I Didn't Watch Donald Trump Ramble

Tonight, Donald Trump is giving his first speech to a joint session of Congress. He’s going to call for $54 billion in new Pentagon spending, while slashing the EPA and State Department funding to the bone. He’s going to call for huge new tax cuts for the wealthy as well. He’s going to call for massive de-regulation on businesses as well. In short, he’s calling for the Reagan/Bush economic plan on steroids. The only real question is if he’s going to call for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, or not, since we don’t know what kind of a mood Little Donald is in today.

Given that we know the utter carnage the Occupier-In-Chief wants to propose, I’m surprised to hear that some Democrats and progressives want to watch his speech. I don’t see any need to. There’s nothing to learn from listening to him speak. There’s lots to lose though.

I did not watch Little Donald’s Inauguration speech, because I know as well as anyone else that he was going to look up the ratings. This man wants our attention, he wants us to treat him as important. I’m going to treat him like he’s very unimportant. Sure, the damage he is doing to our country is bad, but we can’t remove him by a vote for four more years basically, so i’m going to focus on making his Congressional minions miserable, while treating him like a piece of trash on the highway that we drive by. No watching him give a speech that real Presidents get to give. No ratings. He is a second-class President to me.

I hope you’ll do the same, and ignore his speech tonight. Don’t give him the satisfaction of high ratings or the myth of our attention. He’ll get neither when he speaks. Treat him like an outcast, so that maybe he’ll start to feel like one.

Nerd Prom Sucks Anyway

Donald Trump isn’t going to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner this year. Honestly, good. Good for the actual White House Press Corps, who doesn’t have to listen to this orange thing babble incoherently about his “yugeee victory” last Fall, make not funny jokes about Hillary Clinton, or ramble on about how great he is. Good for all the Hollywood stars who promised to not show up anyway. More than anything though, good because no one will pay attention to it now.

Donald Trump doesn’t belong at this dinner. For one thing, we shouldn’t be treating him as a normal human being, much less President. The man has called the press an “enemy of the people” of this country in the past week, a statement so ridiculous that he should probably slap himself for saying it. He doesn’t believe in a free press, so they shouldn’t put themselves through the uncomfortable position of having to act like they want to spend the night with him. Good for them, they should honor their important profession without this enemy of the press in the room.

The other side of this is that I of course am not a fan of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner anyway. I believe in a free press, and I think they are important- I just don’t think they’re that great at their jobs. They do not cover politics as though they want to get the truth and facts out, they cover politics as though they need to show both sides. They do this even when one side is utterly ridiculous- as they have on climate change. They haven’t done the hard-hitting, investigative reporting at times we’ve needed them to- like the run up to the Iraq War. They’ve been deferential to the government- like believing Iraq had a weapons program worthy of us going to war there, when they didn’t. They treat Paul Ryan’s false math as though it’s legitimate, and they covered Hillary Clinton as though an actual crime was committed in Benghazi, or with her private e-mail server- when quite predictably, she was not ever indicted, let alone found guilty of anything. I support our press, and I want them to continue to exist well beyond the excommunication of our Occupier-In-Chief, but I also want them to do a better job at doing their job- and start to cover facts, not cover for balance.

I see no point to this event even existing. I realize that they do a good job at handing out scholarships to kids and helping the Washington-area community, but otherwise I find the idea of a bunch of Beltway occupants throwing themselves a party to be repulsive. Maybe in another time I’d support it, but I can’t back this event as a concept, let alone as a practice. Thank goodness that our press doesn’t have to listen to Little Donald ramble, but perhaps we just shouldn’t have this event for a few years, until it’s worth having again.

A Big Win in Delaware, But...

In November, things didn’t go so well for the Democrats. One of the unexpected under-performances of the election came in Delaware. Democrats came out ahead in the state’s Senate by just one vote, and a vacancy in a Democratic seat had arisen in the down state area. This meant that Saturday’s special election in that district was for control of the chamber. Democrats managed to win by a larger-than-expected 58–42% margin. The result put Stephanie Hansen in the State Senate, and Democrats in charge of a body they should be in charge of anyway.

Democrats have a lot to be happy about in this victory. For one, they avoided a real embarrassment in Joe Biden’s home state. Secondly though, this was a seat they won by 2% in 2014, and they won it by 17% in a Special Election held on a Saturday in February, in a district that was not downtown Wilmington. While they absolutely should win this seat, this was the kind of race Democrats had been losing in the Obama-era. They won it, and they won it by a bigger than normal margin.

Even with all of that, let’s not write the stories about 2018 being our 2010 yet. Yes, there are some promising signs, but off-year Special Elections don’t always tell us much. Republicans lost nearly every Congressional Special Election over the course of the first ten months of 2009, and really didn’t show any signs of the 2010 wave they were bringing until the November elections of Republican Governors in Virginia and New Jersey, and of course, Scott Brown’s Senate victory a short-time later in Massachusetts. All the Democratic wins in early 2009 didn’t mean a whole lot when the 2010 mid-terms came splashing onto the short, delivering big Republican majorities in the U.S. House and in state houses across the country. Democrats might get a similar wave in 2018- but there’s absolutely no proof of that right now.

Feel free to celebrate, because winning is better than losing. Don’t get too comfortable though. Democrats could win or lose in the next big special election, the Georgia Special Election to fill Tom Price’s seat. It’s truly up in the air, because of the weird-ness of any Special Election. If they win, it doesn’t mean 2018 is going to be our year. If they lose, it doesn’t mean it won’t be. It matters though, because the winner will get a seat in Congress to vote on our laws, so pay attention and get involved- these races matter.

All Hail Tom Perez

Saturday was a big day for Democrats, but it was especially a big day for one Democrat in specific- Tom Perez. The former Labor Secretary fell just short of winning the DNC Chairmanship on ballot one, and won it on ballot two. He takes over a party that was torn apart by last year’s primaries, Wikileaks, and Donald Trump. His job is to take it back to where it was under his old boss, President Obama.

Tom Perez handled things about as well as humanly possible. When he won, he immediately accepted his former rival, Congressman Keith Ellison as his “Deputy Chairman,” a mostly made up title that will give Ellison a larger platform from which to put forward his vision for the party as a national leader. I think this was a smart move. While Ellison did support Bernie Sanders in last year’s primaries, and I didn’t, Ellison has shown himself to be an impressive national leader, who while ambitious, also seems to have a plan for how he is going to get his agenda done. The Democratic Party can use more people with actual plans, and not just ideals, and Ellison seems to fit that bill. I don’t agree with everything he says and wants, but the guy feels like a winner to me.

Beyond just handling Ellison well, Perez did a remarkably good job in avoiding getting into the general spat between the regular liberal Democratic Party and the progressive wing of the party throughout this race. He didn’t get himself stuck fighting against activist groups and people who didn’t support him, and he didn’t mix it up with the likes of the #DemExit Crowd and others who called for progressives to leave the party if they didn’t get their way. Perez kept the door open to work with them in the future.

Tom Perez also pulled both of those feats off while not alienating the base of the party that supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and even in some cases Bernie Sanders (90% of his voters united with the party in the Fall, after making their voices heard). Tom Perez doesn’t have to ditch President Obama’s legacy and agenda while he opens the tent to millions more across the country. Perez pulled the “win-win.”

I have no illusions that his job will be easy moving forward. There are still some fringe Alt-Lefters out there who want to tear the party apart to get their way, even primarying incumbent Democrats on tough terrain. We’re not likely to win back the Senate, or even the House, in 2018. There is no Barack Obama type of talent clearly ready for 2020. Our activists are impatient and scared by the thing in the White House. Tom Perez is going to have a tough time as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Fortunately though, I feel like we picked a man who is up to the fight.

The Only Thing I Like About Steve Bannon....

I think Steve Bannon is a Neo-Nazi. I’m not a fan of him, Breitbart, or the Trump White House. I disagree with him on virtually every single thing he believes. I don’t like the guy. I don’t mean to write much nice about him.

When I lived in Washington, DC about five years ago, I hated it. One of the things that angered me the most was the image consciousness that prevailed in that city. The suit and tie are so overplayed in Washington that they lose all meaning. Everyone wants to look important and official, even if they aren’t important or official. It’s stupid, and just an excuse for people to pretend they’re somebody they’re not, while not being who they are.

Now, I don’t like wearing a suit. I’m more friendly to it now than I was ten years ago, but I don’t see any need to impress you. I wear suits to weddings, funerals, and events involving U.S. Presidents, but besides that, you’re lucky if you get me wearing a suit coat, let alone a tie and the whole get-up. I’ll either impress you with who I am and what I know, or I won’t. I don’t much care otherwise.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, Steve Bannon does something that really, really impresses me, and would almost make me like him, if he wasn’t all the stuff I said above- he does not dress to impress anyone. He doesn’t care. He looks like any normal, common guy you’d meet on the streets. I think that is actually really cool. If Steve Bannon didn’t run Breitbart and the Trump White House, I’d actually want to shake his hand for this.

As Bannon spoke to CPAC last week, only two things ran through my mind- I hate this guy with a burning passion, and he looks like he doesn’t belong there. The first means I’d like to punch him in the face, the second means I think he’s doing to DC exactly what it deserves to have done to it- bring it down a notch. Enough with the suit and tie game, enough with the appearances of being important, and let’s actually do work there- unless you’re Steve Bannon. If you’re Steve Bannon, I still hate you.