The Donald

Are we on the cusp of real change? With the so called 'bases' of each party enthusiastically supporting candidates outside both party control and that of the corporate MSM's, it appears “..something is happening and you don't know what it is do you, Mr Jones”.  Something is in the wind. The tired old post-war process of a pseudo center-left vs an increasingly reactionary center-right taking turns running things with only incremental changes is over. The reforms made by the left under FDR and LBJ in the US and during the immediate post WWII era under Labor in the UK have been stopped in their tracks. They are now under constant attack and are being chipped away at. This has gone on ever since the Thatcher/Reagan era whichever party is in.

But now finally a real center-left seems to be getting back in the game with the recent election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new leader of the Labor Party and the early polling success of admitted socialist Bernie Sanders as a Democratic Party Presidential candidate. Bernie Sanders, a friendly grandfatherly type with his Brooklyn accent and his tell it like it is attack on the plutocracy, is going over well.  And in states where he has campaigned he leads the Democratic Party heir apparent Hillary Clinton in all the polls. His platform is loaded with ideas that the Democrats should have been pushing but could gain no traction from their corporate-friendly party apparatus. Such obvious reforms as Single Payer health care (like every other industrialized democracy has), reinstating Glass-Segall (no more economy crashing irresponsible financial speculation by commercial banks), getting some sanity back to our tax policy (so we afford to rebuild our ratty crumbling infrastructure),a full court press on confronting global warming (that's the big one) and so on. These ideas resonate with the base of the Democratic party which in reality means everyone you talk to who isn't a stanch right winger.

But just as fascinating is the situation in the Republican Party.  All of the Repub pundits and party operatives have their undergarments all in a bunch over a rogue Republican, one Mr Donald Trump (what name for lampooning!). He is at once repulsive and irresistible to the media. Here we have (an alleged) billionaire (who know how much money he really has) windbag sucking up all the oxygen in their well appointed mahogany paneled rooms. The Repubs have inadvertently created an ripe opportunity for right wing populism by pandering to, relying on and further engendering on an angry, gullible, ill-informed portion of the electorate. The teabag crowd loves shallow thinkers and simplistic solutions and The Donald's got that down in diamonds. And the nativist anti-immigrant Mex haters have certainly found their champion. Who cares about the feasibility of his solutions like deporting 11 million people or building a Israel style metal wall from Pacifica Ocean to the Gulf Mexico. But  he is  no never-never-raise-anyone's-taxes-ever-again Grover Norquist acolyte. He is a right wing populist not a garden variety party hack. He can even mention a tried and proven solution to runaway health costs like Single Payer health care (in common with Sen. Sanders) and not be called a liberal commie Marxist. He is inoculated from being red baited since he is an avowed card carrying capitalist. To a person all of the bakers dozen of.Repub Prez candidates would rather eat a fresh shit sandwich than ever publicly consider raising taxes on any member of the money falling-off-the-table mega rich.  But The Donald would. 

The Repub base are not ideologues, they just hate stuff: liberals, blacks, Mexicans, gays 'n trannies, gun laws and taxes (their's not rich people's). The royalists who run the Repub Party have been taking advantage of these useful fools for too long. The Donald is stealing this demographic out from under their well tailored behinds. As much as one disagrees with The Donald's views and his harebrained policies, one has to admit his PC-adverse, straight talk, mud wrestling presence on the Repub scene is positively riveting. And again the media can't resist it. So he gets free air time while the rest of the chorus of hacks have to pay big bucks for small smidgens of it (or get in a public dust up with The Donald). Yet paradoxically in the process of these public mud slinglings they get exposed for what they are, opportunistic pricks who have not a whit originality or vision.

All we hear from each and every one are tired reworked versions of the standard GOP package: dangerous and discredited Cheney-esque neocon foreign policy blather, more shop worn intellectually bankrupt supply side economic nostrums and deregulatory panaceas. But most disturbing and dismaying is their stubbornly stupid clinging to climate crisis denialism as the planet heats up evermore, the glaciers melt, the seas rise and the ocean acidifies. And of course there is always time to for their obligatory refrain of Obama vilification. The Repub base has heard all this before. It's boilerplate GOP. . But coming from the The Donald peppered with a little Repub Party heresy and a few well aimed spitballs at his fellow Repubs, it sounds better.

So sit back and make a fresh batch of popcorn the show continues.