“Why I Want It All”: Gloria, Madeleine And We
The last time I stood in front of Gloria Steinem, in the fall of 2012, she spent little time talking to me.
Instead, she trained her laser-focus on the 24-year-old woman next to me. This was my daughter, whose favorite doll in early childhood was a blonde Cabbage Patch girl named Gloria Steinem.
We were in Hartford for a sold-out panel discussion for the Connecticut Forum — featuring Ashley Judd, Michelle Bernard, Gloria and me — on “The State of Women.” When Cait heard that I would be less than two hours from her home in Providence, she considered driving up. When I told her Gloria Steinem was also on the panel, I closed the deal.
What I remember most about that evening was the glow on my daughter’s face as Gloria leaned in and asked her about her life. I couldn’t recount a word of their exchange, but I will never forget the full-circle joy that blurred my vision.
I share this story not to excuse what Gloria said on Bill Maher’s show last week but to explain why I won’t let one clumsy comment diminish who I know her to be.
Maher asked her why so many young women are supporting Bernie Sanders. She has since apologized for this response: “Women get more radical as we get older. Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women get more radical because they lose power as they age. … When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”
I understand the angry response of many young women, but when the outrage turns to rancor and declarations of her irrelevance, I bristle. Gloria Steinem has been a steadfast champion of this millennial generation of women, many of whom have likely never said her name aloud before this week. At 81, she has earned our benefit of the doubt.
It didn’t help that, in the same weekend, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stood next to Hillary Clinton and warned younger women, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” She has said the same thing countless times, often to rapturous cheers, but her timing was off.
At 58, I’m young enough to have found Steinem and Albright inspiring for many years. I even admire their impatience in this presidential year. It is comforting to see a small part of me in my heroes.
How to explain this? I think about that a lot. It’s not that I believe young women have to support Hillary Clinton. I just want them to understand why it’s so personal for many of us who do. We can rattle off all Clinton’s qualifications as the reasons to elect her, and we mean it. But there’s also the woman-ness of it all. Why are we still such a tough sell, even to one another?
In our family, three daughters and a daughter-in-law have careers and young children and a sense of self that triggers a deep longing in me. Sometimes I watch them and wonder, “Who are you?” It is a question of awe, not envy, and a reflection of my own what-ifs. Who might I be now had I been like them in my 20s? It took me so much longer to turn up the dimmer on my own ambition.
Not this generation. Everywhere I go, it seems, I meet young women who leave me breathless. They are teaching and preaching and delivering babies. Once a year, one of them calms my nerves before she walks behind the wall and tells me to hold my breath for the mammogram.
Sometimes, I am at my clumsiest with them, feeing a rush of unearned pride. Who am I, a stranger, to take glory in these young women’s lives? I feel so silly, so full of this song in my heart.
Finally, it seems, I understand how my own mother felt as she watched her daughters leave her behind to navigate a world she had never imagined for herself. Days before she died, she told me she wished she had stuck up for herself more in her marriage.
I braced myself and said, “What would you have done differently, Mom?”
She lifted her weak, manicured hand and pointed to her head. “I would have dyed my hair red,” she said. “And I would have had cats.”
They used to ask for so little, the women in my family.
Maybe that, too, is why I want it all.
By: Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist and Professional in Residence at Kent State University’s School of Journalism; The National Memo, February 11, 2016
“How Would He Govern?”: Why Liberals Should Be Very Worried About The GOP Nominating Donald Trump
Be careful what you wish for.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait hopes his fellow liberals will cheer on the possibility of Republicans nominating Donald Trump for president. Chait’s preference will make no difference at all to the result of the GOP race. But still, Chait’s essay is important for what it tells us about how at least one smart liberal is thinking about 2016 and the stakes involved in who becomes the Republican standard-bearer.
And what it tells us isn’t good.
The GOP is an unstable (but electorally very successful) amalgam of an ethno-nationalist base with a wealthy anti-government and pro-immigration donor class. Republican presidential candidates normally work very hard to smooth over the tensions between these very different constituencies. Trump refuses to do this. Chait argues that by explicitly rejecting the outlook of the donors and siding unambiguously with the base, Trump’s campaign has already begun to make mischief within the Republican electoral coalition.
If he won the nomination, the chaos would increase enormously. And that is an appealing prospect for a liberal. As Chait puts it, “A Trump nomination might not actually cleave the GOP in two, but it could wreak havoc. If, like me, you think the Republican Party in its current incarnation needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt anew, Trump is the only one holding a match.”
Let’s leave aside the possibility that burning down the current incarnation of the GOP would also destabilize the Democratic Party’s own incoherent electoral coalition. If we could be close to certain that Republican nominee Trump would lose the general election, I could see accepting the risks and even cheering him on as a catalyst for fundamental change in the Republican Party.
But can we be so certain? Chait seems to think so. His first reason why liberals should support a Trump nomination is that the billionaire “would almost certainly lose.” I’m not so sure. Yes, it’s true that Trump is “massively — indeed, historically — unpopular, with unfavorable ratings now hovering around 60 percent.” But Trump’s most likely general election opponent — Hillary Clinton — doesn’t do much better, with an average unfavorable rating in the low 50s and two recent polls showing her as high as 55 and 56 percent. That’s not a big difference.
Chait argues that the only thing that could enable the wildly unpopular Trump to overcome this obstacle and eke out a victory would be a “landscape-altering event.” Like what? Chait names a recession. But recessions aren’t once-in-a-century catastrophes. They happen on average at least once in a decade — and the last one (the Great Recession that hit in the run-up to the 2008 election) ended nearly six years ago.
But maybe even a Trump win in November isn’t something to be overly concerned about. That is Chait’s surprising third reason why liberals should cheer him on in the GOP nomination contest: Not only would a President Trump “probably end up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a [Ted] Cruz presidency,” but a Trump presidency “might even, possibly, do some good.”
Here I think the normally sharp and sensible Chait careens off the rails, basing his entire argument on a presumed (and fanciful) parallel with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s two terms as governor of California: The grossly unqualified non-politician with few ties to the Republican Party at first acted like an imbecile but then became a flexible and highly effective governor. Might not Trump do the same?
Never mind that Schwarzenegger left office with a 23 percent approval rating and a massive hole in the state budget. The ominous fact is that a president is exponentially (and when it comes to nuclear weapons, infinitely) more powerful than any state’s executive officeholder. Which means that the stakes in a race for the presidency are exponentially higher as well.
Though he doesn’t make the case explicitly, Chait presumably thinks that Trump would do less harm than a President Rubio or Cruz because he has distanced himself from the ideology that dominates the Republican Party — and because his wealth places him beyond the reach of manipulation by the party’s big-money donors. But that independence — the same independence that led him to blow off the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses — makes Trump more dangerous than standard-issue Republicans, not less.
A President Rubio or Cruz governing with congressional majorities would do lots of things that Chait and I think are bad for the country. But they would be quite predictable things: tax cuts for high-income earners, big increases in defense spending, massive deficits, the repeal of ObamaCare, and so on.
What would a President Trump do? Aside from rounding up and deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, building a massive wall along the southern border, (somehow) making Mexico pay for it, and forbidding Muslims from entering the country — each one of which would be quite bad — it’s impossible to say. Untethered from the constraints that traditions, parties, donors, and other establishment institutions normally impose on politicians, Trump really would be his own boss, relying solely on his own temperament and judgment to determine which policies to pursue.
Even if Trump hadn’t already demonstrated in a thousand ways that he possesses the temperament and judgment of a childish, vindictive bully, this would be an alarming prospect.
As it is, we simply have no way to know how Trump would govern. And that should be more than enough reason to stand against him with everything we’ve got.
By: Damon Linker, The Week, February 9, 2016
“Different Analyses Of What’s Wrong With America”: Here’s The Big Difference Between Bernie Sanders And Donald Trump
Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary represented about as emphatic a rejection as you could imagine of that imposing monolith we’ve been calling “the establishment.” Bernie Sanders certainly felt it. “The people of New Hampshire have sent a profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way, to the media establishment,” he said. “The people want real change.” On the Republican side, you could almost hear the establishment whimpering sadly as the possibility of Donald Trump being their nominee became even more real.
But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that Sanders’ and Trump’s success — whether temporary or not — represents two sides of the same coin, a single phenomenon manifesting itself simultaneously in both parties.
That isn’t to say there aren’t a few similarities between the messages the two men are sending. People joke about Sanders and Trump both being supporters of single-payer health care, even though Trump’s “support” consists of a couple of favorable comments years ago; the truth is that he doesn’t seem to know or care much about health care, just like most policy issues. But Trump has sounded some economic populist themes, particularly on trade, where he’s been as skeptical as Sanders of the free trade policies pursued by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. And Trump has no particular commitment to conservative ideology, so if he does become the nominee, don’t expect him to advocate for traditional Republican economic ideas.
That aside, Trump and Sanders have fundamentally different analyses of what’s wrong with America and its government, and what ought to be done about it.
Anger has been the signature emotion of this election on the Republican side. And while there’s no question that many Democratic voters have problems with what has happened during the Obama years, they’re not angry so much as they are disappointed. And that disappointment is really with governing itself — the difficult slog of legislation, the necessary compromises, the inevitable mix of victories and defeats. Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she doesn’t promise anything different; her point is not that she’ll remake American politics, but that through hard work and persistence she can squeeze out of that unpleasant process some better results.
It’s a pragmatic, realistic message, but not one to stir the heart. Particularly for idealistic younger voters, Sanders’ vision of not just different results but a transformed process was bound to be appealing. To those liberals whose attachment to the Democratic Party is less firm — which may also be true of younger voters — Sanders says that the problem isn’t the other side, it’s the whole system, and the “oligarchy” that controls it.
Trump too has a message that transcends partisanship. But where Sanders says the problem is that the system is corrupt because it’s controlled by the wealthy and corporations, Trump argues that the problem is stupidity. He doesn’t want to bring about some kind of transformation in the system. He wants to just ignore it, and produce unlimited winning through the sheer force of his will. For instance, they may both have problems with the trade agreements America has signed, but Sanders will tell you it’s because corporations exerted too much influence over the content of those agreements. Trump just says the agreements were negotiated by idiots, so we got taken to the cleaners by foreigners.
Here’s another important difference between the two: For all their misgivings about the Democratic establishment, Sanders’ supporters are idealistic, hopeful, and looking for dramatic change that is rooted in liberal ideology. They want more comprehensive government benefits in areas like health care and education, higher taxes on the wealthy, and greater restrictions on financial firms. In short, they want their party to be more ideologically pure.
Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, aren’t motivated by hope and idealism but by anger: anger at immigration, anger at Muslims, anger at foreigners, anger at a changing country that seems to be leaving them behind. They want a restoration of American greatness, the feeling of mastery over events and the world. They are far less interested in fulfilling a wish list of conservative policies — which is why they’re unfazed when other Republicans accuse Trump of not being a “real” conservative. He isn’t, and his supporters don’t really care.
There’s another difference: As dramatic as both victories in New Hampshire were, Trump and Sanders face very different prospects from this point forward. Trump is the overwhelming Republican frontrunner, standing far atop a chaotic race in which his opponents are dropping like flies. He may or may not become the nominee, but at the moment he’s got a much better shot than anyone else. Sanders, on the other hand, still trails Hillary Clinton in national polls and faces a daunting map. He’ll now have to go to states with large numbers of the minority voters among whom Clinton has been particularly strong.
We don’t yet know how deep the desire for “revolution” among Democrats really goes, and that question will probably determine the outcome of their primary race. The conservative rage that propelled Donald Trump to victory in New Hampshire, on the other hand, seems virtually inexhaustible.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, February 10, 2016
“Fringe Appeal”: Sanders’ And Trump’s ‘Us vs. Them’ Mentality Won’t Win Over America
If you want a window into the state of U.S. politics, the speeches given by the first- and second-place finishers in New Hampshire’s presidential primary were revealing. But what was striking was that the commonalities among the candidates did not follow party lines as much as they related to the candidates’ “outsider” or “establishment” status.
The outsiders won last night, of course: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, while having been elected to the U.S. House and Senate, did so as an independent and considers himself a democratic socialist. Donald Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality, has held a variety of positions on political issues and contributed to both parties, but has never before held political office.
The runners up, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Kasich, embody their parties’ establishments: Clinton was a first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state. Kasich served as U.S. congressman, chairman of the House Budget Committee and is the popular two-term governor of Ohio.
But in their victory speeches, the outsiders sounded more like each other than they did their partisan colleagues. Sanders and Trump piqued the frustrations and angst of their respective parties’ primary voters.
For Sanders, it was American versus American: Wall Street, the billionaire class and Super PACs versus the victims of the “rigged economy.” His solution: a “political revolution” to make the rich pay their “fair share” so the rest of us can have free college, health care and retirement.
For Trump, it was Americans versus non-Americans: China, Mexico, immigrants and terrorists. His plan is to “earn world respect” and “make American great again” by constructing a border wall and rebuilding the military to “knock the hell out of” the Islamic State group. Unlike Sanders, Trump at least tempered his typical campaign demeanor and rhetoric during his victory speech in an apparent combination of glee and recognition of the fact that he had a national audience in prime time.
Clinton and Kasich, on the other hand, acknowledged and assuaged the insecurities of their parties’ bases by invoking core American values and desires.
Clinton, always politically calculating and often poorly advised, made a somewhat brief attempt to sound the Sanders theme, vowing to “fight Wall Street,” before falling back on her natural strengths. She promised to “work harder than anyone,” and reminded voters of her lifelong commitment to public service (which has proved that she does, indeed, work harder than anyone). She described a “growth and fairness economy” and vowed to support human rights for “every single American.”
Kasich vowed to “re-shine” America. He discussed the importance of the opportunity to work, the desire in each of us to help our families and neighbors and the preference to look to government as a last resort. Kasich promised to heal divisions, “leave no one behind,” and solve problems not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.
Unfortunately for Sanders and Trump, most Americans still reject the “us versus them” mindset, whether internally or externally focused, espoused by Democrat or Republican. This approach is not just “outsider,” it is “fringe.” That fringe appeal proved to be a successful primary strategy in New Hampshire, but it is neither a viable general election strategy nor a way to govern an already insecure and divided nation.
In contrast, during their New Hampshire primary night speeches, both Clinton and Kasich appeared to have adequately addressed the concerns of their partisan voters while simultaneously appealing to the national electorate that they hope to face in November. To the extent that the term “establishment” correlates with judgment of the sort that Clinton and Kasich demonstrated on primary night in New Hampshire, we might just want to consider using the more appropriate term “qualified.”
By: Michael C. Barnes, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, February 10, 2016
“Team Crazy Wins The Sane State”: We’ve Still Got Some Time For Sanity To Catch Up
Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu is fond of saying “Iowa picks corn and New Hampshire picks presidents.” Let’s hope that he’s wrong this time, or America is headed for an apocalyptic “choice, not an echo” election.
Celebrity demagogue Donald Trump and Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders won massive victories on Tuesday, sweeping virtually every voter group in the Granite State. It was a night for pitchfork populism, with the politics of cultural and economic resentment hitting overdrive.
What’s truly troubling is that New Hampshire traditionally serves as a speed-bump in the crowded primary calendar, calming hyper-partisan passions and pandering. Unlike the low-turnout Iowa Caucuses and play-to-the-base South Carolina, the “Live Free or Die” state offers an electorate that reflects the independent centrist sensibility of the American general electorate.
Forty-four percent of New Hampshire voters are registered independents, essentially mirroring national self-identification numbers. It’s an open primary, increasing competition and voter participation. And it’s a swing state, one of only seven that is considered up for grabs in a presidential election.
For Republicans, New Hampshire is a rare state where the party is evenly divided between conservatives and moderates. Libertarians have a strong presence and perhaps not coincidentally it’s the least religious state in the nation. Social conservative litmus tests have limited appeal here. For example, New Hampshire became the first state to legalize marriage equality via the legislature in 2009. While the state isn’t exactly a bastion of racial diversity, New Hampshire has ideological diversity and a proud live-and-let live culture. In the last two presidential primary cycles New Hampshire backed John McCain and Mitt Romney after the Iowa caucuses elevated Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Earlier in the cycle, it seemed like one of the strong center-right governors—Chris Christie, John Kasich, or Jeb Bush—would be primed to repeat the pattern.
So much for that streak. The record will now show that Donald Trump romped to victory in 2016 with a nativist campaign. He updated the conservative populism of Pat Buchanan, the right-wing pundit who narrowly won the state in 1996 with an anti-immigrant, anti-trade, and anti-establishment agenda. Trump’s proudly anti-PC appeals defined deviancy down in this campaign, delighting in the attention that outrageously ugly “us against them” rhetoric can bring. His Teflon comes from being a reality TV star with a reputation for ruthless business success. Fame and fury more than compensate for a lack of conservative philosophy to those folks who just want an anti-Obama in the White House. Trump’s victory cut across all age, income, and ideological groups, according to CNN’s exit polls—though the more educated and wealthy a voter is the less likely they are to buy his B.S.
The prospect of a billionaire populist should be enough to make your head explode. But for the earnest liberal activists who clustered around Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign, the idea must be particularly insulting.
After all, the energy behind Bernie’s campaign comes from righteous anger at income inequality that has only deepened in the wake of the great recession, making millennials more receptive to a democratic socialist agenda than at any time since post-war Progressive Party members insisted that “Uncle Joe” Stalin was simply misunderstood.
Sanders’s campaign has so far succeeded in making “moderate” a dirty word in the Democratic primary—a mirror image of what the dynamic Republicans have been wrestling with for decades. Whatever the ultimate impact, we are witnessing the birth of a left-wing Tea Party that may divide the Democratic Party—with predictable results—for decades to come.
No doubt Bernie’s big win was boosted by his status as a Senator from Vermont. New Hampshire traditionally rewards neighboring state elected officials from Paul Tsongas to John Kerry. But his campaign also became a crusade against the governing establishment represented by Hillary Clinton. In the psychology of support, it is cool to like Bernie now. And according to CNN’s exit polls, he won almost every voter cohort—including, somewhat surreally, moderate voters. Only non-white voters, senior citizens, and those who made over $200k supported Clinton in New Hampshire.
It’s worth noting that these two opposite-in-everything men share two broad policy positions: a distrust of free trade deals and a belief that big money super PACs are trying to buy elections.
But while Bernie also rode a wave of populism to his victory, buoyed by his unscripted authenticity—any parallels to Trump stop there. While The Donald glories in incivility, Bernie refuses to go negative during the campaign. While Trump’s policies are all bumper-sticker bluster, Bernie glories in a five-year plan with detailed bullet points.
Perhaps the most relevant difference is that Trump has positive primary calendar ahead of him—he leads the polls in the upcoming conservative states throughout the South. Bernie has a much tougher road ahead in states that are both more conservative and more diverse. Democratic socialists from Vermont via Brooklyn don’t expect a friendly reception in the South.
Adrenalin is surging for Trump and Sanders supporters after their lopsided wins in a centrist state. But there is something nihilistic behind the anti-establishment anger that drove them to the polls. Because polarization doesn’t solve problems—it compounds them.
The authoritarian-tinged appeal of a strong-man or the promise of ideological purity makes true-believers feel invincible until they collide with reality in a constitutional democracy. Victory in presidential elections requires reaching out beyond the base and winning over the reasonable edge of the opposition. Effective presidential leadership requires working with congress in a spirit of principled compromise, defining common ground and achieving common goals.
The frustration that many folks feel with Washington stems from its current division and dysfunction, the sense that special interests are ignoring the national interest. They’re right. But the populist protest candidacies of Trump and Sanders will only deepen Washington’s division and dysfunction because they don’t offer any practical bipartisan solutions as a matter of pride. Banning Muslim immigration or single-payer healthcare may have their constituencies but they aren’t going to pass congress. Insults and ideological purity are only a recipe for further polarization, creating a feedback loop of frustration and alienation. Their prescriptions double-down on the disease.
Some hardcore partisan supporters no doubt love the idea of a Trump-Sanders general election, effectively forcing America to choose between two extreme visions. But despite their current popularity with the partisan base, neither man represents the vast majority of Americans. And here’s a proof-point to keep the moderate majority from fearing the future: Less than 0.3 percent of Americans have voted so far in the 2016 primaries. We’ve still got some time for sanity to catch up with all the crazy talk.
By: John Avlon, The Daily Beast, February 10, 2016
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