Like many of you I am concerned about Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants. What we  know is this: There are at least 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States– men, women and children. At least seven million are employed. The deportations are supposed to begin on “Day One,” Inauguration Day, and continue until all undocumented workers are out of the country. The plan appears to be to deport one million people the first year and to have every illegal alien out of the United States by the end of Trump’s presidency. For this to happen deportations would need to increase from one million a year to an average of three million every year after that. We also can calculate that to accomplish the goal of one million deportees the first year would require over 2,700 arrests every day and over 8,000 arrests every day during the three years after that. For this to happen the National Guard and the U.S. Military would have to be involved. It will also require the construction of massive concentration camps, hundreds of millions of dollars to construct and billions to maintain and operate. The immigrants would stay in these concentration camps before being packed into planes and trucks to take them out of the country.

Let’s pause for a minute to think about this: Thousands of people every day across America will be arrested and put into detention camps during the next four years. The vast majority now hold jobs in industries that depend on them like construction, agriculture, hospitality, hospitals, and long term care. This is insanity. Can you even begin to fathom the river of tears that will result? For comparison, during World War II while more than six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, there were “only” 1.65 million registered prisoners in Nazi concentration camps of which over a million died. Trump’s plan is to imprison over six times the number of prisoners in Hitler’s concentration camps. And sadly, this will not be the first time that something like this has happened in the United States. In one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history we imprisoned over 120,000 people of Japanese descent in 10 concentration camps during World War II. But this terrible chapter is miniscule when compared to what Trump plans to do now.

But this situation is different, you may argue. (And it is, of course. Nothing compares to the horror of the Holocaust.) The consolation is that  in this case these people will be in camps only temporarily for maybe a few months before they are shipped off to the country they came from. Well, this will be easier said than done. While many of the undocumented people are from Mexico and Central America, immigrants come from all over the world. The countries they come from may not want them back. Many immigrants may not be able to prove they are legitimate citizens of that country. What will happen to them when their country refuses to accept them? And what do the logistics look like? Will 18-wheelers pause at designated gates in the border wall where armed guards will shove people from the crammed trucks onto the Mexican desert and then drive off to pick up another load?

This is not an academic exercise for me and Embry nor for our children and grandchildren. Our family is very close to four immigrants. They are like family. They are family. Except for a teenage birthright son born in the United States, all are undocumented and at risk. What will happen to them? Is there anything we or anyone can do to keep this from happening? Will they be doomed to live in fear every day once the deportations get started? Will at some point soldiers enter their house, handcuff them, and throw them into the back of a van, never to be seen again? Will they also confiscate the house they own, their car, their bank account, and the condo they own and rent out?

There is already much groaning from despondent Democrats like me about what is likely to happen under Trump’s second shot at the Presidency. Nothing in my view comes close to Trump’s deportation plan as an existential threat to what America stands for. It is a lose/lose situation for everyone–for undocumented  immigrants, for those who love them, for the industries that employ them and for the country. All of these people have made new lives for themselves, and many have become very successful like the immigrant family we are close to. Unemployment in the country is low. We need these workers to do important jobs. Without them businesses will have to pay higher wages resulting in more inflation. Nursing homes and assisted living communities will be desperate to find nursing assistants and care givers. Construction companies will be short staffed. Some hotels and restaurants will be forced to close. Nobody wins.

Most of all, however, what I fear is the cruel and needless suffering that will affect millions of people. We can’t let this happen.

 

 

 

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Everyone I know is in a state of despair and hopelessness. How could Trump’s decisive victory have happened? What will happen next? Is this the end of democracy in the U.S.? Is it the beginning of a new world order?

Trump’s announcement following his astonishing victory was, “Promises made, promises kept.” We know what these promises are:

• Appointing cabinet members and top government advisors who have been fully vetted and are 100 percent behind Trump. No more John Kellys, Bill Barrs, Mark Milleys, or Jim Mattises. Any semblance to guard rails will be gone, allowing Trump to be Trump. The job postings now stipulate “only sycophants need apply.” Two names already at the top of the list for key posts are Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk.
• Changing the status of high level federal government workers from protected civil servants to at will employees allowing Trump to fire thousands of persons in management positions in the federal government and replace them with sycophants already vetted by the Heritage Foundation. He also has said he will relocate hundreds of thousands of federal government jobs out of Washington.
• Attacking the free press and other “enemies of the people.”
• Arresting and deporting immigrants starting with those who are not documented. There are an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States or about 3.5% or the entire U.S. population. He has hinted that he will tap the U.S. military for this job, going from house to house and knocking on the doors of suspected culprits. Those unable to provide valid U.S. passports or credentials will be arrested on the spot and shipped off to massive “holding camps” managed by private prison companies. He will also close the Southern border and eliminate birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
• Imposing tariffs on all imports with huge tariffs on goods produced in China.
• Punishing his enemies. He has identified many people he will order the FBI to investigate, put them in jail or execute them—the Biden “crime family,” Hilary Clinton, Jack Smith, Liz Chaney, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and many others. This will include weaponizing the Justice Department to go after his adversaries. He will also weaponize the IRS to assist in this effort.
• Replacing the ACA with something better (again!).
• Reducing “wasteful government spending” on social programs. He has talked about eliminating major government agencies like the Department of Education and drastically reducing the size of the Environmental Protection Agency. If Musk is put in charge, Musk is promising savings of several trillion dollars from cutting these safety net programs.
• Awarding massive additional tax cuts to “job producers” (mainly billionaires and giant corporations).
• Gutting regulations and policies addressing climate change and rewarding fossil fuel producers and polluters.
• Supporting abortion bans.

He has also hinted he will be cozying up to strongman rulers like Putin, Erdogan of Turkey, Orban of Hungary and Kim Jon Un of North Korea and will distance himself from European leaders he does not like. It would not be a surprise to see him get the U.S. out of NATO.  And he has pledged to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, which implies facilitating a Russian victory.

And what is most perplexing to me is that none of these promised initiatives addresses the needs of his base—what is now a multi-ethnic working class. Zero! If the ACA is ditched many will lose their health insurance. Food security (SNAP) will be cut. Schools could lose much of their federal funding. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will also be on the table if Musk gets his way. I don’t get it. Except for a small coterie of billionaires anxious for more tax cuts, I can’t see how these policies will be popular with a majority of voters. They certainly will not benefit the working class that made Trump’s victory possible. Trump’s victory was  classic bait and switch.

As noted in my last blog, I attribute Trump’s victory mainly to the discomfort felt by so many in the working class who are struggling to get by. The post covid inflation phenomenon was the primary culprit. That is now under control but came too little too late for many people. They voted for Trump. Two other factors were especially important in this election—social media and fake news. Nowadays people can choose whatever news source they want to hear or watch, and there are more right wing, MAGA news media outlets than there are Democrat leaning ones.

So, what are Harris/Walz supporters and bleeding heart Democrats like me supposed to do? How are we going to get through the next four years? How much of his agenda Trump can deliver on will be a big factor in determining what happens next. And two of Trumps initiatives may not go so well for many in his base–massive immigrant deportation and tariffs.

Trump’s plans include arresting all undocumented immigrants, relocating them to massive holding camps to be constructed by private prison companies, and then deporting them. How is Trump going to pull this off? The vast majority have jobs and may have made friends with their neighbors. Some have lived here for decades. When you see the military banging on your neighbor’s   door, pulling out a screaming family and throwing them into the back of a van, that will make an impression on people. Chances are many people know the family to be hard working and good citizens.  Some may be good friends. Their children may go to the same school. When people realize what is going on, many will be horrified. Some will stand up against it. And resistance will happen millions of times all over the country.

Pressure to end the deportation effort is also likely to come from businesses like hospitality, construction, landscaping, and health care. They depend on immigrants to do much of the heavy lifting  that native-born Americans avoid. Many are undocumented. Farming and agriculture are even more dependent on immigrants in harvesting fruits and vegetables. If they put pressure on the Trump administration to curtail these actions, this could help soften the blow somewhat though the picture of a Nazi-like nightmare unfolding is likely to emerge and tarnish the image of the United States around the world. Lasting damage will have been done.

The other Trump initiative which is likely to get him into trouble with the American population are the heavy tariffs he has pledged on imports, especially on China. Few if any economists think that tariffs are a good idea. They point out that they result in significantly higher prices paid by the U.S. consumer and that if heavy tariffs happen, they will lead to high inflation. Inflation is what got Biden, Harris and the Democrats in trouble. It will also cost many billions to carry this out. Where is that money going to come from?

There will be pressure on Trump to curtail both initiatives. There will also be unhappiness on other initiatives such as shredding the social safety net, eliminating federal departments and agencies, getting rid of the ACA, and the huge deficits which will happen due to the tax cuts for the super-rich. Federal employees will not be happy campers. Environmental advocates will be outraged. Deficit hawks will be angry. That won’t stop Trump, who will do what he wants. Wishful thinking that Trump’s reign of terror will end? Hopefully it will, since I can’t imagine that these policies will be popular with most people—especially his working class base. But then again, democracy itself may be under attack, and what the general population thinks may no longer be an issue.

These are scary times we live in. You might not be worried, but I am.

 

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Embry and I attended an election watch party at our Washington apartment house  where close to a hundred people were gathered in a large meeting room to watch the MSNBC presidential election coverage on a giant TV screen while chatting, sipping wine and munching on tidbits. The mood was upbeat and hopeful. I doubt that there was a single Trump supporter in the group of mostly retired people. Sure, the pollsters had warned us that the race was a tossup, but how could we lose against a scoundrel like Trump, a convicted felon, habitual liar, wannabe dictator, and braggart? Kamala had run an inspiring campaign, wiped him out in the debate, plus the Democrats had a stronger ground game for turning out the vote and had spent more money than the Republicans. Also, the abortion issue had galvanized women voters. It certainly looked like momentum was on our side.

We departed a little before ten in the evening when it already had become obvious that the  runaway I had predicted for Harris was not going to happen.  The voting reports in Georgia and North Carolina showed that Trump was clearly ahead. If Harris lost both battleground states, the path to winning would be much more difficult. Embry turned in while I collapsed in front of our television to follow the action for a while longer becoming more concerned after MSNBC called both states for Trump. I stayed up to around midnight noting that similar patterns were happening in other battleground contests, then turned in. I was worried enough that I could not fall asleep. When I checked my iPhone for an update, probably around two, the gap was becoming wider in Pennsylvania and other battleground states. I felt panic coming on and for the rest of the night fitfully drifted in and out of sleep. When I checked my iPhone around three in the morning, it appeared that Trump was going to win the election. When I woke up around five, Embry, who had been awake for some time, whispered in my ear, “Trump won!”

I  spent most of Wednesday watching MSNBC and CNN where pundits gathered trying to make sense out of what had happened. All sorts of ideas were being tossed around: “if only Biden had dropped out a year earlier, allowing primaries to pick a candidate,” “if only Kamela had had more time to introduce herself to the voters,” “if only the Democrats had not been so woke and politically correct,” “if only Biden were not so unpopular and that Kamala had been able to say what she would do differently,” “if only Kamala were not a woman,” “if only Kamala were not biracial…”

In my opinion, the main reason for Trump’s victory is what I call, “The Revenge of the Multicultural Working Class.” I have described this in my two previous blog posts. Beginning in the 1930s when FDR was president, the Democrats embraced the working class, which became the base of the party. This began to change in the 1960s when civil rights and The Great Society programs became the central focus of the party. Then in the 1980s the Reagan revolution reduced taxes for middle and upper income people and reduced financial regulations, which permitted income disparities to grow between blue collar and white collar workers. Labor unions diminished in membership and power. Then in the mid 1990s NAFTA permitted and encouraged factory relocations to Mexico. Good paying union jobs with benefits began to shrink, especially in the industrial Midwest. This was followed by influx of immigrants primarily from Mexico, Central and South America, who competed with American blue collar workers for jobs and kept wages low. Manufacturing jobs decreased from a high of 27% in 1970 to less than 10% of the workforce in 2016 and are estimated to be about 7% today. The service jobs that replaced them paid much less and offered few health or retirement benefits.

Many people who work in these jobs struggle to pay their bills. That is why  inflation became a major issue for them. When the cost of bread or milk is close to double what it was only a year or two ago, people in these jobs notice. In addition, the gap between the incomes of those with no college and those with a college degree has continued to widen. Cultural and religious values are different. Plus, many without a college degree feel that they are looked down on by college educated elites. Many in the working class are angry. Kamala did not successfully address their anger. Trump did. His dystopian message of gloom and despair resonated with the alienated working class. He rode the wave of resentment to a victory over Harris just as he had done with Hillary in 2016. Remember Hillary’s “deplorables” comment? Trump used the same playbook in 2024. Trump described himself as “Your retribution,” the strong man who will fix the woes of those who struggle to get by. The enemies are immigrants, woke Democrats, “cat lady childless women,” and elite prep schoolers born with silver spoons in their mouths. It did not seem to matter to Trump’s base that he was also one of those silver spooners. As long as he despised them, he was their hero: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Of course, this is all a lie– an example of the  quintessential bait and switch. The big money behind Trump is from billionaires who support him to get the tax and regulatory breaks they think they deserve. And the lies Trump spreads are facilitated by social media and fake news, which permit Trump to get away with saying anything he wants to. His policies do little for his base. The only person he cares for is himself. 

One thing that seems to have changed in this election compared  to 2016 is  that for this election it is not just the alienated white working class that comprise Trump’s base. Some 45 percent of Hispanic voters also voted for Trump, a huge increase from previous elections and another reason to be concerned.

There is lots of  soul searching by Monday morning political quarterbacks as to what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party. How did we  miss the size of those who bought into Trump’s dark message of dispair. The challenge for the Democrats is how to recapture at least part of the alienated, now multi-cultural, working class. The adults without a college degree in the U.S. account for 62 percent of the population. There are a lot more of them than there are of those with college degrees. The first order of business for the Democrats should be to figure out how to get them back. This involves  figuring  out how to level the playing field a bit so that everyone who works hard will be able to earn a living wage. This will take some time, effort, and money and the national willpower to make changes.

So how scared should we  be when  Team Trump team takes over? The answer is a lot.  Stay tune for the next blog post. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Embry and I spent the summer of 1966 working in the Civil Rights Movement in Southwest Georgia. We and several of my Union Seminary classmates had been recruited by Charles Sherrod, a classmate at Union and a civil rights leader, to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We lived with a courageous, African American, subsistence farming family in Baker County, about 30 miles south of Albany. We registered voters, assisted in the local Head Start Program, attended “mass meetings” and strategy sessions, and hung out in the neighborhood. It was an experience of a lifetime and one that we will always be grateful for and proud of.

Today the topic of the New York Times Dailey podcast happened to focus on Albany, not far from the town where we had lived. The issue on the Daily was whether some African Americans now appear to be leaving the Democratic Party and are becoming Republicans or Independents. Albany! Good heavens, we knew the people who were on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement there. We saw how much was accomplished, albeit with great difficulty. The people we worked with were heroes, and many went on to achieve great things. Charlie Sherrod became a city council member. His wife, Shirley, became a high level government official in the Department of Agriculture during the Obama Administration. Schools became integrated. Good jobs opened up for African Americans.  A majority of the city’s elected officials have been Black for many years. My thinking was that the movement had accomplished a great deal in Albany and rural Southwest Georgia. And certainly, this was true for the family we lived with. The oldest son—the first African American to graduate from a formerly segregated high school in Baker County– got a college degree from a HBCU college in Texas and then a master’s degree in finance from Stanford. He went on to become the President and COO of the largest railroad in California. His wife, whom he met in college, got an MBA from Stanford and became the CFO of The Bay Area Blue Cross and Blue Shield. If this is not success, I do not know what is.

There were two principal people interviewed for the Daily podcast, an elderly African American mother and her middle aged son. The mother, now retired, was active in the early 1970s in the Civil Rights Movement, a few years after we lived there. She later became a civil rights lawyer and a member of the Albany City Council. The contrast between the attitudes of the two people could not have been stronger. The mother was positive and proud of the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, is a dedicated, lifelong Democrat and huge fan of Obama. She said she will enthusiastically vote for Harris. The son—whose job was not revealed– described himself as leaning Republican or Independent and admitted he had a somewhat positive view of Trump. He does not want to vote for Harris but confessed that he will probably not decide until he is in the voting booth.

He explained why he has abandoned the Democratic Party. The times, he said, have changed from the years immediately following the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1970s and 1980s factories were moving to Albany, providing new jobs with better pay for African Americans. Schools were integrated and professional careers were opening for people of color. He was just a child then but realized that was an era of optimism and hope. In the late 1990s when NAFTA had become law, many of those factories began to leave for Mexico, unemployment began to rise, and the crack cocaine epidemic ravaged the neighborhoods where many African Americans lived. Entire neighborhoods deteriorated. Then came the increased arrival of immigrants competing for jobs, the housing collapse of 2008, and the covid pandemic of 2019-2022. The optimism felt by African Americans in the late 20^th Century morphed into pessimism, disillusionment and despair in the early 21^st Century.

Four things about the interview stood out for me. The first was that he blamed NAFTA for the loss of good paying jobs beginning in the late 1990s. And this law was championed by Bill Clinton. It was on the Democrat’s watch. The second was the crime bill of 1994, also on Clinton’s watch, which resulted in massive, mandatory incarcerations—especially of people of color– and remains a big problem. The third was his disillusionment with Barack Obama. He talked about how hopeful he was when Obama was elected, expecting great changes, but saw little progress on the ground for Black people and angrily rated Obama’s presidency a failure for people of color. The fourth was his ambivalence about Harris not really counting as an African American due to her mixed racial and family heritage. He did not mention the pushback from the right on DEI and Black Lives Matter, but I suspect that might also be a factor. He also pointed out that Black women seem to have benefitted more than Black men from civil rights initiatives, which is a sticking point for him and many men in his generation and younger. He predicted that Harris would  probably lose enough votes from African American men like him to tip the election to Trump in Georgia.

Who knows how prevalent his attitude is? But in an election as tight as this one is supposed to be, it surely could affect Georgia and perhaps other battleground states. It also suggests to me that the class issue is now just as important as the racial issue and that class disparities now include African Americans—especially African American men. When I was listening last week to the Daily podcast about the disgruntled, white working class, caused by immigration, it occurred to me that the same dynamic must also be affecting the Black working class. This podcast about Black voters suggests that that this is true and means that Democrats can no longer assume African Americans will overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

I get this. But I also pray that while his attitude is understandable, that for this election, he and other men like him will realize how high the stakes are; and when in the voting booth, they will take a deep breath and cast a ballot for Harris-Walz. The election may depend on it. The future of our country may depend on it. It also means that there is unfinished work that must be done to correct the class and racial inequities and grievances in the United States.

 

 

 

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On October 9, I posted a blog on why we Dems lost the vote of many in the white working class, who until recently were the backbone of the Democratic Party. The culprit was NAFTA, which beginning in 1994 has resulted in the loss of more than 4.5 million blue collar jobs, including many union jobs, as trade barriers disappeared and factories moved to Mexico and other low wage countries. I learned about this from my favorite podcast, The New York Times Daily. “Oh,” I said to myself, “So that explains it.”

Well, today, October 29, on another walk on a spectacular fall afternoon with blazing colors and a chill in the air, I again listened to a Daily podcast.  Michael Barbaro was interviewing David Leonhardt of The New York Times, one of my favorite New York Times writers, who now writes the online “Morning Newsletter” and contributes to the Sunday Review. He is smart, progressive, empathetic and anything but a Trump supporter. It was another one of those Ah Ha moments. The discussion was on immigration. Leonhardt began studying immigration as part of the research for his latest book, Ours Was the Shining Future, The Story of the American Dream. He explained how immigration has hammered the American working class. At the same time when the good paying, union jobs were disappearing due to NAFTA, a huge influx of immigrants began arriving in the United States, both legal and illegal, competing for the lower paying, blue collar jobs that remained. In other words, it was a double whammy.

Elites in both parties supported more relaxed and confusing immigration policies. For businesses a relaxed immigration policy provided an expanded labor pool that kept wages low. For liberals and progressives, it became a righteous cause in reaching out to oppressed people and expanding the American dream. Leonhardt explained the pros and (mostly) cons of our immigration policies starting with Bill Clinton and how for a long time, the system has been broken without a national consensus on how to fix it. This has been a national phenomenon that few people, on the Right or on the Left, have been happy with. And those who feel they have lost the most—the (mostly) white working class—have experienced the pain firsthand. In 2015 Trump sensed this sour mood, which gave him an opening that he exploited to win the 2016 election. As president Trump built a portion of the Wall and implemented horrific policies separating families and denigrating immigrants but did not fix the immigration problem. The influx of over a million immigrants a year continued and increased under Biden. Republicans and Democrats finally agreed on a strong border and immigration bill last spring, but Trump ordered the Republicans to ditch it so that it would not give the Democrats any ammunition on the immigration issue. Both parties have failed on this issue.

(Note that the immigration issue affects the Black working class probably even more than the white working class and Trump is trying to gain ground here as well though due to the racial divide in this country, anti immigration sentiment  has so far not gained the foothold among the Black community that it has in the white community.)

So, in addition to the good jobs exported under NAFTA, immigration is the other shoe that has dropped for working class people and is one reason that many have become Trump supporters. Good heavens, no wonder so many are angry and have gone to the Dark Side! They have good reason to be angry. While it is easy to point a finger at these people for being “stupid,” “uneducated,” “misguided,” “racists,” or “prejudiced,” that reveals the class divide that exists in our country and is also a blemish on us “elites,” who got the lucky breaks regarding education, careers and income, not that we are better people. That working class people often perceive that we look down on them is another factor in their discontent. Shame on us!

This is not to say that it is ok to support Trump. It isn’t. He is a wannabe fascist, who if elected would destroy the soul of America. However, understanding the grievances of the working class helps me understand why Trump has the support of so many people. Until we address the inequities and class divisions that exist in the United States of America, the problem will continue.

Of course, Trump’s support comes from more than the alienated white working class. The tech bros like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and many other billionaires see Trump as a means to more wealth. And the likes of Jeff Bezos and the owner of The Los Angeles Times have not endorsed a candidate presumably for fear of retribution if Trump wins. It appears CEOs of many major corporations are also keeping silent, afraid like the others of retribution. There are many who support Trump only because they think that they personally will benefit from more tax savings and fewer regulations. And there are libertarians, traditional conservatives and evangelicals who have their own—in my view mysterious– reasons for supporting Trump.

The sad thing is that those in the working class who are supporting Trump have picked the wrong horse. It is a classic bait and switch. Trump portrays himself as their savior and their retribution even though he champions policies which will shred the social safety net. He will fight labor unions, oppose increases in the federal minimum wage, impose high tariffs on cheap goods made in China, try to kill the ACA (again!),  and reduce taxes for large corporations and billionaires. And even more frightening, he will arrest millions of immigrants, put them in holding camps, and deport them. He will rule as a dictator. The very thought of his becoming president again is too frightening to contemplate. And the election is now less than a week away with both candidates locked in a virtual tie according to the polls

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A week from Tuesday, voting will be over. This weekend the presidential race is still a tossup. Some Democrats are showing signs of panic. I am inches away from being part of that group.

Here is what we know:

1. The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times are not endorsing either candidate. The owners of both newspapers—Jeff Bezos owner of the Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times—could be affected financially depending on the outcome and presumably do not want to risk Trump’s wrath. Shame on them, especially Bezos. Not endorsing either candidate implies there is no significant difference between the two and is an implicit endorsement of Trump.
2. The New York Times countered on Saturday, the day following the announcement from the Washington Post of its neutrality, by posting a blistering attack on Trump on the front page and endorsing Harris. Three full pages of the paper were devoted to all the harm Trump is likely to do if elected. The list is now familiar thanks to Project 2025 and what Trump has told us—arresting and deporting tens of millions of immigrants, replacing federal bureaucrats with Trump sycophants, arresting and jailing his enemies including the entire Biden “crime family,” Hilary Clinton, Liz Chaney, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, hostile journalists, former cabinet members or high level officials who have warned us that he is a potential fascist, imposing huge tariffs on imports, especially from China, weaponizing the justice department as his own private law firm, selling out Ukraine so that Putin can claim victory, killing all climate initiatives, using the military to punish domestic adversaries, changing the rules of NATO (or exiting the alliance), and more massive tax cuts for the rich and super rich. There are more but you get the picture: a Trump presidency would mean life in the U.S. and the world would never be the same.
3. If Trump and Vance lose the election, however, it is very likely they will not concede. They have told us so. Trump’s allies have been working on ways to restrict voting by people whom they consider hostile, to use state legislatures to reverse the outcome, and other measures which are likely to put the country into turmoil. Were it not for Mike Pence, we probably would not have survived the 2020 election without major damage to the country. The Trump team has been hard at work to assure that their plan to overturn the results will not fail this time.
4. The Supreme Court cannot be counted on to counter Trump’s overturning the election and has already ruled that if elected Trump (or any president) can not be prosecuted for any “official act.”

So, yes, I am very worried and am not able to see how this movie will end happily. If Trump wins, it is a debacle. If he loses, it is a disaster if he does not concede. Take your pick—debacle or disaster. How are we going to survive this crisis, which will affect not only the United States but the entire world?

Do you see any light at the end of this tunnel?

Your comments are welcomed.

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On my daily walks (painfully slow 3-4 miles nowadays) I usually listen to two or sometimes three podcasts—always the NY Times Daily, often Ezra Klein or Heather Cox Richardson and occasionally Radio Atlantic or The New Yorker Radio Hour. They are all good, and yesterday they all had programs on the election, which will be two weeks from today.  Here were the major themes from these podcasts:

• The margins are razor thin and the races in the seven Battleground States remain too close to call. The election remains a tossup.
• Trump is becoming more and more unhinged, incoherent, vulgar, and off topic. The Arnold Palmer locker room obsession on Sunday was perhaps a low point, but no day goes by without a gaff, insult, or rant that would doom almost any other candidate. Yet so far there is no indication that he is losing much, if any, support.
• Harris is running a smart and impressive campaign, and the Democrats have the stronger ground game, more money, more energy and more enthusiasm. Yet so far, the needle has not budged.
• Three factors will determine the outcome for the Harris Walz ticket —turning out the Democratic base, convincing uncommitted/undecided voters to vote for Harris, and attracting moderate, traditional Republicans and those fearful of the right to life movement in the Republican Party.

Turning out the Democratic base, of course, is hugely important and from all I can tell we Dems are doing pretty well in reaching out to Democratic voters. I know several people who are canvassing in North Carolina and other battleground states. Embry is spending next week there canvassing with her niece, May. Our nephew, Alex, has already written over 70 letters to registered Democrats in Pennsylvania who rarely vote. He aims to complete over a hundred letters and will be canvassing there the final week.

The challenge of reaching uncommitted voters is more unsettling because the message in both podcasts I listened to yesterday was that a majority of uncommitted voters appear to be leaning toward Trump. I listened to several interviews with people who rarely vote or think much about politics, all of whom were working class people living in Nevada or Arizona. The Times reporter said that the more than  100 persons she had interviewed  fell into three groups– those who will sit this election out, those who may vote for Trump with some reluctance and those who will enthusiastically vote for him. Few people she talked to in those states said they were going to vote for Harris.

To compensate for the diminished working class vote the Democrats will need to convince some  college-educated voters in the Republican Party to vote for Harris and Walz. The major targets would be women who are opposed to the Republican’s strict anti abortion policies, the traditional Republicans who can’t stomach Trump’s  personality,  Republicans who value a strong foreign policy, free trade, and balanced budgets and those who are appalled by Trump’s character and totalitarian instincts.

It seems quite likely that if the Harris Walz ticket does win, the election deniers will make another robust effort to overturn the election results. Both Trump and Vance continue to argue that the 2020 election was rigged. They will argue that the 2024 election was also stolen and take action. Get ready for another January 6-type rebellion—this one on steroids and better organized—with pressure on Republican election officials and others to change the outcome.

The perplexing question is why almost half of the United States voting population appears to be ready to vote for a fundamentally flawed human being, who intends to take the nation down the rabbit hole of authoritarianism. How could this be happening?

The most enlightening thing for me from the NY Times interviews with working class people who used to be Democrats but have changed parties or dropped out was how tough their lives have been starting with Covid. The main culprit, of course, is inflation. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, the increase in the cost of gas, milk, rent, utilities and most of life’s necessities gets your attention. While this year the increases have moderated, in their thinking it is too little too late. This happened during the Biden years. They are holding the Democrats accountable.

But could Trump do any better? Many seemed to think so. They cited what they thought were Trump’s strengths—that he was a “successful businessman,” that he always “speaks his mind,” that he won’t let anyone shove him around and, most unsettling, that Trump is a “strong man” and America needs a strongman. These are some of the same arguments that you would have heard if you had been living In Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

We do not know how this movie will end and probably won’t know until days after election day. But if nothing else the fact that it is a cliffhanger should be a warning call that all is not right in the United States of America. Beginning in the 1980s the gap between the rich—and very rich—and the rest of the country has only gotten wider. Those with incomes much below the median income –in other words about half the country—are struggling to make ends meet while the top 10 percent are pulling away from the rest of the pack faster and faster. A country can get away with this for a while but not forever. This has happened on the watch of both Republicans and Democrats. There is plenty of blame to go around. But somehow, we have got to fix this before it does us in. If Trump were to get elected, it will be too late.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is my second recent anti-nuke post, prompted by an article I read this past Sunday (October 13). I opened The New York Times to the “Sunday Opinion” section where I found the headline noted above. The caption below the title read “The U.S. military is spending mightily to overhaul the nation’s outdated nuclear arsenal. Why are we back here?”

What?

The United States will be spending almost $2 trillion over a thirty year period to replace and expand our nuclear arsenal! Good heavens, I had no idea! Yet this spending spree started in 2010 as reported by The Times. The new nuclear arms initiative has fallen behind its original goal of  completion by 2042 and so far is way over budget.

I was taken aback. There has been little, if any, reporting—at least that I am aware of–on this massive, under-the-radar nuclear buildup by the United States military. This article comes only a few months after the publication of Annie Jacobsen’s new book, Nuclear War, which scared the bejesus out of me but did not include material about this massive nuclear weapons buildup. Why hasn’t this been a big issue? And whatever happened to the idea of nuclear disarmament? I thought that following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s we were on a course to get rid of these weapons of mass destruction, not to increase them. What happened? Who is responsible?

Friends, this is insanity!

From Jacobsen’s book, we know that the 5,000 “outdated” nuclear weapons at our disposal still have the power to destroy our adversaries many times over and to alter the climate of the planet Earth.  A nuclear winter could last for years and possibly decades. We currently have 14 nuclear submarines, which continuously cruise deep beneath the surface of the ocean and cannot be detected. Given orders to attack they could respond within seconds with enough warheads to destroy any adversary on the planet. So even if the United States got hit by surprise attacks from Russia, China or North Korea which destroyed most of our nukes that are  in silos, they would still pay the price of being annihilated. Yes, the United States would be devastated, but so would they. This is, of course, the premise of MAD– Mutually Assured Destruction. And it has worked so far.

In other words, even if our nuclear arsenal is old, we still have the capacity to strike back. Why would replacing and expanding our nuclear arsenal change that fact?

There are two major reasons why this initiative is insanity. First, it is costing a huge amount of money that could be put to better use by reducing budget deficits, leveling the economic playing field in the US, and addressing human needs here and around the world. Second, it could bring us closer to a nuclear war, which would mean the end of life on the planet Earth as we know it.

The Cost Issue

Here are some of the facts listed in the Times article:

• The current spending on our nuclear weapons buildup amounts to an average of $57 billion per year or $108,000 per minute and will continue for at least two more decades.
• Each day more than 110,000 scientists, military personnel, and contractors are currently involved in expanding and updating the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Yet because of labor shortages, the initiative is way behind schedule and is experiencing excessive cost overruns. The article points out that many more workers are needed in the effort, and the main government contractor, General Dynamics, is even teaching classes at the elementary and high school level to attract people when they finish school. They also are advertising heavily to recruit more workers.
• While the nuclear weapons in the silos located around the nation are being replaced or upgraded, the biggest investment is for expanding the nuclear submarine fleet. We currently have 14 of these monsters, which are 550 feet long and currently cost $11 billion per ship to build. Operating costs are also high since each sub has a crew of 100 sailors. Every sub carries up to 20 long range nuclear missiles, each of which can carry multiple warheads. The plan now underway calls for building one new sub every year along with two new attack submarines. At the end of the redevelopment period the fleet would increase from 14 to at least 35 nuclear subs. The nuclear missiles would increase from around 300 to over 500. If these subs were given orders to fire their missiles, they could destroy any adversary several times over.
• The best case scenario is that the missiles never get fired, which means that $1.7 trillion has no benefits other than providing jobs and avoiding a holocaust, which one could argue may be worth the cost—if there is certainty that the MAD theory will work forever. But what if it doesn’t?

The Nuclear Holocaust Issue

The impetus for modernizing and expanding our nuclear capability is due, I presume, to classified information regarding what China, Russia and North Korea are doing with their nuclear military programs. The Pentagon analysts must have concluded that if we do not keep up with what our enemies are doing, we will fall behind and lose our MAD deterrent capability. In other words, if our enemies conclude they can knock us off before we can respond, they will do just that. However, just as we spy on them, they also spy on us; and if they conclude that our buildup gives us the edge, they will have no choice but to expand their nuclear capacity. This is what happened during the Cold War, resulting in at least 70 thousand nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals. This was followed in the 1980s and 1990s by several nuclear disarmament treaties, which eventually reduced the weapons to about 5,000 for both the Soviet Union (and Russia) and the U.S. Other countries, however, have now joined the nuclear club—the U.K., France, Israel, India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea.

Does anyone think that these weapons will never be used? Ever? What are the odds given that from time immemorial we humans have used whatever weapons we have to defeat our adversaries? We surely did in 1946. I do not doubt that we would do it again if we believed our country’s survival was threatened and we determined we would not suffer the consequences if we used our nukes.

So, MAD has worked so far, but will it always work? What are the chances of a miscalculation or a mistake? There have already been several close calls when we thought Russia was launching weapons but were able to correct the error minutes before we retaliated.

So, yes. This nuclear buildup and expansion on our part is insanity. The only solution is to rid the planet of these hideous weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. That is where our energy needs to be focused. We still have a long way to go, but we have made progress on countries coming together to fight climate change. The same energy and determination now must include nuclear war. The threat of Nuclear Armageddon is closer now than it has been since the height of the Cold War. It is time for mass demonstrations around the globe focusing on the goal of ridding the world of these weapons forever—not increasing the risk as our current buildup is doing.  A new, vigorous peace movement and anti-nuke movement may help us avoid catastrophe and enable us humans to avoid being part of  the Sixth Great Mass Extinction on the planet Earth. Doing nothing is not a viable option.

 

 

 

 

 

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I am an avid listener of The New York Times “The Daily” podcast. On Tuesday, October 8, Michael Barbaro interviewed a Times reporter who has been following the 2024 presidential election campaign for some time and who has a theory of why the working class jumped ship from the Democrats, starting several decades ago, and accelerating in the early 2000s as became evident in the 2016 “upset election.”

 For quite a while, I have been perplexed by this phenomenon. Why would working people in 2024 vote for Trump, whose policies when he was president did not benefit blue collar workers but rather large corporations and the super-rich, who saw their taxes plummet? The Republicans have been anti-labor and pro-business for decades. They have fought Obamacare and efforts to strengthen the social safety net. What is going on?  I sort of understand the rebellion of the white working class and the evangelicals who are driven in part by culture wars and belief that DEI, “Black Lives Matter,”  pro-immigration and pro-abortion policies have gone too far, offending their religious and cultural values. Trump in his own words has said as much: “I am your retribution.”

So, I get this, but there are many others in the country who also are blue collar workers and who are not white. And 60 percent of our work force in the United States are people without a college degree. Many do very important—and difficult– work for which they get paid barely a living wage. What about them?

The reporter argued in the interview that the reason for the great discontent of the American working class can be explained in one word: NAFTA– The North American Free Trade Act, which passed the Congress in 1993 and became law in 1994.

The reporter went on to cite facts and figures over the decades about the job losses which followed the enactment of NAFTA, which lifted trade barriers first with Canada and Mexico followed by additional free trade legislation including China and other cheap labor countries. When the NAFTA bill was being debated during the election of 1992, Ross Perot, the third party candidate, railed about the “great sucking sound” which would happen when good paying jobs in the industrial Mid West and across the country were shipped  off to Mexico where there was cheap labor. Bernie Sanders and several other progressives and center-left Democrats protested vehemently as well but not enough to keep the bill from passing.

While I can remember the NAFTA debate, it is a bit foggy. What I remember most is that I had no idea whether it was a good or bad idea. The economists along with other experts as I recall tended to support lifting trade barriers, but at the time who was to know? And for that matter, the question is still unresolved since a strong argument can be made that it has helped our economy remain robust  and has benefitted many countries around the world. What is also now clear according to the Times reporter is  the collateral damage that has hammered the working class in the United States.

It turned out that Perot was right. Thousands of businesses downsized or closed in the U.S. and opened factories in Mexico and then in other low wage countries around the world resulting in the loss of millions of good paying, blue collar jobs (with benefits) in the U.S.–over 4.5 million according to the Department of Commerce.  The exodus of factories and manufacturing jobs might have happened to some extent anyway. However, NAFTA was responsible for accelerating the decline. And the argument goes, there were some good outcomes. Prices of goods manufactured in low wage countries tended to be low, providing some relief for people with modest incomes shopping at Walmart and Target. And the economies of countries like China and Mexico have benefitted immensely, bringing down the world-wide poverty rate. But as for the American workers that did the heavy lifting, not so much, and for many it has been a disaster. No wonder many are upset. I would be too. Through no fault of their own, opportunities to earn a decent living have collapsed for many workers with no college degree and who find that they now must compete with immigrants for jobs that do not even pay a living wage.

The crowning moment, the reporter said, came during the presidential debate in 2016 when Trump blamed NAFTA and Bill Clinton for the job losses and Hillary responded by confirming her support for her husband and shrugged off the question. Game over. Despite his many egregious faults, Trump is a marketer and could sense the simmering anger and resentment of the working class. According to the reporter, this was the moment that sealed the fate for the Democrats.

The highlight of the podcast, however, were the comments of an African American factory worker whose life had been upended when his employer, Master Lock, closed, sending him and his friends scuttling, trying to find jobs which paid well, and provided health insurance and a pension. They were unable to find anything even close. His union factory job had enabled him to buy a house and provide for his family. It instilled pride and a feeling of self-worth. All that was gone when Master Lock closed down.  When asked if he was a Democrat or a Republican, he said that while he used to be a Democrat, he would never vote for a Democrat again because most of this happened on their watch. Clinton was the president  who started it all. What happened made it possible for  his employer and so many others to move their factories to Mexico. He was quick to point out that he was not a Republican either. He thought Trump was “a crook” and that the Republicans were probably even worse. Rather, he was disillusioned and alienated and would not vote at all. And this was also true, he said, for his African American friends and co-workers. Everyone was fed up.

Listening to his sad story was an Ah Ha moment for me. Of course! No wonder so many working people feel abandoned by the Democrats. Their path to the middle class was roadblocked with no good options readily available for finding a new pathway.  Listening to this guy honestly and painfully describe his experience, I could not help feeling empathy. And this has been happening everywhere in the United States for decades—especially across the industrial Mid West and in the battleground states. 

One could argue that all is not lost for us Democrats. Not everyone who lost a good paying union job has become a Republican, but still, many in the working class feel abandoned by the Democrats, who they feel do not care about ordinary working people since many believe that now the party has become the party of the college educated elite. Many blue collar workers do not see a happy place for themselves if there is no change of course. For this reason, they are going to vote for Trump or are not going to vote. But sitting out this election could make all the difference. Will we Dems pay the price, or will we pull this one out of the fire giving the country a chance to try to level the playing field and right some of the wrongs that have happened to the American working class? The stakes have never been higher.

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On November 5 voters will decide the outcome of the most consequential election in my lifetime. This election is not about the traditional issues that have separated (modern) Democrats from Republicans. Democrats have tended to focus on leveling the playing field, expanding the social safety net and embracing reform movements like civil rights, and gender identity issues. Republicans have championed a strong, unfettered business-based economy, individual responsibility, “family values,” a strong military, and a robust foreign policy. As the saying goes, “Those trains have done left the station.” The fundamental underlining question on the table in this election is whether democracy will survive in the United States. The Republican Party has been transformed from supporting traditional conservative values to a radical populist party supported largely by an alienated, white working class and financed and directed primarily by billionaire tech libertarians. At stake is the survival of our system of government.

Before I start my day, I will typically open my iPhone and take a quick look at my calendar (usually not much there) and read two blog posts, one by Robert Reich and the second by Heather Cox Richardson. They rarely let me down. On October 3 the Reich post was about the threat to our democracy where he posted the following, referring to Vance’s phony, “nice guy” debate performance and his close relationship with billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel:

Thiel and Vance — along with Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, blogger Curtis Yarvin, and others in the anti-democracy movement — believe that the only way true libertarians can win in America is for a Caesar-like figure to wrest power from the American establishment and install a monarchical regime, run like a startup.

Reich describes Vance as the heir apparent to lead the effort to transform the United States into a totalitarian country. Regardless what happens  in 2024, Vance will likely be the Republican candidate in 2028 and the battle for the soul of America will continue. In other words, this battle will not disappear in 2024 and will likely be the most important issue that our nation will face now and possibly for years to come.

And it is far from certain how this movie will end. But even if we Democrats pull off a victory this election, Trump and Vance will likely fight the outcome just as Trump did in 2000. There could be another January 6 type event, this time on steroids.

This leads to the fundamental question: what is wrong with us? Surely there are important issues that are fueling the fire. Our country has become more divided and unequal according to social class and income. There is push back on immigration. Racism persists. Wars in Europe and the Middle East persist and are intensifying.  Covid was a huge factor and continues to be a potential threat. Inflation has aggravated economic inequalities. Lack of affordable housing (my field) is a big problem. Social media  and alternative news options also play a role. “Political correctness” and culture wars alienate many on the right. Huge divisions surround the abortion issue. Then there is climate change, horrific hurricanes, and coastal flooding.

But still. We live in a great country. There is much to celebrate—the fact that for now we still have a democracy, that we have made great progress on racial and gender issues, that we are not a police state, and that new opportunities pop up when others fail. We are the wealthiest and most powerful nation on this planet. We have the most robust culture and produce some of the world’s greatest artists, writers, athletes, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, inventors, philanthropists, scientists, and performers. And we are trying to address the problems facing us.  Yet there are those that want to throw all this out in favor of an authoritarian system? What is wrong with them?

In times like this I keep falling back on the explanation that this is our human nature. We are a flawed species. Humans have risen to the top of the food chain due to our superior brain and intellect, but we are just another animal and have animal instincts when it comes to self-preservation. When animals feel cornered or threatened, they fight back. So do we humans. We are also herd animals. We evolved   because over hundreds of thousands of years we gradually formed family groups, clans, tribes, and eventually nations and figured out that working together in groups produces better outcomes. And the key to tribal–and national–survival is having a strong and good leader.

We humans have a mixed track record in leadership. While we have had our share of good leaders, we have also produced the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Franco, Mussolini, Putin, and Xi. I suspect that the list of bad leaders—some horrific– is much longer than the list of great leaders. But few would argue that leaders do not make a difference. That is why the election of 2024 is so important.

And never have the stakes been higher.  According to many pundits we are closer to World War III than we have ever been, given the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and that nuclear saber rattling is raising its ugly head.

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