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We really need to hang together for the next two elections. We can now see the scope of the damage done to our nation, from the rampant voter suppression, the conservative-stacked judiciary to the violence aimed toward our very government by the right-wing terrorists.

We need to STOP our circular-firing-squad if we’re going to save the country.  Our continued nit-picking of our own Party can only end in discouraging our own voters from showing up for the next two elections.  And preventing the GQP from retaking control is the imperative goal.

The Democratic Party is not the enemy; it is the vehicle we need to save our democracy.  If we have to compromise and don’t get the exact legislation exactly the way we want it, then that’s what we have to do.  Our choice at this point, if we want to keep power out of the hands of the GQP, is to remember to be adults and maintain the ability to compromise, at least on the edges.

STOP calling the Dems “cavers” and realize that compromising was the intention of our Founders in setting up the three branches of government.

I haven’t written in my blog for three years and six days. It’s been a long three years for our nation, and right now our country seems to be just holding its breath. Maybe the world is too.

So America’s back. Maybe. We hope. But with all our failings now exposed and revealed, we have a new reality. The arrogant American, believing that we’re #1 and better than all other nations, has come face to face with our failure to address our sins of racism and violence — and our past sense of self-importance is dashed.

We flubbed the pandemic. Russian cyber wizards have invaded our government sites and now have all our secrets. Our people no longer have faith in our American institutions. We’re lost and we can’t hide or pretend anymore.

We begin to question what we stand for: Win at all costs? Does truth matter? Is cooperation still an American value? Can we trust our fellow Americans? Who are we as Americans?

Perhaps we are at one of those existential moments. Will our democracy survive?

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Having a major déjà vu moment.  The feeling in the national zeitgeist right now seems very similar, and eerily familiar, to the 1990s when Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City in his anti-government, anti-liberal act of terror.  Pulling on that string of instinct I ask myself, “WHY does it feel so much like that time twenty-two years ago?”

I recall the horror that our nation felt when the innocents were slaughtered and the buildings crumpled.  And, I recall President Bill Clinton coming to the podium beseeching the Right to put a halt to the hate-talk-radio venom being spewed into the heads of the susceptible.  It was so clear that all the hatred directed at our government was based on the Right’s inability to accept a Democrat in the White House.  The violent anger inspired by a political loss resulted in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Democrats lost this last 2016 election, bigly, and so the violent uprising in the streets and in the “air” is not caused by angry Democrats.  Oh, we’re angry alright, but when we take to the streets it is in peaceful marches, holding our signs up high and demonstrating our power in sheer numbers.  No, while the feeling of violence is the same, the cause is the Right again — this time they won the election, and they take this to mean that they not only won an election — but that they are conquerors and the rest of us have to bow down and concede that they were right all along.  After all — the president lets the far Right know that he’s really with them … the dog-whistles are loud and clear — and this time we can all hear them.

Trump won.  They won.  The rest of us lost.  Surrender.

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FOLLOWING IS AN ACTUAL SENTENCE FROM THE MOUTH OF PREZ-ELECT TRUMP.

And, we wonder why the world is laughing at us!

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, thepower and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power ofwhat’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now itused to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, Iwould have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarterright now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them aboutanother 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

Transcribed from this video, if anyone is interested in deciphering in real time. The video is from a year ago. Why are people just now figuring out he’s not all there?

REPOSTED FROM THE DAILY KOS

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The Democratic Party has to do some major rethinking — and it has nothing to do with going to the Left or moderating on issues.  It is waking up to the reality that we have no partner in governing, no partner willing to compromise, no partner to partner with in the interest of our nation.

We’ve had a Democrat in the White House for eight years who worked hard to be bi-partisan and to reach across the aisle.  He executed many GOP ideas over his two presidential terms, from a healthcare system first implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in his term as Governor of Massachusetts, to being willing to be branded “the deporter in chief” of undocumented workers in unprecedented numbers.  I believe that he deported huge numbers of the undocumented in an attempt to show the GOP that he could be reasonable, and isn’t an ideologue but a pragmatic leader.

Obama offered to the Congressional GOP a trimming of the so called entitlement programs, that Dems support, in a package that included tax reform that the GOP claims they want.  The Grand Bargain. The Republicans walked away from the deal because they couldn’t bring themselves to support anything that Obama offered, even if it was what they also wanted.

The more Obama offered to compromise, the further to the Right Congress went.

And, now the lesson of the candidacy of Hillary Clinton:  Hillary enlisted the support of most of the high level Republicans in her general election effort;  she reached out to moderate Republicans in the media; and she appealed directly to the rank-and-file members of that party.

Here’s my conclusion:  Both Obama and Clinton reached out to try to unite the country, by not being ideologues and by expressing a willingness to work with the Republican Party.  And in the end, in both cases, the Republican Party could not bring itself to work with a Democrat.  In the end, the moderate Republicans voted for Donald Trump; in the end the GOP would not deal with Obama — because when all is said and done, the Republican Party tribalism beats pragmatism.

The GOP sticks together with its other members of the tribe — no matter what, and THAT’S why the Democratic Party has to rethink strategy.  It’s time to realize that the GOP doesn’t want to work or play with others and their philosophy is “my way, or the highway.”   The only option left to the Democratic Party is to work our asses off to win and win BIG.  It’s time to make a long-term plan for the hearts and minds of American citizens.

The Democratic Party needs a new strategy, because without a partner in compromise the nation just stays stuck, and being stuck means falling backward.

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If our countrymen didn’t hear us over the two years of electioneering, then they aren’t going to hear us now. They chose not to listen because they didn’t care, and they are going to choose to not hear us now that their guy won the White House.

It’s time for some rethinking on our part. During the campaign we kept thinking that the country could be persuaded by logic and facts, and our logic and facts were dismissed. As The Donald said, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters.” Yup … he was right, and we need to wake up and realize that is not going to change.

We’re spinning our wheels thinking, “Oh, they’ll be sorry for their votes when Trump changes his mind and backs off campaign promises.” Not going to happen. They don’t care.

We think, “The country no longer believes in Trickle-Down Economics and so when Trump gives massive tax breaks to the elites, that his voters despise, then maybe then they will turn on him. Not going to happen. They don’t care. When he doesn’t build the wall and make Mexico pay, when he doesn’t deport 11 million immigrants, when the courts find him guilty of breaking laws, when facts emerge that Trump actually did sexually assault many women, when his business conflicts of interest are exposed — then, THEN the voters will turn on him.

Not going to happen. They don’t care. Because this vote, I believe from the bottom of my heart, was not about issues, not about Trump’s veracity — It was about race and the desire to strike back at the changing demography in America today. And it worked. It worked because we didn’t show up at the polls to vote for what we believe.

And, that’s a problem for our party. I kept saying, “There are more of us in America than there are of the angry haters.” I was right about that. Where I was wrong is that we didn’t care enough to go vote.

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The last CLN post was on Election Eve, and consisted of musings about the first woman president of the United States of America!

NEVER MIND.

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Tomorrow is November 8, 2016 — a momentous presidential election day in America.  Our country and the world agrees that this has been an unbelievably painful and negative campaign season, and we are all relieved that it’s almost over.  The twists and turns, the plethora of bald-faced lies, the interference in the election by the F.B.I., and the disgusting sleaze that has permeated this campaign has all been exhausting and infuriating.

And in the midst of all this negativity we’ve forgotten that tomorrow, America will likely elect our first woman president in the history of our nation.  We haven’t really stopped to think about this potentially historic moment, but we will when it happens, when it becomes real … when we feel comfortable enough to let our held-breath out, and realize we’ve dodged the disaster named Donald Trump.

Then, then we will emotionally gasp; we will watch it happen on our televisions and we’ll see a victorious moment for women — a victorious moment for ourselves, our daughters and granddaughters — and the past will be put into perspective with a new point in time to look back from.

Hallelujah, I may have lived long enough to see a woman in the White House.  Amazing.  Amazing.

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I met Hillary Clinton once.  She was meeting and shaking hands with donors in Colorado, and I was one of hundreds standing in line to chat with her for a minute or two.  It was at the height of the many attacks on her personally, and I remember that I said to her, “I hope you can feel all the support that’s out here for you.”  She said, nodding affirmatively, “I do, I do.”

Still got your  back, Madam President.

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