So it begins (reflections on Nov 21-22 2017)

It has officially begun - the Trump Era. I sit here looking out my front window at an angry sea (26ft /14sec groundswell - which is beyond huge). There is whitewater to the horizon. Is this nature's way of saying “watch the fuck out!”? One of Herr Trumps first acts was to have “his people” take down the Obama Administration's Climate Change Plan website. What a message to send to the rest of the world as the polar ice caps melt, as 2016 comes in as the hottest year on record, as Miami Beach once high and dry now is flooding regularly, as the ocean becomes ever warmer and more acidic disrupting crucial food chains and killing coral reefs worldwide, and as the weather becomes evermore erratic.

Apparently Trump and his Republican Party enablers, if they can, intend to categorically negate, disable, eviscerate or revoke every single law, initiative, regulation, executive orders, and as well and undermine or cripple every environmental, social service and regulatory federal agency or commission they can get their well manicured greedy hands on. They are declaring war on anything and everything that the government does that does not enrich the already ultra-rich, all in the name of faux populism – and a majority of the white working class bought into this preposterous and evil attempt at political regression project hook, line and sinker.

Whether The Donald will be able to deliver on his mishmash of bold ever-morphing array of wild eyed promises made to the  beleaguered (in their own minds anyway) rural and rust belt white population is beside the point. The Repubs have run the table. All three branches of government, are now in their hands, plus 26 state houses. It is truly the season of the witch. To make matters worse Trump has cobbled-together quite an impressive pack of abject opportunists and GOP career hounds to make up his cabinet of federal agency kingpins. It is almost like his cabinet was selected solely to rub salt in the wounds of his defeated enemies. All of them, probably even including the ex-generals, are Repub loyalists of the ultra-right variety. Trump himself is the only wild card. Trump has changed parties back and forth from Demo to Repub five times. He is his own party.  Can this mix of arbitrarily chosen pack of millionaires and billionaires deliver on any of Trumps laundry list of absurd and dangerous promises?  He does have a Repub Congress, but already they don't see eye to eye. One scary possibility that many fear is when things start going sideways re: Trump's contradiction infested "plan"(if you can call it that), is that his right wing populism will metamorphose into a virile new form of fascism. Remember fascists don't need no stinking democracy to get things done.

Both major parties share in the blame for this horrendous situation. The GOP clown car of aspiring POTUSes all saw the Demo parties heir apparent HRC as 'easy pickin's'. That's why there were so many of em - at one time twelve. These party hacks to a man (and one woman) all believed that if they could get past the Orange One, this interloper, they would be on on easy street against the Demo Party's tone deaf and popularity challenged choice of a candidate. Had any of these aspirants actually landed the nomination and prevailed over the hapless HRC we might be even further up shit creek. Actually Trump could turn out to be a God send causing a popularity crushing train wreck for the Repubs - we hope. But maybe not. In any case Trump as Commander and Chief however you take it is a menace of the first magnitude. Yet had any of the clown car occupants (especially the despised by his own party Ted Cruz) won the nomination, the full apparatus of the corporate funded right wing think tank archipelago and media active conservative punditacracy would have been ardently on his or her side. Now many of the Repub thinkers have their doubts as to the Orange One's loyalty to the Republican cause. Nevertheless much of Trumps so-called program does coincide with the GOP's infernal designs. And the tactics are the same, like their never ending siren call for “lower taxes/less government”. This is their perennial 'magic elixir' for goosing the economy into better performance. Yet it doesn't work.  The 'tax cuts for all' after the dust clears and its short burst of spending by consumers is over, it always finally results in simply another round of wealth redistribution upwards to the richest 1% - and an ever deeper federal deficit. They have been using the intellectually discredited 'supply side economics' argument  ever since Saint Ronnie's era. But Herr Trump has taken GOP madness to a whole new level with a deficit projected to be literally off the charts.

However The Donald has accomplished one thing he didn't intend to. He has managed to unify the opposition. He has' herded the cats' of the progressive/liberal left and the establishment center together. The centrist (NY Times and Wash Post and the mainstream Demos like Schumer, the HRC backers, etc.) plus the newly energized center left (the Sanders/Warren left wing of the Demo party) plus the incorrigible radical left (anarcho black bloc types) are now all united (at least informally) in vehement opposition. As I write this women from all over the East Coast have crammed into DC in a massive demonstration with solidarity marches in cities and town throughout the entire country– and in cities all over the world. The 53% (the majority of voters) that did not vote for this absurd buffoon plus the unknown number that could not bring themselves to vote for either the Orange One' or his unappealing opponent, HRC, are now up in arms. Hey, there are at least 3 million more people on our side than the combination of GOP country club loyalists and their redneckian dupes. It reminds one of the old “days of rage” during the Nixon years (ironically in many ways Richard Nixon now looks  almost like a “liberal”. That's how far hard right the GOP has traveled into cuckoo land). But make no mistake with Trump in the local PD's are now dry washing their hands in gleeful anticipation of being unleashed as occupying armies (if they weren't already) to club, teargas, fire hose and jail the rabble into some state of docility. It won't work. If everyone opposed to Trump/GOP agenda comes out there won't be enough cops to go around. They will  have to bring out the National Guard or the US Army.

We have been hit by a triple whammy: Trump's inconceivable inappropriateness for his position compounded with impossible promises and added to that the Republican Party's brutal new ideology of deregulating and further privatizing the all aspects of the economy including those that function well and are popular. What has pretended to be a indigenous rural/blue collar revolt (improbably led by an ersatz billionaire) against the harm wrought by globalization, immigration and corporate friendly trade agreements is really a surrender to the very forces that let these process become harmful to the working class in the first place.

It remains to be seen how this all will work out but it looks bad. If the first days are any indication, we should all hold on to our hats. It's going to be a rough ride.

An American Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy: Government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.

• A Labor Secretary who has promoted low wages, automating workers, and the objectification of women
   
• A Housing and Urban Development Secretary with no relevant experience.
   
• A Commerce Secretary who owned a dangerous coal mine where twelve miners died in an explosion.
   
• A Secretary of State who ran ExxonMobil.
   
• An EPA Administrator who has sued the agency on behalf of fossil fuel companies and is a climate change denier.
   
• An Energy Secretary who wants to get rid of the department (and might not know what it does - Answer: Most of its budget is for managing our nuclear energy and weapons issues).
   
• A Health and Human Services Secretary who has attacked policies that protect women's health.
   
• An Interior Secretary who has a League of Conservation Voters score of 3%.
   
• And an Attorney General who opposes civil and voting rights and was denied a federal judgeship due to racist remarks.
  
  
  

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Whoa, wake me up. I am having this horrible very realistic nightmare. Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States.

What in the crying in the fuck just happened? How could 60,371,182 people be so incredibly heads-up-their-asses fucking gullible? Why the mass disaffection with and from reality? The economic numbers (GDP growing / unemployment down) with things way better than what Romney promised in the heat of the 2012 campaign. Inflation is non-existent. Stock market is up. The real estate market has recovered. The US economy is doing way better than Europe's or Japan's. In fact the US is a rare bright spot globally. But I guess these 60,371,182 stupid shits don't care for facts they prefer the Trumpian/GOP faux dystopia. The pat answer is that the white working class is pissed and are not taking it anymore. They want their semi-skilled decent paying (but boring) factory jobs back and did see not it coming by way of a continuation of Obamanomics. And those are the ones that swung the election.. But what about the rest of the Trumpians who are doing OK, thank you, and making well over $60k a year? The answer is they are all plugged into the three Big Lie machines: Fox News, right wing talk radio and the Briebart/ Drudge conspiracy bullshit spewing blogosphere. Tell me again how the Internet was going to be a force for progressive change. 

The trouble with the First Amendment and the (necessary) free press that it supports is that the free speech also allows the freedom to spew out boldface lies and un-provable assertions, and go as far from reality as gullible followers will tolerate – and that's a long ways, just look at organized religion. We are way beyond the quaint old printed word of our Constitutional architect's day. Now with electronic media lip readers and functional illiterates can be fed lies, fact-spun propaganda and hate speech - almost instantly. Our new President knows this well with his perchance for Twittering out provocative crap to roil (or placate) his 60 million dupes.

I had hoped once the full gravity of President-elect Trumps situation sunk in and the byzantine complexity of the nuts and bolts of implementing his wide array of wild promises, that a new sober presidential Donald Trump would start to emerge.That has not happened yet. On 60 Minutes last night it was same old orange haired ogre. Without a hapless opponent to demean and vilify  he had nothing significant to say other than repeat his usual overused superlatives and hackneys adjectives- such as “terrific” and say former vilified foes (like Barack Obama) have now suddenly become “nice people”. His limited vocabulary and lack of intellectual depth makes George W. Bush look like Winston Churchill. How did sixty million people who see such a lightweight as their political messiah?

On 60 Minutes and in his meeting with Obama, Trump seemed seemed stressed and uncomfortable. He didn't seem that happy for a guy who just won the election for “president of the world”. He knows he is out of his depth. I think he loved the rock star limelight and the fun of egging on his adoring fans by promising them the sun, moon and stars. Now that the brutal complexity of each and every issue that he hammered the ineptness of the establishment on is dawning on him, he is saying whoa, wait a minute. He must be realizing  after his Herculean effort and masses of money spent that he has stepped into some real heavy shit.  As others have said he does not seem to have the temperament for the job. Will he grow into it? My feeling is the radical right in the Republican Party (which is all of 'em) will take over. If he has any integrity and tries to stick with all his contradictory but difficult if not impossible to fulfill promises he will have to confront key GOP ultra neoliberal ideologues like Paul Ryan, if he doesn't his base will turn on him.

In all honesty I don't have a clue as to what is going to happen. No one does. Hold on to your hats, folks, it will be quite a ride.

A Debatable Matter

It seems like as a nation we are increasingly becoming a dysfunctional mess. Americans are living in two separate universes - politically, ideologically and culturally.  Furthermore we have an economy that on paper is chugging right along but for many it seems stuck in neutral. To make matters worse both political parties are controlled by hacks and functionaries. And to top it off our Supreme Court, our ultimate legal authority, is guided by hard coded ideologies rather than an evolving objective interpretation of the Constitution.

Now it's presidential election time and one party has forced upon us a 'heir apparent' as if we had to continually tap into some kind stock of political-aristocratic families for leaders. The other party having tried to do the same with the hapless Jeb Bush has ended with up a dangerous usurper as their candidate.  As bad as the Demos are, the Repubs are far worse having long since gone off the deep end.  They have all lost credibility with most thinking people and certainly internationally by adopting a flat earth society approach to science and letting Christian fundamentalists bible-thumpers, a powerful gun lobby and oil companies commandeer their party. This while deviously relying on a voting demographic that hates reason and revels on irrational contempt. They have callously nurtured a Redneckian strain of Americana that thrives on fear and loathing of 'the Other' be it  blacks, native Americans, gays, liberals, environmentalists, immigrants, Muslims, elites, eggheads, hippies, you name it.  But to the  GOP's collective embarrassment their whole strategy has blown up in their faces. Now to their befuddlement they have been outmaneuvered by a garden variety demagogue as the 'ordinary folks' they relied on for votes have rebelled and produced the most absurd presidential candidate in American history.

With an unpopular hand picked heir apparent Democrat on one side and a madman Republican demagogue on the other we arrive at the televised Presidential  Debates - the big show. The presidential debates are always a media circus of the first magnitude with.over the top hoopla and lots of posturing but short on content.  The candidates will always promise way more than they have any chance of delivering. And the viewer-voters  are supposed to pretend to believe what they hear. It's all a fine show with the hope that in the process their candidate will expose the other side's candidate for a fool.  For the candidates the main hope is to demolish their opponent with a freshly minted perfect ad hoc rebuttal (AKA 'a zinger'). But so much of it is canned, choreographed and redundant since each has side has practiced lines like actors for a school play. Functionally the debates this late in the game are all about attracting the low information undecided voters in so-called "battleground states".  But this time it is also (for HRC, anyway) about corralling back into the fold the erstwhile Sanderinistas, many who are stilled seriously miffed at the shenanigans of the Demo Party big wigs who ramrodded in an unpopular candidate despite their candidate's strength and appeal especially among the white working class.


In any case by all accounts (except for the most Trumpian partisans) the first debate was a resounding defeat for  Project Donald. Viewers saw a  smiling, perky and well informed Hillery next to a sour, grumpy, scowling and accusatory Mean Mr Mustard.  More importantly the abject emptiness of his entire endeavor was on full display.  All that most people can remember about Mr Trump from the first debate was serial rude interruptions and speak-overs and gruff denials of past (proven) prevarication framed by his patent stump speech material which always contains overwrought accounts of a once great country now in serious economic and geopolitical peril.

Granted much is amiss in the US of A and the world in general but certainly the The Donald is not up to the job fixing anything. The devil that you don't know is clearly light years more dangerous than the one you do know. Despite one's grievances with Obama, HRC's implicit promise to keep the Obama ship steady as you go clearly points to one needing to vote for HRC - for better or worse. 


Even if it's a foregone conclusion that HRC will carry your state by a wide margin, one should consider voting for her just to get her popular vote count as high as possible   If she wins the overall election by a tiny margin or even worse loses the popular vote but squeaks by via the electoral college, the disgruntled Trumpians (replacing the nut case Tea Partiers) within the ever-whacho Republican Party will make Obama's bitter relationship look like a lovefest.  Of course that may happen anyway.

Polls tell us that many younger voters are refusing to hold their noses and vote for HRC.  Yet Jill Stein of the Greens is only at polling at a measly 7%.".  Apparently many of them say they are now going to (stupidly) use their 'protest vote' for that clown from the Libertarian Party Gary Johnson, probably because he's in favor legalization of marijuana  (isn't everybody?). This even though he thinks the government should do nothing about confronting global warming (let the corporations handle it as they are so wise and humane) and he certainly as a libertarian has no interest in governmental help in funding college educations. (Also he's not so good at geography  - or international affairs.)  Back in 2000 many of us in states in which Al Gore was expected to win overwhelming (like Calif) voted for Ralph Nader as the Green Party candidate because we were trying to get the Green Party up to a certain % nationally so as to become a functional third party.  Jill Stein is not even close to where Nader was.

The main thing here is that four years of Trump will be an unmitigated disaster for the environment and the Supreme Court even if nothing else bad happens (like declaring national bankruptcy or nuking Iran or North Korea). The Democrats may be part of the same dual-party continuum of corporate control and are no better than Repubs on many important issues but at least they acknowledge we are on the brink of something we as a species of have never faced before - irreparable damage to our entire global ecosystem.  Vote fof  HRC even if you can't stand her.  It does matter!

HRC vs The Orange Ogre

We now face another prime time over-hyped boring spectacle with a capital S (see Society of the Spectacle). This time it features the ever blue pants suited Hillary Rodam Clinton starring as Queen Bee in yet another official party convention - yawn. As loathsome as the orange haired orangutan Donald Trump is, Queen Hillary gives him a run for his money. Many mornings of recent her smiling countenance has beamed down at me above the masthead of the NY Times online edition in another paid political ad.  This does not help her or me. Someone should tell her that people who read the NY Times have long sense made up their mind and most will vote for her in November - but many with nostrils  firmly pinched shut. 

There is almost totally unanimity among the chattering classes and MSM regarding Mr Trump's patent unfitness for the presidency. Also there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the surreal aspects of Trump's candidacy among the conservative apologist Repub-friendly pundits like David Brooks, Ross Douthat, George Will and their ilk. Even among them Trump's name is now Donald Mudd .

Yet the weakness of the Democratic Party's offering is being overlooked. With the Repubs you can blame their awful candidate on their over reliance on mining redneckian, reactionary and the south-will-rise-again voters. As many have noted with Trump the Repubs are finally reaping a stunted ugly plant from one of their malevolent tainted seeds that has ripened and burst forth. The Repubs have been masters at tapping into deep seated discord in the American lower middle class, a sector they has long since been marinated, in the myth of a forever growth in their material well being - gas gobbling SUVs, ever bigger pickup trucks, palatial size tract homes, steak dinners twice a week,  motorboats, motor homes, Vegas vacations, etc. etc. Ever more materialistic goodies, these are their God given rights as Americans. Now all that has slowed, and for some it's totally stopped - and it's all Obama's fault.

The basic problem is that our two corporate sponsored parties have led to kind break down in democracy. There is no party to really represents the working class. Both parties represent the corporations and upper classes. Both parties have allowed global corporations to call the shots for far too long . A number of interlocking seemingly intractable problems have emerged, and many Americans are extremely dissatisfied. Sometimes as with the white working class these grievances area diffuse and generalized. Right wing media helps to define them. 70% is often cited as the percentage of those who say the country is 'headed in the wrong direction' whatever that means. This 70% are not all potential Trump voters, many are liberal Sanders Democrats. And no amount of citing numbers that tell us how good things are getting by HRC, Obama and Demo bigwigs is going help. However this will be the prime objective of the unfolding Demo Party Convention/Propaganda-fest.

What really drives this malaise? Could it be the decades long spiking in wealth inequality and its problems for the global economy in general (see Thomas Pikitty)? Global aggregate demand which is the mainspring of capitalism is sagging and much of the problem is that too much wealth (potential capital) is sitting idle. This is the unintended side effect of a long global one-sided class war by the 1% against the 99% (with many in top 10% aiding and abetting the 1%). And in many cases it was US led (see US tax policy and malfeasance of the deregulated financial industry). To make matters worse for labor in the wealthy industrialized West, impersonal forces of capitalism dictated that capital (read investment in factories) flow to low wage countries, this in turn leading to their rapid industrialization. Corporate designed trade pacts of course fostered the process. These countries have no labor unions (or environmental protections) to speak of so exploitation (and pollution) can be maximized. And everybody likes the cheap commodities that flow forth including un and under employed US workers. For US workers it will never be 1955 again. The US came out of WWII as a intact industrial hegemonic giant, unmatched, and the US working class was able to join ranks of the lower bourgeoisie thanks in no small part to a strong labor movement - now gone. Those days are over and no empty promises by orange haired demagogues or blue suited queen bees can turn back them clock.

Discord on the left includes the awareness one of the two parties (probably tactically) refuses to cooperate even on a common sense level like maintaining the infrastructure as it rots out from under us. This even when such a practical investment would put many back to work in decent paying jobs. But even more existentially serious is that this same Neolithic party refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the inexorable world historical catastrophe of climate change. Of course both parties pay blind obedience to major industries that are incestuously integrated into the government that they are elected to run- such as the defense industry, the medical insurance/pharmaceutical industry and many others as privatization of the public sector proceeds. Underpinning all of this is an unspoken acceptance by both parties (with HRC as a perfect example) of neoliberal economic ideology.

As Trump rises in the polls from a bounce from his absurd Leni Rafinstal Nuremberg Rally style Republican Convention extravaganza, the Demos prepare for theirs. Will the Demos rue the day they let the corrupt DNC shepherd in “status quo annie”, Hillary Clinton, and pulled out all stops to block a truly viable candidate who represented a real departure from the status quo, Bernie Sanders?

We shall see.

Commentary on the surreal

As shock turns to resignation over another horrific mass shooting, the mass media gorges itself on the tragedy.. This time it's a new record - 49 dead, 6 in ICU and another unknown number maimed or crippled. The motive of the killer still in the midst of being untangled by the 'media sleuths'. And then there is the florid faces of our two presumed presidential candidates in full oratory mode each trying to capitalize on the moment. Was it a result of our overly lenient gun laws? Or was it another instance of another home grown Muslim terrorism? Can these acts of lunacy be stopped by some impossible scheme of barring entry of citizens from entire countries? Was was simply some twisted psychotic response to homosexuality, a (self) hate crime of the first magnitude? The candidates no doubt will tell us.

You have to admit things keep are getting ever weirder. This election is turning out to be something that might have been concocted by a Hollywood screenwriter. The strange, unexpected and unwanted candidacy of Donald Trump as the Grand Old Party's official candidate for the presidency of the US is a descent into the surreal. His unfitness is unparalleled, and it scares the bejesus out of anyone with half a brain including many of the half-witted Republican Party stalwarts .

But to compound the problem we have the Democratic Party foisting off on the voters an unpopular, corporatist, imagination-challenged party hack as their candidate selected autocratically long before the primaries ever really got underway. Furthermore, they pulled out all the stops to make sure a popular progressive challenger was pushed aside.

Have we all given up? We have two candidates each representing a loss of hope from different angles. One is a total charlatan, who himself seems surprised that his shtick has taken him this far - almost to the presidency. He promises a vague return to some ill-defined halcyon past by promising if elected to implement impossible schemes. The other one, a careful an ever-plotting mainstream policy wonk/politician whose charmless style and sense of entitlement, leaves everyone except Demo party acolytes and identity politics driven feminists either bored, disappointed or openly hostile.

• But beyond the sorry and weird 2016 Presidential election this loss of hope can be seen it in other phenomena:You see it in public and political cynical acquiesce to the biggest threat ever facing the life as we know it – human induced global warming. Our chance to really begin to address this profound crisis in an effective way was probably lost two decades ago. Yet judging from public priorities we are still. incapable of really seriously invoking adequate mitigation measures and enduring the economic dislocation these measures will involve. In fact one entire political party categorically denies a problem even exists.

• You see it as the ever-wobbly global economy run on a mode of production based on resource and labor exploitation leaving half of the ever expanding world population in abject poverty while most of the new wealth flows ever upwards to a small ruling elite of millionaires and billionaires. Some of them see the handwriting on the wall, but most are engaged in a several decades long one-sided class war.

• You see it in the embrace of demagogues like Donald Trump in the US and Marie LePen in France and the emerging strength of the far-right in eastern Europe. Such actors use the classic emotional political levers of hate, jingoism and racism offering simplistic solutions to complex problems that always involves xenophobic neofascist scapegoating.

• You see in the passionate embrace of the most reactionary and brittle interpretations of major world religions, the most dangerous being Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi Muslims, Israel's ultra orthodox Jews and American right wing evangelicals. This unfolding renaissance of religious fundamentalism is resulting in a scourge of terrorism, violent insurgencies and brutal suppression of rights.

• You see it as the inability of nuclear weapon armed nations to cooperate on some fundamental level and to go beyond primitive hegemonic competition even as full scale war with nuclear weapons amounts to global suicidal. Geopolitical gamesmanship still reigns supreme.

• You see it in popular culture as a constant outpouring of movies, graphic novels and computer games involving acquiescence to a violent, hopeless, dismal dysotopian future, or else as escapist CGA-driven fantasies of future intergalactic warfare as if war as we know it is inescapable throughout the entire universe.

As we plow deeper into this new millennium the stakes are getting ever higher. Yet how could the stakes get any higher than they became after the advent of nuclear weapons? While these doomsday devices so far have only been used once (well twice actually), we have come very close several times to again using them (accidentally or intentionally) and initiating a nuclear apocalypse. Paradoxically in the past, the Cold War years, their very existence discouraged such a war, since the two major adversaries more or less were equally armed and knew a 'nuclear exchange ' would have ended badly for both sides – and for human civilization - Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Yet these quintessentially evil devices still exist abundantly and are even scheduled to be 'modernized' by the US and China.

While this horror beyond imaging has been hovered over us for over half a century, another slowly unfolding crisis is now taking center stage: global warming. Yet the public for the most part does not place it high on their list of things to demand that their politicians 'fix' – hence procrastination continues. Only one candidate for US president even systematically mentioned it and now he is gone. Yet no day goes by without another depressing news release of some inexorable change wrought by this rapidly unfolding catastrophe – mass dying of coral reefs, flooding coastal areas and island chains, major droughts, massive loss of ice on both poles, ocean acidification, specie die-offs. The list goes on.

More immediate concerns always dominate and distract. There is always the latest incident of mass carnage, nativist-driven immigration woes, serious economic concerns (like pending recessions/ depressions) and of course 'geopolitics by other means' - localized wars. These stock issues are always easier for politicians to make facile promises on based on their party ideologies and penchant for bullshitting. So these become the issues of the day while the deeper problems are publicly ignored. Admittedly with these 'deeper problems' we have formal global conferences where well informed experts express grave concern and leaders formally sign (usually unenforceable) grand global agreements. But discussion of such larger issues are nowhere to found at election time.

So the deeper question of how to progress as a species never enters the dialogue. And as Kurt Vonnegut used to insert at that end of his great metaphorical sci-fi novels “..and so it goes”.

HRC's Credibilty

In a recent NY Times column, Nicholas Kristoff's while not breaking ranks with the rest of the pro Hillary columnists at the Times, discussed the perception that HRC is dishonest (56% now think she is). The problem is not that HRC is dishonest in any indictable sense, the problem is perception. Crazed GOP voters (except for a few) will irrationally considered her dishonest in the fullest sense of the word and will vote against her in mass. On the other hand, many within her own party (and many independents) believe she is dishonest in terms of what she purports to represent. On the campaign trail HRC is probably no worse than most politicians in bending the truth. As Politifax, a website that Kristoff cites that checks the factual accuracy of politician's statements, Bernie Sanders actually gets a 1% lower rating than HRC in terms of his statements being 'true or mostly true'. The trouble is not that she is a bona fide liar but with her political credibility. There is a huge perceived gap between what her position is on a given issue and where she probably really stands - or will stand as President.

So at this point HRC faces two adversaries: the left within her own party (strong. sizable and not reflected in most of the Democrats currently holding office - which is another problem) and the nutcase GOP. The Democratic Party stalwarts and HRC supporters in the media see them as inadvertent allies and are becoming increasingly shrill and hostile toward the Sanders campaign.  Sanders, knowing HRC is getting an unfair boost from the powerful party apparatus, has ignored the tilted playing field and simply tried to focus on the issues. The left in the Demo Party sees through HRC's shape shifting and political wind surfing. She is a solid corporate Democrat through and through and everyone knows it.

The problem HRC has is that the Clintons' as a team symbolically represent the Democratic Party's 1990's unholy embrace of 'neoliberalism', now acknowledged as toxic by most Americans with its deregulation of banking, offshoring of jobs through corporate-friendly trade pacts and downsizing of government by outsourcing services and jobs.

The perception of her dishonesty by the right is of course due to GOP fabricated propaganda which is typical of their own never ending intellectually dishonest machinations. On the other hand the dishonesty perception by the left is based on the suspicion that her Bernie-lite positions are simply short lived tactical maneuvers designed for winning primaries. But her ace in the hole is the utter absurdity of the Repubs as their out of control post-tea party, low-info base goes bonkers over Trump.

The Democratic Party is more the problem than HRC. Was HRC the best they could come up with? It must be, since they held a coronation and anointed her queen way back when  Bernie Sanders appeared to be just some crank left wing socialist from a hippie state who threw his hat in the ring as the perennial protest candidate.  But this time people are more angry and despairing than ever. Huge swaths of Democratic voters and independent (an increasing subset) resent having a Clinton redux thrust downs their throats. Also in many ways Obama (as hard as he tried) has been a disappointment. Only in his last years in office has he begun to robustly challenge the whacked out theocratic, hard core reactionary, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners gang that is today's GOP.

People are falling from the middle class in droves, suicide and opiate addiction are rampant in its lower rungs, wealth continues to funnel upwards to people who shamelessly flout their obscene levels of avarice for all to see. This while pot holes and rickety bridges and road rage causing traffic jams are a daily experiences everywhere. Yet we continue to funnel hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and more into lost causes like Afghanistan where billions are siphoned off into Dubai bank accounts, and pump ever more dollars into the military-industrial complex (along with several new 'industrial complexes'). College now means home mortgage level debts for many even as many grads can't find good jobs. And most alarmingly of all, seldom a day goes by without another dire data driven prediction by the scientific community of the coming environmental and geopolitical catastrophes that will be caused by overheating our planet.  We need to redesign our entire economy. Will HRC tackle that?

Sanders not Clinton represents a departure from business as usual, a much needed one. Yet the institutions in place , the two moribund and corrupt centrist parties want to continue to futilely struggle with their horns inextricably entangled like two doomed male elks on the frozen tundra. Huge swaths of voters want a new game. Conservative inclined types, indoctrinated by years of simplistic Reaganian anti-government propaganda as the sole explanation as to why their incomes have plateaued or fallen combined with their own inherent racist and nativist inclinations, have fallen for the siren call of a cheap huckster. Like the 'Sandernistas' on the left, the 'Trumpites' have parted company with their party bosses and their approved choices – Jeb, Rubio and the rest. Only Kasich and the (much hated) Ted Cruz struggle on hoping for some kind of convention coup dete. But most Repub voters prefer The Donald.

As the candidates fight it out state by state in trench warfare for their respective bases, most presidential elections turn on independent voters in swing states. These voters are often low-info, late comers to the fray and likely as not to be swayed by well designed TV spots possibly featuring a shiny new 'presidential' Donald Trump or a 'reasonable personable' Ted Cruz or worse (for Demos) Kasich as a slightly more conservative version of HRC. The questions the Demo Party bosses should be asking themselves is who is best to attract these voters – HRC or Sanders? The Repub Party bosses (the plutocracy) has already answered on their side – anybody but Trump even as they may be stuck with him.