Month: October 2018

Another 9/11 lie to excuse his need for some ego stroking

by digby

Fact-check:

“I remember when we had the attack in Manhattan, we opened the stock exchange the next day. People were shocked.”

— President Trump, remarks at National FFA Organization Convention, Indianapolis, Saturday

“With what happened early today, that horrible, horrible attack in Pittsburgh, I was saying maybe I should cancel both this and that. And then I said to myself, I remembered Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy, he headed up the New York Stock Exchange on September 11th, and the New York Stock Exchange was open the following day. He said — and what they had to do to open it you wouldn’t believe, we won’t even talk to you about it. But he got that exchange open. We can’t make these sick, demented, evil people important.”

— Trump, remarks at a campaign rally in Murphysboro, Ill., Saturday

“Remember the teams, the Yankees, George Steinbrenner. He said we have got to play, even if nobody comes, nobody shows up, we have got to play.”

— Trump, a few minutes later

Memories are fallible, even for presidents. This is why they are supposed to have staffs who help make sure they stick to the facts and, if they get it wrong, make sure that the misstatements are corrected.

President Trump is not an ordinary president, and apparently he does not have a typical staff. So, in an effort to justify holding a campaign rally after 11 people at a synagogue were gunned down in Pittsburgh, the president twice referenced an event that did not happen.

This will be a very short fact check.

The Facts
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, struck at the heart of New York’s financial district, destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Is it possible that the New York Stock Exchange, located just blocks away, quickly reopened the next day?

No.

The NYSE and even the over-the-counter Nasdaq exchange never opened for trading the morning of the attacks and were closed until Sept. 17 — the longest shutdown since 1933. Other stock markets around the world were closed as well. It’s easy to figure this out using Google. There’s even a whole Wikipedia page.

The market plunged 7 percent that day, but the fact that things went smoothly was hailed as an achievement.

Just two years ago, the Wall Street Journal celebrated the reopening on its 15th anniversary with the headline: “9/17/01: Wall Street’s Proudest Day. A Look Back on the Reopening.”

“The reopening had both financial and psychological significance for the country,” the WSJ said. “In fact, it was Wall Street’s proudest day. The 9/11 attacks in New York were just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, and getting the markets to reopen was a round-the-clock effort, even as workers grieved for those who died. The market closure itself was the longest in nearly 70 years, and it was certain that there would be heavy trading and a stock drop when trading resumed.”

While Trump remembered “Dick Russell, a friend of mine, great guy,” as reopening the exchange, it was actually Dick Grasso, at the time chief executive of the NYSE. Grasso appeared on Fox News just a few weeks ago, on Sept. 11, to recall the reopening. Dick Russell was a senator from Georgia, known as a fierce defender of segregation.

Trump also implied that baseball did not pause for the attacks but started playing games as soon as possible. But the games were canceled that night — and then for the rest of the week. Professional baseball also did not start up again until six days later, on Sept. 17. The whole baseball season was pushed back a week.

We asked the White House for an explanation but did not get a response.

The Pinocchio Test

There are many reasons the president might have wanted to have continued with a campaign rally. But conjuring up a phony story about the stock exchanges and baseball after the Sept. 11 attacks is not a valid one. We can possibly understand one mistake, but not that it was repeated hours later. Is there no one on his staff who will dare tell him that his memory is faulty?

Four Pinocchios

This may not seem like much but it’s just so perfectly indicative of Trump.

He didn’t want to cancel his rally just because a bunch of Jews were gunned down by a right wing nut who would have loved Trump if only he’d hated Jews as much as he hates Latinos.

So he lied about the greatest terrorist attack in history to justify standing before a big crowd of drooling true believers and basking in their worship.

And, he’s so focused on his cult that he doesn’t even take the opportunity afforded every president to garner respect and affection even from political opponents by being the nation’s healer in a time of tragedy. He doesn’t know how to do it, he doesn’t care about it and frankly, he thinks it’s weak. So he just runs to his cult and performs for them. He feels better. They’re fine with it, it’s all good fun for them.

And the rest of us just look on — appalled and horrified.

It’s not just what he says but what they hear
by Tom Sullivan

Saturday’s mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue leaves behind not only waves of grief, but of commentary. To the anguished crying out this is not who we are after a wave of pipe bombs and another mass shooting, one Twitter user responded this is exactly who we are. We simply just refuse to see what the mirror reflects. There lies a portrait of Dorian Gray draped in a flag.

A news media cowed by years of being “worked” by movement conservatives remains wedded to an image of journalistic normalcy at odds with the world before its eyes. The press covers an attention-obsessed administration committed to inflaming divisions as it would any other, and even more. The president speaks. The president gets coverage. The administration lies. The press headlines the lies. He spews slurs and hate? There’s news at six. He says noxious things he knows the press will report and reporters report it. Just doing their jobs as the fire alarms go off at CNN.

The president invites his crowds to hate their neighbors. They do. Indeed, the president is so successful drawing angry crowds exactly because he both celebrates his own and reflects back his followers’ inner darkness. He encourages them to unleash it against named enemies foreign and domestic. When violence aimed at his enemies erupts, he cannot even mimic compassion, much less accept his own words could have inspired it. He morosely reads the White House’s official statement of sorrow and gets back to talking about his favorite topics: himself and his enemies.

Responding to lamentations and shock at worshipers gunned down in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, Dahlia Lithwick believes trying to argue causation between the president’s eliminationist rhetoric and the violence is pointless.

Democrat Andrew Gillum’s smackdown of Ron DeSantis in last week’s Florida gubernatorial debate made the case first. Gillum observed that Neo Nazis and white supremacists support DeSantis. Why? “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist,” he said. “I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”

Aside from whatever Trump believes, what his followers hear is presidential vilification of the free press as enemies of the people, of “globalists” like George Soros (read Jews), and of a long list of political enemies targeted last week with pipe bombs. The Beatles did not cause Charles Manson with “Helter Skelter,” but neither were they trying to. Trump eggs on his Mansons daily and feigns innocence when they act on what they hear.

Lithwick writes:

In the last week we have encountered two actual killers and one aspiring killer who believed their president when he said that caravans of murderous foreigners are approaching, and who believed that what their president wants is to have those caravans halted by force. They believed their president when he said that the media is hurting America and they believe their president wants to stop the media from doing that journalism by physical force. In the last week, we have seen that when the president makes or amplifies false claims about George Soros and globalists and refugees, people want to act on those claims. It doesn’t matter whether the president is being truthful or arch or ironic or funny or even if he admits moments later that he was just lying for sport. It does matter that millions of Americans believe this president wants them to rise up if the election is stolen by way of “vote fraud,” and that this president wants them to physically assault journalists who report bad things about him. That is what they hear every day, and that is what we need to worry about.

It makes no difference whether the president is “responsible” or not. He accepts none, ever. “The point is,” Lithwick writes, “that people who hate Jews and immigrants and minorities believe that when they commit violence against these people, they are behaving as the followers their president wants them to be.” Why shouldn’t they? That is what they hear in his words day after day.

Our message needs to be louder and clearer if America’s “hinged” community expects to exorcise the demons Trump has unleashed. Lithwick concludes:

We will try to show our children that there are stark differences between love and hate, between hopelessness and hope, and between truth and fabrications. We will also have to show our children what kind of people we want them to be, because as it turns out, when you show people who you want them to be, they believe you.

And some of Trump’s Redhats will act accordingly.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Spirits in the night: The Guilty (****) & John Carpenter’s The Fog [re-release] (***)

By Dennis Hartley

Nothing can be more frightening than your own imagination, especially when it comes to horror movies. Generally, a horror movie that instills fear and dread without “showing” us anything tangibly horrific can be designated as a “psychological thriller”. And the best psychological thrillers, from Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Hitchcock’s Marnie to more modern fare like Francois Ozon’s Swimming Pool and Christopher Nolan’s Memento aim to unsettle us further by presenting a protagonist whose grip on reality appears to unravel as we helplessly observe. Gustav Möller’s The Guilty is one such film.

Essentially a chamber piece set in a police station call center, The Guilty is a “one night in the life of…” character study of a Danish cop (Jakob Cedergren) who has been busted down to emergency dispatcher. Demonstratively glum about pulling administrative duties, the tightly wound officer resigns himself to another dull shift manning the phones.

However, if he was hoping for something exciting to break the monotony, he’s about to fulfill the old adage “be careful what you wish for” once he takes a call from a frantic woman who has been kidnapped. Before he gets enough details to pinpoint her location, she hangs up. As he’s no longer authorized to respond in person, he resolves to redeem himself with his superiors by MacGyvering a way to save her as he races a ticking clock.

Considering the “action” is limited to the confines of a police station and largely dependent on a leading man who must find 101 interesting ways to emote while yakking on a phone for 80 minutes, Möller and his star perform nothing short of a minor miracle turning this scenario into anything but another dull night at the movies. Packed with nail-biting tension, Rashomon-style twists, and completely bereft of explosions, CGI effects or elaborate stunts, this terrific thriller renews your faith in the power of a story well-told.

Just in time for Halloween, a 4K restoration of John Carpenter’s 1980 chiller The Fog debuts this weekend in select cities. Carpenter’s follow-up to his surprise 1978 low-budget horror hit Halloween didn’t conjure up quite the same degree of enthusiasm from filmgoers and critics, but still did respectable box office and has become a cult favorite.

Set in the sleepy hamlet of Antonio Bay on the California coast, the film opens with a crusty old salt (the great John Houseman) holding court around a campfire scaring the bejesus out of children with a local legend about a mysterious 19th-Century shipwreck on nearby rocks. This happens to be the eve of the 100th anniversary of the incident; the codger hints at portents of imminent phantasmagoric vengeance. ‘Night, kids-sleep tight! Enter a winsome, free-spirited hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who catches a ride into Antonio Bay with one of the locals (Tom Atkins), just in time to see a dense, eerily glowing fog roll into town at the stroke of midnight (rarely a good sign). Mayhem ensues.

As is the case in most of Carpenter’s oeuvre, narrative takes a back seat to suspense and atmosphere. In another Carpenter trademark (and ongoing nod to one of his Hollywood heroes Howard Hawks), there’s more character development than you find in contemporary horror fare, which tends to emphasize shock and gore. The film isn’t gore-free, but (cleverly) it’s more aurally than visually graphic; which showcases the craft of the Foley artists and sound engineers (as much of the action literally takes place in a fog).

It’s not Carpenter’s crown jewel (which for me is Escape from New York), but it gave me a few jumps and a guilty twinge of 80s nostalgia. The cast is game, especially 80s scream queen (and Mrs. Carpenter at the time) Adrienne Barbeau as a late night radio DJ who broadcasts from an old lighthouse. I also enjoyed watching the Hollywood royalty on board (Houseman, Curtis’ mom Janet Leigh, and Hal Holbrook) doing their best to lend gravitas to the proceedings (which they must have had a tough time taking too seriously).

Due to technical limitations, the preview copy I watched was not in true 4K format, but it was the newly restored version, which highlights striking work by cinematographer Dean Cundey (Halloween, Escape from New York, The Thing, Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, et.al.) and is a noticeable upgrade over murky, faded prints that I’ve seen circulating on cable and home video for years. I imagine that on the big screen, you can nearly make out what’s lurking in the mist now…

Wandering the night in search of a Halloween flick? Walk this way (no…THIS way):

Fright night at the art house: a top 10 list
Frightfully amusing: 10 horror comedies for Halloween
The docu-horror picture show: Top 10 documentaries for Halloween
Creepy lodgers and seedy inns: 10 worst places to stay in the movies
Hitch by ten best

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

More leadership

by digby

What the hell?

Here's the video. Trump jokes that he considered canceling his speech to FFA because his hair got wet while talking to reporters (about the mass shooting in Pittsburgh). pic.twitter.com/wLb4hpERgF— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 27, 2018

Hours after a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh that killed at least 11 people, President Donald Trump gave a political speech at the Future Farmers of America Convention. During the speech, Trump, unprompted, discussed how his hair was ruined earlier in the day when he had to stand outside in the rain by Air Force One answering questions about the shooting.

“By the way, somebody just said your hair looks different today,” Trump said in Indianapolis.

“I was standing under the wing of Air Force One doing a news conference earlier this morning, a very unfortunate news conference, and the wind was blowing and the rain and I was soaking wet and that’s what I ended up with today,” he added.

Trump, whose hair has long been the subject of much mocking and questioning, continued: “And I said but at least you know it’s mine.”

As the crowd laughed, Trump said that he mentioned the possibility that he should “cancel this “arrangement because I have a bad hair day.”

“The bad news,” he added, was, “somebody said, ‘actually it looks better than it usually does.’”

I actually did.

While speaking at the event, Trump also confirmed that his rally scheduled for later in the day in Illinois would go ahead despite the deadly shooting.

“We can’t let evil change our life and change our schedule,” he said. “We can’t do that. We have to go.” He added: “I’ll go. Not that I want to go. But I think I actually, in reverse, have an obligation to go.”

I’m sure they’ll all have a lot of fun.

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Recall Trump’s closing Steve Bannon special in 2016

by digby

Josh Marshall analyzed it at he time:

From a technical and thematic perspective it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semitic dog whistles, anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic vocabulary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whistles. The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO).

The Trump narration immediately preceding Soros and Yellin proceeds as follows: “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington [start Soros] and for the global [start Yellen] special interests [stop Yellen]. They partner with these people [start Clinton] who don’t have your good in mind.”

For Blankfein: “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the [start Blankein] pockets of a handful of large corporations [stop Blankfein] and political entities.”

These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary lined up with high profile Jews as the only Americans other than Clinton who are apparently relevant to the story. As you can see by my transcription, the Jews come up to punctuate specific key phrases. Soros: “those who control the levers of power in Washington”; Yellen “global special interests”; Blankfein “put money into the pockets of handful of large corporations.”

This is an anti-Semitic ad every bit as much as the infamous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Horton ad were anti-African-American racist ads. Which is to say, really anti-Semitic. You could even argue that it’s more so, given certain linguistic similarities with anti-Semitic propaganda from the 1930s. But it’s not a contest. This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas. That’s the only standard that really matters.

This is intentional and by design. It is no accident.

Trump has electrified anti-Semites and racist groups across the country. His own campaign has repeatedly found itself speaking to anti-Semites, tweeting their anti-Semitic memes, retweeting anti-Semites. His campaign manager, Steven Bannon, is an anti-Semite. The Breitbart News site he ran and will continue running after the campaign has become increasingly open in the last year with anti-Semitic attacks and politics.

Beyond that, this shouldn’t surprise us for a broader reason. Authoritarian, xenophobic political movements, which the Trump campaign unquestionably is, are driven by tribalism and ‘us vs them’ exclusion of outsiders. This may begin with other groups – Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, Muslims. It almost always comes around to Jews.

It’s true there is son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Jew and Ivanka, who converted to Judaism. But this isn’t terribly surprising. Kushner appears to be conscienceless. And as I noted here, there is a storied history of anti-Semites being happy to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews.

There’s been a lot of discussion of anti-Semitism and the Trump campaign but a fierce resistance to coming to grips with the fact that anti-Semitism is a key driving force of the Trump campaign, that the campaign itself is an anti-Semitic one even though the great majority of Trump’s supporters are not anti-Semites. When he closes out his campaign with a blatantly anti-Semitic ad, it’s time to rethink that resistance.

He may be too stupid to know that when he starts talking bout “globalists” and “nationalists” the anti-Semitism is baked in.

But what’s Jared and Ivanka’s excuse?

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“I would never kill them —- well….”

by digby

This just seems like a good day to remind people of the kind of “jokes” Trump used to make on the campaign trail about killing reporters.

He was referring here to the criticism of his great admiration for Vladimir Putin when Putin has had critics in the media killed:

Tens of millions of people in this country love this man.

He’s not funny.

When refugees became “invaders”

by digby

This is the refugee organization that bigoted monster was so angry at that he stormed a synagogue and committed mass murder this morning:

Founded in 1881 originally to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, HIAS has touched the life of nearly every Jewish family in America and now welcomes all who have fled persecution.
[…]
Because we have helped more than 4.5 million people escape persecution, HIAS is uniquely qualified to address the modern refugee situation, which has mushroomed into a global humanitarian crisis.

We understand better than anyone that hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia must be expressly prohibited in domestic and international law and that the right of persecuted people to seek and enjoy refugee status must be maintained. And because the right to refuge is a universal human right, HIAS is now dedicated to providing welcome, safety, and freedom to refugees of all faiths and ethnicities from all over the world.

Starting in the 2000s, HIAS expanded our resettlement work to include assistance to non-Jewish refugees, meaning we became involved in the aftermath of conflicts from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia, Vietnam, and the successor states to the former Soviet Union. We began to work in countries where refugees fled to identify those in immediate danger to bring them to safety. We realized that there were many refugees who would not be resettled and that it was important for us to help.

We began a new chapter in 2002 when we established operations in Kenya to provide protection to refugees from several African countries plagued by conflict, to advocate on their behalf, and to resettle the most vulnerable. This was the beginning of HIAS’ work to build safe communities for refugees in the countries of first refuge where the majority now remain indefinitely.

HIAS recently celebrated 130 years of helping refugees escape persecution and resettle in safety; reuniting families who have been separated; and helping them build new lives in safety and freedom. HIAS continues to resettle the most vulnerable refugees of all faiths and ethnicities from all over the world. We facilitate the application process for the most vulnerable refugees who can be resettled in countries around the world. In the U.S. we work with local social service organizations around the country to welcome refugees and help them integrate into their communities and build new lives.

Finally, we continue to be on the front lines, working with refugees in camps and cities from Kenya to Ecuador. We are the only Jewish organization whose mission is to assist refugees wherever they are.

Our president is right this minute demonizing refugees coming to the US borders as invaders. Last week he claimed they were being paid by “globalist” George Soros. The man who committed these murders also blamed HIAS for “the invaders.”

This is all of a piece.

It used to be normal that the US would take in refugees. Donald Trump has admitted fewer refugees into this country than any year since 1977.

The Trump administration’s rationale is that limiting the number of refugees entering the country is an important component of public safety.

A report from the libertarian Cato Institute released in 2016 indicated that the risk to an American of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack in any given year was 1 in 3.64 billion.

Remember, one of his winning campaign promises was to send Syrian refugees back.

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“Eh, it’s a violent world. Waddaya gonna do?”

by digby

The worst post mass shooting statement from a leader in history:

TRUMP: “This would be a case for, if there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him. Maybe there would’ve been nobody killed except for [the gunman]… [but] this is a world with a lot of problems & it has been for many, many years.” pic.twitter.com/85LCTAl0ym

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2018

Trump laments that there’s nothing he can do about gun violence: “Before I ran for office I’d watch instances w/churches & other things. I’d say ‘what a shame, what a shame.’ But it’s even tougher when you’re POTUS & you have to watch this kind of a thing happen. It’s so sad.” pic.twitter.com/RUdP6OyDua

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2018

REPORTER: Is there anything we can do to stop gun violence?

TRUMP: “Well, the violence, you look at violence all over the world, the world is violent…I think one thing we should do is stiffen up our laws in terms of the death penalty…they should suffer the ultimate price.” pic.twitter.com/0aHhOuiIA2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2018

Six cops were shot so the “they should have had an armed guard” excuse doesn’t hold water. And most mass shooters either kill themselves or are killed by cops. They seek the death penalty for themselves.

And everything else. Jesus Christ.

There’s never been any leader on earth as bad as this guy. He’s incapable on every level.

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Trump’s midterm plan comes to life

by digby

In the wake of the last week’s violence and terror, it’s a good idea to recall that ginning up these crazies is part of a well-planned strategy. Axios reported this last February:

Here’s Trump’s real plan for ’18:

A source close to the White House tells me that with an eye to getting Republicans excited about voting for Republicans in midterms, the president this year will be looking for “unexpected cultural flashpoints” — like the NFL and kneeling — that he can latch onto in person and on Twitter.

The source said Trump “is going to be looking for opportunities to stir up the base, more than focusing on any particular legislation or issue.”

One of D.C.’s savviest Democrats had come to the same conclusion, without my even mentioning it.
Matt Bennett, c0-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, said: “His administration is cranking away on these Potemkin legislative efforts.”

“But what he’s really interested in is storylines revolving around him — driving the conversation with whatever crosses his mind at that moment, and then comes out of his mouth or his fingers.”

Be smart … All that is more evidence for our continuing reminder to you that Trump will be more Trump this year:

With the departure of centrist aides and the gravitational pull of midterms in November and his reelection race in 2020, Trump’s nationalist campaign instincts are likely to get even more sway than they did last year.

Trump is decrying “hate” on my TV right now.

And he’s blaming the victim again, saying they didn’t have enough protection inside the temple.

But look at what this shooter was tweeting:

alleged suspect had post 2hrs ago blaming jewish immigration resettlement org for caravan, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people”— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) October 27, 2018

I’d say the caravan would fall under the category of “unexpected cultural flashpoints.”

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Maybe improve their lives?
by Tom Sullivan

Lost in the pre-election horse-race coverage, the latest in pipe-bomb news, and her own DNA kerfuffle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s American Housing and Economic Mobility Act has not drawn headlines. For all her skills on the stump, Warren is still a policy wonk. A real one, not an over-hyped wannabe like House Speaker Paul Ryan. Warren’s policy proposals, solid though they are, draw fleeting press.

Mehrsa Baradaran and Darrick Hamilton dive into her bill to address decades of federal housing discrimination dating back to the New Deal. The bill is the first since the Fair Housing Act aimed at “redressing the iterative effects” of the kind of housing discrimination Ta-Nehisi Coates chronicled in his 2014 “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic. Anyone still needing a primer in redlining and its effects on disfavored communities can find one there.

Basically, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration that helped build the American middle class left black families behind. The programs, with private lenders in tow, refused to insure mortgages for nonwhites. White families built wealth in their homes they could pass along to their children. They used their equity to start businesses. Meanwhile, redlined neighborhoods stagnated, passing along only intergenerational poverty.

Warren’s bill seeks to redress the problem in part with a down-payment assistance program:

The bill directs HUD to provide a grant that would be equivalent to an FHA loan down payment to all low- and middle-income first-time homebuyers who live in formerly redlined communities that are still low income. While many first-time homebuyers have help from family in putting together a down payment, government discrimination robbed most families in redlined neighborhoods of that opportunity.

The bill also extends the Community Reinvestment Act to include nonbank lenders and credit unions that now provide half of all mortgages. Warren would expand Fair Housing Act protections from discrimination, Baradaran and Hamilton write, to “sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status, and source of income, including government benefits.”

Perhaps the greatest sticking point for Warren’s bill will be its spending on affordable housing:

The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act also addresses the poverty caused by generations of housing discrimination. Black families are more likely to rent their homes because of historic exclusion from the housing market and restriction from accumulating and passing down wealth in general. In recent years, a severe shortage of affordable housing affecting every county in America has caused rents to spike for low- and middle-income renters, stretching their budgets and putting them at risk of eviction. The bill would invest $45 billion a year for 10 years in proven federal programs that use public capital to subsidize the construction and preservation of housing that’s affordable to working families. An independent analysis by Moody’s Analytics suggests this investment will produce more than 3 million new units and that new supply will pull down rents by 10 percent and create 1.5 million new jobs. In addition, the bill provides $2 billion in new grants to states to help homeowners and communities targeted with the most abusive loans before the financial crisis—often communities of color—where many homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth. These grants could be used for loan modifications that include principal reduction, purchasing or rehabilitation of vacant lots to increase neighborhood property values, or providing loans to negative equity borrowers to allow them to maintain or rehabilitate their homes.

New Deal housing assistance demonstrated the “iterative and multigenerational value of wealth creation” government assistance can provide. The question is whether a white America falling out of the middle class and intent on protecting its gains from encroachment by other-hued neighbors will support such a program. Republicans now stand behind democratic principles only so long as they win. Republican legislators support government spending only so long as it benefits those who support them at the polls. Warren’s proposal does not.

With nearly 30 million Latinos eligible to vote, Democrats might want to emphasize the potential for Warren’s housing proposal to help not just black voters, but a Latino community struggling to climb into the middle class. On The Daily Friday, Jose A. Del Real of the New York Times observed that Latino voters are not as monolithic as both major parties treat them. Latinos “care about a lot more issue than they are being spoken to about.” Immigration is not the primary driver of their participation in elections. Like other Americans, they care about mental health, education for their kids, and paycheck issues. They care about building middle class lives for themselves.

Eric Levitz writes at New York magazine:

On the eve of the 2014 midterms, just 35 percent of Latino voters told Pew Research that they were paying “quite a lot” of attention to the upcoming elections; the latest Pew poll puts that figure at 52 percent. Meanwhile, 55 percent of Hispanic voters say they are “more enthusiastic” about voting in this year’s midterm than they have been in previous years.

And only a small minority of those voters are excited to cast a ballot for the party of Trump. According to Pew’s data, two-thirds of Latino adults say the Trump administration’s policies have been harmful to Hispanics; half have serious concerns about their “place in American society” now that Trump is president (up from 41 percent in 2017); 55 percent say they are worried that either they, a family member, or friend could be deported; 69 percent disapprove of Donald Trump; and 63 percent of registered Latino voters prefer Democratic congressional candidates to Republican ones, up from 57 percent in 2014.

The “Elizabeth Warren wing” of the Democratic Party might want to laser-focus on what having Democrats back in control might mean both for those Americans struggling to reach the middle class and for those hanging on for dear life. Pitching her American Housing and Economic Mobility Act as a way to help African-Americans left behind by the New Deal may not provide the clout she’ll need to pass it. For that, she and the Democrats will need to build a broader coalition.

“Around 60% of registered Latino voters nationwide are not even being contacted by these campaigns,” Del Real says. “And when they are, it’s largely focused on President Trump and his comments which didn’t motivate them to turn out in 2016, and about immigration policy which we’ve been hearing about for decades.”

Maybe they would rather hear about how Democrats will improve their lives?

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.