservior.

I will call out that one of my uncles, Charlie Moff, served at Pusan. He served in the artillery.  I’m forgetting the details, but he told me that the artillery they were operating had a maximum range of x hundred yards if well maintained.

“But, ours didn’t go that far,” he said. I asked why, and he responded, “well, we were using them a lot.”

The book is also a social and political history of the war and America going to war again only five years after the end of World War II. The account of Truman’s conflict with McArthur—the unpopular president prosecuting an unpopular war and facing open insubordination from the most popular general on the planet and the defacto emperor of Japan. Truman’s handling of the crisis puts the lie to any assertion that a president can just surround themselves with good people who will run that country. Truman had courage, character, and a sense of self that guided him through the crisis.

 Chosin, by Eric Hamel

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chosin-eric-m-hammel/1102559177?ean=9781890988142

More Korean War. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir is right up there with Iwo Jima, Peleiliu, and Guadalcanal in the annals of Marine Corp valor, but too few people remember it.

This book is a military history so lacks the sweep and drama of a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist like Halberstam. But, the events of Chosin don’t need much embellishment.  McArthur, in the wake of brilliant success at Incheon, revealed his full megalomania, narcissism, and incompetence by driving an ill –equipped army (along with 30,000 Marines under army command) right up to the Chinese border, despite the numerous indications that the Chinese would respond.

When the Chinese did attack it resulted in one of the most devastating retreats in U.S. Army history. It was during this retreat that my mother’s uncle, Mario Del Costello was taken prisoner of war.  He’d remain a prisoner until the end of the war. He was tortured. Among other things, his captors would make him stand bare foot on blocks of ice for long periods of time. When I met him as young boy in the seventies, I wondered why Uncle Mario had such a hard time walking around.

This book tells the story of the 30,000 marines who were encircled by a Chinese force four-times their number.  They were at high altitudes, in the winter, with no winter gear. They engaged in a ferocious fighting retreat over the next 17 days.  As one veteran said, “We weren’t retreating. We were attacking in the other direction.” By the time they broke out of their encirclement, they had smashed two Chinese Army divisions beyond repair, inflicting staggering casualties.

 The Battle for Leyte Gulf by C. Vann Woodward

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/battle-for-leyte-gulf-c-vann-woodward/1101999183?ean=9781782899112

Leyte Gulf is the largest naval battle in the history of the world, the most ships committed to combat over the largest theater of battle. It was not the decisive battle of World War II, that was Midway, and so it’s largely forgotten.  It was the Japanese Navy’s desperate last effort at victory in the Pacific.

At one point during the battle, a large fleet of Japanese war ships bore down on a group of U.S. tender and transport ships that were in a position thought to be safely away from the battle.  In what came to be called The Charge of the Light Brigade, the three U.S. destroyers protecting the tender and transport ships engaged the much larger Japanese fleet. They fought so desperately—and to the last full measure—that the Japanese fleet broke off the attack, thinking that they were facing a much larger force.

My uncle, John Emile was a sailor on one of the tender ships that was saved by the “Light Brigade”.

 

Sorry.  I hit publish instead of save.  I was debating posting this and did the classic draft thing.  What was interesting to me about this argument against HRC wasn’t getting attacked like, say, a Young Turks video (despite some stylistic similarities).  More interesting was that pro-Sanders types – who are now trying to defend the legitimacy of having been or continuing to be supportive, or trying to justify his persistence as a candidate – are posting it like crazy in my part of the world.  People who were going quiet because they thought they had crossed the line and were supporting Trump, got active again around this post.  More interesting still was that nobody was piling on about how deluded, arrogant, privileged, Naderite, or a-historical she is.  It might be because she’s pretty, likable, and isn’t lily white (which is to say I haven’t unpacked her ethnicity). But that didn’t help Rosario Dawson . . . So probably more just wondering if she was making an argument that wasn’t easily dismissed.

I think, had I returned to this, I might not have published it at all, but one of the good things about blogs is that it catches in-between moments, so rather than take it down, I’ll just leave the initial thinking.

I have to give Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort credit. Does anyone, other than his boss, pack as much crazy and danger into so few words. Is there an award for Most Outrageous Statements in A-One-Photo-Caption-Sized Quote?”

In an interview this week, Manafort managed, in 106 words, to dismiss women and minorities from the vice presidency, to show contempt for Trump’s “long list” of possible V.P.s, and, at the same time, to suggest that one of these people with “major problems” will be given unprecedented authority in a way that would likely produce multiple constitutional crises.

Here’s what Manafort said in an interview this week:

“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.

“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.

“The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”

It might be futile to take anything that the Trump campaign says too seriously, except that Trump is only one unpopular seventy-year old woman away from the presidency, so, yeah, everything his campaign says should be taken seriously.

Manafort states that Trump will be the metaphorical Chairman of the Board of his administration while the Vice President handles the parts of the job he doesn’t want to do!” He doesn’t elaborate on what those parts of the job will be, but I’ll bet it’s a long list.

There is a dangerous logic to this.  It gives cover to Trump supporters who are too embarrassed to admit it. Or need some re-assurance that their decision is actually a sound and prudent one. And maybe it persuades some Republicans who don’t like Trump, but have a hard time voting for Hillary.

I think back to 1980 when people were concerned that Reagan was too old or not engaged enough to be president. The idea then was that he’d be like the CEO and hire great people around him and everything would be fine. Except that Reagan had been a two-term governor of California and, as it turns out, was much more engaged and hands-on than his critics wanted to believe.

And Reagan did bring in great people.  He’d been part of Republican and conservative politics for decades. I don’t get the sense that Trump’s got people like George Schultz, Casper Weinberger, David Stockman, and Jim Baker lining up to join his team.

And the CEO metaphor betrayed an ignorance of exactly how engaged and hands-on and essential a CEO is to a company.

But, Trump’s taken the metaphor to the next level.  He’s going to be the Chairman of the Board. Which means no real involvement in the day-to-day strategy or operations of the company.

The idea of Trump spending much of his presidency in Mar-a-Largo while his vice president runs the country has undeniable appeal. It might even get him elected if he can find a serious Republican to take the job.

The Trump as Chairman idea also explains why someone as serious as Bob Corker would take a meeting at Trump Tower to discuss the Vice Presidency.  You sorta have to take a meeting with someone who wants to give you unprecedented, extra-constitutional power.  But, I’m sure someone as canny as Corker—who also made his fortune in real estate—recognizes Trump as a guy who negotiates a contract for steel or cement or dry wall and then when the bills come due doesn’t pay them, and then 120 days later re-opens negotiations on the price.

I’m not qualified to assess whether such an arrangement would be constitutional.  Trump dipping in and out of his presidency when the spirt moves him, and Bob Corker running the government except when he doesn’t. And no one knows when he is or isn’t.

It almost doesn’t matter. Even if some kind of legal action could be brought, it would go to a Supreme Court that is less “supreme” than it used to be. A court either still split 4-4 or that has a Trump-appointed replacement for Scalia. John Roberts recognizes his responsibility to protecting the role of the Court.  He would likely step in and declare the arrangement unconstitutional.  But, then what? President Trump, “Well, John Roberts is a loser. He failed on Obamacare. He’s not liked by many people. I don’t trust him . . . “

I’m straying into future-history fiction, but my point was that if professional politicians and voters don’t take the institutions of government seriously, then they will break. Manafort’s off-hand comments make it clear how close we are to that breaking point.

Watching Donald Trump on the stump in New Mexico this morning, I’m reminded of Robert Deniro in Goodfellas when Spider briefly and fatally stands up to Joe Pesci’s character, Tommy.  “Good for you. Don’t take no shit off nobody, “Deniro tells him, seconds before Tommy shoots Spider a bunch of times in the chest.

One of Trump’s appeals is that “he don’t take no shit off nobody.” Not even the Republican governor of New Mexico in her own state.

Susana Martinez is the governor of New Mexico and head of the Republican Governors Association for this election cycle. Which means she’s in charge of the national efforts to raise money for Republican’s running for governorships across the country.  It’s the kind of position an ambitious politician takes to rack up IOU’s across the country from candidates who might support her when she runs for national office. Chris Christy had this job for the last cycle, and it was going pretty well until the thugs on his staff closed the George Washington Bridge (and two interstate highways) for three days.

Martinez gets a lot of potential VP talk. Although, she and her staff apparently got staggeringly drunk last year in a hotel suite, throwing bottles of beer out the window into the street and being so rowdy that the hotel had to call the police to break it up. But, such an episode might actually make her a more attractive candidate for Trump.  But, not after yesterday.

Trump was in New Mexico yesterday, and Governor Martinez found some other pressing duties to attend to and avoided appearing on stage with him or even meeting him. This kind of thing happens all the time when you have an unpopular candidate and is a sure sign that for all the stories about Republicans closing ranks behind Trump, they don’t really mean it. Let’s see how many of them actually want to be photographed with the guy.

Again, this kind of thing happens all the time. Think back to when there were still Democratic governors and senators in the deep south. Any time a Democratic president or presidential candidate showed up in their state, the Democrats in those states would regrettably inform President Clinton or Senator Kerry that there was a county fair four-hundred miles away that they were just committed to attend. Really sorry that they couldn’t make it, but next time, for sure.

But, Trump reacted to Martinez’s demurral by just ripping into her in front of a Republican audience in her own state.  It’s remarkable. She’s the sitting Republican Governor of an increasingly Democratic state. She’s Latino and a woman. And she’s head of the Republican Governors Association. And he just rips into her like she was Hillary Clinton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L5qtzJs-80

Which brings me to my larger point. Anyone who has worked on a political campaign, whether for a presidential candidate or for some small local office, knows that the great joy of politics is the connections you make with other people.

My father, he and my mother are local politicians in Western Pennsylvania, once was quoted in the local paper as saying, “everyone should run for office once in their lives.”

A political campaign is one of the purest forms of community. Disparate people working for a common goal. People you flat-out come to love. People you hate but have to work with. People you know weren’t on your side in that last primary and won’t be in the next one, but you are together with them for a few months this time, and, really, they aren’t that bad a person. Shared ecstatic moments when you win. And broken hearts shared with people you might never meet again, but who you’ll never forget.

Trump has none of this. He elides all that’s warm, and human, and joyful about politics.  Hillary will have quite a team out there working for her: Obama, Biden, Bill, eventually Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, and a plethora of senators and governors and congress people all over local television and showing up at endless barbecues and Fourth of July parades.

Trump has a few people on the payroll and his statuesque wife and daughters, but he’s otherwise all alone in his well-upholstered plane or sitting on the sofa in Trump Tower eating candy, watching all the news channels at the same time, and firing off tweets.

No team. No friends—lasting or even just for the moment. Nothing that makes politics so much fun and so essentially human.

Just caught up with this from Jedediah Purdy and haven’t even read it all yet, but it seems potentially useful as a critique of Andrew Sullivan’s discourse on how “the excesses of democracy” — as the nation’s founders did indeed put it — have brought us Trump.

One possibly amusing diversion in what is sure to an otherwise especially cruel and humorless election campaign, is to watch Republicans who should otherwise know better appear on television and try to defend Trump’s antics and pretend that everything they’ve worked for all their lives hasn’t just been usurped by the Grand Wizard of Wrestling.

Here’s a clip of Haley Barbour on Morning Joe this morning. I’m obviously not a big fan of a former Republican governor of Mississippi who is also a former head of the RNC. But, I do admire his considerable political gifts and his deep-south-as-it gets accent.  And suspect he would be someone I wouldn’t mind having a beer with. Or a couple or three bourbons at an airport bar along with a basket of fried catfish and some hush puppies.

Watch this usually glib, fast-talker just twist himself in knots trying to make sense of the Trump campaign.  Skip ahead to 2:00 minutes in the clip where Joe Scarborough (remember, a former Republican congressman from Florida) asks him about Trump’s re-surfacing the Vince Foster murder insinuations.  And then, right after that, Mark Halperin (another Republican), asks him what he thinks of Newt Gingrich as Trump’s possible running mate.

His answer is basically, “Newt Gingrich is a living person, and I have met him on more than one occasion.”

http://on.msnbc.com/245PghV

 

I’m starting to think that Hillary is the best candidate that the Democrats could possibly run against Trump. He showed during the primaries that he could emasculate a wide range of governors and senators like the journeyman school -yard bully he is.

Bush, the wimpy rich kid; Little Marco, the short, sweaty little forensics kid; Christie, the fat kid; and, well, he just came out and called Carly an ugly girl.

And, looking back, what a bunch of terrible politicians. One of the good things about the extended American election campaign is that it sorts out who is tough enough to be president. I get that no one saw Trump coming, but I think that JFK, or Bill Clinton, or Reagan, or Obama, or even the first Bush could have handled this guy, because they were all cooler and tougher than the bully.

JFK, wealthy, handsome, war hero, dismissing him with an existential smirk. Reagan, “there-you-go-again-ing” him. Clinton, like he did with Bob Dole, walking over and leaning on Trump’s podium, maybe even covering the microphone, while he leans over and whispers a threat in Trump’s ear. Obama, like he’ll do this fall, the cool, smart kid making the other kids laugh at Trump.

Hillary doesn’t have the political skills of JFK, or Reagan, or Clinton, or Obama. But, unlike “little” Marco or Jeb!, she’s a tough customer. Go back and watch the last few hours of the Benghazi hearings if there’s any doubt about that. They came at her with everything they had for over 12 hours, and, to quote Robert Deniro in The Untouchables, “You have an all-out fight, you wait until the fight is over, one guy (or woman) is left standing. And that’s how you know who won.”

It’s kind of cute when reporters refer to Trump’s “war room” because he’s still just tweeting and doing phone calls from his bath tub.  Yesterday, Trump reiterated his suggestions that Bill Clinton is a rapist and, in an interview with the Washington Post, resurrected insinuations that Bill and/or Hillary had a role to play in the death of Vince Foster.

This is all Trump’s got? A seventy-year old man’s thirty-year-old sexual indiscretions? Vince Foster? Even Gingrich didn’t go after this when it might have made a difference in 1993.

I’d remind Mr. Trump that voters knew all this stuff when they re-elected Bill in 1996. And, that Hillary’s approval ratings soared all through the Monica and Gennifer Flowers stories. She’s saving this one up for later in the campaign. That moment when, with dignity and disgust, this grandmother reminds the over-the-hill playboy that she doesn’t need him to lecture her about infidelity. We’ll put that moment up there with Lloyd Bentsen’s take down of Dan Quayle.

Hillary’s disapproval numbers by voters are already at 60%, historically bad for a presumptive nominee of a major party; except for the jackass who is the presumptive nominee for what we once called the Republican Party.

People have made their decisions about her a long time ago. She’s had millions of dollars spent over twenty-five years to destroy her. It’s going to take a lot more than tabloid-level insinuations from Donald Trump to take her down. She really might be the ideal person to take this guy down.