One thing that drives me crazy is this idea that the Greeks invented Democracy. Even if you go over to the Wikipedia page History of Democracy, Athens as held up as the first real democracy. Gratefully, it does discuss what it calls proto-democracies. But there is a problem with this: ancient Athens didn’t have much of a democracy. And truthfully, neither does the United States.

The Important Kind of Democracy

I found an excellent article from the May 1919 issue of American Journal of Sociology, The Origins of Democracy. It is by J L Gillin of the University of Wisconsin. He notes that there are different kinds of democracies. But his interest is in “democracies that provide equality of opportunity[1] as between individuals and different classes, not only political, but educational, social, and economic, opportunity.” In other words, social democracy.

Gillin then bluntly notes, “Nowhere as yet has this form of democracy been fully realized.” I now see that this kind of social democracy as what we really need to be working toward. Conservatives, by definition, will always see the current power structure as right. Thus, when slavery was common, they saw it as the way things should be. And the extreme lack of democracy in all ways (even political) is seen as correct. The end of history!

Democracy in Tribal Groups

Gillin quoted Lewis H Morgan on the Iroquois confederacy:

What’s more, Morgan wrote:

Gillin discussed many other ancient democratic systems, including the Hebrews. But the most interesting is his contention that democracy arose out of the natural connections of small tribes of as few as 50 people.

More recent work suggests that pre-neolithic groups were generally egalitarian. It was the rise of cities and agriculture that brought social hierarchy (eg, kings, priests) and set roles for the sexes.

Hardwired for Democracy

Humans appear to be hardwired for democracy. In Nature Human Behaviour Kanakogi et al published Preverbal Infants Affirm Third-Party Interventions That Protect Victims From Aggressors (30 January 2017). What this seems to indicate is that babies as young as six-months-old have an innate sense of justice. And democracy is all about justice.

The problem is that socialization leads us to accept that certain injustices aren’t. That’s where we get ideas like the divine right of kings and meritocracy. It’s funny — Isn’t it? — that the overwhelming number of meritocratic people are third basers. When believers in meritocracy are pushed on this issue, they always retreat into genetics. And not only is this contrary to what science teaches us, it is just the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings.

Short-Circuiting Democracy in the West

Most people believe we are better off now than in the past. But pre-neolithic tribes seem to have a stronger sense of democracy. And even in the last 40 years, we’ve seen the United States regress substantially with regards to egalitarianism and democracy. This has reached a point where Republicans, by and large, don’t even believe in democracy.

If we are to survive, we start by seeing that democracy is not some western concept that we just “get.” Rather, we have developed a society that does all it can to stratify us for no reason other than to make the powerful more so. And this makes sense. In a tribe of 50 people, you simply can’t be that much more powerful than anyone else. In a global society of 7 billion, you can be much more powerful.

The fact that Mark Zuckerberg has approximately a half-million times as much wealth as the median American makes no sense. Yet most people are so used to this kind of un-democratic fact that it doesn’t even occur to them that there is a problem.

We Need to Change

Social democracy is our birthright. But we have allowed a system to thrive, based on the myth of meritocracy, that deprives us of it. Democracy is not a western idea. But the west has done an amazing job of retaining the pretense of democracy while depriving it of most of its meaning.

[1] Gillin is not using this phrase as it is normally used in political discourse today as simply a way to justify actual inequality. Clearly, real equality of opportunity is not just that the poor have the same legal opportunity as the rich. There is no equality of opportunity when a poor person has no capital to start a business while the rich have millions of dollars. The use of “equality of opportunity” in this case is nothing but propaganda meant to obscure the truth and stop social change.

[2] This is a slightly difficult concept. It is basically the group of people who are allowed to vote. It’s like “property owners” at the start of the United States. But instead, the group is defined by blood-relations.

I have been really annoyed listening to people talk about who the Democrats should nominate for president. It’s been made all the more annoying listening to The Villagers gush about Joe Biden. That’s nothing against him. I like him. He’s a great retail politician. I loved watching him beat the crap out of Paul Ryan during the 2012 Vice-Presidential Debate. But who cares? He’s run for president twice and lost both times. Democrats like him but they don’t want him as their presidential candidate. He’s polling high because people know his name. That’s it. If he runs, he will again embarrass himself.

For months, my choices have been Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown. But I’ve evolved on the issue.

Elizabeth Warren

Even though I defended Warren on her Native American heritage business, there’s no doubt that she handled it poorly. Ultimately, I think that Donald Trump — the trust-fund baby with half a brain — managed to out-maneuver her.

But don’t get me wrong: the Democrats can run a little yellow dog. It doesn’t matter. If the economy is tanking in 2020, that little yellow dog with a (D) after its name will win. And the Democrats could nominate the second coming of Jesus Christ and if he had a (D) after his name, he’d go down in flames (Haha!) if the economy has a minor recession next year and comes roaring back in 2020.

But I just don’t think that Warren is going to make a great president. I fear it will be too much like Obama’s presidency where her naivete will hurt the country. (This is in an “opportunity cost” way: she won’t get as much good work done as she could have.)

Of course, if she is the nominee, I will proudly vote for her.

Bernie Sanders

And then we come to my choice in 2016: Bernie Sanders. I still like him — a lot. But there are things about him that do bother me. But rather than go my own way, I think I will address Mehdi Hasan’s article, Critics Say Bernie Sanders Is Too Old, Too White, and Too Socialist to Run for President in 2020. They’re Wrong. He counters five arguments against Sanders, so let’s go through them.

He’s Behind in the Polls

I’ve already addressed this to some extent. Hasan is right: Biden is beating Sanders in the polls. And this has all the relevance as the fact that my truck needs an oil change. We are one month short of two years from the 2020 presidential election. We are over a year from when the primaries even start. As Hasan noted: at this time in 2014, Jeb Bush was not just the front-runner in the Republican primary, he was the front-runner by double-digits! Fun fact: Jeb Bush suspended his presidential run after South Carolina — the third primary contest!

He’s Too White

On this issue, I don’t think that Hasan did a very good job. He noted two things. First, a number of high-profile African Americans supported him. Second, Sanders has done a lot of outreach to the African American community. I can counter both of these. Sanders didn’t get very many high-profile endorsements and he’s continued to make racially insensitive errors.

A much better argument is just to note that Clinton did poorly with blacks in 2008 and great with them in 2016. If Sanders does manage to have a lot of support in the 2020 primary, I expect him to do much better with the African American community.

So even though I don’t find Hasan’s arguments persuasive, I agree with him. Bernie is not “too white.”

He’s Too Old

This is probably my biggest problem with Sanders. Hasan notes that Nancy Pelosi is older than Sanders. Yes, but not as old as when he runs for president and not nearly as old as when he finishes his first tern. He notes that Biden is almost as old as him. But who cares? I could be wrong, but Biden doesn’t even exist in my political universe.

Hasan also mentions that Warren will be 71. And that gets to my main point: brain function. Adult brain function doesn’t normally change that much over time — until the mid-70s. So I’m not really concerned about Warren. She would be 79 at the end of her second term. She was an academic and that helps with brain function. And she is a woman and they do not generally decline as fast as men.

Sanders would be 87 at the end of two terms. I do think humane instincts are more important than mental power. But this is an important job. And you know what Harry Callahan said:

He Isn’t a Democrat

This is something that annoys me a little bit. The reason is that Sanders is not a socialist. I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn over him any day because Corbyn is a socialist. Sanders is just a typical New Deal Democrat. And that’s great! But why the big deal of refusing to join the Democratic Party? We don’t have a parliament. We have a two-party system. Sanders is a Democrat and he should just accept it.

Hasan’s primary argument is, “So what?” That works very well for me. Personally, I feel that Sanders was treated almost as badly in 2016 as Jesse Jackson was in 1988. Unfortunately, it matters a great deal for a whole lot of Democrats. There are a lot of Clinton supporters who seem to hate Sanders more than Trump. And if that’s a bit hyperbolic, a lot of people hold Sanders partly responsible for her loss. That’s totally unfair, but since when was politics fair?

He’s a Socialist

Hasan says the usual things: the word doesn’t have much power anymore; among democrats “socialism” is more popular than “capitalism”; it’s going to be hard for Republicans to demonize him with the word since they called Obama and Bill Clinton — both conservative Democrats — socialists. I’ll add another one: he’s not a socialist!

Why I’m Not Keen on Sanders

It should be clear that my main problem with Sanders is his age. But I also don’t like the fact that the Democratic establishment is going to go after him even harder this time. Just the same, I hear a lot of Democrats on Twitter saying, “We are united!” When I hear that kind of thing it makes my ass twitch. It’s the kind of thing people say right before a major screw-up.

But there is another reason I’m not as keen on Sanders. Although I agree with him on most things, we part ways significantly over policing and guns. That wouldn’t be a problem if there weren’t someone else who I agreed with more.

But again, if he is the nominee, I will proudly vote for him. Sadly, just like a lot of the ignorant Jill Stein voters in 2016, I feel certain that a lot of establishment Democrats will not vote for Sanders if he is nominated. All this tribalism drives me crazy.

Sherrod Brown

I’ve always like Sherrod Brown. He’s kind of my perfect politician: a labor Democrat. In terms of policy, he really isn’t different than Warren or Sanders. But Brown has deep ties with organized labor. And I really think if workers are ever going to get any power in this country, it’s going to take more than policy; it’s going to take a revitalization of organized labor.

But earlier this year, I didn’t know that much about Brown outside of his economic positions. So I researched him. And I found that other than a mixed record on drugs, I agree with him pretty much across the board. He has everything Bernie has going for him and nothing he has going against him.

And he has something else that was critical to Sanders in 2016: authenticity. He is not a latecomer to this party. He’s been pushing the same policies for decades. In the 1990s, he wasn’t a New Democrat.

Summary: 2020

So I hope that Sherrod Brown runs. I think if he does, he’s going to blow away the pretenders like Biden, Harris, and Booker. But who knows? He may not even run. I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is. (Yes, even the little yellow dog.) I’m united with that cause. Sadly, I’m not so sure about a lot of other Democrats — and that includes people on both sides of this ridiculous conflict.

#SherrodBrown2020

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Trump is not some pernicious force in American politics. He is, instead, just a symptom of a Republican Party that has lost all of its moorings to liberal democratic government. This has not been a surprise to me. In the early 1990s I noticed conservatives talking about how democracy wasn’t that great. And for good reason! They saw that what they believed in as not popular.

But I bring this up because most Americans do see Trump as some outlier. My father, for example, hates Trump but absolutely cannot see that other than being personally coarse, Trump is a standard issue Republican. Indeed, Trump is in many ways better than you garden-variety Republican. Let’s look at the case of Chai Feldblum.

Chai Feldblum

Feldblum is a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Obama first put her on the board, but Trump just waved her through for her second term. And why wouldn’t he? She is an LGBT advocate and a lesbian. And Trump really doesn’t have problems with the LGBT community. (Obviously, if it comes to it, Trump will demagogue anything and anyone.)

But standard-issue Republican Mike Lee has a problem with Chai Feldblum: she’s anti-religious! So he’s holding up not just her confirmation but two others. I’d go through his complaints, but there really isn’t anything to them.

It’s really just what I’ve talked about with regard to the supposed War on Christmas. The problem for conservative Christians is that not treating Christianity as the One True Religion is the same as attacking it. Saying “Happy holidays!” isn’t good enough. They want, “Happy holidays but remember that unlike those other religions, Christianity is true!”

Mike Lee

That’s what Mike Lee is up to. Feldblum has called for more inclusive kinds of group structures: “partnerships, households, kinship relationships, and families.” Notice: families is in there. But the fact that it isn’t the only structure that is in there is not good enough for Mike Lee and the other Good Christians™ with all their Christian Love™.

It’s a shocking thing, really. Mike Lee wants to limit the franchise of marriage — explicitly. Yet he has the hubris to say that Feldblum is the one who is an opponent of marriage.

This is Mike Lee! He’s been a Republican in the Senate for 8 years. Certainly, he has been considered conservative. But there was no outrage because nothing really stands out about him compared to other Republicans.

The GOP Is the Problem

And that’s the point: the Republican Party is horrible. The difference between a Donald Trump and a Mike Lee is that Trump is obvious in his vileness and Lee is worse in his vileness.

Yet if Mike Lee had been president, I don’t think that the Democrats would have picked up 40 House seats last month. And this is terrifying.

Let’s face it, the next Great Demagogue will be a whole lot smarter than Trump. And he’ll be smooth! People won’t be marching in the street because he seems like an okay guy. Sure, we may disagree with him but at least we can speak reasonably with him. And then he will instruct the military to shoot migrant children at the border.

Seeming Reasonable Isn’t Enough

But isn’t it better when our beastly behavior comes from a man who seems reasonable?

Well, no; no it isn’t.

And this is why we have to continue to focus on the Republican Party itself and the way that it is destroying our country. We must destroy the Republican Party before it can destroy the United States as a relatively free and democratic country.

The Industry for Those Who Dream Only of Money

Stephen McBride is the editor of RiskHedge Report — a stock analysis company. You know the kind of thing: a must-read website (used to be a newsletter) for people who are bigtime stock traders who are inexplicably not rich. How could following widely circulated tips not be a foolproof way to beat the competition?

McBride is such a successful stock trader that he is the editor of the modern equivalent of a tip sheet and a writer for another magazine of the inexplicitly non-rich, Forbes.

Netflix Is Shockingly Not a Good Investment Anymore

Thus, you might not be surprised when McBride reported, Netflix’s Worst Nightmare Is Coming True. I read the article because I thought McBride might have something to say about the increasing cost of bandwidth. But no, his point was that you shouldn’t buy Netflix for the same reason you shouldn’t by IBM: it seems to have peaked in its current state.

I don’t doubt him. This is the reason I don’t trade stocks: by the time I hear about a good company, everyone else knows. Netflix has been streaming video since 2007. And that is when the company really started raking in the money.

Disney Will Destroy Netflix

McBride’s main point is that Netflix is now getting major competition. So it’s dead. The problem is that Netflix has had competition since, well, 2007. Like Hulu. And Amazon Prime has been nipping at Netflix’s heals for years.

The big change is that Disney is coming out with a streaming system, Disney+, next year. (McBride knows it will be successful because he has a child so McBride will be Disney+.) Disney is planning to pull all of its content off Netflix at that time. That will cost Disney $300 million per year.

More Like Consumers’ Worst Nightmare Than Netflix’s

This move will require most people who want to keep streaming Disney films to buy Disney+. But if they want to continue to watch what are mostly exceptional Netflix-original shows and films, they will still need to continue their Netflix subscriptions. Most people will rightly blame Disney’s usual greed.

Side Note: Porno Mickey Is Coming!

McBride also claimed that Disney still had exclusive use of Mickey Mouse. Either he doesn’t realize that this annoying rodent goes out of copyright in 4 years, or he thinks that Disney will again be able to get the copyright term extended. I’m highly skeptical. At 95 years, no one without a major financial stake can think that a longer term will do anything but hurt creative work.

McBride’s Worthless Data

But McBride’s only real data is that Netflix stock went up at a very high rate for the first 6 months of this year and has since gone down. Now it is back to its trend line from 2014 until the beginning of 2018. In other words, his big scoop is… nothing.

McBride Might Have Been Right!

It is clear that the only purpose of this article is to allow McBride to brag about what an awesome company RiskHedge Report is since it has been skeptical (for reasons so obvious I know them) for some time. If McBride were really secure, he would have waited another 6 months to publish this when the data would be clear. Right now they aren’t at all. So I suspect that he published now because he knew there was roughly a 50 percent chance that in that time the data would show the opposite.

In the article, he also recommends that people buy Disney stock because of Disney+. But I’ve already mentioned a couple of reasons to be skeptical. Another one is that Disney has never run a streaming company. This could all be a catastrophe. But what do I know? Maybe all start-ups prefer to start each year $300 million in the hole.

Stock Analysts Aren’t Worth Much for Society

My point in discussing this is not to say that Netflix is a better investment than Disney. Or vice versa. Rather it is to note that places like RiskHedge Report are more dream factories than Disney and Netflix. The argument by Stephan McBride is so facile that only someone desperate to believe would.

And on a broader level, how is any of this good for our society? This isn’t a situation where Disney+ will make costs go down. Oh sure, maybe each one will cost less than they now do. But most consumers will end up paying slightly less than twice what they now pay. And it’s all because $12.5 billion per year in net profits just isn’t enough for Disney. And note, they make so much because they’ve been so successful in manipulating the government into forcing consumers to pay much more by enacting unconscionable IP laws.

No one can ever say of me, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” I really don’t care about money. Even making the little I do, I still end up giving a sizable percentage of my income to people even poorer than I am.

But Stephan McBride clearly cares a lot about money. But there is no reason to ask that question of him either. He clearly isn’t smart. He’s nothing more than a professional psychic. It’s just that the people who listen to him are richer than those who call The Psychic Hotline. And they think the fact that the drones at RiskHedge Report can push numbers around in a spreadsheet makes their proclamations any more believable.

It’s just a bunch of people with big but shameful dreams.

Ed Kilgore recently wrote an unfortunate article, Democrats’ 1982 Midterm Gains Looked a Lot Like 2018’s. Then Reagan Was Reelected in a Landslide.

I understand that Kilgore’s intent was positive: he is worried that Democrats are over-confident about taking the White House back in 2020. But there are ways to do this that don’t distort what we know about political science.

Facile Logic

The article is filled with facile comparisons of Trump and Ronald Reagan. For example:

“Democrats picked up 26 House seats, which was pretty impressive because they held 243 going into the election (they won 55 percent of the national House popular vote). They also gained seven net governorships, precisely the number won in 2018.”

Oh my! I guess I should go drown myself instead of face the prospect of Trump being a two-term president!

Reagan and Trump Coincidences

Some other amazing coincidences:

• Trump owns property in California and so did Reagan!
• Trump is 6"1' and Reagan was 6"1'!
• Trump was 70 when he was elected and Reagan was almost that old!
• Trump is mentally ill (narcissistic personality disorder) and Reagan was mentally ill (dementia)!
• Trump’s secretary was Reagan and Reagan’s secretary was Trump!

Trump’s Approval Wasn’t the Same as Reagan’s

Okay, most of Kilgore’s coincidences aren’t quite so facile. But they aren’t that much better. And in at least one case, he’s simply wrong: Trump has the same approval rating now as Reagan did at this time: 43 percent. To start with, he’s wrong on the numbers:

1. First, according to Pew, the polling average so far this year is less than 41 percent. And the yearly average is only 38 percent. Where Kilgore is getting his numbers is unclear.
2. What’s more, the most correct number for Reagan would be 44 percent, not 43 percent.
3. So Reagan was beating Trump by 6 percentage points.

But the numbers don’t even matter because Kilgore does not put these numbers in context. When Reagan saw these terrible numbers, the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent! Additionally, the unemployment trend was horrible: it was only 6.3 percent when Reagan entered office. This completely explains why Reagan was so unpopular in 1982.

Things couldn’t be more different for Trump. The unemployment rate went from 4.9 percent when he entered office to 3.7 currently. Yet despite these good economic numbers, Trump is distinctly less popular than Reagan.

But Kilgore just throws up two (incorrect) numbers and provides no context.

Trump Could Very Well Win in 2020

Don’t get me wrong: over the last two years, a lot of liberals have indicated that 2020 will be an easy election for the Democrats. And I always tell them the same thing: if the economy is still growing, Trump will win.

Note that my simple presidential election model predicted that Trump would win the election in 2016 by a very small margin. And it will predict that he wins re-election depending upon the employment numbers in the first 9 months of 2020.

But there are a couple of things that make me think he will not win re-election.

The first is that Trump did far worse than the economic numbers would indicate. Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes when Trump should have won it by a small amount.

The second is that the economy is at as good a place as the Federal Reserve will allow. Trump’s only real hope is that there is a quick downturn and recovery. It certainly could happen. But if I were a betting man, I’d go with the Democrats.

Summary

The last thing I want to see is the Democrats getting complacent. It was tragic that after Obama became president, the base dropped the ball. Even worse: so did Obama. And in 2016, if all those Jill Stein voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio had voted for Clinton, the Democrats would contract the White House — and the Supreme Court for a generation.

The Democrats need to fight hard in every election. 2018 showed how important this is.

But the 2020 election will not depend upon this year’s results. And the comparison with Ronald Reagan in 1982 is meaningless.

I’ve been meaning to write this for weeks. In some ways, it is hard to get too excited about, however. I can go through the propositions in July and tell you which good ones that are polling well will go down in flames because all the money spent on them.

Prop 10

This year, the primary example of this in Proposition 10.

The interesting thing about 10 is that it didn’t actually need much spending to be killed. The truth is that our “liberal” Californians are very much like our Silicon Valley plutocrats: they are all for liberal causes as long as it doesn’t require even the smallest personal sacrifice.

And the amazing thing is that Prop 10 doesn’t even do much. All it does is allow local governments to enact rent control if they want to. Currently, local governments are greatly limited regarding how much they can do to keep rents low.

Now, on one level, I’m not that keen on local control. As we have seen over and over, it is usually local governments that are most corrupt and evil. So I always had a small reservation about Prop 10. But I find it annoying that all the “local government is best” conservatives out there are voting against it. Remember: it doesn’t enact rent control; it only makes it available.

Other Stuff

Some propositions each year confuse me greatly. That was the case with Proposition 12. It sets how large a farm animal’s pen must be. I am voting for it. But both sides of 12 claim to be the real defenders of animals. And listening to them go back and forth makes my head spin.

One really good thing this year is that Kevin de Leon is running for US Senator against Dianne Feinstein. I know that she is going to win (although that itself is an indictment of our political system). But it is nice to have someone else to vote for. Feinstein’s sell-by date is about a decade old.

Votes

I am afraid this list is not very interesting. This is how a hard-core Democrat would vote. But that should surprise no one.

• Prop 1: yes
• Prop 2: yes
• Prop 3: yes
• Prop 4: yes
• Prop 5: no
• Prop 6: no
• Prop 7: yes
• Prop 8: yes
• Prop 10: yes
• Prop 11: no
• Prop 12: yes
• US Senate: Kevin de Leon
• Representative (5): Mike Thompson
• Governor: Gavin Newson
• Lieutenant Governor: Ed Hernandez
• Secretary of State: Alex Padilla
• Controller: Betty Yee
• Treasurer: Fiona Ma
• Attorney General: Xavier Becerra
• Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara
• Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond

But just make sure you vote! Also: it’s important that Tony Thurmond win because that means Marshall Tuck will lose.

I was driving today, so I got to listen to the entire press conference about the arrest of Cesar Sayoc — the man suspected of sending pipe bombs to a number of Trump critics. What most struck me was just how useless the press conference was.

Jeff Sessions

It all started badly with Jeff Sessions giving a “can’t we all just get along” speech without a hint of irony. This is the way it will be with Republicans. In fact, before the press conference, NPR interviewed two political consultants: a female Republican and a male Democrat. And she, of course, brought up Maxine Waters who told Democrats to harass Trump Cabinet officials in public.

The Democrat pushed back and said that Waters specifically talked about making it uncomfortable for people in the Trump administration to go out to dinner. In other words: putting a social cost on working for Trump. She specifically wasn’t calling for violence. And Trump has specifically called for violence.

The Republican backed-down and claimed that she did not mean to make the two sides equivalent. But if that’s the case, what was she doing? She was trying to give Republicans cover by misrepresenting what Democrats have been saying!

During the same segment, Sessions was applauded for the way he dealt with the matter. But this is totally backward. Sessions is simply trying to remove politics from this clearly political act. And that’s what you would expect because it the Republican Party that has been pushing this kind of violence. In other words: the best political move for the Republicans is to claim that this is not political. Sessions isn’t being a statesman; he’s being a good Republican Party soldier.

Self-Congratulations From Law Enforcement

The law-enforcement officers who spoke were the same way. They didn’t want to get into the politics of it because this was just a law-enforcement matter.

But their bigger mission was to congratulate themselves. There was endless repetition of “The work our people did was amazing” and “The American people should all unite in thanking the FBI for its amazing work in this case.”

But the one bit of information that was helpful in the press conference undercut this: they found the suspect because he left a fingerprint on the envelope that he sent to Maxine Waters.

In other words: this wasn’t amazing work by the FBI and others. Apparently, Cesar Sayoc left his fingerprint on the envelope. And even then, the FBI would not have found him had Sayoc not had a criminal history and thus had his fingerprints on file.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that the FBI has done a professional job with this investigation. But this is not cunning investigational work. Any law enforcement agency would have found this guy. I see nothing that should make Americans especially proud of the work in this case. Indeed, if the FBI had not found this guy quickly, it would have been an indication that we desperately needed reform at the FBI.

Press Conference Was Supposed to Be Useless

I was struck by the fact that the press conference started with the FBI saying that they were not going to comment on the investigation nor the suspect. I thought right then: why are you having a press conference?! After all, that is the information that the people want.

But they didn’t live up to that. They told us a number of things about the investigation like the fingerprint on the envelope. It seems that they simply weren’t going discuss anything that might make the president or his party look bad.

And that makes me think that the government is going to do everything it can to let this whole thing blow over before having to admit that the Republican with all the pro-Trump, pro-Republican, and anti-CNN bumper stickers on his car is, in fact, guilty.

Standing Up for the Rule of Law

One thing Session discussed was that America stands up for the rule of law. That was an interesting claim, because when it comes to criminal behavior by Donald Trump, neither the administration nor the Republican Congress nor even Republican voters believe in the rule of law.

And this whitewash of a press conference is part of this. Had it been a Clinton supporter sending out pipe bombs to Republicans, I’m sure we would hear a lot more — even things that weren’t true.

Elections do have consequences. We see that more clearly now than ever. But at least when Barack Obama was elected, the people knew what they were voting for. Although Trump voters are largely okay with holding the president above the law now, I know that’s not what they voted for.

There is some question as to whether Elizabeth Warren should have been pulled into a pissing contest with Donald Trump. After all, the man does nothing but piss. And there is no winning an argument with a man who habitually lies and who won’t even admit wrongdoing when there is video evidence. For example, Trump offered to donate a million dollars if Warren took a DNA test and it showed she was “an Indian.”[1] When she did so, Trump claimed he never made the offer.

But let’s cut through all the nonsense. The facts are clear. Trump made an offer to Warren. She accepted it and proved she was right. And he has since had a number of excuses for why he doesn’t need to follow through on his promise. I have little doubt that the million dollars does matter to him — even though it isn’t much compared to all the corrupt money he has acquired while being president. But the bigger issue is that Trump will never admit to being wrong. And with the help of the Republican establishment’s mendaciousness and the Republican base’s motivated gullibility, he doesn’t need to.

The Cherokee Nation Responds

What most concerns me is the response from the Cherokee Nation. They have been engaged in some major false equivalence. In addition to it being morally wrong, it is bad politics. Do they really think that knit-picking a Democrat who is broadly supportive of their concerns will translate to support from Trump and the rest of the Republican Party? Although it isn’t a subject of particular concern to the Cherokee Nation, look at how the Republicans has responded to the concerns of Native Americans regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

I’m not saying that the Cherokee Nation should just accept that their allies are in the Democratic Party and so they should shut up. But in this case, leaders of the tribe seem to be going out of their way to find offense when there really was none. And we know this because their complaints have been about things that Elizabeth Warren never did. For example, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin was interviewed on NPR.

Tribal Identity Isn’t Determined by DNA

The complaints circle around what it means to be Cherokee. And Hoskin is right — not just about Cherokees but about any group. The problem is, Warren’s argument with Trump — and the release of her DNA test results — have nothing to do with her being Cherokee.

This whole thing started when she first ran for Senate in 2012. She was challenging Scott Brown, who made a big deal about it. And his supporters began calling her Pocahontas. Warren’s only claim has even been that according to her family members, they had a Native American ancestor. This is pretty common. Most families have one or more such stories. “Thomas Jefferson was the brother of our great-great-…-grandfather.” Or whatever.

What’s more, her listing herself as part Native American while in college is hardly cultural appropriation. I listed myself as Portuguese, and I certainly have no cultural connection to even the local Portuguese community. There certainly is some question about whether people should do this. But the issue is a mess and Warren certainly shouldn’t be held accountable for the fact that our society has (and probably will) never come to terms with its continued history of racism.

Warren Isn’t Claiming to Be a Tribal Member

Regardless, this is not the issue that Cherokee Nation leaders have been complaining about. They have been complaining about the DNA test. And the DNA test was taken to answer one question: did Elizabeth Warren have a Native American ancestor. And the results of the test indicate that she did, in fact, have an ancestor “living around the mid-1800s, which is similar to Warren family lore.”

The result of this attack on Warren has been that the release of her DNA test results is reported as being as bad or worse than Trump’s vile and loud racist comments. In fact, as you will see in the NPR interview above, Chuck Hoskin has no comment about Donald Trump’s racist bullying of Warren that caused her to release the results in the first place.

Elizabeth Warren Makes the Cherokee Case

And in the video that Elizabeth Warren released, she acknowledges all the points that Hoskin makes about DNA not being an indicator of tribal identity. Yet Warren’s video (which must have taken some time to produce) was released a day before Hoskin’s interview.

Yet if you do a Google search on “warren cherokee,” you will find article after article about how angry the Cherokee Nation is at Warren. And it is all about stuff that she did not do. It is all presented as explaining to Warren things that she clearly knows based on her video.

I really hate this because it allows Republicans to run around spreading lies — including their favorite lie that Democrats are the real racists. And I’m really unclear what the Cherokee Nation gets out of all this. Yes, it was an opportunity to educate the public. But it didn’t provide any more information than Warren’s video. And the Cherokee Nation could have educated the public without the false equivalence, which is all most people will take away from this debacle.

[1] Trump’s full statement was, “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” A DNA test can’t actually prove that one is a Native American in any scientific sense. Race is not a scientific thing. But in this context, Trump can mean nothing other than that she was telling the truth about having a Native American ancestor. As for the claim that she has less Native American DNA than the average American, that is completely false.

You probably know of my great hatred of Andrew Cuomo. A big part of this is simply that he has coasted on his father’s reputation — but in the name of policy that his father would have hated. He’s even claimed that his unpopular support of Wall Street is equivalent to his father’s principled stand against the death penalty. Really, the man deserves to fall through a manhole.

Independent Democratic Conference

One of Cuomo’s worst aspects is his support for the traitor Democrats in the New York Senate. These are the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC). They caucused with the Republicans, depriving the Democratic Party control of the Senate from 2013 through 2014, even though the Democrats had more representatives.

The IDC has been a free-floating group. It seems there are always New York Democrats willing to betray their voters in the name of corporation-friendly policy. That’s especially true when they are wedded to big campaign contributions and later industry jobs.

Andrew Cuomo’s Gang

But even though Andrew Cuomo has claimed to have nothing to do with the IDC, it is clear that the group has everything to do with him. By giving power to Republicans, Cuomo avoided having to take a stand on actual liberal policy. Cuomo was thus positioning himself to run for president. Given that Democratic Party voters have decided that they would like it very much if the party offered them, you know, liberal candidates, it seems Cuomo’s quest for the presidency is done.

Most damning is that Cuomo met with the IDC in April. One meeting and the IDC disbanded — what a surprise! The meeting was part of Cuomo’s rush leftward. It’s important to remember that in addition to all his horrible qualities, Cuomo is also craven and lacking in principles.

Defeat of the IDC

There seems little doubt that the IDC would get back together as soon as they (and Cuomo who, like other New York cockroaches, is hard to kill) got re-elected. Luckily, that didn’t happen.

Of the eight current IDC members, six lost their primaries. Since the IDC was disbanded, and it wouldn’t work with only two members anyway, I assume these traitors will caucus with the Democrats.

It seems odd though. I would think there would need to be some punishment. Public whipping, perhaps. But New York is an odd place. You only have to look at Chuck Schumer who doesn’t seem much interested in fighting the Republican take-over of the federal judiciary so long as his corporate bosses keep sending him those sweet, sweet campaign contributions.

Less Bad Than Fascists

This is why we in the democratic wing of the Democratic Party are so upset with the Republican wing. These people have convinced themselves that they are the reasonable ones. But the fact is that there is almost no constituency for them. Democratic Party voters want liberal representation. Republican Party voters want fascist representation. The only people who want these “moderates” (read: corporate sell-outs) are pundits who will always see the right policy as that which is hated by the greatest number of people.

It’s great that the IDC went down in flames yesterday. Just the same, two of them won. And Andrew Cuomo won decisively. As long as people like Cuomo can coast to victory despite working against the interests of their constituencies, we are lost.

It isn’t enough for a Democrat to simply be less crazy than the fascist opposition party.

Today, I listened to a fair amount of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I found it offensive.

There was a time when I thought that Supreme Court justices could be reasonably objective. But I was young and foolish. Also, neuroscience was not as advanced then. Now we know that people aren’t “objective.” Instead, like the Stephen Colbert character, we decide with our gut and then use our reasoning ability to justify it.

This is one of the reasons I find libertarians so annoying. They are, with almost no exceptions, privileged people who are either rich or assume they are going to be. And then, they cling on to libertarianism and come up with a lot of pseudo-intellectual nonsense to justify it. I’m thinking of you, Penn & Teller!

Brett Kavanaugh Is Above Ideology?!

But this morning was particularly hard to take. Democrats questioned Kavanaugh’s ideology. But one Republican after another claimed that Kavanaugh was not guided by ideology. Indeed, I even heard that he would just call balls and strikes — a reference to John Roberts who has been incredibly ideological. His “balls and strikes” claim is certainly an outright lie (or he is self-deluded).

If we are to believe Ted Cruz and Benjamin Sasse, Kavanaugh isn’t guided by ideology. No! He’s just following the law.

Why Didn’t Republicans Support Merrick Garland?

But if this is the case, why didn’t the Republicans allow Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland?

Certainly, to listen to Republicans now, there was nothing wrong with him. So what was the problem?

Obviously, the issue is that Republicans are completely ideological. They only approve of people for the courts who will reliably act as extreme right-wing ideologues.

Republicans Always Push the Limits of Hypocrisy

That’s their right. But I don’t think the rest of us have to pretend that they are honest when they claim that Brett Kavanaugh is not ideological.

The truth is that the situation could not be more unsymmetric. Look at the three people Obama nominated: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Merrick Garland. All of them moderates — typical of Obama’s “if I’m a centrist, the Republicans will join me” failed logic.

But Republicans nominate extreme ideologues and then claim that they are above ideology.

If these judges were above ideology — or just not extremely conservative — they would never be nominated.

Will Democrats Wimp Out?

The only question now is whether the Democrats will fight fire with fire. When Washington is back in Democratic hands, it will be time to increase the size of the Supreme Court to 12. The Court needs to be larger anyway. And this is the only way that we will ever get a Supreme Court that isn’t bought and sold to the power elite.

Of course, Democrats will almost certainly not have the guts to do this. And if they did, the Republicans would just increase the seats on the Court to 500 as soon as they got in power.

This is why I think this nation is doomed. But what’s bad for us is doubtless good for the world.