I went to the hospital to give some blood. So I heard some NPR. Despite what conservatives will tell you, NPR is not liberal. It is the most scrupulous news source you will find in terms of telling you what the two “sides” think on any issue. So I wasn’t surprised to hear the two sides of the debate on gun rights debate well represented. There aren’t just two sides of any issue, of course. And the two sides they presented were center-right and far-right — at least by any any international standard.

The two sides of the gun rights debate are familiar to you all. On the one side, you have the people who don’t want to do anything. They claim that it won’t do any good. The fact is, of course, if making guns slightly harder to buy would completely solve our gun violence problem, they would still be against them. So they are disingenuous. On the other side, you have people who think that “the least that can be done” is whatever. They want to close the gun show loophole or ban assault rifles or stop people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.

The Least That Can Be Don’t Won’t Do Much

As vile as the pro-gun types are, they have a point: doing “the least that can be done” really won’t do much of anything. Currently, there are more than 3 million AR-15s in the United States. It is sad that we can’t do the least that can be done. But doing the least that can be done is not doing enough. And it is entirely typical of how the left does politics in this country.

Over the last several decades, the left has given into the right on gun rights. And has there been a meeting of the minds in the middle? Have we gotten what President Obama likes to call “common sense gun laws”? No, of course we haven’t! We’ve simply gotten a more radical right-wing. We used to have a right wing that thought that proposals to ban hand guns was tyranny. Now we have a right wing that thinks that any limit to gun rights is tyranny. If a mentally unstable man can’t buy an assault rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition at a gun show, the Nazis are coming tomorrow.

Doing Little on Gun Rights

There’s a bigger problem with doing the least that can be done. When we do the least and it does no good, the right wing can say, “See! Told you it wouldn’t work!” We need to think bigger. We need to think a lot bigger. Zack Beauchamp wrote a great article, Australia Confiscated 650,000 Guns. Murders and Suicides Plummeted. That’s not surprising; that’s what happens when you actually try to solve a problem.

Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban might make people feel better. But it will be the typical American thing: not effective except as a pacifier. Did I mention that that there are more than 3 million AR-15s in the United States? And that was back in 2012. And that’s just one kind of assault rifle. I have no idea how many other assault rifles there are. But if you include guns in general, you find there there is just about as many guns in the United States as there are people.

Guns Won’t Protect Us from Tyranny

I don’t understand the issue either. I remember when I was a libertarian. Everyone was certain that if guns were taken away, then there would be tyranny. But the truth is that military technology has outgrown the idea of people defending themselves with their guns. Give the people all the guns, rocket launchers, and flame throwers they want! If the government wants to take over, it will.

We protect our liberty by protecting our democratic institutions. That means that people like the Bundys actually make us far less safe from tyranny. Are you afraid of government overreach? Fight for a strong media! Fight against funding for the CIA and the NSA! Fight for government transparency! Don’t fight for allowing ever more guns in this country.

But again: I’m not too concerned about the gun nuts. The leftists in the United States have empowered the gun nuts by trying to pacify them. We don’t need to slow the increase of gun ownership in the country; we need to lower the total number of guns Americans own. Because our fanatical commitment to guns is going to lead us toward tyranny. It won’t do a damned thing to protect us from it.

Early this morning, a man killed at least 50 people in the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse. Most of my liberal friends see this as another example of the problem of guns in the United States. And there’s a vague hope that this time maybe we will do something about it. But I think this is all a sign of just how out of touch all of us are with each other. If two dozen murdered children in Sandy Hook didn’t change things, this certainly won’t. But there’s more here. The shooter’s name is apparently Omar Mateen.

If this had just been some white guy named John Smith who went into Pulse and killed so many people, America would react in the normal way, “This is terrible! Now let’s do nothing!” But a bunch of people getting killed by a Muslim does cause action. It isn’t action that will do any good. But it is action. Suddenly, Donald Trump seems to have made a lot more sense when he said that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed in the country until we “figure this out.” This kind of thinking is the very definition of racism, but it isn’t recognized.

Right now at the Fox News website, the top story is, Breaking News: 50 Murdered, 53 Wounded in Possible Act of Islamic Terror in Orlando Gay Club. There’s no nuance here. It’s “Terrorism!” And everyone knows that death by terrorist is so much worse than death by Christian fundamentalist.

Of course, there is no such thing as death by Christian fundamentalist. When a Christian fundamentalist kills someone, we get little but nuance. And rightly so! Because people who go on killing sprees are messed up in the head. They aren’t rational warriors. (Well, most of the time; the 9/11 attacks were part brain washing and part peer pressure.) But when it comes to Muslims, we get none of that.

Check out this Fox News headline, Florida Nightclub Shooter Apparently Made Threats in the Past; Ex-Wife Claims He Beat Her. Now that strikes me as having some nuance, but the lede doesn’t follow, “The gunman who killed at least 50 people at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was a licensed security officer who claimed more than once that he had connections to Islamic terror groups, Fox News has learned, as the killer’s ex-wife reportedly said he was unstable and would beat her.”

But reading the whole article, I got the impression that Omar Mateen was mostly just a homophobe. Is that based on his religion? Probably, although most men don’t need a religion to be a homophobes. Mateen’s father said that his son became enraged when he saw two men kissing in Miami. It sounds like a hate crime committed by an unstable Muslim man. But in the end, none of that will matter.

In the weeks and months after this, people will remember vaguely that a Muslim killed a bunch of people. The fact it that his Muslim identification will be taken to be as critical, just as Robert Lewis Dear’s Christian identification is taken to mean nothing at all.

But maybe this is how ISIS defeats us. Because this is the kind of attack (even though almost certainly having nothing directly to do with ISIS) that will make Donald Trump become president. See Paul Bibeau’s Trump Tales Of Terror: Weird Stories about a Hideous Man and His Movement for details.

After ever one of these shootings, my gut reaction is, “Didn’t anyone notice that this person was stockpiling weapons and ammunition?” But I catch myself instantly. Stockpiling weapons and ammunition is so common among the paranoid gun freaks of this country, that it isn’t unusual. It’s just a particularly good day Joe’s Gun and Mass Shooter Emporium.

I have a bone to pick with Robert Reich. He put together a great video, Eight Reasons Why Republicans Must Dump Trump. He’s completely right about everything that is wrong with Donald Trump. And these are indeed eight reasons why normal human beings should not even consider voting for Donald Trump. But they aren’t reasons why the Republican Party should dump Trump. If anything, they are eight reasons why almost none of them would ever even consider dumping him.

Let’s go through the list, because it’s telling:

1. He divides us by race and ethnicity and religion;
2. His incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them;
3. He bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him;
4. He spreads baseless conspiracy theories;
5. His hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for years;
6. He believes climate change is not caused by humans, contrary to all scientific proof;
7. He proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their families, both in clear violation of international law;
8. He wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year.

There are only two reasons there that are not complete Republican orthodoxy. Number 3 is still largely true of the Republican Party, but party actors aren’t in general so obvious about it. But listen to Michael Savage some time and you will see that this is still at the core of Republican thought. Number 5 is quite true of the Republican Party, but the way that Robert Reich has presented it, it is too specific to Trump. Reich could have just as easily written, “Trump treats women in a demeaning way and tries to control their lives.” Then that too would be Republican orthodoxy.

Robert Reich Wants to Believe

I know what’s going on. Robert Reich still holds out hope that the “reasonable” Republicans will step up and take over the party. But that just isn’t going to happen. Look at what happened to the segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, they ran screaming for the Republican Party. But as the Republican Party has gotten more and more insane, we haven’t seen a huge exodus of Republicans to the Democratic Party. Instead, we’ve just seen more and more extreme claims from the Republicans.

This is why we heard throughout the 1990s that President Clinton wasn’t just a liberal but a “socialist” and even a “communist.” So there’s always a reason why the Republicans don’t change parties. And the real reason is that the Republican Party is still controlled by those bigots who left the Democratic Party because they didn’t think blacks ought to have the right to vote.

What I’m saying is not new. I’ve said it many times before and so have lots of other people. But as time goes on, people lose grasp of the truth. And that truth is that Donald Trump is not an outlier in the Republican Party. Sure, he has his own style. But what he stands for is what the party stands for. Just because Paul Ryan seems more reasonable than Trump doesn’t mean that he is. The truth is that they are very much the same and if they were in power together, they would get along just great.

And Robert Reich understands this. The only reason that Republicans have for dumping Trump is that he is almost certain to lose. Otherwise, there is nothing substantive that the Republicans can complain about when it comes to Donald Trump.

As you probably know, Bernie Sanders met with President Obama yesterday and then gave a press conference where he said he would work with Hillary Clinton to help the Democratic Party defeat Donald Trump. But he also said that he was still going compete in DC’s 14 June primary. And his reason is one that is close to my heart. He said that he thinks that DC should become a state. I’m with him. Puerto Rico should also be a state. But I don’t want to get side tracked. The speech was more or less a concession.

At the press conference, Sanders looked like his old self: rumpled suit, hair flying everywhere. It makes me wonder. Yes, I am very much in agreement with his policies. But is my commitment to Sanders also more personal? I identify with him. My hair is rarely combed. People often mistake me for a homeless person. But I think that substance matters more than style. And Sanders seems to be the same way. (He’s had that luxury since he represents a small state.)

Of course, Sanders also looked unhappy. And I think he’s allowed. I tend to think that he started his campaign much as Howard Dean started his in 2004: to get his issues more attention in the party. And then things really took off — to the point where he had a chance to win the whole thing. He needs a little time to lick his wounds. But as Robert Reich recently put it, “You’ve already succeeded.”

In a sense, Sanders never had a chance. As I have stated countless times, the Democratic Party didn’t like having to choose between Obama and Clinton in 2008 and this was their chance to have their cake and eat it too. But there was something else. The Clintons have deep roots in the African American community. This morning, Paul Krugman noted that Sanders didn’t get minority group inequality “with his exclusive focus on individual inequality.” This indicates more that Krugman didn’t follow Sanders’ campaign, being, as he was, so busy attacking it.

The fact that Hillary Clinton had a huge reservoir of good will in the African American community (And among older Democrats as well!) was not a trick; it was the result of her work in the Democratic Party over the last 40 years. That has to be applauded. This was a great campaign, even with all the anger on both sides. And now we are at the point that we work together to defeat a very frightening foe.

I don’t like revolutions. They don’t tend to work out well. Bernie Sanders didn’t not bring us a revolution. I think he brought something much better: the fear of a revolution in the Democratic Party. My biggest fear with Clinton is that she will “evolve” on the TPP and sign it into law. And that’s why all of us — not just Sanders supporters, but everyone who is in the democratic wing of the Democratic Party — needs to hold to task Clinton and the entire political world.

In a sense, there is always a war going on. We must constantly fight for the interests of the weak. The powerful never stop fighting for their own interests — they just hire people to do it. Even if Bernie Sanders had become president, we would have to continue to fight. We will continue to argue among ourselves about what the best policies are. But as I found when I tested myself, I side with Bernie Sander 98% of the time and Hillary Clinton 95% of the time. And Donald Trump: 24% of the time.

With Hillary Clinton as president, we will need to apply pressure to her. If Donald Trump becomes president, will with have to fight with all our strength. And we will still lose. So we are all in this together. Kumbaya My Party!

Fittingly since this is the third in this series, I decided on Nevada’s third congressional district (NV-03).  This one is marked as a toss up by most observers. The incumbent, Joe Heck, is attempting to move up to the Senate to take the spot that Harry Reid has occupied for ages.

The district equally divided. It has had a Republican Representative since 2010, even while twice voting for Obama. With an open seat, it really is anyone’s guess how NV-03 will go in November.

The primaries have been packed. Seven Republicans are running: Kerry Bowers, Michele Fiore, Sami Khal, Andy Matthews, Michael Roberson, Danny Tarkanian, and Annette Teijeiro. And six Democrats are too: Barry Michaels, Jacky Rosen, Jesse Sbaih, Steven Schiffman, Alex Singer and Neil Waite. What’s more, there is an Independent American Party candidate: Warren Markowitz.

The Democrats and Republicans are both pushing hard to get this seat. Both national party organizations have invested directly into several campaigns.

Republicans in NV-03

The Republican candidates of particular note are Michele Fiore, Michael Roberson, and Danny Tarkanian.  All three are experienced campaigners.  Michele Fiore and Michael Roberson are former state legislators. And Danny Tarkanian ran in the 4th District.

Of the three, Assemblywoman Michele Fiore is the one who is best known. She’s gotten national attention for her love of guns, her outrage inducing statements, and her role in the Oregon Malheur National Wildlife Refuge stand-off.  She is something of a libertarian — supporting marriage equality and cannabis legalization.

Michael Roberson has served as both Majority Leader and Minority Leader in the Nevada State Senate since 2010.  He is a fairly conventional candidate and has raised the most money. He’s a member of the Republican Young Guns.

The third candidate, Danny Tarkanian, was the Republican nominee in the 4th Congressional District race in 2012. But he lost badly to Democrat Steven Horsford in the general election. He is also a member of the Young Guns.

Democrats in NV-03

Of them, the top candidate from the establishment is Jacky Rosen. She is the president of Congregation Ner Tamid, and was personally recruited by Harry Reid to run. In addition, Rosen has the support of the Democrats’ Red to Blue program as well as Emily’s List.

But Jacky Rosen has a serious challenger in Jesse Sbaih. He is generously self-funded, and is the first to have his ads up.  Sbaih has an interesting backstory. He immigrated from Jordan with his family when he was 11 years old. Since then, he has become a very successful attorney. He’s also married to a physician with whom he has three children. He has been in the news, claiming that Harry Reid told him to not run because he is Muslim and that a Muslim couldn’t win in that district.

Outlook in NV-03

Since this is a fairly evenly split district, it is unclear who will win the primaries (next Tuesday). The Democratic primary has been quiet. The Republican primary, however, has been very contentious. Jon Ralston has been reporting on the various efforts from both sides. It looks like Roberson is benefiting from establishment support with a lot of SuperPac money.

Ultimately, if the establishment candidates win their primaries, the general election will be close. The April straw poll showed that it was almost exactly split between Rosen and Roberson.  So it will be an interesting race to watch in November.

It amazes me to think that only a few years ago, I thought Jonathan Chait was an insightful analyst — even when I disagreed with him. I no longer think that. He’s just sliding along on his reputation at this point. Yesterday, he wrote, How Can Hillary Clinton Win the Bernie Sanders Vote? Always loving the counter-intuitive take, the subtitle is, “By moving to the… right? That’s what the data says.” Oh my! Such shallow thinking.

Chait presented some data that showed that the Sanders holdouts — the ones saying they will never vote for Clinton — are actually more conservative than Hillary Clinton supporters. I have little doubt. It’s been well known that Sanders did best in open primaries. So he was pulling from independents. And his populist message certainly did appeal to conservatives, even though that was not the core of his support. But these are supporters who Clinton is most certainly not going to get — even if she does move to the right as Chait suggests.

At the same time, there is an opportunity cost. Clinton could lose support from the vast majority of Sanders supporters who do now plan to vote for her if she decided to make a sharp right turn. (Of course, she won’t do that. I don’t understand why so many people seem to think that politicians have no actual beliefs — as if they would all join the Nazi Party if it would get them elected.) So no: Clinton can’t win “the Bernie Sanders vote” by moving to the right.

This gets at something that has bugged me for months. Most Sanders supporters are like me: they don’t hate Hillary Clinton; they just like Bernie Sanders more. But despite this, Sanders supporters are painted with a broad brush using obnoxious Twitter trolls as the model. It bugs me especially because I like Hillary Clinton. There aren’t that many Democrats that I would have voted over her. Certainly Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown would top her. But she’s vastly superior to my own Democratic Representative, Mike Thompson.

It was interesting watching the coverage of last night’s primary. My biggest concern about Hillary Clinton is that she seems soft on the TPP. I’m afraid she will “evolve” on the issue. I don’t think there’s a strong probability there. Politicians reflect their times and I don’t think that Bill Clinton would support NAFTA if it came up today. So I’m not too worried. Just the same, listening to Donald Trump talk so forcefully against the TPP last night would have inspired me if I didn’t know he was a pathological liar.

The main thing is that there is no “Bernie Sanders vote.” There are millions of Bernie Sanders voters. And there are millions of Sanders and Clinton voters who want to see the Democratic Party become more liberal. I don’t think that’s true of Jonathan Chait, however. As Eric Loomis likes to point out: Chait thinks that Chait is the most liberal a reasonable person can be. And he clearly thinks the Democratic Party shifting to the left is a bad thing. So he has cause to cheer on Clinton to turn right to appeal to the “Bernie Sanders vote.”

As I write this, it is noon on election day here in California. I have no idea who will win in the presidential primary. It’s pretty close. But here’s the thing: I don’t care. Look: if things were reversed and it were Hillary Clinton saying that she was going to flip super delegates, I’d take that a lot more seriously. But Bernie Sanders (much like me) is an outsider. He’s been his own party for decades. He isn’t going to convince the Democratic Party elites to abandon Hillary Clinton.

And here’s another thing: I wouldn’t want them to. One of my big complaints about the Democratic Party is that it is not very loyal — at least not loyal in the way that the Republican Party is. The Democratic Party pretty much is the Hillary Clinton party. And we Sanders supporters need to do something about that over the next twenty years. Regardless, Bernie Sanders winning California would be cool, but it doesn’t change the election.

For the record, in addition to voting for Sanders, I voted for Loretta Sánchez for Senate, Nils Palsson for the House (mostly a vote against Mike Thompson), and Jim Wood for Assembly (he is the only one running). I also voted for local measure AA that (for a change) taxed property owners rather than consumers to clean up the Bay. And I voted against Prop 50, which would take benefits away from state legislators who are suspended because of legal matters. I’m sure that Prop 50 will win by an overwhelming margin because Americans (1) don’t believe people are innocent until proven guilty and (2) don’t believe in democracy. That was all that was on the ballot.

But while running my election day errands, I was listening to NPR. I was really struck by this story, California Republican Lawmaker Explains Why He’s Uncomfortable With Trump. The lawmaker in question is Assemblyman Rocky Chavez. He is a 28-year veteran of the Marines. And he thinks that Trump would be a catastrophe for the nation and the world. But he would never vote for Hilliary Clinton because she is “duplicitous.” And I thought that was really interesting. Here we have Trump who people like Chavez think might start a nuclear war. But that’s equally offset by the fact that Clinton might not always tell the truth.

If the choice for me was between Hitler and Trump, as much as I hate Trump, I would have to go with him. If I said I couldn’t vote for Trump in that case, I would be duplicitous. And you hear this all the time from Republicans: “Trump is totally unacceptable but I have some minor complaint about Clinton that makes her just as bad.” If they would just come out and admit the truth I wouldn’t mind: they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a Democrat.

Later, I heard the tail end of a discussion about Silicon Valley. And I heard this line, “…and allows the smartest people to contribute the most.” That certainly sums up what Silicon Valley thinks of itself as: a pure meritocracy where the best rise to the top. Of course, the reality is different. Just look at Carly Fiorina. But more than that, look at the conspiracy that Steve Jobs and other high tech CEOs engaged in to not hire each other’s employees. Have to keep those wages down. Once you’re at the top, pull that ladder away! And now they claim to be for Bernie Sanders on election day?

And finally, Bob Kerrey Says He Won’t Step Down as Chair of New University in Vietnam. I don’t particularly care about the issue and I don’t think that Bob Kerrey is really any worse than any other man in his position. But he mentioned that although the US did some terrible things during the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong were a thousand times worse. And the statement doesn’t raise even the smallest amount of dissent. We are America and therefore when we kill civilians it is just a mistake. The other side, of course, is just evil and loves to kill civilians. This from the country that used almost 400,000 tons of napalm in Vietnam.

But election day is always nice. I like the process. I don’t expect the US empire to be perfect. But that won’t stop me from complaining that it isn’t.