Month: January 2016

We’ve come a long way baby

by digby

Sean McElwee at Fusion observes that an awful lot of young men think sex discrimination is part of the past:

The Supreme Court may well gut Roe v. Wade. Access to abortion and contraception has regressed dramatically, and clinics face increasing intimidation. The pay gap is stubbornly broad. Campuses struggle with disturbingly high rates of sexual assault, and domestic violence is all too common.

America seems a long way from becoming a society in which young men and women have equal opportunities to succeed. And yet data suggest that many Americans—disproportionately men—believe America already is such a society.

He looked at the American National Election Survey used by academics to study voter attitudes, of Americans age 17 and 34. And he found three questions particularly illuminating:

The first was about traditional gender norms: Do you think it is better, worse, or makes no difference for the family as a whole if the man works outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family?

Young men and women had roughly the same attitudes about that—if antiquated ones. About a third of each said it was better for the woman to stay home.

The next two questions were more direct. And the answers suggest that men are blind to continuing structural inequities and perceptions about women in society that restrict success and opportunity.

The survey asked whether men or women have more opportunity for achievement. Almost half of young men—47%—say opportunities are equal, while only 37% of women think so. Meanwhile, 62% of women say men have a better shot at achievement. Only 47% of men agree.

The gap is even wider on whether men have “many more” opportunities.

Interesting, no? He notes that the gaps are much less stark between young Democrats although it’s still present.

And then there’s this:

Interestingly, when I examined only young people with college educations, the gaps are even larger than they are in the full sample.

College men may see successful women on campus and perceive that women have more opportunities, while college-educated women appear more attuned to persistent discrimination.

These tensions are often reflected in the campus debates of the past few years.

“Many men I’ve worked with truly believe that our campus has moved beyond gender bias,” Roberta Barnett, a senior at Columbia University and president of the Panhellenic Council, which governs the sororities at the university, told me. “But if you ask female members of our community and even many student administrators, the role of implicit bias against women is both pervasive and actively felt.”

Barnett cites frequent slights about women’s appearance at official meetings and the dearth of women in high positions of student politics.

He cites a recent Pew Poll which shows many of the same results.

He goes on to note that just as electing Barack Obama did not usher in a post-racial society (who in God’s name ever thought it would???) and that electing Hillary Clinton would not likely bring in a gender-equal one. I don’t think there should be any doubt about that. Of course it won’t, not in and of itself. But since there has never even been a woman nominee of one of the major parties it would indicate something changing in this regard. An opening perhaps.
But yes, I would expect there would be a backlash just as there was with Obama. And my feeling is, so what?

And just one more point. I think these studies also show the fallacy of attaching too much significance to “generational” differences. Obviously, attitudes change over time. But they are not so neatly divided between one “bad” generation and their “good” offspring. (Read “Nixonland” for how that played out in the most tumultuous generational battle in American history.)

No, our differences tend to fall along tribal and ideological lines with new generations moving in slightly different directions from their parents in some ways and hanging on to some attitudes in others. The move from rural to city was a huge change. Something like gay rights was a magnificent example of a wholesale shift. But it’s not a neat transition. And sometimes the younger folks can even become more conservative.

Millennials are certainly a more tolerant bunch than those who came before. But that tolerance tends to be clustered around a discrete set of issues and among those who identify as Democrats. The conservative millennials are more tolerant than their conservative elders but they’re still conservative.

This is what we call progress. But it’s always two steps forward one step back. It’s not a dramatic divide between one generation and the next.

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A peek into the subconscious mind of the far right

by digby

This is from a lawsuit filed in 2014 against President Obama and (apparently fraudulently) signed by Cliven Bundy:

The motion for preliminary injunction, filed in federal court in Nevada, claimed Obama threatened Trump’s business interests to get him to stop questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S.

The lawsuit, filed by David Rothrock, lists a Pennsylvania prison as a return address. It was apparently sent by Rothrock in his and Bundy’s name.

It reads: “Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen therefore he has no authority to take over peoples land under imminent domain. Mr. Obama blackmailed and covertly threatened Donald Trump with building code regulation violations, property tax fraud, illegally operating offshore tax havens for betting with Federal indictments unless he shuts up and stops the Birther movement because Mr. Obama fears he will be exposed for his covert and sinister ties to Iran’s Hezbollah network.”

The suit also says that “all Americans are in danger.”

The lawsuit — which was dismissed because the $350 filing fee was never paid — claims the plaintiffs saw Bill Clinton cross-dress in a burqa and claims the plaintiffs saw Obama sell “Muslim oils at a street vendor stand with a wig and mustache.”

The lawsuit demands an investigation into the “atrocities” committed by “these orgie, sex deviants.”

The lawsuit also claims the Benghazi attack was “implemented so George Bush could somehow feel vindicated for 9/11.”

The sexually explicit letter makes several nonsensical claims — including that Obama had the plaintiffs oral sex on the president’s dogs, Sunny and Bo, in the Oval Office.

The sexually explicit letter makes several nonsensical claims — including that Obama had the plaintiffs oral sex on the president’s dogs, Sunny and Bo, in the Oval Office.

“Mr. Obama has portrayed himself as hope and change, the only hope he gave me was gay rights with dildo enhancements. Thank you Mayor Rob Ford and Philadelphia Parole officer Agent Fletcher they give a good warm tickle when performing tooth extracts on my genital area. Mr. Obama is a a phycosomatic [sic] sex freak. Mr. Obama had me and agent Fletcher perform oral sex on Sunny + Bo in the Oval office.”

The lawsuit states that if the “whistleblowing” claims are not brought to light, America will “be the new Africa and are [sic] citizens will be sleeping in tents and washing clothes in puddles by 2022.”

“America will be the new Africa and are [sic] citizens will be sleeping in tents and washing clothes in puddles by 2022 while China donates rice to us on a camel drone from Pakistan why we are celebrating Kwanza with pet turtles.”

You can see the whole thing at Buzzfeed. This man is obviously very disturbed. But the truth is that this is the wingnut subconscious laid bare. The racism, the paranoia, the sexually deviant imaginings. Those who think that people who follow all the right wing propaganda are driven by constitutional principles and beliefs about the role of government are hugely mistaken. Sure, most right-wingers aren’t as overwhelmingly delusional as this man. But they are ruled by many of the same impulses.  After what Bundy notoriously said about black people it’s not surprising in the least that a disturbed individual would think they are on the same side.

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Imagine if this happened every day #mediadoesitsjob

by digby

This is a beautiful moment:

A *crazy* thing happens when CNN simply asks a “Muslim ban” supporting pundit to source their claims! WATCH: pic.twitter.com/nogDcnJtDp

— Cafe (@cafedotcom) December 8, 2015

If you haven’t read this fine fellow’s ISIS warrior fantasy, you should. It’s really something.

“Play it again. I love the feel of it”

by digby

Piñata maker Hector M. Barajas’ Facebook page

Trump’s first ad is out and a one might expect, it’s really something:

Brian Beutler’s comment is perfect:

This has as much to do with economic anxiety as the Pete Wilson ads of the Prop 187 era had to do with economic anxiety. In fact, the resemblance between the two, including darkened depictions of immigrants as invaders, is unmistakeable. Republicans are well aware that the Prop 187 campaign was the beginning of the California GOP’s long slide into oblivion. They’re also aware that wide swaths of the country are coming to look more like California than like Iowa every day. If bigotry were truly an impotent force in Republican politics, other candidates would be leapfrogging each other to denounce the ad, not as “unserious,” but as racist, and not just because racism is wrong, but because they want the national Republican Party to avoid the California party’s fate. Their indifference tells the whole story here.

Indeed it does. Trump doesn’t care about this and neither do his supporters. They think most people in America are as bigoted as they are. The rest of the field knows better but they can’t win the nomination if they say so. Yuuuuuge problem.

The Washington Post article about the ad tells the story of making it:

The first ad, titled “Great Again,” makes clear that Trump’s closing pitch to voters will be as visceral and arresting as the one he delivers at raucous rallies. It is a full embrace of the most incendiary of his proposals, as opposed to the more biographical spots that some other candidates favor.

One afternoon last week in the candidate’s 26th-floor suite at Trump Tower here, the fiery depictions of global terrorism flickered on Trump’s face as he stared down at campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s laptop computer to watch the final cut of the ad.

“Play it again,” Trump told Lewandowski, nodding approvingly. “I love the feel of it.”

I’m sure he did.  And it’s bound to thrill his supporters too.

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Ted Cruz, stopped clock


by digby

He’s not right very often but in this case he is:

“Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds. But we don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others. So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation.”

This is absolutely correct.

Like you, I assume, I think these militia members are completely full of BS in almost every way. But they do have a right to protest. In fact, I suspect many of us might join in a protest against a mandatory minimum with which we disagree, particularly if a friendly liberal judge had purposefully ignored it to make a point and the appellate court had reinstated it. I happen to believe that arson is a particularly heinous crime and I’m not surprised that someone would get a long term for starting fires but that’s not the point. The principle is the same whether or not we agree with the particular mandatory minimum sentence or the protest itself. And they can protest and even occupy a federal building as part of it. There are many, many precedents for this.

The problem here is that they are threatening to shoot people and go down in a hail of glory to make their point. Armed protest is not a protest, it’s violent intimidation. These people are dead wrong in that regard and even Ted Cruz agrees.

Using guns to make a political point is never ok. It’s undemocratic, thuggish behavior and this insistence that “armed revolution” is a constitutional right is one of the most outrageous aspects of the NRA campaign to sell as many guns to Americans as possible. It’s cynical and dangerous.

I’ve written a lot about this over the years. This piece talks specifically about the use of guns and the First Amendment.

Update: Brian Beutler reminds us that Cruz was once more sympathetic to the Bundy cause until he realized he was dealing with open and unrepentant white supremacists. I’m sure many of Cruz’s supporters are also unrepentant white supremacists but they have learned not to talk to the press about African Americans being happier as slaves. I’m sure they all think that’s just more PC but for the most part they’re willing to abide by it.

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We need to reform the culture of law enforcement, not just the procedures


by digby

I have a new piece up at Salon this morning about police reform:

Such procedural reforms focus on training officers to be more judicious and race-neutral in their use of force and how they interact with the public. The report encourages officers to work harder to explain to people why they are being stopped, questioned or arrested. Departments are advised to create consistent use of force policies and mechanisms for civilian oversight and transparency. The report implies that more training, diversity and communication will lead to enhanced police community relations, more effective crime control and greater police legitimacy.

Nicholson Gregoire, a 25-year-old biology student at Nassau Community College, was walking his puppy pit bull, Blue, around 5:00 pm on December 15 when he noticed police conducting “stop and frisk” searches, according to the New York Daily News. Police noticed the dog wasn’t restrained by a leash and asked Gregoire for ID. Gregoire reportedly was granted permission to go inside his Queens Village home to find the ID, but he closed the door, prompting two officers to repeatedly ring the doorbell. Gregoire’s 87-year-old grandfather, Roleme, came down the stairs to answer the door, but from there, the police and Gregoire tell different versions of subsequent events.

“The suspect apprehended in that case at Rossmore and LaBrea was convicted on three counts of being apprehended and one count of being a suspect. Apprehended suspects are punished under state law by a term of not less than five years in the correctional institution at Soledad.”

Read on for more about a family whose home was raided by a SWAT Team doing a PR stunt. Oh, and nobody was held accountable for that one either.

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A “terrible legacy”
by Tom Sullivan

Graves of Union soldiers who died at the Race Course prison camp in Charleston (1865). (Library of Congress)

While #YallQaida was in southeast Oregon looking for a liberty tree to water with the blood of BLM agents, we were weekending in Charleston, SC where bloody history is still fresh. It had been over a decade since I’d worked there. It took time to get reoriented.

The peninsula is not that big, though, so it wasn’t long before we passed Mother Emanuel AME Church, the site of last summer’s mass shooting. A 21-year-old white shooter confessed to the killings. He had hoped to ignite a race war. Instead he found forgiveness from the families of his black victims. People are still leaving flowers outside. A sign still mentions the Wednesday night Bible study. It hurt just standing there reading it.

Outside Mother Emanuel AME church, Charleston, SC

The Washington Post reported after the massacre:

That history is a long and storied one. The congregation was founded in the era of slavery by Morris Brown, a founding pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1816, frustrated with the racism he encountered in Charleston’s segregated churches, Brown decided to form a church of his own. About 4,000 parishioners followed him — more than 75 percent of the city’s black community, according to a history published by the College of Charleston.

From the beginning, the congregation was a focal point of community organizing and anti-slavery activism — provoking fears and intense distrust among the city’s white population. According to a PBS documentary, white Charlestonians constantly monitored the church, sometimes disrupting services and arresting worshipers.

They had some reason for alarm: Denmark Vesey, the organizer of one of the nation’s most notable failed slave uprisings, was a leader in the church. He fiercely and insistently preached that African Americans were the new Israelites, that their enslavement would be punished with death, and in 1822 he and other leaders began plotting a rebellion.

It failed. Vesey and many others were hanged.

Sunday morning we happened to drive by The Citadel, removed from the business district and off the usual tourist track. I had never been in that quadrant of the city before, but remembered a recent blog post that explained how Memorial Day had its origins in Charleston in a spot just east of the military college. Of course, we went looking for it:

… During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

Hampton Park, Charleston, SC

The fallen were later moved, most to a national cemetery in Beaufort, S.C. The race track became a city park named after Confederate General (and later governor) Wade Hampton III. An historic marker commemorating this first Memorial Day was installed in just 2010. Wherever it was, we missed seeing it. Even reading a photo carefully (go do it now), one can easily miss that the majority of participants were former slaves. You have to know your history and read between the lines. At a time when news agencies cannot bring themselves to mention that the armed, Bundy insurrectionists in Oregon are white (or nearly all) or refer to them as anything more dangerous than “activists” or “occupiers,” on this coast even a five year-old historical marker in a gentrifying, heavily black city tiptoes around the fact that the honorable actions it commemorates were performed by black, former slaves.

Then again, newer, more prominent, and a surprise was the statue below, installed at Hampton Park just two years ago. Unlike the other marker, the statue’s base provides a clear background to who Denmark Vesey was and why he has found a place in Hampton Park:

Denmark Vesey memorial statue in Hampton Park Charleston, SC. Baba Robert Ellington. pic.twitter.com/6Biqud284y— Sam Livingston (@samoryba) February 17, 2014

The Post and Courier reported:

Committee members and speakers all said the monument was an important step taken to fill in the historical gaps – to widen recognition of slavery’s terrible legacy and the full cost of freedom. Vesey’s actions of 1822 can inspire anyone who cares about liberty, Franks said. “The spirit of freedom is so pervasive.”

Mayor Joe Riley, admiring the site, said it was neither hidden nor too prominent, affording people a contemplative spot to pay their respects to an important historical figure.

“The undeniable fact is this: Denmark Vesey was free,” Riley told the assembly. “He was a free black man, No one owned him. … He risked his life and gave his life to make enslaved people free.”

The Rev. Joe Darby, speaking as a leader of the AME Church, was perhaps the most outspoken about the controversies surrounding Vesey and the effort to memorialize him.

“Some people see Denmark Vesey as a dangerous terrorist,” Darby said. “Most see him as a freedom fighter. My hope is that this monument will add to the full story of our southern heritage.”

The would-be freedom fighters’ insurrection in Oregon over poaching on public lands doesn’t quite measure up in the heritage department.

ISIS Baby. #YallQaeda #bundymilitia #OregonUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/QGoB74sCxk— bennydiego (@bennydiego) January 4, 2016

It took over half a century to bring down the Confederate battle flag South Carolina raised over its capitol in 1961 in defiance of the Civil Rights movement. That came down just last summer in the wake of the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME.

He’ll take care of everyone. As long as they don’t cross him.

by digby

This guy is nothing but a thug …

In 1999, the family patriarch died, and 650 people, including many real estate executives and politicians, crowded his funeral at Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue.

But the drama was hardly put to rest. Freddy’s son, Fred III, spoke at the funeral, and that night, his wife went into labor with their son, who developed seizures that led to cerebral palsy. The Trump family promised that it would take care of the medical bills.

Then came the unveiling of Fred Sr.’s will, which Donald had helped draft. It divided the bulk of the inheritance, at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, “other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr.”

Freddy’s children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father’s share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used “undue influence” over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out.

A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew’s infant child.


“I was angry because they sued,” he explained during last week’s interview.

At the time, he attributed their exclusion from the will to his father’s “tremendous dislike” for Freddy’s ex-wife, Linda. She and Fred III declined to comment on the dispute.

That’s from a piece in this morning’s New York Times about Trump’s family. It will make you sick actually. He’s a very twisted piece of work.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the reason Trump was sent to military school was because he beat up one of this teachers. Mussolini stabbed one of his at roughly the same age. Just saying.

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So I guess it isn’t just jihadists who make these videos now?

by digby

This person thinks the BLM is a tyrannical agency so he has made a suicide video and has promised to die for “the constitution.”

If those Guantanamo prisoners ever heard about this they would die laughing.

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Turning that big ship around

by digby

This is an excerpt of Peter Beinert’s new essay in the Atlantic in which he argues that the country is moving left — and that while there is a rightwing backlash forming, this time it’s smaller and weaker than it was in the 1970s and cannot stop the leftward tide:

I came of age in the ’80s and ’90s, when the backlash against ’60s liberalism still struck terror into Democratic hearts. I watched as Ronald Reagan moved the country hard to the right, and as Bill Clinton made his peace with this new political reality by assuring white America that his party would fight crime mercilessly. Seeing this year’s Democratic candidates crumple before Black Lives Matter and shed Clinton’s ideological caution as they stampeded to the left, I imagined the country must be preparing for a vast conservative reaction.

But I was wrong. The more I examined the evidence, the more I realized that the current moment looks like a mirror image of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The resemblances are clear, but their political significance has been turned upside down. There is a backlash against the liberalism of the Obama era. But it is louder than it is strong. Instead of turning right, the country as a whole is still moving to the left.

[…]

If the lesson of the Reagan era had been that Democrats should give a Republican president his due, the lesson of the Bush era was that doing so brought disaster. In the Senate, Bush’s 2001 tax cut passed with 12 Democratic votes; the Iraq War was authorized with 29. As the calamitous consequences of these votes became clear, the revolt against them destroyed the Democratic Party’s centrist wing. “What I want to know,” declared an obscure Vermont governor named Howard Dean in February 2003, “is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president’s unilateral attack on Iraq. What I want to know is, why are Democratic Party leaders supporting tax cuts?” By year’s end, Dean—running for president against a host of Washington Democrats who had supported the war—was the clear front-runner for his party’s nomination.

With the Dean campaign came an intellectual revolution inside the Democratic Party. His insurgency helped propel Daily Kos, a group blog dedicated to stiffening the liberal spine. It energized the progressive activist group MoveOn. It also coincided with Paul Krugman’s emergence as America’s most influential liberal columnist and Jon Stewart’s emergence as America’s most influential liberal television personality. In 2003, MSNBC hired Keith Olbermann and soon became a passionately liberal network. In 2004, The New Republic apologized for having supported the Iraq War. In 2005, The Huffington Post was born as a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report. In 2006, Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party’s most outspoken hawk, lost his Democratic Senate primary and became an Independent. In 2011, the Democratic Leadership Council—having lost its influence years earlier—closed its doors.

By the time Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, in part because of her support for the Iraq War, the mood inside the party had fundamentally changed. Whereas the party’s most respected thinkers had once urged Democrats to critique liberal orthodoxy, they now criticized Democrats for not defending that orthodoxy fiercely enough. The presidency of George W. Bush had made Democrats unapologetically liberal, and the presidency of Barack Obama was the most tangible result.

He goes on to talk about Occupy, Warren and Sanders as reactions against Obama (or perhaps more aptly, the reality that electing a president isn’t enough.)

Arguably more significant than the Sanders campaign itself is the way Democratic elites have responded to it. In the late 1980s and the ’90s, they would have savaged him. For the Democratic Leadership Council, which sought to make the party more business-friendly, an avowed Socialist would have been the perfect foil. Today, in a Democratic Party whose guiding ethos is “no enemies to the left,” Sanders has met with little ideological resistance. That’s true not only among intellectuals and activists but among many donors. Journalists often assume that Democrats who write big checks oppose a progressive agenda, at least when it comes to economics. And some do. But as John Judis has reported in National Journal, the Democracy Alliance, the party’s most influential donor club, which includes mega-funders such as George Soros and Tom Steyer, has itself shifted leftward during the Obama years. In 2014, it gave Warren a rapturous welcome when she spoke at the group’s annual winter meeting. Last spring it announced that it was making economic inequality its top priority.

He points out the various ways in which the Clinton campaign is further to the left than it was in 2008 and how it continues to be pressed by Sanders’ agenda. Read the whole thing.  It’s very thought provoking.

The problem with the piece is that it doesn’t discuss foreign policy where everything is all mixed up at the moment. (Odd that Beinert of all people wouldn’t go there.) You’ve got interventionist and non-interventionists of all kinds in both parties, which is odd considering how polarized we are about everything else  This could shake the whole thing up. We are, after all, in an era of terrorism and instability in a very hot part of the world and it’s likely to get worse.

It’s a mistake to believe it’s all going in one single leftward trajectory. Politics rarely works as cleanly as all that, at least in the moment. And outside events can shake up the dynamic overnight so nobody should rest on their laurels. But as it stands I think he is correct. We are moving leftward, for a lot of reasons, and the Democratic Party is reluctantly moving with it.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are having a political seizure worse than the Democrats had in 1972. People like Bill Kristol are openly talking about having to form a third party. The establishment is finding they have very little power anymore having ceded it to its crazy media and conservative institutions. Even Big Money, with all the arrogance it assumed after Citizens United is flummoxed in the face of a clownish celebrity billionaire. The conservative movement is at war with itself over the tactical efficacy of repeatedly shutting the government and defaulting on the debt out of a belief they can enact their agenda by sheer force. They are, quite simply, a mess, and Democrats have more room to move than they’ve had in decades.

Beinert says that the next Republican president will be more liberal than George Bush and if that’s true, it looks like we aren’t going to see another Republican president for quite some time. I know the standard CW is that once they lose some elections they’ll get right, but there are structural impediments to that happening very soon.  The base of the GOP has been indoctrinated in radicalism for decades and the institutions they have built, if they sober up, have a lot of work to do to change how the base thinks about this. (They can always cheat, and have no problem rationalizing it, in which case it doesn’t really matter what the majority of the country wants.)

Still, if a Democrat wins with a leftward mandate, whether it be Clinton or Sanders, it is certain they will disappoint. Our system pretty much bakes that into the cake. Even if you go back and look at the most successful presidencies like Roosevelt’s or Reagan’s you see that they were always fighting their flanks. But that’s because it’s the flank’s job to fight the fight against the other team — and the center — while the president has to contend with a system that gives the opposing minority vast power to obstruct. It sucks, but it is what it is until Americans decide to change it.

In my lifetime, Carter, Clinton and Obama all made the left feel frustrated and disenchanted. But the truth is that presidencies are just one of the instruments we use to turn the ship of state to port and it takes a lot of momentum to get that done. In my view, that’s happening and it’s picking up steam. The best sign of it is the shrieking of the right wing as it watches its great movement lose its moorings.

But they accomplished a lot. Perhaps as much as the New Deal in their own way. And they aren’t finished yet. This will go back and forth, it always does. But right now, I do believe we’re heading back in the right direction, too slowly of course and, as always, in fits and starts.  Unless something happens. And something can always happen.

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