Before moving
to concentrate on today’s post, I want to highlight an issue related to the special
significance to the current political narrative. On Monday evening, CNN and the Associated
Press declared that Hillary Clinton has crossed the threshold to reach the
combined number of Pledged and Super Delegates requited to clinch the
Democratic Presidential Nomination. The
New York Times added its imprimatur yesterday morning.
That was all
before taking into account the six Primary contests conducted yesterday in California, Montana,
New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The candidates are expected to split the 694
available delegates. Next Tuesday,
Washington, DC will officially close out the 2016 Primary Election season. Twenty delegates are at stake there.
Let me be
clear, the quest for determining the Democratic Party’s nominee for President
ends “officially” in Philadelphia on July 28th, at the Democratic
National Convention. That is an
incontrovertible fact. There are expected to be 4,765
delegates to the Democratic National Convention, so a candidate needs a simple
majority of 2,383 delegates to win the presidential nomination.
However…for all practical purposes, the contest ended Monday evening,
when Hillary Rodham Clinton became the Party’s presumptive nominee.
Bernie Sanders
has done an incredible job with his campaign.
He exceeded expectations, most likely, including his own. He engaged youth and Millennials in historic
fashion. He has vowed to fight on until
the Convention. At the outset, Senator
Sanders argued that the country was poorly served by crony Capitalism and the
Party’s reliance on big money donors, and its penchant for rewarding the
financial industry with bank bailouts, the auto industry with its own bailout,
and generally dismissing regular middle class Americans.
His message
resonated with many Americans and as a result, he built a small donation based
Campaign that rivaled the big PACs, in fundraising, and enabled the Senator to
take his Campaign through the entire Primary Season in a competitive way. Alas, there was one major problem. Secretary Clinton held her own in the early
contests in the Northeast, built a sizable lead in the South, and held on and
in some cases expanded her margin as contests moved to the Midwest and the
West. As she maintained and/or expanded
her lead, the Senator was forced to pivot.
He could no longer focused solely on the crony Capitalism argument; he
added that the Party electoral process was also corrupt.
Since then,
the Sanders Campaign has made a huuuuge issue of the Democrat’s Super Delegate
process. He and his supporters also
skewered the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman, Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, who is a Clinton supporter.
Undoubtedly, the next seven weeks will be filled with intrigue and
maneuvering as the Clinton and Sanders campaigns navigate and negotiate a truce
that in the end must produce something between Détente and a unified Party.
The 2016
General Election is scheduled for Tuesday, November 8th, five months
from yesterday. You can be sure I will
have a lot to say about politics and the election in the coming weeks and
months. In the meantime, with all due deference
to Bernie Sanders for conceiving and constructing an outstanding and an
incredibly productive effort, Secretary Clinton has fashioned a lead among
Pledged Delegates, among Super Delegates, in the popular vote, and in the
number of state contests won. Congratulations
to Hillary Rodham Clinton on positioning herself to become the first female
Presidential Nominee of a major Party in American History.
That
highlight was longer than I intended.
Let me move directly to addressing the main topic. As a nation, we have become a prickly
lot. I’ve written volumes about the
notion some Americans label us an Exceptional nation. Indeed, we have amassed many accomplishments
that render us distinguished. Yet, I
must inject, America has long held a rather high-minded view…of itself. A home team media; a biased political class
of powerful elites armed with a self-serving agenda, often crafts this
narrative. Regardless of its origin,
millions of Americans routinely buy into or co-sign such views.
Regardless
of the appellation applied to a particular age, whether in this country or
others, the name often is intended to convey some positive aspect or attribute
of society, or of it’s people. That is
as true for the largely European Age of Enlightenment as it is for the current
worldwide Information Age. As you may
know, the Information Age, also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age)
is a period in human history
characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial
Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based on
information computerization. The onset of the Information Age is associated
with the Digital
Revolution, just as the Industrial
Revolution marked the onset of the Industrial Age.
I want to
momentarily elevate a different kind of Age, the Age of Incivility. In a paradoxical kind of way, President
Barack Obama’s critics frequently credit or blame, you decide which is
appropriate, him for the rise of incivility in America. While I am inclined to characterize any such
attributions as bovine excrement, I do see how, and in select instances why,
some folks might feel that way.
Donald Trump
has been the Presumptive Republican Nominee for President for several weeks
now. Mr. Trump bogarted his way to the
top of the heap of GOP Presidential candidates by relentlessly attacking his
fellow competitors, as well as a host of others, including Mexicans and
Muslims. Mr. Trump has vacillated
between controversial and flat out toxic, even in his own Party.
How
controversial/toxic has he been? Just
yesterday, Republican Paul Ryan, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,
called Trump’s comments on (Kappa Alpha Psi Man) Judge Gonzalo Curiel "indefensible," "wrong" and
"racist." At a news conference
in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC yesterday, with a full complement of
African Americans in attendance, Representative Ryan said, "Claiming that
a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook
definition of a racist comment."
Trump suggested Curiel could not adjudicate his case without bias
because “He is Mexican, and I am building a wall.” For the record, Judge Curiel was born in
Indiana.
When Ryan
was later asked on Fox News Radio's Kilmeade and Friends program whether he
considers Trump racist, Ryan responded:
"No,
I'm not – I'm saying that the comment was. I don't know what's in his heart, I
can't speak to that whatsoever. What I'm saying is to suggest that a person's
race disqualifies them to do their job is textbook – that's what I'm saying.
I'm not saying what's in his heart because I don't know what is in his heart
and I don't think he feels that in his heart but I don't think it is wise or
justifiable to suggest that a person should be disqualified from their job
because of their ethnicity."
Despite his
frustration, Ryan, who initially declined to endorse Trump said he would still vote
for him. This exemplifies the challenge
leaders of the GOP face. They appreciate
the demographic filters associated with winning the White House. They also know, unquestionably, what it is
like to lose two White House bids in a row.
I am certainly
not going to say Donald Trump cannot be the next President. He does, however, continue to take actions
and make statements that exasperate those in his own Party, who possibly want
that high office more for him than it often looks as though he wants it for
himself.
In
retrospect, watching and listening to Ryan alternately prod Candidate Trump to
be better, tiptoe around inconvenient truths, and dissemble with passion, all
in an apparent effort to maintain a shred of credibility, I am reminded of the
Biblical admonition found in Matthew 19:14, which advises, “Again I tell you,
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who
is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
(--KJV) I think of this passage,
not because of Mr. Trump’s wealth, but due to his propensity to spew venomous
uncivil statements. To close the
metaphor, it appears from my vantage point, it is more difficult for a came to
traverse the eye of a needle than for Paul Ryan and the GOP Establishment to
corral and manage Trumpspeak.
Republicans
leadership has spent 7 and a half years demonizing and lambasting President
Obama. The level of disrespect has been
so prevalent. How pervasive and
disrespectful has it been? From SC
Congressman Joe Wilson’s 2011 “You lie” comment, directed at the President as
he addressed a joint session of Congress on various aspects of the Affordable
Care Act, to then House Speaker John Boehner’s, Ohio, bypassing the President
and issuing an invitation to Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to address Congress in
2015, to Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton initiating a letter to the leaders of
Iran, signed by every Republican Senator except, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker
of Tennessee, Dan Coats of Indiana, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins,
of Maine, and Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also last year.
It is
because of an innumerable list of reasons like those above that I have noted
many times that Trump is effectively the anointed one; the anti-Obama, if you
will. Therefore, it becomes a natural
progression that the newly minted presumptive Republican Nominee takes off
where his recently adopted Party left off.
So yes, Obama haters can blame the President as often and as fervently
as they like. Just be mindful, calling a
pigeon a pimento cheese sandwich doesn’t make it be one.
Historically,
we like to summon data rather than rely on “a feeling” to underscore the most
vital of points. To that end, I submit
two studies that suggest support for Trump is highly correlated to concerns
about race and ethnicity. In one study,
Hamilton College political scientist Philip Klinkner analyzed data the 2016
American National Election Study in a representative sample of 1,200 Americans
to compare feelings toward Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He evaluated the degree to which economic
opinions, racial attitudes, and demographic variables predicted an individual’s
feelings toward the two. His research
showed one factor was much stronger than the others:
“My
analysis indicates that economic status and attitudes do little to explain
support for Donald Trump. Those who
express more resentment toward African Americans, those who think the word
‘violent’ describes Muslims well, and those who believe President Obama is a
Muslim have much more positive views of trump compared with Clinton.”
Klinkner
found racial attitudes were highly determinative:
Moving
from the least to the most resentful view of African Americans increases
support for Trump by 44 points, those who think Obama is a Muslim (54% of all
Republicans) are 24 points more favorable to Trump, and those who think the
word “violent” describes Muslims extremely well are about 13 points more
pro-Trump than those who think it doesn’t describe them well at all.
In the
second study, the Washington Post conducted a similar analysis using data from
a national poll co-sponsored by ABC News comparing Trump’s support to the other
Republican primary candidates. The
survey questions asked Republicans and Republican-leaning voters whether they
themselves were struggling economically, and whether white people’s troubles
were a direct result of “preferences for blacks and Hispanics.”
The biggest
predictor of Trump support among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters was
a belief that “the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens
U.S. values.” Republicans holding this
belief felt 18 points more positive toward Trump on a 100-point scale, than
Republicans who didn’t feel this way. Belief that Islam encourages violence,
and that it’s “bad” for the country that blacks, Latinos and Asians will
someday make up the majority of the population, accounted for eight-point jumps
in positive feelings toward Trump. In
summary, it’s about to go down. It’s up
to you to fight, and especially vote to change this dynamic if you believe it’s
inappropriate. For the time being, what
we all face is…”No Middle Ground: Welcome tothe Age of Incivility!”
I’m done; holla back!
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