Trump vs Cruz

I spent most of the week wondering which was better - or at least which would result in the least evil: President Trump or President Cruz. So first of all you know that even for me to be thinking this way, we are in a very bad place.

Surprisingly the answer is Trump. He is a fascist, bearing resemblance to Mussolini. Hopefully he is just Berlusconi, a fascist contained. I do believe even now in the constitution. I believe it is robust enough, even if there is a still a vacancy on the court, to prevent most of his malign policies. The exception would be the Wall, which he is now very committed to as ridiculous as it is. But I think he is egotistical enough to be subject to manipulation by flattery at least enough to serve the big corporate interests and avoid a war with Mexico.

Cruz however is not manipulable. He is not a team player. Everyone who has worked with him hates him. He is entirely and unapologetically self-seeking, dishonest and obsessively ideological. He also believes he is on a mission from God. He does not believe in the same constitution that most of us were even taught about. He does not believe for example that the constitution protects the separation of church and state. Given his direct connection to God's will, this is extremely dangerous for non-Christians like me.

But after Christie declared for Trump yesterday, presumably in a bid for VP, I think it is clear finally this is it. Trump will win the nomination. The craziness is over let the new craziness begin. Its so crazy that I find myself agreeing with Lindsay Graham!

I liked Christie. Before Bridge-gate. I liked when he hugged Obama because he got him disaster money after Hurricane Sandy. I liked him because he seemed authentic, practical and moderate. Conservatives are at their best when they are pragmatic. But Bridge-gate showed him to be a bully...or his staff at least.  Do you know what that is? Basically his staff wanted to coerce the Mayor of Fort Lee into supporting him as Governor and closed down the toll plazas on the George Washington Bridge. No-one could get in or out of New York becasue Christie was having a toddler tantrum. Sorry I mean his staff were. He didn't know anything about it.

This endorsement for Trump is pure pragmatism, but without value. Trump is not a conservative. He is a a radical fascist. When he says he will make America great again there is no version of America before that matches his vision of 'white' greatness to which to return the clock.

After tonight's performance in South Carolina, the Democrat ticket also seems to be in 'game over'.  We always new it was a problem for Sanders to win the black vote, which is older, activist and loyal to the Clinton machine. They both worked incredibly hard the last month to convince us that they were the successor to Obama, but in the end the Democratic voters of SC went with the successor to the Clinton presidency.

I know - we should wait for Super Tuesday. In just a couple of days 13 states will vote and it will be clear who is going to be nominated. The rest of us will vote later but it probably won't matter. (I have to be registered by May 23 in order to vote in the June Primary. My citizenship interview is on March 22.)

But its going to be Clinton vs Trump.

So just a few questions left:
1. Will Bloomberg stand as an independent, splitting the vote three ways and allowing Trump to win with 34%?
2. Will the monied interests favour the safety of Clinton over Trumps unpredictability?
3. Will Republicans of any hue (Rubio, Cruz and Bush) detest Clinton so much, and believe so greatly in the evidence of the emails as proof of her corruption, that they will vote for Trump over Clinton?
4. Who will be the VP's?
5. Will the Sanders supporters rally around Clinton to protect against Trump?

What I have to do now is smother my Sanders excitement and try to muster some support for Clinton (I liked her in 2008!!!) But it is a challenge. Maybe that's why we need this lull between Super Tuesday and the Convention, so that you have time to forget Bernie and get excited about Hillary. Its a challenge. But the alternative is unthinkable: Trump or Cruz.

But I don't think Bernie will go quietly. He will make some noise about Super-delegates and big corporate funding in the Democrat party. Do you know what this is? - I suspect you are going to hear all about it now for about 4 months!

It's President's day and everyone is talking about a dead judge.

I really wanted to talk about race and misogyny in the campaign and the corruption of the National Democratic party but the death of Scalia has completely changed the whole ball game.

On Saturday we heard that Justice Antonin Scalia had died in his sleep while on a quail hunting trip in Texas. He was really into hunting. We still don't really know why he died - we are just told natural causes and that no autopsy is necessary. I would not be surprised if he had been ill, as he is said to have been this brilliant mind, but in the last story we heard about him he didn't seem so sharp.

About a month ago, liberals were all shocked about Scalia's line of questioning in oral arguments in a case about affirmative action in university admissions, even to the extent of publishing transcript of his words. Normally the process of the Supreme Court, while public, is not published because what is important is the judges' written decision which was not yet available. Scalia's questioning seemed so racist, suggesting that African Americans were not up to attending prestigious universities, but were actually based on some research submitted to the court which was sympathetic to affirmative action but showing that it often didn't work in terms of putting minority groups into positions of power, and that the kind of college education needed to be considered - but prestige was not part of story. Scalia mangled the line of argument in a way that makes you wonder what happened to this sharp mind that we are all hearing about in the obituaries.

This already seemed like a seismically significant election, a paradigm shifting, era defining election but Scalia's death ups the stakes considerably, now that control of all three branches of government are up for grabs. Its not just math(s) - Scalia was one of five conservative judges sharing the court with four liberal judges, but he was also a leader, often the author of conservative Originalist decisions or dissents.

Scalia was famous for his view that you have to read the original constitution textually rather than constructively. He refused to see it as a living set of principles that could develop with our society and adapt to new social situations and new attitudes and technology. So because the founders in 1791 had no intention of legalising same-sex marriage there was no way a judge could find that in the constitution. It is just a text not a set of universal values. Except when it came to gun control because surely no one in 1791 really intended citizens to have a right to own a semi-automatic machine gun?

So now we need a new judge and whether Obama gets to appoint someone or we have to wait for the next president, its likely to be someone more liberal than Scalia. Even if the Republican's win the election, its difficult to imagine that they can find a judge as conservative as Scalia!

So now we have a chance to overturn Citizen's United, the court case that gives corporations citizenship in political donations, union rights can be protected and even perhaps the majority can democratically turn around the obscene protection of gun sales. Many of the cases coming up will be pitting the religious liberty of businesses against women's ownership of their bodies and marriage equality so the ninth judge will be the ultimate referee in the culture wars.

As you can imagine they are already fighting over who gets to pick the new judge. The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell almost immediately said they wouldn't confirm anyone that Obama put forward, and Obama says he's going to make an appointment anyway. The Republicans have some theory that there is a precedent not to appoint a supreme court judge during an election, a precedent that doesn't seem to be born out by history and the Democrats are all of course becoming Originalists and reading the constitution textually and not finding any lame ducks in the text.

Its telling that the Republicans want to stall. They must actually think that they are going to win! If as the polls suggest the Democrats win the presidency and pull in the senate on his or her coattails, they can appoint a seriously liberal, nay even a progressive, judge. Even Obama himself! Who actually isn't that progressive when it comes to constitutional law but certainly is a liberal. Whereas if Obama appoints now he has to choose a moderate who can be confirmed by a Republican senate. So their stalling is very very interesting. Or ridiculously optimistic, I'm not sure which.

But its hard to see how they can win this way. They are already perceived as the 'Do nothing Congress' and despised for it, and now they are going to leave a Supreme Court vacancy for 11 months. As for the debate on Saturday evening - the candidates looked like five year old boys yelling 'liar' at each other and 'my dad's bigger than your dad' and making up precedents that didn't exist. It was amazing drama, must be good for TV ratings, but even the republican pundits on CNN were shaking their heads and saying this was not a good look for the party.  Pitted in contrast with all the tributes to Scalia from people who disagreed with him on the law but got along with him and counted his as a friend.

Maybe we can get back to Hillary and Bernie desperately trying to convince South Carolina that they are the proper successor to the first African American president. This upcoming primary will be a big test for Bernie who we are told does not have support among black voters, and Clinton is trying to present this as his being a 'single issue candidate' (the single issue being campaign finance and the rigged economy) while she looks at the wider context of social inequality including race and gender. In reality she is stuck n the old Democratic politics of the 90's putting together a rainbow coalition of disenfranchised minorities as if their oppression was only contingently related. I have to admit that Clinton did well in the last debate. Bernie chose FDR and Churchill as his foreign policy role models (cringe) and Clinton chose Mandela and Obama, simultaneously presenting herself as 21st century and woke. But the trouble is how will her uncritical adulation of Obama play in the Nevada caucus where Latino voters might quite rightly be irritated by Obama's unprecedented number of deportations. And they could have fixed that if his Executive Orders weren't stuck in the Supreme Court.
Other news: I saw my first bumper sticker yesterday, showing that the election has finally arrived in Los Angles and it was for Bernie (or that only Bernie Anglenos are willing to risk their car's aesthetic with a bumper sticker!)

New Hampshire feeling the Bern

So tomorrow is the New Hampshire primary and Bernie Sanders is expected to win it. He was supposed to have no chance in Iowa and came out even so tomorrows result might very well be absolutely awesome. So here's all about primaries, all about New Hampshire and all about Bernie.

A primary like a caucus is just part of the process each party has of nominating a candidate for the presidential election in November. Each state has its own rules and each party has its own rules, but what is unique to the US is that the primaries are organised by public authorities in the same way as elections rather than the parties themselves. In some states anyone can choose to vote in whichever primary they want and sometimes who you can vote for depends on the preference that you state when you register to vote. You can register for a party, or as an independent or decline to state. So in some places there are also Libertarian party candidates that you can nominate and in just few districts also Green party, so there really is very little protection against the kind of Entryism that was happening in the recent Labour Party election but that does not seem to be a worry. Only the Green party are telling their supporters that if they vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary they can't then stand for office for the green party at any level. (Yes expect an HOOOGE collaspe in the New England green party vote...from tiny to tinier).

The point of all this nomination process is to collect delegates committed to voting for you at the party convention in July (in Philadelphia for the Democrats and Cleveland for the GOP). So between now and then all the states get to vote in their own way. There has been a lot of wrangling especially in the 2012 election about changing who goes first, but on the whole the experts and the media agree that while we need a new plan that its good to have two small states first as a kind of  bellweather and it allows candidates with less money to do relatively well because campaigning in a small state is cheaper. Of course as bellweathers go Iowa and New Hampshire are about as useful as a piece of seaweed in the desert because they are both very rural and not in tune with the metropolitan culture where all the votes really are. "New York" values goes down well in Iowa and early enough for everyone to have forgotten the phrase by June.

So in terms of numbers of delegates at the convention New Hampshire ought to be of marginal importance but the media pay so much attention to it and the candidates do all their campaigning there because it is believed that American like winners. Americans vote aspirationally, and losing, even coming second in a primary makes you a loser and who would aspire to be a loser? So the whole underdog thing that Brits like so much doesn't work here - unless your second name is Clinton. Famously in 1992 Bill Clinton was way behind in Iowa and in the polls in New Hampshire. The Genifer Flowers story broke about him having an affair and he and Hillary went on TV resulting in a surge to second place in the New Hampshire primary, a surge that carried them all the way into the White House. Hillary also in 2008 lost to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucus and was visibly shaken by the result (yes she cried but in a good way because it made her seem more human), and then she won in New Hampshire...but her comeback was not enough to counter the Barack Obama Yes We Can "you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do" narrative.

Bernie Sanders is expected to win tomorrow in New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign are dismissing this as because he 'comes from' the next state (He actually comes from New York but Vermont is is political home). Actually there is more to it than that: its because he has much greater name recognition in New England and because some of his differences with Clinton that come from his being senator of Vermont (such as his hesitancy on gun control and environmental responsibility) play really well in New Hampshire as a rural state.

I am surprised actually that British people haven't gotten much of a clue about Bernie Sanders. Somehow the international media only like to report about the marginal crazies in US politics on the right wing side. Not that he is marginal or crazy at all but the media here would like to portray him that way.

Bernie Sanders is old - although actually Clinton who is just a few years younger would also be the oldest president ever elected. He has been in politics for ever. Eight years as Mayor of Burlington in Vermont and then 16 years as a representative for Vermont in the House, and since 2008 he's been Senator for Vermont. As a politician he's a hard worker, he sits on loads of committees, he sponsors legislation and and works really hard to make laws better for working Americans. He does what he can to work with a other politicians and perhaps the best reason for him not to be president is that they will miss him in Congress.

He hasn't always been a Democrat by party affiliation. He has usually run as an Independent but voted with democrats in Congress. He identifies as a 'democratic socialist' which he describes as striving for something like Scandinavian social democracy. Of course the 'socialist' tag is very controversial here where it is not associated with the great traditions of the British Labour Party or with the French economic success of Mitterand's  Parti socialiste but with Marxism and the communist planned economy of the Soviet bloc. Some people just hear 'Stalin'. But they weren't going to vote Democrat anyway.

He is a true radical - he was arrested in 1963 at a demonstration in Chicago - but actually as Mayor of Burlington he was actually quite pro -business and pro-development, even in one case going against the unions to support business. He is widely credited with running an economically successful city. Interesting that it turns out that radical socialists like Red Ken can be quite good mayors. What's more is that experience as mayor even of a small city is probably the best practice for the presidency because of the day to day nature of executive politics and their direct face to face access to stake holders. Like Ben Barber says - if Mayor's ruled the world...they would actually solve problems.

Maybe what seems a little crazy is why is he running for President?  To begin with there was a strong feeling in Democrat circles that Hilary should not be crowned (or coronated as they say here) but that the primary process is an important part of honing out the campaign before you get to dealing with the Republicans. More than anything the Republicans started with 18 candidates which is a lot of people throwing money and soundbites at the media and without someone to campaign against Clinton would not get a word in edgewise.  Secondly I think Sanders as a campaign from the left draws Clinton away from the center that she will have to occupy to win the election but might not be a good place to govern from. Part of the frustration on the left with Obama is his incessant insistence on trying to govern with bipartisan support which he was NEVER going to get. The orthodoxy from the 80's that you can only win by occupying the center simply allows the GOP who refuses to play the game to draw the entire political field to the right and the Sanders campaign counterbalances this and, like Obama's 2008 campaign, enthuses activists who really are not that interested in campaigning from center right. So even if Clinton comes out as the candidate, the Sanders' campaign has done a great job of showing that free education, campaign finance reform, environmental responsibility and income equality are policies that can garner a great deal of support.

The problem with the primary campaign is that it forces candidates to attack their own potential party nominees, who they will later have to support in a General Election just months away. In Sanders' case they even seem to be attacking the Democratic Party infrastructure that seems weighted against him but will have to put all its resources into to electing him if he wins the nomination. Sanders and Clinton have both worked really hard on avoiding negative campaigning and the usual bickering showing the Democratic debate to be so much more civil and substantive than the GOP. But now it looks like Sanders actually has a chance, the attack dogs are at least being taken out for a walk on a leach. The issue that has sparked outrage is campaign finance. While Sanders has been careful to only talk about his policies and not to knock Clinton he has been pointing out how much money she gets from Wall street. The Clinton campaign is trying to present this as a vicious and unfair attack. And the Sanders campaign is coming right back at your with Elizabeth Warren (oh if only she was running) keeping it real.

In truth Sanders may not have a super pac and may have raised an awesome amount of individual contributions but he has been spending lots of money that has come from major labor unions and other left thinking campaign groups. Of course in the primary, Clinton can't suggest there is anything wrong with getting union money (especially not in New Hampshire) but in the General Election this will be presented as 'special interest money'.

On the Republican side Trump is expected to win in New Hampshire and all eyes will be on who gets second, third and fourth place. The entire country is hoping that the candidates have heard the expression "Its win or go home" because they seriously need to winnow out the field and find a candidate that can rally an "anybody but Trump" vote. And also because the most entertaining meme of the process so far has been Stephen Colbert's Late Show bit "Hungry for Power Games" which he does every time someone drops out, although he did Jim Gillmore who didn't actually drop out but ought to and we are still waiting for him to do Santorum. So Wednesday night at 11.30 we will all be waiting for the next tribute to fall.

Hope you can watch the Colbert clip in the UK.

Education, Education, Education

Famously the 1992 election was all about the economy (I never call people stupid). This one is actually all about education, more specifically the crisis in higher education, although no-one except Bernie Sanders seems to have figured that out yet. Sanders' campaign has focused on college towns trying to get those millennials who are then going to buzz about him on social media. His number one policy - the one that gets cheers and incredulity and even laughter is, wait for it...FREE college! He wants to make state and community college free for everyone (just like Scandinavia and many other places). He is going to pay for it by putting a tax on Wall Street speculation - OK now we are laughing - but he's really serious. Apparently, he can't win but he is making a fair crack at it.

Education is the most significant difference between Sanders and Clinton. Yes they differ on healthcare, but who can really blame her for not wanting to go down that road again, and sort of on guns but not really in principle - Sanders does not think restrictions on gun sales are unconscionable - and of course the differ on Wall St but that is just part of the same thing. 

But in addressing the crisis in higher education the difference is huge. Hooge, Sanders would say, in almost the same accent as Trump. Clinton says she wants to make college more affordable (yawn they have been saying that for years and its just getting more expensive) but on the PRINCIPLE of free education she asks if we really want to pay for Trump's kids to go to college? 

And Yes actually I do because that is why this election is really about education. Because it turns out that the Trump supporters are mostly people who did not get to go to college or finish college. I want to pay for his kids and him and his supporters to go but only if I can get some assurance about the quality of education they are going to have - not some business degree that will teach them how to avoid paying their debts by declaring bankruptcy willy nilly all over the shop - but a degree that might include some classes in ethics or philosophy, a bit of constitutional history or at least allow them to recognize a snake oil salesman in full pitch. If this stat is not an indication that education is a public good I don't know what is?

So what's the problem? - Americans have always paid for college and they have some of the world's best colleges and one of the highest rates of college education in the world right?

But the cost of college has increased by over 1000% in thirty years. You still have a very high number of high school graduates going to college (about 68%) but half of them drop out before they finish. Its because it costs too much: According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2015–2016 school year was $32,405 at private colleges, $9,410 for state residents at public colleges (but that's an average - a UC college about $14,000), and $23,893 for out-of-state residents attending public universities. Its impossible. Unsustainable. Its just inconceivable that it could be worth the money!

So a lot of people are not getting to go to college or they go, spend lots of money and then don't even get a degree. And all the people with degrees are taking all the jobs that people without degrees used to do. Now that would make you angry. But its easier to think your job is being taken by immigrants than by overqualified graduates.

This is why people are so disillusioned with the American dream because it is supposed to be that if you work hard you can succeed but now all that happens is that you work hard and you end up with a huge debt you are never going to pay off and you have to pay stupid government interest rates and you can't even declare bankruptcy like Mr Trump does.

What is most dangerous is that the education they are paying huge sums for is not what it was. It might be said that what is driving up the cost of education is that the colleges are hiring the best and the brightest from all over the world, and certainly private US colleges pay better than anyone in Europe (ha!) but the colleges are cutting costs at the same time as driving up fees, and hiring adjuncts to teach destroying the whole idea of a university as an academic community that can further human knowledge. 

There is an immense snobbery about education - about which college you go to that drives the fake meritocracy - and what you are buying is not education but entrance to a team playing in a national success league based on the image of your college. You do two years at a community college and then transfer to UCLA and you only have to pay the big bucks for the last two years. But you are still a UC graduate. Studies show that graduating from an elite college is not the key to success - only getting admitted! suggesting for all those high fees the schools really don't add value.

So its not surprising if the sensible people are starting to question the whole idea of higher education, Like Warren Buffet saying you should invest the money instead and Bloomberg recommending training as a plumber.

Anyway that's my 2 cents worth. The New Hampshire primary is on Tuesday so I'll explain why a primary is different from a caucus and why Bernie Sanders is going to win in New Hampshire. Soon.

So my old friend Ceri wants me to explain this mess...

that passes for an election here. I am probably not qualified, firstly because I can't even vote and secondly because I am a bit of a psephology geek and like all geeks struggle to find the border between fascinating and tedious. Thirdly I really don't think the Presidential election is important. Of course I understand that everyone back in Britain is fascinated by the political theater and no doubt the shenanigans are highly amusing but they imagine that this is serious business here. But in all honesty I don't think the presidency is that important to people's everyday lives even in the US. 

I think what makes a difference here is state politics, and local politics and I wish international news (or even national US news) would focus on theses issues sometimes. Washington really doesn't matter that much except maybe the supreme court. After that comes congress and then the presidency and even then the White House has so little power - its more about moral leadership and of course foreign policy. So in a sense who gets elected is as important to the rest of the world as it is to Americans, except you don't have to make up your mind and choose who to vote for.

I was hoping I would get to do just that. Having lived in California for 10 years, I filled out my naturalization form and sent it in hoping to get citizenship in time to vote. My husband who sent it in at the same time has already completed his interview and his ceremony and I am still stuck on "application in process." So here I am very probably a non-voting observer. Question is what needs explaining? The first thing is: isn't this a weird election?

Yes it is. All US Presidential elections are unpredictable and surprising things happen but this one has a bizarreness to it that is freaking out the media but actually engaging American people, particularly the millennials. 

There is a mood across the country that is disillusioned with the political status quo that is drawing support towards candidates that seem to be 'authentic'. The biggest problem for the media is that Hillary Clinton, who they were ready to crown, doesn't do 'authentic'. Perhaps more than a mood - perhaps even a national crisis of identity.

Normally the mood wouldn't matter much - but, here come the numbers, demographers and psephologists are tracking the RAE - the Rising American Electorate which is unmarried women, people of color and millennials. Not only are they increasing in number but they are also increasingly participating in the process. Have a look at the sweet millennials arguing it out at the Iowa Caucus! This is what democracy is supposed to look like, um.

The other change is the money thing. It has been a common place since television was invented really that the way to win the US election was to show lots of expensive TV ads and so the person who could raise the most money and show the most ads would win the election. (Of course legally the person doesn't raise or spend the money - a superpac that supports them does and its 'really out of the candidate's control'. The effect is of course corrupting of the news media (who's stations need the ad revenue) and of the candidates trying to raise huge sums of money. 

No one can ever really change this system because to support campaign finance you would need to be elected without being beholden to the financiers. Two candidates are doing just that. Bernie Sanders has no Super-pac, and is accepting only donations from individuals. The average donation is $27. He has raised a lot of money but its minuscule compared to what is usually needed. But he is still able to get his word out mostly through social media which costs very little. The problem for Sanders has been not getting much more than a tiny soundbite on national TV or print news. Unless its something about how remarkable he's doing for a loser. Trump is going the other way - he does have some (white supremacist)Super-pacs supporting him but mostly he doesn't have to raise money because he is getting all the publicity he needs from the media obsession with him. Until now he hasn't paid for media - now he is blitzing Iowa and New Hampshire but its not the usual campaign orthodoxy. He doesn't even need travel money - he misses the debate and they talk for two weeks about his absence. He could stay at home and do this. The voting consultants are baffled. Frank Luntz tried every strategy the Republican party could use on his focus group and NOTHING could stop him. 

The Iowa Caucus is important only because it is the start of the real race after a long long phoney war. Bernie Sanders won morally because he made the media show his whole speech and he was able to state all his amazing fabulous policies without it cutting off to show trump doing something idiotic. Cruz was expected to win Iowa because of his evangelical background so no surprise there but the media had to find a way of making it about Trump and they enjoyed cruzifying him. He will rise again on February 9 in New Hampshire. The winner from the GOP side was certainly Marco Rubio. The problem on the Republican side is basically that there are too many candidates and everyone knows it but no one wants to give way. Now Rubio can try to present himself as the establishment Republican candidate - the safe bet for those who vote Republican to keep their taxes low and their investments safe but aren't motivated by all the crazy anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-gay stuff. But is he strong enough to put a sensible choice coalition together? Because we all know that those moderate Republicans might vote for Hillary rather than Trump or Cruz. And usually that would win it - because that's where the money is. But 2016 is weird.