The New Democratic Party Base

When I was born (into the white working class), the base of the Democratic party was white working men. That's no longer the case. Much of that base has shifted to Reagan/Trump. The election of President Obama signaled what the new base would be, but Obama left the leadership of the Democrats in the hands of the Bill Clinton Centrists. They lost to Trump, which wasn't easy.  

The change among Democratic voters can be seen in a few statistics  In 1994 only 25% of the party called themselves liberal. 45% called themselves moderate. That was not the party of FDR or LBJ.

Today 51% of Democratic voters call themselves liberals, while 34% call themselves moderates. The percentage of Democratic liberals has doubled. The base has changed.

That shift has been in the works for a while. It was a main reason Obama defeated Hillary in the primaries. 

In the Bernie-Hillary contests, the liberals divided. Many backed the independent socialist on the issues, but a good number backed Hillary. For these liberals electing a competent woman was a civil rights issue, although some Hillary supporters said they preferred Bernie's platform. (If she had adopted Bernie's platform, as Kamela Harris and others are doing today, Hillary would have pleased the base and won.) 

Today the old party leadership, often good vote counters, is taking a few steps to the left and preparing to age out of power. The next round of leaders are likely to cater to their base of voters, which consists of people of color, educated women, young lefties with a New Deal-like view of socialism, gays, environmentalists, unions, students unable to afford college, etc. (Of course, Wall Street will still be working some of its magic back stage.)

DNA and Confusion

My daughter had my DNA run, and I came out 

30.8% Irish, That's based on a bit of DNA that science associates with some--but not all--of the people who live in Ireland. The company that did this claimed to be naming my "ethnic mix."

Actually I am 100% American, but that's not a category like English or Irish.  Apparently.  

DNA tells you something about a person's physical characteristics. For example, it might tell you which racial category Americans will put you in, if you don't already know. 

Your ethnicity refers, for the most part, to cultural factors, to the social groups you inhabit. You might be a fourth generation Inner Mongolian Catholic in Dublin, which would make you ethnically Irish, but that wouldn't show in your DNA, which might put you in NE Asia. 

The company that analyzed my saliva claimed to be able to name my "ethnic mix," but that was false. They named places where parts of my physical mix were common. My "mix" rests on what philosophers call a category mistake. That is, it confounds physical characteristics with social characteristics.

Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas, say the experts. I'm not sure--does that make my ethnic mix fruit-based?

Who Is Roger Stone?

In 1996 Robert Stone resigned from his role as a consultant to the Bob Dole Presidential campaign to run a group sex ring with his wife. They took out ads on the Internet and in a magazine called  Local Spring Fever. Stone was looking for partners for  himself and his wife, a "hot, insatiable lady" seeking "exceptionally muscular  . . . single men."

That's none of our business, of course. It takes all kinds  We will be pleased if Stone's access to exceptionally muscular men improves in the the course of 2019.

Why were the Stones seeking single men? They weren't single themselves. Was this position a matter of ethics of some kind?

Trump and Stone

Roger Stone, was arrested by the FBI this morning for lying under oath. The FBI was working without pay. Stone raised his two flabby arms in the famous Nixon salute, forming a V with his arms and raising two victory fingers on each weak hand. To which, I returned two fingers of my own. Stone is so bankrupt of morality that Nixon (for whom as a fresh chunk of shit, Stone served as a fecal transplant) remains his idol, his Satan to imitate. 

May Roger Stone get rogered in a cramped cell.

Meanwhile, Trump, a moron, claimed that his disastrous defeat in shutting down the government was a signal victory.  He'd just had his nuts chopped off; he celebrated this event as a planned weight loss. 

Trump could lose thirty pounds of ugly fat by cutting off his head. 

In the course of Trump's tepid bragging, he said "I think." My first reaction was that this was another one of his lies, but there really is a sense that he thinks. I mean, a dog that brings his leash to you is thinking, just not in words. Trump thinks like a dog (without the dog's genuine attachment to its friends and family). At this point we haven't figured out exactly how a dog's mind solves problems, and we don't know how Trump's mental apparatus flexes and flails; but it works well enough for him to order two dishes of ice cream at lunch. His brain functions on the "mo' food" level.

Going to Vietnam at Last!

The White House has announced that President Spanklyn T. Borderline has finally volunteered to go to Vietnam. He will be lunching there with a pal, the dictator of North Korea. Two factors drove this decision. One was an unexpected recovery from bone spurs in the President's feet. He recently regained the ability to walk and play golf, which he lost more than 50 years ago. The other was the rumored end of the Tet offensive.

On this trip, the President will be accompanied by his sons, pursuing their interest in shooting geckos. 

ARISTOTLE

In an old speech broadcast today by Amy Goodman, Martin Luther King, Jr. cited an example of how racists reason.

"God made man in his own image. Everyone knows God was not a Negro. Therefore, Negroes are not men."

(Many people believe they can describe the color of God's skin and what God's opinions on human sexual behavior are and so on. None explain why an all-knowing, all-powerful Being would care about such things in the first place.)

If We Had Lost the Civil War

What would have happened if we had lost the Civil War or had never fought it? A history of Brazil, which abolished slavery in 1888, provides one likely outcome.

By 1880 the United States and Brazil would have been the last two western nations where a rich man could own enslaved women. World opinion would have isolated the two nations politically, and they would not have made natural allies. Brazil was led by a monarchy.

For many years abolitionists would have been banding tightly together in the North and in the Border States. The Republican party, backed by abolitionists, would have achieved a tight grip on the House, Senate, Presidency and Supreme Court. Most enslaved people would have left the border states, led out by free people of color and white sympathizers, or they would have gathered in intimidating numbers in and around the major cities of Tennessee and Kentucky. More than a million black people would have already freed themselves or been freed. 

In places like Virginia and North Carolina, support for slavery would begin to fail. 

In the Deep South, where a financial way of life depended entirely on slavery,  the authorities, frightened, would have begun taking extreme steps to stop escaping slaves and anyone who aided them. Militia would have begun legally killing and maiming people in Mississippi and Georgia in an attempt to intimidate the abolitionists. But the abolitionists would have continued working more and more openly. 

When the federal government proclaimed an end to slavery in 1885, outright opposition in the main remaining slave states would have collapsed in favor of a call for gradualism. In effect, a Jim Crow era would have stabilized the South with slavery gone but white men still in control. Black people would have been expected to sign contracts to work as submissive laborers on white-owned farms and so on, not too different from what actually happened after Reconstruction ended. Voting by people of color would have been suppressed in the South, as it still is today, but the suppression would become less effective over time. 

Attempts to steal free labor will never end, but the will to resist is strong.   

I'm Not Going

I support the right of Palestinians to their own nation, to medicine, to food and to respect, but I don't support anti-Semitism in any form, even the mildest. There seems to be a touch of anti-Semitism in the new Women's March leadership, although I can't get a good reading on what is going on.

I (and many in my family) turned out for the local version of the original Women's March, and it was vital, leading to good things like many new women winning political office. For the first time in our history, the Democrats have a handful of strong women running for the Presidential nomination. 

It's unfortunate that the toxic Israel-Palestine conflict has somehow been introduced into the Women's March. That splits progressives. Some on the Left will not be turning out to march with defenders of Louis Farrakhan on the 19th, tomorrow. I'm not going.

The Guilty

In a kleptocracy, as practiced by President Spanklyn T. Borderline Personality-Disorder (and crooked national leaders around the globe), the best part is the power to protect the guilty. 

As a private citizen, Spanklyn lolled about while protected by enormous inherited wealth. He could cheat the hard-working plumber with pleasure and impunity, because the plumber could not afford an attorney. Who could win against Spanklyn's 101 lawyers trained in legal abuse at the nation's most elite academies?

Spanklyn could crush a small business, trample a mid-size city and cheat anyone except the Mafia. 

Becoming President gave Spanklyn the ability to empty the offices of federal prosecutors. That felt great! He appointed an accused rapist to the Supreme Court. From the Oval Office he "sold" million dollar apartments to dozens of Russian oligarchs while lifting their sanctions. His extended family sold green cards to Chinese billionaires looking for dual citizenship. His cabinet contained one flagrant, graceless crook after another. 

But Spanklyn overreached. He doesn't live in Putin's Russia. Nothing in his slobby life of enormous wealth and privilege prepared him to cope with non-compliant people. Suddenly he can't have it all his way. 

His fear has always been that people secretly despise him, liking only his cash. Now they openly despise him, mock him every night on television; and certain implacably obsessive cops are staring at him and his family. He hasn't had a pleasant moment since 2016, except for the involuntary smile that lights up his pouting visage when he spots another villain on the dias. He can't help it. His mindless, loose,  prehensile lips curl in delight.