President Donald Trump, after week upon week of inaction, was finally convinced to make use of the Defense Production Act to coordinate the distribution of medical swabs. This will hopefully alleviate one of the bottlenecks the states have had to deal with as they attempt to ramp up testing in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. However, this step could have been taken a month earlier, which would have solved the problem when it actually developed, but for some reason Trump refused to do so until now.

This follows the pattern that Trump has set during the pandemic crisis. First, he denies that a problem exists -- for as long as he thinks he can get away with such denial. He loudly asserts that everything is fine and nothing's going wrong, all evidence to the contrary. Then he tries to blame the problem on someone else -- anyone else, really: China. The World Health Organization. Democrats in general. Democratic governors. "Nasty" women reporters in the media who keep pointing out that the problem is getting worse. Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. Barack Obama. Joe Biden. Dr. Anthony Fauci. Bill Gates. Mitt Romney. Trump lashes out in all directions, hoping to distract everyone from the plain truth that he and he alone has always had the power to fix the problem, but refused to act.

Continue Reading »

Testing... testing... One... two... three... Is this thing on?... Hello??

We can think of no better metaphor today than a booming amplified voice addressing a dark and empty space. For reasons that should be obvious, really.

President Donald Trump is an absolute genius -- at wasting time, that is. He just essentially wasted another entire week, which can be added on to all the previous weeks he wasted, since the dawn of the coronavirus. Which definitely includes the entire month of February, by the way.

Donald Trump spent the week as a total drama queen. Monday, he was apparently in a snit because on all the Sunday morning political shows, it was becoming more and more obvious that the real fault for why things had gotten so bad was that Trump himself wasted over a month at the very beginning of the crisis. So Trump rolled out a full-on propaganda show, complete with a video that tried to put all the blame on China and the press, instead of at his own feet where it rightfully belonged. The video had a timeline that was supposed to show what bold, decisive actions Trump had taken, but it left out the entire month of February. When an intrepid reporter pointed this out, Trump had a full-on tantrum. Here is Paula Reid from CBS, trying to get Trump to answer for the gap:

The argument is that you bought yourself some time and you didn't use it to prepare hospitals and you didn't use it to ramp up testing. Right now, literally 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How does this reel or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis? Your video has a complete gap. What did your administration do in February with the time that your travel ban bought you?

In response, Trump called her "disgraceful" and "a fake."

Continue Reading »

As many of the self-induced drama queen moments from Donald Trump tend to do, this one just fizzled away into nothing. The president is now calling for the decision to reopen the economy to be made by the individual governors, not the White House. This comes as relief for all those who were worried that Trump would throw the country into a constitutional crisis in the midst of a pandemic. Because what Trump is announcing even as I write this is nothing short of an admission of the status quo ante -- the ante being "before Trump's nonsense began," of course.

It was always going to be the governors' decisions to make, since Trump hadn't shown an iota of leadership when the country shut down. If he had, he might have had a case to make that it would then be up to him to decide to reopen, but he didn't do that, so that point is moot. The governors shut down their respective states' economies, therefore the governors would be the ones in charge of opening them back up again.

Continue Reading »

For the first time since 2004, Democrats are united in the spring of a presidential election year. The primary season is essentially over, with only one candidate left standing. All the other candidates of note have now endorsed presumptive nominee Joe Biden. This is downright remarkable when you consider where we were just a few short months ago.

Three months ago, there were still multiple strong candidates in the race, all running hard against each other. Two months ago, people were either predicting an open convention fight or an outright win for Bernie Sanders. One month ago, the race was almost over as the rise of Biden became unstoppable. And now the party's unified behind him. That's a whiplash-inducing change of events in a very short period of time, you've got to admit.

But nobody's really looking back right now -- Democrats are instead looking forward to the general election. And they're doing so with more unity than they've shown in 16 years. In 2008, bitter feelings remained between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- feelings that wouldn't fully go away until Obama named Clinton his secretary of State. Remember the cries of "Party unity my ass!" (or the "PUMAs")? In 2012 we were united because Obama hadn't drawn a major primary challenge, so that cycle doesn't really count when considering open primary seasons. But in 2016, the bad feelings between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were just as fierce as the Obama-Clinton dustup. This time around, Bernie endorsed Biden early, but that's really not what's bringing the party together so effectively.

Continue Reading »

One week after an entirely unnecessary and dangerous in-person election in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the Wisconsin vote totals were announced. And the result was surprising, because it seems there was a backlash against the heavy-handed Republican tactics which forced the election to go forward against all common sense. I guess voters don't appreciate being put in danger for one party's political advantage.

Wisconsin Republicans wanted the election to go forward for one simple reason: they thought that the lower the turnout, the better the result would be for them. In particular, one of the state's conservative supreme court justices was up for re-election, and they thought he'd win if they could just suppress enough Democratic votes. Well, the results are in, and they were wrong -- the liberal challenger handily won the race. This is only the second time in a half-century that an incumbent didn't win re-election, it's worth pointing out. And Wisconsin is a key state in the presidential election in November.

Continue Reading »

Donald Trump seems determined to reopen the country for business on the first of next month. For a while, the media kind of went along with the fantasy that there was a giant "on/off" switch in the Oval Office that, when thrown by Trump, would immediately put all Americans back to work and fully restore the economy. This was never really true, and now they've finally woken up and realized it. Trump is not king, and we have no royal edicts in this country. It just doesn't work that way. In fact, President Trump has been incredibly reluctant to offer any sort of federal top-down leadership at all during the crisis, from largely refusing to take charge of the supply lines to refusing to issue a nationwide "stay-at-home" order. Because of his absolute abdication of leadership, individual state governors had to step in and fill the gaping void. Which now means that they are the ones in charge of making the decision as to when we should all get back to work. Trump, to be blunt, cannot rescind an order that he never gave.

Continue Reading »

In times of crisis, America looks for leadership. This means they want to be told the truth, they want to see the president and those around him working as hard as they can to improve things for everyone, and they want to see mistakes quickly rectified and problems that pop up addressed and ultimately solved. Sadly, though, we are getting none of this from President Trump.

What we're getting instead are temper tantrums worthy of a two-year-old toddler. We're getting lies and misinformation from the president. Things that should be getting done are not, or (even worse) are being actively blocked by the White House. No one appears to be in charge, since Trump announces a new "point man" every couple of days. Mistakes are piling up which are making the problems that already existed much worse. We're in a ditch, and Trump's only answer is for everyone to dig faster.

Continue Reading »

The Republican Party has now been reduced to being so deathly afraid of the unpopularity of their political agenda among the electorate at large that they are now openly admitting that the only way for them to win elections is to suppress as many votes as possible. This is the exact opposite of "having the courage of your convictions," folks. Republicans are quaking in fear of the efforts to expand voting to make it easier and (much more important) safer for everyone, because they think they'll lose if that happens.

This used to be the sort of thing that was left unsaid. It used to be just the murmuring from the smoke-filled rooms in the back, where Republicans felt free to talk among themselves. This is no longer true, since Donald Trump is now openly admitting what they've been fearing all along -- that mail-in voting would mean (as Trump put it): "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." And now that he's just coming right out and admitting it, this has freed up other Republicans to 'fess up to the real truth of their multi-decade attack on easy voting: it was never about "fraud," it has always been about suppressing Democratic votes, period.

Continue Reading »

I wrote the following article in June of 2016, after it became crystal clear that Bernie Sanders was not going to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Now that Bernie has suspended his 2020 campaign, I thought it was worth publishing again.

In fact, if I were to sit down today and write a fresh article expressing the same thanks to Sanders, I wouldn't have to change much at all. Switch "Joe Biden" for "Hillary Clinton" and remove any Clinton-specific references, and it'd pretty much be ready to go.

In the intervening four years, much has happened, of course. Bernie now is the leader of a solid movement within the Democratic Party, and fresh new Progressive faces have indeed appeared on the scene. With Donald Trump in the White House, much of Bernie's agenda remains unfulfilled. But the biggest change of all is that Bernie Sanders has personally shifted the "Overton Window" in politics, and now his proposals are seriously discussed by people and politicians who previously scoffed at them (or worse). That is progress. Almost all of Bernie's ideas are not "radical" -- they poll incredibly well with the public, which is the very definition of "mainstream." They may have seemed radical to a Democratic Party emerging from two decades of centrist thinking and Wall Street appeasement, but they weren't radical to the voters. Now the politicians are beginning to catch up to all these mainstream ideas. That is more than progress, that is an enormous achievement.

So thank you once again, Bernie Sanders. You made all this possible, and by doing so you have already secured your place in history.

Originally published June 6, 2016

Senator Bernie Sanders, barring extraordinary unforeseen circumstances, is not going to be president. He has fallen short of his goal of winning the nomination of the Democratic Party. No tricky delegate math is going to save him now. His campaign is now over, whether he wants to admit it or not quite yet. But I for one am thankful he ran, and thankful for what he did manage to accomplish. Because though his campaign is done, his political revolution should continue.

Continue Reading »

In the admittedly sophomoric fashion of headline creation, today we do not cheer: "On, Wisconsin!", but rather approach the state from the point of dealing with a tricky subject to address, in the style of: "On The Subject Of...". The reasons are pretty obvious (not to... ahem... badger the point), since the primary election they're holding today simply should not have been held right now, seeing as how we're all still in the depths of a medical crisis which demands as stringent social distancing as possible. But Republicans have successfully demanded that people risk death to cast a ballot, so (sadly) here we are.

Continue Reading »