tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7354286255927912762024-03-13T16:30:55.365-07:00DOM'S DOMAIN POLITICSVisit DOM'S OTHER DOMAIN -- domsdomain.blogspot.com -- for movie reviews and culture pieces.Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.comBlogger218125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-57985042354346129542023-02-09T17:10:00.000-08:002023-02-09T17:10:32.625-08:00THE OLD PRESIDENT SHOWS HIS METTLE<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmkDEEMK-fLBc8NqATBg-EgK_G0xI7EKKuTH8fRGqgezPkjmtEDpr-Oe-CX1IUzNAOEjCgaJVxRQfmgyKhtAkM7Su3cpZdlRc64SlFubDLghVQJUXPAMOvLOStF7fXIzArXbSqw1GxKUe6X4lMirmcHFaR3Ej3NBELhm7SPesYrL_1x6DNjON-CjuY/s929/BidenState.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="929" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmkDEEMK-fLBc8NqATBg-EgK_G0xI7EKKuTH8fRGqgezPkjmtEDpr-Oe-CX1IUzNAOEjCgaJVxRQfmgyKhtAkM7Su3cpZdlRc64SlFubDLghVQJUXPAMOvLOStF7fXIzArXbSqw1GxKUe6X4lMirmcHFaR3Ej3NBELhm7SPesYrL_1x6DNjON-CjuY/w640-h360/BidenState.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Biden delivering the State of the Union, forcing even Kevin McCarthy to applaud<br />while VP Kamala Harris smiles in amusement.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Joe Biden can lead a nation, but he sure can’t do anything about his age. Watching him rule that congressional mob February 7, however, made my Pacemaker sing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">He ran rings around Republicans 40 years younger during the State of Union address, making a usually formal event look much like a rugby scrum inside the British Parliament, where free-for-all antics are normal. But if this was give and take, he was clearly taking them. He led the Republicans to applaud for seniors and at least by behavior put Social Security and Medicare outside the zone of their debt ceiling threats (they may take that all back over time, but now know they will look foolish whatever they do).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The one thing Joe can’t change, and it will loom large even among Democratic supporters in his 2024 plans <a href="https://captimes.com/2091df43-a6c8-5966-b409-a1ac52c9298e.html" target="_blank">(looks like he’s running)</a>, is his age. He’s grandpa Joe, physically in great shape next to all us other 80 year olds, and he proved in that State of Union that he has more vigor and better ideas for the nation than that dying party. Ron DeSantis will have an easier target in the blubber of Donald Trump than he does in Joe Biden.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But the grandpa label is still there, intractable in a party that remains young in spirit, forward moving and basically progressive. Nancy Pelosi may look every minute better as Speaker of the House than that new GOP guy (who can do little more than purse his lips futilely at his misbehaving GOP underlings) but she is 82 and even Democrats chafed about that. Given how all sides of our culture treat age, including oldsters themselves, it is an issue. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I know. I still write on both politics and culture, I can still croak to my guitar and cook gourmet dinners. But I now have grandchildren as well as children who unconsciously -- and sometimes not so unconsciously -- are taking notice of my age. They accidentally can make me feel feeble even in those areas where I’m still pretty lively. I know I can’t keep up with them in energy and I have learned they don’t want me suggesting things that I know from experience that they still have to learn. Insisting on telling them is the definition of old fart. I know that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">At their youthful age, they are much like I was. They can’t help lecturing me about medical issues (though at my age I have investigated more ailments than they yet know about) or particularly the dangers of our new technological age -- though in the 1990s I left The Journal Company because the CEO thought I knew enough about the Internet to be put in technical charge of its online division. Even then I knew enough to know I didn’t know enough and was happy to leave a newspaper that knew so little about the Internet that they contemplated putting me in charge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">28 years later, there has been so much change I know I was right back then. My children, ranging in age from the thirties to the fifties, are so accustomed to this technology that they can Google their way into fixing most everything. Yet they pale next to their own kids, my grandchildren, who can do things on a laptop or a Smart Phone (except talk on it) that put most of their parents to shame. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Nothing can change their attitudes – we are all the oldies that have to be tolerated. So-called reverence for the elderly doesn’t stretch that far! So I can’t blame college age Democrats who admire old Joe but still hope for someone younger. I suppose I do, too – and I expect he does as well at times. It seems strange to skip two generations to find the party leader. But who else is there ready to go?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Not to say there aren’t a number of younger Democrats coming up fast on the outside. Some we can name – like Adam Schiff or Pete Buttigieg or Maryland’s new governor, Wes Moore – but if we’re looking ahead to 2028 (that seems most likely) the leading Democratic name may still be unknown. There’s also vice president Kamala Harris, but I am not sure she has lit a fire in the voters right now, and lighting a comfortable fire may be the best thing Biden has going for him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">2024 may be a case of grudging agreement among Democrats rather than the sort of electric charge enthusiasm that Obama rode into office. It may also be that down home Joe -- talking up the family kitchen table needs, quoting his father in speeches at risk of boring audiences with the familiar, handling world affairs without swagger and with intelligence and thoughtfulness; not a progressive firebrand but obviously leaning into progressive ideals and common-sense advancement – could be just what we need right now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Personally I might like more teeth in how he tackles police reform, outlaws big guns and big magazines, pushes child care, fights for legal immigration – all things he mentioned but did not detail. But he is setting a pace that gets things done, as even the wilder progressives in his own party concede. I even wonder if his steady stubborn hand may actually bring about more changes in a society clearly too locked into political conflict.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It has become laughable that Republicans try to scare voters about Biden – Really? Good old Joe? Some sort of left-wing nightmare? Even traditional Republicans voters find that vision amusing. They know they’ve lucked out in getting a president who moves left from a comfortable middle, pushing concepts in a way that doesn’t inflame right-wing opponents, or shouldn’t if they had any common sense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">His new ascendance comes at an important time for Democrats, entering an election season where personal inter-party conflicts could generate hurtful moments. Just look at Arizona, which is confounding many party leaders. Sen. Krysten Sinema (who sat among Republicans during Biden’s State of the Union) has switched from Democrat to Independent but still votes with the Dems, which puts them in a strange position about offending her. Yet a noted progressive Democrat from the House, Ruben Gallego, is taking her on. What will the rest of the party do?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The House brings some problems of its own since three well liked House Democrats are talking about the California senate seat in 2024 though the much honored occupant, Diane Feinstein, has not at this writing announced her plans. Talk about pushing because of age! She is 89 now and would be 91 if she ran again, so both Adam Schiff and Kate Porter have announced they are running and Barbara Lee, a young 76, is thinking about it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Wisconsin is a rare case of an important April election – NOW -- that could change the face of the entire state. It is the supreme court contest where four are contending Feb. 21 and then the final two for the April 4 finale.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtojwp0F8PiESErF4nRttM7c8c71Ops4Y5wPb6LCPzgycl4TnBfmnNVczG7s6QPkSKcHyAsZJqSI9cnnIw_yBW1pxwB7ID1Yjh_lPw-cpBHjoJ5mEm2DXJA9ZJX7xOL93IgW6z98cA0xYZf8mIPxjbtoID7vHTJd785HHb2STuwHiypnIhRoL882n/s546/Protasiewicz2023.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtojwp0F8PiESErF4nRttM7c8c71Ops4Y5wPb6LCPzgycl4TnBfmnNVczG7s6QPkSKcHyAsZJqSI9cnnIw_yBW1pxwB7ID1Yjh_lPw-cpBHjoJ5mEm2DXJA9ZJX7xOL93IgW6z98cA0xYZf8mIPxjbtoID7vHTJd785HHb2STuwHiypnIhRoL882n/w366-h400/Protasiewicz2023.png" width="366" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Campaign photo for Janet Protasiewicz</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">My vote is for Janet Protasiewicz (have you caught her funny TV commercial about people trying to say her last name), a judge I <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2014/07/money-talks-in-elections-but-kept-its.html" target="_blank">wrote about in 2014</a> when GOP big money avoided her circuit court race. Would that would be true this year, when many expect an enormous amount of campaign spending by outsiders. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But that 2023 judicial election is also a one and done. It could flip the court majority to a four to three sensibility rather than the what-the-hell-did-that-mean </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">conservative bloc that seems to blindly vote for anything the GOP dominated legislature wants to do. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It could be that a fair-minded liberal elected to the state’s high court in 2023 will have an inspirational impact on 2024 races where all the Assembly and half the state Senate are up for grabs, not to mention Tammy Baldwin’s US Senate seat. It even could lessen the GOP gerrymandering impact, since there are cases pending.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Historically Democrats do well in statewide contests but when you get down to districts for the state assembly and senate, the gerrymandering in favor of Republicans means that Democrats have to fight above their normal weight class in most districts. A more balanced high court could adjust that. Protosawiecz is also a judge who <a href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/2023/01/did-wisconsin-supreme-court-candidate-janet-protasiewicz-identify-as-a-progressive-on-certain-issues/" target="_blank">openly stands for progressive values. </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">At least, the GOP could no longer have a state top court to lean on. This April election could be the break in the dam that Wisconsin residents seriously need.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Nationally the Democrats stand a better than even chance of winning back the House and that looks like the Republicans’ own doing. Anyone who thought splitting the Congress between the two parties would be good news has learned differently in just a month of GOP control of the House.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The GOP barely won a House majority and is already squabbling about how to continue, launching investigations into the FBI, Hunter Biden and the origins of COVID (bats, pangolins, Chinese labs?) that most of the country find laughable. Republicans have inspired a genuine fear that Biden’s first two years will be the end of the road for him doing any good until he wins again in 2024. That potentially lost two years is the voters’ own fault given how a few but still too many treat Republicans as some sort of balancing party. Sorry, folks, that’s not today’s GOP.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But the Democrats will have to fight like hell to keep or grow seats in the Senate, where they have 51 voting with them out of 100. The election map is against the Dems.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And the House could well face more churns since there will be open Senate seats for Democrats in several states (not Virginia, apparently, since Tim Kaine now says he’s running).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Note the irony. Most of the Senate, even the progressive icons among them, are at the age to contemplate retiring. The Democrats do have a strong bench in some states that think about such things. But given the weight of the issues, the need for experience and the immediacy of how well he’s doing, the Democrats have good reason to stand by Joe. </span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVp9830q_yjuUOpfL_MJc77kInWl1eQ_CTmKQlqx89jfuPHxF9EIpvsWvah2wqUSemtpcHUsa09ViAdts5b66PRIyrAIajCHhPjDGhcQpEnp0qgmeQ79L0Gluy_qIPXszsPVoKvqHN56l_Afz7A5KAznzrYeTLevNYP7bWmYu8d5pZvIdEKIQ0q2E/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVp9830q_yjuUOpfL_MJc77kInWl1eQ_CTmKQlqx89jfuPHxF9EIpvsWvah2wqUSemtpcHUsa09ViAdts5b66PRIyrAIajCHhPjDGhcQpEnp0qgmeQ79L0Gluy_qIPXszsPVoKvqHN56l_Afz7A5KAznzrYeTLevNYP7bWmYu8d5pZvIdEKIQ0q2E/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with still active archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his Doms Domain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-23727589791640566982022-11-09T19:59:00.000-08:002022-11-09T19:59:05.733-08:00 CHOP FLORIDA OFF THE MAP TO SEE REAL NOV. 8 ELECTION<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9GiCthrXVDwPrW9abVB87Xe5ZhhY5edAeAo7pr92yF0APYw7WJBZlAQWhZBXIuO5e2UXDSMWiq1oc1QneFg0GBWGDtmVETc1nUqAN191wWgzNV1zj9Doy2w0UIixoV6bHQEks519ELxJCRmT4JntkPR2TsLsrPllrrMsy95MlPHqx9rBKQma4FG6/s854/BugsSawingOffFlorida.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="854" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9GiCthrXVDwPrW9abVB87Xe5ZhhY5edAeAo7pr92yF0APYw7WJBZlAQWhZBXIuO5e2UXDSMWiq1oc1QneFg0GBWGDtmVETc1nUqAN191wWgzNV1zj9Doy2w0UIixoV6bHQEks519ELxJCRmT4JntkPR2TsLsrPllrrMsy95MlPHqx9rBKQma4FG6/w640-h360/BugsSawingOffFlorida.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">On election night, as Florida dominated the news and led to false ecstasy from Republicans, a relative sent me a famous old Merrie Melodies gif of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off from the rest of the United States – <a href="https://youtu.be/xiTM2HQ0g98" target="_blank">an apt memory for me</a>. I was sawing Florida off in my email from any future gathering of relatives, which we had done in that state several times. But not again as long as Ron DeSantis was governor and Marco Rubio was a senator.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Florida election results not only saddened me, but they misled many in the nation <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>because they came early in the Nov. 8 count. Viewers didn’t at first realize it was an outlier, that Biden had scored a victory by going gently into changing things, by staving off disaster and keeping not only the Senate in control (probably) but the House less in opposition hands than many of the presidents who preceded him in mid-terms. They had disasters, he had a glitch. He also had voters who understood his pace and ignored (in several areas though not my state) the hysteria crime ads of the Republicans.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHhU7ycDFwZ83gglAZEQ5yHNQUbJJLIkiJ6eGG0QMrF1fwNG5LFgbX2KAFYaPZ2PAZBQahxxCIex4fzmJMGcBh-CN3fF0Ds8ivgRR-6agG0sQQHszEHtXrBZvyybZ0zE8MVcfKZkVTIJMgIRo002dUP6zFlUWyRw08O0fjA-QJ-N2vog92PHbpl5h/s542/DeSantisboots1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHhU7ycDFwZ83gglAZEQ5yHNQUbJJLIkiJ6eGG0QMrF1fwNG5LFgbX2KAFYaPZ2PAZBQahxxCIex4fzmJMGcBh-CN3fF0Ds8ivgRR-6agG0sQQHszEHtXrBZvyybZ0zE8MVcfKZkVTIJMgIRo002dUP6zFlUWyRw08O0fjA-QJ-N2vog92PHbpl5h/w369-h400/DeSantisboots1.jpg" width="369" /></a></div><br />I was saddest for Val Demings (Senate) and disturbed that smirking DeSantis was now acting even more godlike as he contemplated running for president. That gif reminded me and should remind him that Florida is unlike most of the country and can be mentally sawed off. Whether he has appeal in the other 49 remains to be seen, though the battle with Trump could be as laughable as his Nancy Sinatra boots (a now famous meme).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It is ironic, of course, that the state most in need of active action on climate change, health care, broad cultural diversity and immigration reform would vote statewide against its own best interests. But that is Florida today, like Kansas in eras gone by.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Unlike 2000 and the Al Gore/George Bush race when NBC’s Tim Russert <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOaaUackKFQ" target="_blank">famously proclaimed “Florida, Florida”</a> (the then swing state that could save democracy) -- well, Florida ain’t swinging these days. It is hard red – no longer a state for the US to put any hopes in.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It was not all great news for the Democrats, though better than </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">many expected. There were some bridges too far and I was steeled to expect Rubio surviving in Florida (though he almost ran away with the race), and that Chuck Grassley was likely to die in harness in Iowa. But Johnson? 18 years of that oaf? I am ashamed of my home state, somewhat eased by the Democrats who survived (almost all of them), the Democrats who changed the map (Futtermen in PA) and the ones who came close.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Let’s be honest about the last batch. Ohio is a strange and strangely conservative state in politics, and while Tim Ryan was clearly the better choice (saying Sen. J.D. Vance makes me feel like swallowing my tongue), he also looked too cautiously at the conservative nature of the state and decided to run as a maverick and his own man, refusing help from Biden and even Obama. He came close but events prove him wrong. I mean, the other senator from that state is blunt progressive Sherrod Brown! This was an election year where some Democrats like Ryan wanted the president to stay away. They didn’t understand that Biden’s low poll numbers were more about age than accomplishments. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I also think the Democratic powers-that-be missed a developing opportunity in North Carolina, which despite the prognostication has been a good chance for months. Maybe the money was stretched too thin already, but celebrity presence could have made a difference. I keep thinking a visit from Obama in the last week would have worked wonders for Cheri Beasley, who came close but doesn’t have another good national opportunity for years.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But what was also remarkable about Nov. 8 was that the voters took seriously the threat to democracy, and to reproductive rights, the two together probably more important than inflation. The vote reflected their distaste for Jan. 6 and even for Trump, up and down the ballot of governors and other local races.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It also signals that the nation is comfortable giving Biden some freedom to operate. The polls that indicate most voters think he is too old to run again in 2024 were belied by the results. His policy (doing things people want and just letting the results unfold in their own time) seems to be working at home and abroad.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">If the Republicans can actually do anything with a narrow margin in the House, Biden is probably the Democrat who can work with them. He may not be able, lacking the House, to codify Roe v Wade into law – except the Republicans were looking at the same election and saw how reproductive rights were essential to voters, a concept winning in states like Kentucky where the Democrats didn’t do well. It’s not a partisan idea, and Biden has a better chance of picking off enough Republicans in the House to go with what looks like a stronger majority in the Senate.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Wisconsin was not a typical election state because it has been so gerrymandered. But even here the Republican legislature <a href="https://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/republicans-dont-reach-veto-proof-majority-in-legislature-but-make-slight-gains-under-new-maps/article_e0e1d243-f636-570c-9723-b168aa831dab.html" target="_blank">failed to gain a supermajority</a>, which means Tony Evers’ return to the governor’s mansion keeps an important block on Republican shenanigans. Josh Kaul also returns as attorney general. In many ways this is a salve to Barnes’ loss in the Senate, because keeping Evers in place was the most important goal.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There are some pundits, mainly Republican ones, who think if Barnes had been more of a centrist he would have won. I wondered if those remarks were a subtle suggestion that Wisconsin was not ready for a black senator or a progressive one. I think it should shame Wisconsin that the racist ads and focus on crime worked, but frankly I think Mandela handled himself well and shouldn’t back way from his progressive roots – in fact, I think he should have been more aggressive in that regard. But the marketplace was against him, particularly the split between urban and rural. America seems to have entered a space where every casual remark can be turned into a savage sound bite in a commercial.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">One thing Nov. 8 does set up is a surer chance for Wisconsin to return to the real world. In April it only needs one election and one candidate to correct a state supreme court that has given the GOP free rein on Foxconn, voting rights, big business corruption, and poor environmental regulations. This is a court that has been carrying Republican water in a 4 to 3 majority for way too long.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Now there is a firmer justice on the horizon, not beholden to one particular political party and committed to intelligent judicial balance – Janet Protasiewicz, <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2014/07/money-talks-in-elections-but-kept-its.html" target="_blank">a Milwaukee judge I covered years ago</a>. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">She is running for the high court in 2023. Her election in April would quietly but instantly correct a big problem in the state and pave the way for more intelligent and progressive elections in 2024 and 2026.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I expect more attention will be paid to this state race, including vicious GOP attacks and big money, because the US high court’s decisions taking away rights people thought they had has made everyone more conscious of the importance of judicial appointments – on all levels. In Wisconsin we elect them.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Even a casual look at the state high court decisions on voting rights, big business behavior, John Doe probes of corruption – and on and on – emphasize how this is the next most important election in Wisconsin.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwn-z6XGUEkYGWkUEs1G1ETwH7BF2XcASqndRdf8uahOh7xF-5zowDxOjJiKeBUvupFWc1pW0ZZcQcK_swuz4fyy1yDNmyj-6K_5vXLa63uHTCLTyoryX963LRMDexBpSpw97xFqVGC8eAcwnCl1JDeXjm_2R-OpmsDLanC1f3H_Cztc8yQ61nmfxf/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwn-z6XGUEkYGWkUEs1G1ETwH7BF2XcASqndRdf8uahOh7xF-5zowDxOjJiKeBUvupFWc1pW0ZZcQcK_swuz4fyy1yDNmyj-6K_5vXLa63uHTCLTyoryX963LRMDexBpSpw97xFqVGC8eAcwnCl1JDeXjm_2R-OpmsDLanC1f3H_Cztc8yQ61nmfxf/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his Doms Domain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-36318363539757711102022-10-23T17:52:00.000-07:002022-10-23T17:52:29.393-07:00BRANDS OF FEAR PREOCCUPY NOV. 8 VOTERS<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I wonder how many other voters are caught in a seesaw about Nov. 8. Sometimes, absorbing interviews and speeches from President Biden and other leading Democrats, I agree that optimism is in order, that America has toyed with running on fear before and generally corrected itself when the voters see an administration getting things done – or look around the corner at things that one side will do more than the other side. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That makes me want to preach Nov. 8 as salvation, a nation correcting and protecting itself.</span></p><p></p><div style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiT5QvC-S3T9qQY1d6sl7IXz3j2HZ2YOVz4R-tbkxrsgyDyHPLB8SC0BhaIVgrnAQRYfjpT7wYAkM_Nu2kKJkuF994Lmt6iQytEM2TbSWnIF0BLAfY9Mec8lhBuw_K3jzQAGkfSzc8ILTNvDHeJ9Vt1Ww8nOwrlAeCu7PPids7NZ5mGxdS1Oqn2oyl/s660/Barnesnegativead.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img alt="Newspapers have had fun contrasting the filter darkened images of Barnes in Johnson home mailers to the actual photo (left) being copied." border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="660" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiT5QvC-S3T9qQY1d6sl7IXz3j2HZ2YOVz4R-tbkxrsgyDyHPLB8SC0BhaIVgrnAQRYfjpT7wYAkM_Nu2kKJkuF994Lmt6iQytEM2TbSWnIF0BLAfY9Mec8lhBuw_K3jzQAGkfSzc8ILTNvDHeJ9Vt1Ww8nOwrlAeCu7PPids7NZ5mGxdS1Oqn2oyl/w640-h403/Barnesnegativead.webp" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And then come the strident dark clouds of teetering poll numbers and GOP voices saying the big fear should be migrants and crime. Part of me doesn’t want to believe Wisconsin voters would tolerate another six years of Ron Johnson. But those ads are everywhere!</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">(<i>Illustration text: Newspapers are having fun contrasting the filtered image of Barnes in Johnson home mailers to the actual lighter skin photo at right.</i>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In states like Wisconsin, the GOP also has gerrymandering on its side. Even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/us/politics/voting-democracy-wisconsin-senate.html " target="_blank">publications like the New York Times have noticed</a>, quoting Democratic Party organizer Tammy Wood in Wisconsin: “It is daunting to convince fellow Democrats their votes matter. That is the purpose of the gerrymander — to make us fall into that feeling of defeat.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In Wisconsin crime is being linked bigtime to Mandela Barnes (as mis-portrayed in endless dark money GOP TV ads that colorize Mandela in shadows. make his movements herky-jerky and blame him for all the children abducted into a van). The crime issues raised may be state ones not federal, <a href="https://www.cbs58.com/news/cash-bail-how-it-works-in-wisconsin-and-the-proposed-changes-explained" target="_blank">dating back to a bill he supported</a> in the Assembly as did many Republicans, prosecutors and judges wanting a better cash bail law for Wisconsin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">More mildly, maybe because Tony Evers isn’t black and as governor has tried to increase funding for police departments but was blocked by GOP legislators, the leaking faucet of drip-drip Michels commercials plays similar themes. Fair is fair, I guess, since the anti-Michels home mailers make him look almost as grainy and villainous as Barnes does in the TV ads.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">These crime ads are cited as the main cause of Barnes shrinking in the polls from a lead to a few points behind. On the other hand, the polls show fluidity, and his counterattack seems to be having success. We keep seesawing back and forth, don’t we?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In Pennsylvania, where Democrat John Fettermen once had a clear lead over TV doctor Oz, crime ads are also blamed for the polls tightening. Ditto Colorado of all states, ditto Nevada, ditto Ohio, ditto North Carolina where Democrat Cheri Beasley once actually had the lead in polls that are now tied.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The GOP-supporting dark money involved is close to obscene – and the anger of Democrats is growing that their own party doesn’t have or won’t spend their own dark money (don’t we have that?). Or maybe the complaint is that the Democrats’ legitimate funding outlets aren’t spending more money to support these candidates plus some long shots as Charles Booker in Kentucky, Mike Franken in Iowa and even Trudy Busch Valentine in Missouri (who is having success as well as laughs reminding Missouri voters that the US Senate needs a nurse, which she is).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Look beyond the games of who has money and how it is spent. The ability of voters to blame Democrats for crime statistics, which are actually sinking in some places, is ridiculous. Especially, as cooler heads point out, statistics show Republicans are not better than Democrats in this regard -- in fact, right now crime is statistically worse in states considered red not blue. So much for GOP leadership!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The other Republican selling point is equally ridiculous according to facts – inflation. My main reaction might be amusement at the voters who think like that, followed by anger at their naval gazing. But the immediate issues at the supermarket seem to be trumping common sense about the future.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Sure, we are in inflation, but what did you expect? Think what we just went through. In the first year of COVID, we are more and more learning, Trump responded poorly. Biden did much better. If there was ever a time for the federal government to give money over to people suffering from the pandemic, both parties agreed and the Democrats’ aid strategy once Trump lost has worked much better.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Other consequences that led to inflation) were disruption in the supply system, which had a lot to do with how many goods were manufactured in foreign hands – such as computer chips, which Biden is addressing with big money for US manufacturing. Time will cure the problems, but which party’s hands do you want in charge?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Does the American voter also want to suspend aid to Ukraine to make the supermarket prices lower? That was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/world/europe/ukraine-children-russia-adoptions.html" target="_blank">another costly commitment that the Biden administration has taken on</a>, which the Republicans are making negative noises about despite the applause of most American shoppers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">You can more rightly blame the cost of fossil fuels on Russia and the Saudis. Biden is the one who has cut the national budget deficit in half, freed oil from national reserves, worked to keep pushing on climate change while dealing with the interim need for increased oil production (an interim I expect to last for decades). Trump’s big selling point was his tax cuts for the richest, snarling at our NATO allies and saying climate change was no big deal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But the polls keep suggesting a close election and that voters don’t take seriously enough the threat to democracy and basic voting rights the Democrats keep talking about.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Wisconsin particularly suffers because in statewide elections we lean toward Democrats, but through gerrymandering we have a Republican dominated legislature that resists sensible changes in voting policy, gun policy, medical policy and so forth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Ohio and Georgia worry me, because I feel that both are states once thought red in balance but o are now on the bubble, and you can almost feel those local pockets of GOP voters getting angry about that. It’s also hard to apply any logic to how hard it has been for Warnock to shake off Walker in Georgia despite the Republican’s constant idiocy– or for that matter in Ohio for Tim Ryan to shake off the personality loops and dodges of J.D. Vance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And then Georgia and Florida worry me because their state leadership continues to push the voter suppression buttons in heavily organized campaigns and state laws that aim to keep the poor and disenfranchised at home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Meanwhile, back in the real world, food and gasoline costs are going down and are precisely the transitory wounds of our society that neither party can solve. Crime flows up and down in a society that still hasn’t sensibly addressed its gun problem and the issues of equity. Right now, though, the GOP is telling us to fear, fear, fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Except for FOX talking heads, the media has been sounding the alarm about an imminent loss of US Democracy, a rise in antisemitism, a rise in foreigner hatred (if you regard the immigrant community that has been our nation’s backbone as foreigners) and attempts to turn the power of voting over to Republican legislatures. But are the voters listening? And to whom are they listening?</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWY2cEAZVP2GcYNtNgGIdz6kVqxhwiMyHE4bICrJGeX0wX9yq4SVbZgYGX7NclokEg0xMWlI8oB-qZ1o_yBNdFGXPvtY2TO4jrxpAKO04WT2JDxtBC59CUv-feHEqr2XswcWyNX0Z5W-JucONw1kh0o_rArXVB9e7LAqqdAn9DGecwOc9lKUtirOc/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWY2cEAZVP2GcYNtNgGIdz6kVqxhwiMyHE4bICrJGeX0wX9yq4SVbZgYGX7NclokEg0xMWlI8oB-qZ1o_yBNdFGXPvtY2TO4jrxpAKO04WT2JDxtBC59CUv-feHEqr2XswcWyNX0Z5W-JucONw1kh0o_rArXVB9e7LAqqdAn9DGecwOc9lKUtirOc/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his Doms Domain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-32458683032743775962022-09-14T18:33:00.003-07:002022-09-14T18:47:16.919-07:00A TINGE OF RACISM PLAYS WELL IN JOHNSON’S TV ADS AGAINST BARNES<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b> By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">As national surveys keep showing, citizens absorbed by commercial television’s endless crime shows <a href="https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/06/25/television-has-distorted-americans-view-of-policing" target="_blank">tend to have a more negative view of their own personal safety</a>, particularly in urban communities. The images they believe in are rife with dark alley gangs often portrayed as black thugs threatening those nice white citizens who are the clean-cut center of our democracy – at least in this corner of TV land.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I think the stereotypes are even worse in Wisconsin – at least judging by the millions of dollars in TV ads on cable and on the Internet funded by Ron Johnson and Tim Michels, Republican candidates who have a lot more personal wealth and PACs to throw around than their opponents.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Judging by recent polls – Johnson has climbed eight points to nip ahead of Mandela Barnes where a month ago he was seven points behind – the slimy crime ads succeed in something more than <a href="https://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/u-s-senate-race-tightens-between-mandela-barnes-and-ron-johnson-in-latest-poll/article_c58b0a2b-6817-5a73-a584-8612d17d70ae.html" target="_blank">reminding us, as polls often do, how fickle are the public’s opinions</a>. These ugly ads appeal to the darkest regions of the human brain by emphasizing shadows and subtly dimmer lighting. They may obviously be as they have been identified for years as “political advertisements that blatantly stoke racial fears and stereotypes,” but they work.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They did for the first President Bush in that still notorious “Willie Horton” ad that tied Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis to a convicted black rapist. They <a href="https://captimes.com/opinion/column/john_nichols/opinion-michael-gableman-ran-the-most-racist-ad-in-the-history-of-wisconsin-politics/article_db2d1353-5d51-5966-9170-6980b00b3a76.html" target="_blank">worked most prominently in Wisconsin in 2008 </a>when buffoon Michael Gableman beat the only black elected to the state’s highest court by juxtaposing Louis Butler’s image with a black rapist that Justice Louis Butler had nothing to do with the release of.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">(Gableman was a laughingstock for 10 years on the high court, but he returned and even doubled down on his buffoonery – so extreme about Biden’s election win that <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2022/08/14/vos-fires-gableman-ends-election-probe/" target="_blank">his fellow Republicans have been busy trying to disown him</a> and justify the million dollars taxpayers spent on his “investigation.”)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There was always a subliminal visual appeal to these ads that stay just slightly to one side of legal consequences. Gableman was actually brought up on legal charges of exploitation, but since he was one of the votes in the high court monitoring role, he escaped judgment by a 3-3 tie among the other members.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In Johnson’s ads against Barnes – unavoidable even on MSNBC and YouTube, so heavy is the ad expenditure – they feature every ugly image of Barnes’ longer beard as opposed to the well-trimmed one he has today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They blur the lighting and the facial images as if they have discovered someone lurking in doorways surrounded by graffiti, whose head moves in a jerky motion as misshapen headlines and phrases are painted behind him. They pull every misleading quote by Barnes about defunding the police or how he supports (as well he should) the progressive side of the Democratic Party -- despite every clear Barnes in-context explanation of what he said.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Now, progressive though I may be, I did worry last year of how many Democrats were caught up in the understandable George Floyd protests and hung out with the “defund the police” crowd. There was an understandable repulsion at how many black citizens has been shot by police.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That anger caught up many moderates including Republicans – until cooler heads better defined the movement as ”refund the police” to better recognize mental illness and social needs, which I really can’t find anyone opposing. But those damned images and isolated old quotes still flourish on TV as if black skin is still affiliated with dark streets, as if muggings and nightclub shootings by every race take place in the daylight.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Tim Michels, running against Gov. Tony Evers, has tried similar crime ads but Evers has such a mild-mannered image and sensible policies that these ads backfire. He tries to blame Evers for taking money away from police forces while Evers actually proposed an increase that was shot down by a GOP legislature!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But Wisconsin voters are still so weird on this issue that Michels poll numbers have also gone up slightly, basically meaning that the Democrats cannot relax the pressure in the last months, and we really won’t know what will happen until Nov. 8.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Meanwhile we have to recognize that in terms of political ads TV is still segregated, thanks to how local ads are inserted into what we think are national programs or national Internet services.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Folks in other states do not see the repellent GOP ads we get in Wisconsin just as we don’t see the senate and gubernatorial ads from other states where the Democrats are now gaining in terms of the Senate particularly and the House in general. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">You could argue that this is because the big GOP money is more scattered or hasn’t yet landed full bore in Ohio and Pennsylvania (where Democratic senate candidates Tim Ryan and John Fettermen are ahead). But it could also be that Wisconsin’s more extremely split citizenry are more vulnerable to the TV commercials and the generalities about crime, punishment and blackness than their national counterparts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Personal Note:</b> Maybe the visitors are mainly law students fascinated as I am by what Wisconsin lost in 2008 – and may be restored again in 2023 if Janet Protasiewicz, is elected to the high court – but I am still getting visitors to a 2015 article I wrote (rare for an old political piece to still get traffic) <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-vindication-of-louis-butler-and-how.html" target="_blank">about Louis Butler.</a></span></p><p><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQtI8fIztMpqI98wERWkFiP4tbwCrKsWzzCpT9NugnFlwkftKpWrLuNpmlRl7R67M6g-3JCYP32OBSIxsIHRv3HmmqsVqiBWS8iHd_TbdO8D5cX7myxMqFlfmKsL-_9DxiZrXk_P0dx0Pt2PNVlmJuc-IwWKMFo9CXSBLTf4xiW2WSsDWyE3qRm_Zk/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQtI8fIztMpqI98wERWkFiP4tbwCrKsWzzCpT9NugnFlwkftKpWrLuNpmlRl7R67M6g-3JCYP32OBSIxsIHRv3HmmqsVqiBWS8iHd_TbdO8D5cX7myxMqFlfmKsL-_9DxiZrXk_P0dx0Pt2PNVlmJuc-IwWKMFo9CXSBLTf4xiW2WSsDWyE3qRm_Zk/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his Doms Domain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-24295460323514502722022-09-06T17:41:00.001-07:002022-09-06T17:41:56.254-07:00NOVEMBER VOTERS ARE REAL TARGET OF THAT TRUMP SPECIAL MASTER RULING <p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> By Dominique Paul Noth</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">John Roberts (hardly having a liberal bone in his body) has lost any semblance of control of the conservative court he is chief justice of. He’s been pushed aside not just by Trump’s ability in four years to make three appointments. Old buddies like Sam Alito are shoving him into the toilet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">For three years in speeches and reports, Roberts has been urging his colleagues to move more slowly through past decisions and insisting the federal court system is nonpartisan. There are not Obama judges or Trump judges, he has proclaimed, but judges doing the best they can to protect democracy and the Constitution.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Guess what, John? For any who doubted there are Trump judges willing to put politics above the law, it’s not just Alito. Welcome to the special master decision by a Trump appointed novice district judge in Florida.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">She has invented a special deference for former presidents (or just one of them) when facing criminal investigation, forcing a special master to be appointed before the Department of Justice can use the documents seized in August at Mar-a-Lago. That seems to mean that even forensic evidence about who handled what has to be deferred until a special master decides what is in bounds and what it not.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-s5XObqRZvZ0cDE2kp0E9Z-NuhMhKXV4AEhSU6OcTKDHRINqgDBhSy-5P3XsOxmRKsrSLGpAg4DUXl4JyexwJweDsu0vdbjjcIhSNoNvFwi1XKdDvJxkdbgmkV_EZR_gRAjg6UBtzoGMq_x6fahX8bh_0cc05_ovexpGoUtqw6yMO4FiJwjx0MHhJ/s1280/CannonAileen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-s5XObqRZvZ0cDE2kp0E9Z-NuhMhKXV4AEhSU6OcTKDHRINqgDBhSy-5P3XsOxmRKsrSLGpAg4DUXl4JyexwJweDsu0vdbjjcIhSNoNvFwi1XKdDvJxkdbgmkV_EZR_gRAjg6UBtzoGMq_x6fahX8bh_0cc05_ovexpGoUtqw6yMO4FiJwjx0MHhJ/s320/CannonAileen.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Legal experts respond with<br />rage and sadness to<br />Aileen Cannon</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Constitutional lawyers on all sides are frankly aghast. Aileen M. Cannon based in Florida -- and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/trump-special-master-aileen-cannon.html" target="_blank">only appointed by the disappearing GOP Senate majority</a> in the days after Trump lost the election – has basically invented standards beyond the attorney-client privilege a special master is supposed to protect. She has imagined a standard for ex-presidents (those named Trump not Obama) and ordered the DOJ not to use any of the material seized in August for criminal prosecution, though the DOJ knows full well (while we don’t) what it found.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The DOJ, the national archives and the FBI found a lot more at Mar-a-Lago before August, none of which is hampered by the Cannon fodder. (Though the August haul is more clearly stuff Trump was hiding.) Plus, there are arrays of grand juries and legislative hearings probing Trump that will not slow down. It does mean that several of these impending charges are about money and influence, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-24/prosecute-trump-criminal-charges-jan-6" target="_blank">though some want to find him guilty of Jan. 6</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Trump may wind up <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2020/10/17/al-capone-convicted-on-this-day-in-1931-after-boasting-they-cant-collect-legal-taxes-from-illegal-money/" target="_blank">an Al Capone echo</a>, forced into prison by tax stuff though we knew his mob behavior killed people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">TV’s usual array of talking heads – right, left and supposedly middle – seem equally muddled. Some see a victory for Trump, others expect it is activating his opposition and speeding his doom (sort of like Russia buying missiles from North Korea, which can be seen as a sign of Putin’s deterioration).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">All acknowledge its main gain is a delaying tactic forcing the DOJ into a difficult decision as it lays grounds for what it will accept or oppose by Sept. 9 in the choice of special master. In a rare display of judicial balance, Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, likened the special master ruling to a baseball game “rain delay of a couple of innings.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Traditionalists, recognizing how this novice judge has created new rules just for Trump, want the DOJ to go the formal appeal route to a higher court, the 11th Circuit where 5 of the 11 judges were appointed by Trump. But all are probably more restrained by their judicial temperament than she was. The appeal route could force intermittent delays, briefs, a trial-level presentation, even an appeals panel that can be appealed to a full court, causing even more months.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Meanwhile simply choosing a special master – who is supposed to have judicial experience – may also be a delay but far quicker. Hovering over all is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/judge-cannon-trump-mar-a-lago-special-master/671349/" target="_blank">the public and legal anger </a>that the Cannon novice has written new rules of the road, and these must be forced away by judicial sensibility.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But honestly, how do these delay tactics benefit Trump? The public is clearly impatient to see him penalized or absolved. His tactics do suggest he still holds some power. Yet the tactics give the various branches of the law more time and clout in pursuing him. Meanwhile the public is getting sick of the game and disinterested, which may work to Trump’s advantage. People are asking themselves if the full force of the government can’t lock him up, maybe the public should just let him be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And that’s the only way the delays will work – <b>IF</b> in November the Republicans gain power at the polls. <b>IF</b> the Republicans take enough seats in the House to stop the Jan. 6 hearings. <b>IF</b> the GOP gains enough leverage in the Senate to block the range of good things the 50-50 split (with VP Kamala Harris as tiebreaker) have put in place. <b>IF</b> enough states gain enough GOP voters to revive abortion laws passed in the 19th century when women didn’t have a vote. <b>IF</b> such antiquity and GOP gerrymandering (under the inane false equivalency that “we’d better do it to the Democrats before they do it to us”) gain even an inch of ground.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That Trump judge in Florida has actually clarified how real are the worries about our democracy being in danger. The <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2022/09/06/murphys-law-big-surge-in-women-registering-to-vote/" target="_blank">extremes of the SCOTUS abortion ruling</a> gave voters, even those who didn’t like Roe v Wade, more reason than ever before to roll away from the extreme right wing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> Biden’s successful infrastructure and inflation reduction bills are also making inroads, as are his speech efforts to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/05/biden-mainstream-republicans-trump-wisconsin-00054829" target="_blank">separate responsible Republicans from MAGA ones</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">For the public that refused to worry about the future of our democracy, the special master decision should have a very specific meaning. The danger warnings no longer feel like the left side of right-wing conspiracy paranoia. More of the public is now activated by concern for one person, one vote, for the basic standards of democracy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">These voters realize the danger is real – if a judge in Florida can violate all expectations to rule somewhat in his favor, if he can still draw several hundreds to his rallies almost two years after leaving office, if states continue to try to elevate false electors, if state GOP legislators try to override the votes against them in an election. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">If these attacks and more succeed, it will only be because voters didn’t pay attention and organize to shoot them down.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9WarOT20Tqz4OQCnZMfwY8ooZmYuxMZZzwmQuzhYw8lSFItADNbq4np7Bw8BANgNniQP_n7d2vi2GYztf4TkdO1KZbGU61um-s9CJgNtcFSjlhIADAsNra-IyQHYWNS8TXC_but0De1DLdTqEO6S_nD8K2Wl7ZzeK44ruzf_lQUQ9pQTlVGS8Au_f/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9WarOT20Tqz4OQCnZMfwY8ooZmYuxMZZzwmQuzhYw8lSFItADNbq4np7Bw8BANgNniQP_n7d2vi2GYztf4TkdO1KZbGU61um-s9CJgNtcFSjlhIADAsNra-IyQHYWNS8TXC_but0De1DLdTqEO6S_nD8K2Wl7ZzeK44ruzf_lQUQ9pQTlVGS8Au_f/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-61892208486100030952022-08-28T21:26:00.000-07:002022-08-29T10:18:01.334-07:00CAMPAIGN TACTICS HAVE GOP PEDDLING HATE AND DEMOCRATS CAUGHT IN THE SWITCHES<p><b> </b><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">By Dominique Paul Noth</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">If you’re on the Internet or watching TV looking ahead to the November election, you know the GOP is offering you resentment and the Democrats, judging by their emails, are still in the throes of desperation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Republicans are all about hating those who are benefitting from Biden’s moderate but progressive approach, which actually is getting astounding things done on the climate change front, combatting inflation and deepening the benefits of Obamacare, to name the top of my list. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Now added in is student loan debt relief for the lower incomes in particular. But the GOP ads dominate in encouraging people who paid their student debt to resent any giveaway to students carrying the debt, even though the government aid back then (state and federal) was vastly superior and even high-priced private universities didn’t cost that much (I went to Marquette University in the 1960s and remember $500 a semester,).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: left; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-2A7o1ox5dQmkJeg9zE1L4qB21_yqFQoOhqDuvRNK2iwkYPYLnn8GqeDSAE-CIXkpUVoJu3zC1a-NqEsoYL1bSKHfUzVptuvniAp0B40cysYKj-rzazfiuN1O8zt4e7y_PQOCIDN2nE2N25-atqwtqwajhO-HGYwpsDb-1hGfWzCdyKYw20DrbNb/s1440/Barneswinsprimery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="907" data-original-width="1440" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-2A7o1ox5dQmkJeg9zE1L4qB21_yqFQoOhqDuvRNK2iwkYPYLnn8GqeDSAE-CIXkpUVoJu3zC1a-NqEsoYL1bSKHfUzVptuvniAp0B40cysYKj-rzazfiuN1O8zt4e7y_PQOCIDN2nE2N25-atqwtqwajhO-HGYwpsDb-1hGfWzCdyKYw20DrbNb/w320-h202/Barneswinsprimery.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Mandela Barnes made to look<br />lousy in GOP TV ads.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The sense of hatred expands into the techniques of advertising, though I am sure some Democrats are also guilty of similar devices. But they sure dominate in GOP ads in Wisconsin. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The commercials reduced to slow-motion shadowy images every bad moment Mandela Barnes has ever had in campaigning -- trying to make him look like a cartoon or puppet, while also trying to tie him into what they regard as the extreme vision of the Squad (their term for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her allies) – who in the case the GOP cite also have allies in most Democrats and even some Republicans in trying to get rid of cash bail as the prime way to control lawbreakers. The dominance of cash bail has long harmed lower income workers rather than the criminals who exist in all rungs of society. The GOP is reverting to the 1950s and trying to make opposition to extreme cash bail a sign of law-and-order weakness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> The GOP approach -- demonizing all those seeking better roads to social justice as weaklings at law and order -- comes even as the party supports the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2020, most of whom were white Trump supporters.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Speaking of the Johnson race against Barnes, his ads are particularly weak-kneed for any who know his actual history. There are those ads in which a trucker (or actor) and a young mother (or actress) praise Rojo for defending the working family. The trucker ad even has him doing great things like supporting domestic gas production and the Keystone Pipeline (which is only a conduit through the US for Canadian tar gas heading to Gulf ports, proving again that the GOP treats Wisconsin voters as know-nothings about Rojo’s tax policies and actual behavior.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The resentment politics – hate these liberals! – are most evident locally in Tim Michels race for governor. Most people realize that Gov. Tony Evers is hardly a professional long-term politician, more the milquetoast-looking detail man who spent most of his career in education. But Michels, who owns homes in many states and whose construction company has benefitted mightily from Evers’ spending on roads ignored by the previous GOP administration, has been filling the airwaves and campaign rallies urging people to hate those in government who want to spend more money on schools and higher education.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">What I’ve personally enjoyed is looking back in time at which presidents’ tax and social policies most helped my family (I can start with LBJ, then skip to Clinton slightly, then Obama a lot and then Biden, literally unable to think of anything Reagan, the Bushes and Trump did to help my struggles to raise nine children; Nixon, my amazed memory records, actually did some things). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I find the most mature Americans are not resentful of Biden’s help to those with student debt but wish it had happened in their time, are glad they spent the money to improve family income despite the tight belts it caused and doubly glad that it looks like their children will suffer less if prices of education can come down. They remember how different government attitudes toward schools and higher education were then.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I think the GOP approach is going to backfire – and already has, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/us/white-house-twitter-ppp-loans.html" target="_blank">the Biden team takes some delight </a>in fighting back.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Some Democrats I like who are running in more moderate states are trying to achieve a balance in the wrong way (such Michael Bennet seeking re-election in Colorado and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, plus Senate wannabe Tim Ryan the Ohio Democratic candidate who is heads and shoulders above his opposition). <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119283353/student-loans-biden-democrats" target="_blank">They are going to regret their hands-off Biden approach</a> because he may have mediocre poll numbers now, but those numbers are likely to climb as people weigh his accomplishments. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">My emails from Democrats amuse me in their strident demands for money because they are clearly based on poll numbers in early summer that have swung to the Democrat side in August, giving them much better odds in the Senate and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/27/democrats-republicans-house-midterms/" target="_blank">even better chances in the House.</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I don’t blindly trust the vagaries of the polls (and the public that responds to polling) but the rise in Democrat fortunes reflects my anecdotal take (in a community of mixed partisan beliefs). These are highly paid campaign workers putting out the email blitzes, and they may be based on the time-tested belief that negative ads bring in more money.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But from where they started the blasts a few months ago the conversation has shifted under their email fists. Incumbent Mark Kelly’s email team tells me they’re packing their bags and leaving Arizona, so upset are they by the GOP dark money pouring in against him. Val Demmings team in Florida cries “game over” and Maggie Hassan’s emails from New Hampshire chronicle how much mysterious GOP money is lining up against her. <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/08/10/2495877/0/en/POLL-Mark-Kelly-Leads-Blake-Masters-54-to-40-Among-Likely-Voters-in-Arizona-s-U-S-Senate-Race.html" target="_blank">When they composed those emails,</a> the polls didn’t show Kelly leading little-known venture capitalist Blake Masters, nor Demmings in a tie or ahead or Marc Rubio, not Hassan pulling ahead.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Similar “end of the road” emails stem from throughout the Democratic nation, even down to House races. Bennet in Colorado is trying to establish a more positive image, but his campaign hires are still engaging in the doomsday approach. From Nevada (or the Internet portals being used), Catherine Cortez Masto’s emails are equally bleak, reflecting what was a difficult fund-raising period for them and the tons of dark money the GOP has poured into these contests.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyKPwYd-178QHc9f7BEpqYj0kJu3l8bTVyAjiXHY0CRLmaB4N_S-Mkmb8Mo-A_Y8z6PlOfPudYGIZRl-42gVsr-jOez5vVTbFGar0gl7O9CDW0OXf4PHqoDyvFNB0Yt7gjO5bM3rAtCfrrptaRN0MwHmQywHwEqRgJ-zq7TZzSAfFkfGEnVRfNoBkW/s2500/Fettermen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1667" data-original-width="2500" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyKPwYd-178QHc9f7BEpqYj0kJu3l8bTVyAjiXHY0CRLmaB4N_S-Mkmb8Mo-A_Y8z6PlOfPudYGIZRl-42gVsr-jOez5vVTbFGar0gl7O9CDW0OXf4PHqoDyvFNB0Yt7gjO5bM3rAtCfrrptaRN0MwHmQywHwEqRgJ-zq7TZzSAfFkfGEnVRfNoBkW/w400-h266/Fettermen.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">John Fettermen winning in Pennsylvania</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Perhaps because the poll numbers have been building in John Fetterman’s favor for months in Pennsylvania and for Barnes in Wisconsin, their campaigns have mixed the pleas for money with a more optimistic view of America’s future.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) has also expanded its aims. Aside from the traditional defense of threatened incumbents (Kelly, Hassan, Bennet, Cortez Mastro with less attention to Patty Murray in Oregon and Tammy Duckworth in Illinois who seem in better shape) the DSCC has expanded its money-raising activity to encompass some new polling favorites – Fettermen, Ryan, Cheri Beasley in North Carolina and Demmings in Florida.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLAYmBXiFZF3azlcTdJVouViUnaNjE9irvb4zM2Bpd2bonNM_1u2QXixgbQYLSU58Tibz-VhfnZbhVNY2xRz_7iKTqn8t0xsPq2GCHwIrYCZeid_RVbT5kJ50uJ90PRU-zUuxBWSssWmbblBM_DMTbE9rWRE_hcjOFFYA8N-8hp6-uotaRWMZZm5N/s1802/PetersGary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1802" data-original-width="1800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLAYmBXiFZF3azlcTdJVouViUnaNjE9irvb4zM2Bpd2bonNM_1u2QXixgbQYLSU58Tibz-VhfnZbhVNY2xRz_7iKTqn8t0xsPq2GCHwIrYCZeid_RVbT5kJ50uJ90PRU-zUuxBWSssWmbblBM_DMTbE9rWRE_hcjOFFYA8N-8hp6-uotaRWMZZm5N/s320/PetersGary.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sen. Gary Peters</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I almost feel sorry for the nice guy, new DSCC chairman Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, a low-key and quite successful public servant who fought off a big money attack to win re-election. He at first refused calls to head the DSCCC (main job is setting goals and raising money for the Senate) and finally gave in to pleas from fellow Democrats who admired his quiet way of working. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Now he is being pestered to add more attention (meaning money) to Democratic newcomers who are making unexpected inroads in come from behind campaigns – particularly Charlie Booker in Kentucky and even Trudy Busch Valentine who lags further behind in a tradition red state like Missouri yet is gaining ground because of her roots as an Anheuser Busch heir and her own personal record as a nurse and social activist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">My emails are clogged by the new ability of American voters to give money over the Internet to any state they wish (even if they can’t vote there) while the nature of cable and cut-in network ads tend to only tell Wisconsin voters about their own state contests.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The GOP can find nothing more to do than to push the resentment, basically reminding voters their currently constricted party hasn’t done much of anything for Americans except to gripe about inflation and immigration. The Democrats are doing better though they still seem to be looking for problems in the headlines to worry about. We certainly are not framing the future as a positive place, are we?</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUo-o6OEH3nP-isD4Ce1CzkdtBXUh_dAuuelqESbpOb5u7rplfyOw545sEb3_-WE_ZbZfRF6ltKPau0BJPGr3STfZZBx0kIPEGgtMlVndNbHi_WdBPRdpbVeSllxP2j6BR1W9nFcSydE0fmtqtDCnhkQGYx7tg2wDPYDJqGMT3F7-UhlI9VvYd3sZT/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUo-o6OEH3nP-isD4Ce1CzkdtBXUh_dAuuelqESbpOb5u7rplfyOw545sEb3_-WE_ZbZfRF6ltKPau0BJPGr3STfZZBx0kIPEGgtMlVndNbHi_WdBPRdpbVeSllxP2j6BR1W9nFcSydE0fmtqtDCnhkQGYx7tg2wDPYDJqGMT3F7-UhlI9VvYd3sZT/w309-h400/NothatPfister.jpg" width="309" /></span></a></div><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p></p><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-42296755769164360472022-08-18T17:09:00.000-07:002022-08-18T17:09:35.184-07:00NATIONALLY AND LOCALLY, POLLS SHOW DEMOCRATS’ POWER SURGING<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I have my problems with the Marquette University law school poll though it is one of the most scrupulously done in Wisconsin. I fear a little bit that <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2022/07/a-decade-plus-for-the-marquette-law-school-poll/" target="_blank">poll expert Charles Franklin </a>sometimes overreaches trying to balance the rural and urban vagaries of this curious state and thus the poll, like the university, tends to reflect more conservative concerns than a good Jesuit institution should. But that may be mainly about me and my experiences as a long-ago MU student and teacher who liked to push the institution’s buttons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Still I noticed with interest the week of August 16 how the Senate poll put Mandela Barnes <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3605567-barnes-tops-johnson-by-7-points-in-wisconsin-senate-race-poll/" target="_blank">seven points ahead</a> of incumbent ass Ron Johnson (now you know my political leanings) while suggesting that the governor’s race between Tony Evers and unknown (before his endless TV ads) GOP billionaire Tim Michels (whose construction business has been rewarded with projects from Evers’ tireless effort to fix Wisconsin roads, led into disrepair by GOP policies) is a contest several points closer, though Evers is still two points ahead.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSz6X7YaFHlj-6gPqmaXucBymC65Of4_CgvH2Bb8HwqudI5xMee6Jzj3Y3RkM6qXendQTEeJe6a3m2l46DKzNXqe-_UTwgVVRuwVrrU4MohDHfusKw54jVrQi7l_eKpnZSOm4q29IEf-B5u_fpr2EvSVe_lsUPT79M0yIorBBSuSUz0w8xxKWTvApo/s986/BarnesEvers2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="986" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSz6X7YaFHlj-6gPqmaXucBymC65Of4_CgvH2Bb8HwqudI5xMee6Jzj3Y3RkM6qXendQTEeJe6a3m2l46DKzNXqe-_UTwgVVRuwVrrU4MohDHfusKw54jVrQi7l_eKpnZSOm4q29IEf-B5u_fpr2EvSVe_lsUPT79M0yIorBBSuSUz0w8xxKWTvApo/w400-h225/BarnesEvers2018.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mandela Barnes (left) gained his <br />statewide moxie as lieutenant <br />governor to Tony Evers in 2018.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">That pleases me in one sense because Barnes’ reputation throughout the state as Evers’ lieutenant governor is clearly dominating any concern about his skin color (in a state not recently famous for avoiding racist concerns) and to this point Rojo hasn’t played the race card as I suspect he eventually will.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But here’s why it also worries me. The Evers race is more important and it’s tighter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I consider the state in total to lean toward progressive policies, but it is also the classic example in the nation of how a GOP dominated legislature, even with a Democratic governor, is unhealthily self-naval focused on winning elections and keeping ordinary folks from voting. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Forget <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-wyoming-republicans-affirm-that-principles-no-longer-apply-only-trump-matters/article_aeb4eda6-c46f-55fd-9cfd-47b754cce628.html" target="_blank">the stupidity people feel looking at Wyoming </a>whose voters plug away in blind support of Trump even in the face of one-time conservative darling Liz Cheney. Sometimes Wisconsin voters behave no better. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">How else can you explain the tolerance for gerrymandering and the tendency of GOP legislators to do so little for their constituents and so much for their biggest donors? -- and keep getting elected by the folks they openly call their sheep? As election expert David Pepper recently told New Yorker magazine in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/state-legislatures-are-torching-democracy" target="_blank">a thoughtful article: </a>“No one knows anything about statehouses. They can’t even name their state representatives. And it’s getting worse every year, since the local media’s dying and the statehouse bureaus are being hollowed out.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">To be blunt, the only thing standing between the GOP’s worst tendency and Wisconsin’s chance of improving things for its citizens is Tony Evers, the governor whose presence thwarts the GOP – and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/us/politics/wisconsin-governor-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">next April Democrats could thwart them even deeper</a> when the election of Janet Protasawiecz to the state’s highest court will literally flip the balance on the high court and block the GOP from expecting favorable rulings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Dare I say it out loud. As much as I like Barnes and dislike Rojo, re-electing Evers as governor is the most important task facing the voters in November. If along the way they can weaken the GOP hold on the legislature – even though the Democrats didn’t universally field candidates in rural GOP strongholds, misreading how much the fever for change was operating – that would be great as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Nationwide, in fact, history may be standing on its head thanks to constant right-wing overreach. Only the GOP rumbles about inflation are keeping the party in the election game and it may well be the most powerful, if misapplied, issue the GOP has. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Recent polls suggest that Biden’s calm manner as well as his sneaky progressive commitment are starting to gain traction. Of course, young voters would rather have someone who doesn’t look like their grandpa, but so far no one in their generation has proven as politically nimble. Politics is a different kind of marathon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Biden is taking victory laps for the Inflation Reduction Act, which has many elements. But its common name doesn’t reflect the climate change reality -- it’s the largest climate rescue investment in human history. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The Democrats’ standings in national ratings are beginning to reflect this, even before Labor Day when traditionally most citizens don’t look very much at politics. I think the abortion decision and Trump’s flirtations with prison are changing that – in fact, I am most distressed that in America there are still 20% of Americans who cling to Trump and don’t believe in the realities in front of them. They stubbornly vote for people who aren’t doing them any good. I’m not sure Trump alone is responsible. There has been a curious willful me-ism streak in American society for centuries.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">History records that, in our two-party system, the party out of White House power does well in the mid-terms, and it is hard for pundits to recognize why this year may change that. In the past voters almost unconsciously tried to keep the nation in balance by helping both parties. Few believe that today’s Republicans have any ideas how to solve the issues and they are starting to give the Democrats credit for intelligently trying. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Reality is sinking in, putting the inflation issue in balance. The country has come through COVID-19 and other diseases, a crazy Putin, aggressive China, supply problem issues, a Supreme Court attack on women and more problems that would stymie the best economy and the best administration. Yet all the GOP can think to do in their TV commercials is blame Biden – and then try to say he is too old and senile to be effective. They can’t have it both ways as he passes the most progressive legislation in decades.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It is starting to make a difference though everything is still in doubt with November a few months away. But look at recent polls. I am not much enamored of how Americans keep changing their minds in polls, but only a few months ago, the pollsters were doubting the Democrats could keep the Senate and pretty much stated they would lose the House. Not today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In August, many polls are saying the Democrats have a chance to expand the Senate and that the House could flip either way. The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/bipartisan-infrastructure-law/" target="_blank">Inflation Reduction Act </a>that Biden and Congress passed is only part of the difference, but this is the part that should keep growing in the voters’ minds until November. By then, it is hoped, more of the nation will be clear on where their brightest political future resides.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKo7PL_-dwPEJrp7duaf8jmaCQIUgma4OIuVMbRFnfLwh0pYR57T59Ps-lXjqlfI5KVoaiE9olYRXBCMF6zRl8LvbcT9dFDZSwUr8rLh7bRQSxV1xbezrhIjmPQ7Gd6jPOfAZUEcIkDkT9Coc95kolk5W8OKiwDvnjTdWpIUgvZqYSFGTbEm-hdeDa/s675/FettermanJohn.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="675" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKo7PL_-dwPEJrp7duaf8jmaCQIUgma4OIuVMbRFnfLwh0pYR57T59Ps-lXjqlfI5KVoaiE9olYRXBCMF6zRl8LvbcT9dFDZSwUr8rLh7bRQSxV1xbezrhIjmPQ7Gd6jPOfAZUEcIkDkT9Coc95kolk5W8OKiwDvnjTdWpIUgvZqYSFGTbEm-hdeDa/w400-h313/FettermanJohn.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman's <br />everyman image is a winner.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">Democrats still engage in desperation email campaigns, each claiming that giving money to just this one candidate (be it Mark Kelly in Arizona or Michael Bennet in Colorado or Warnock in Georgia) was essential to keep the Democratic majority, The Democrat PR folks haven’t caught up with the national thinking that gives the Democrats a better chance – not only to Kelly, Warnock and Bennet (who are now polled as leading) but also to Catherine Cortez Masto now leading in Nevada, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and even added targets – Democrat Tim Ryan in Ohio, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Cheri Beasley in North Carolina and amazingly Val Demmings in Florida. All are also <a href="https://www.miamitimesonline.com/news/florida/val-demings-closes-in-on-marco-rubio-in-latest-poll/article_02d76d54-9018-11ec-ba9c-dbfd5ba4280b.html" target="_blank">leading or gaining in polls.</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The hopes for these Democrats are even bringing tsunami dreams to some Democratic insiders. They are chastising party leaders for not giving more money to Charlie Booker in Kentucky (running against the schizophrenic – even to Republicans – Rand Paul). Booker has rightly pointed out that what <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2022/08/02/kansas-voters-defeat-abortion-amendment-in-unexpected-landslide-1/" target="_blank">the abortion issue did in Kansas </a>it may do again in Kentucky.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Also looking stronger are retired admiral Mike Franken who has made inroads against Chuck (“am I really going to pretend I can run again?) Grassley in Iowa at age 88, and even Budweiser heir Taylor Busch Valentine trying for the Blunt seat in normally red Missouri (she loves to point out <a href="https://www.trudybuschvalentine.com/about/" target="_blank">she would add a much-needed nurse </a>to the Senate). Along with those Democrats who look totally safe in their seats (Patty Murray, Richard Blumenthal and Tammy Duckworth) the odds are looking better for a broad swath of Democrats.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Recent polls suggest they may even hang on in the House. Sure, if you look at gerrymandering, we may see more of extreme Republicans like Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy, but not as once thought in majority positions. If progressive voters hit the polls. And the new political reality of our Internet times is that progressives in other states can send money and call their friends.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhH_6vzIy0GDJazcnNN3xqknSdXTWjHKclwJ0psK8TsYK5ehPsJhYQ1utLJ_vafsyPo7yLp56bkfZRDw5ZeRnRmAN-spoPKzVcy3xLtAdZVJuFnb5Wg14auTnVujglPQ_zwshSSPonVSUcax6EL8us94mJE_VLEp6Ooj9mBoJ28S4ty2znP720M8O2/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhH_6vzIy0GDJazcnNN3xqknSdXTWjHKclwJ0psK8TsYK5ehPsJhYQ1utLJ_vafsyPo7yLp56bkfZRDw5ZeRnRmAN-spoPKzVcy3xLtAdZVJuFnb5Wg14auTnVujglPQ_zwshSSPonVSUcax6EL8us94mJE_VLEp6Ooj9mBoJ28S4ty2znP720M8O2/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-46269580894799900992022-08-03T16:30:00.000-07:002022-08-03T16:30:54.112-07:00NO MORE DAWDLING – DEMOCRACY NEEDS TROOPS NOW<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBtlvHGuG6CNzAw8xhOIOmjjEwsXP8LkA07q4qVfVY5kXFvIvKbwGqQVrNOT63Hp7LcNIv32YsC-YjWfEP5uGvKSqns6RjgRHISmQlfTaf33GSSM93VRdEhc_OZ9AGK9LJBcgsvDRH9DwDzVxAmSCHXeZD7Ov2nMdTAq5uft0ClEyDeYoXrmg0NaGD/s720/Newpolitics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBtlvHGuG6CNzAw8xhOIOmjjEwsXP8LkA07q4qVfVY5kXFvIvKbwGqQVrNOT63Hp7LcNIv32YsC-YjWfEP5uGvKSqns6RjgRHISmQlfTaf33GSSM93VRdEhc_OZ9AGK9LJBcgsvDRH9DwDzVxAmSCHXeZD7Ov2nMdTAq5uft0ClEyDeYoXrmg0NaGD/w640-h480/Newpolitics.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reminder news about this illustration thanks to one in a long line of noted<br />political cartoonists for the old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.<br />Gary Markstein is timely as ever in national syndication.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">For 18 months I have suffered a selective writer’s block, a sort of drip-by-drip Chinese water torture caused by disgust with America’s politics. While consumed by the ins and outs of the Jan. 6 events and hearings, I haven’t written about them for over a year, while staying busy as a writer on all other fronts</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">My <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/author/dominique-paul-noth/" target="_blank">theater reviews continue apace</a>, even busier now that COVID-19 fears have subsided. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Over at my original blog I continue to </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://domsdomain.blogspot.com/2022/" target="_blank">plug away at Oscar time</a> </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">on movie reviews, which <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com" target="_blank">Urban Milwaukee</a> has often picked up. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">But thousands of my regular readers have noticed <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">my absence at my political blog, </a>where I used to post every few weeks.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">An interesting story there. I bubbled with ideas and commentary throughout the Jan. 6 events, as my family and friends will tell you in painful detail. But every week events changed so quickly. Unresolved questions were answered. Or some enterprising journalist somewhere else took up the insights I saw. I was more frustrated than usual in trying to be cogent about my disgust. I wanted to be clear and fresh in a world of gridlock and felt frustrated that most of my (largely accurate) predictions were actually late to the table because of all the commentary around me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So DomsDomainPolitics has been absent since before Jan. 6, 2021, but not now. Not with the vital November election only three months away, and reality imposing clarity as the Biden forces thankfully gain ground. The public is beginning to absorb the consequences of Trump’s reign and the time for dillydallying has passed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Like many Americans, I long thought Jan. 6 was an aberration led by a small contingent of rabid Trump believers who, in misplaced passion and mob violence, were frightened that America – particularly white America – was losing its grip on democracy. After all, the president had told them to be there.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I had misjudged the smallness. It was less about Trump than the negativity and fear existing in our society. You don’t even have to believe the hearings’ careful case dissecting Trump’s methods. It’s clear to everyone except him that his diehard support is shrinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And yet many Republicans don’t want to be told so bluntly that they were duped. So maybe now his support has shrunk to less than 20% of Republicans. But that’s a hell of a lot of people who don’t understand our democratic system! There are still those who say they were proud of their vote for him! How is that possible? It’s still enough to cause trauma in primary season.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Some supporters who now say they know better became involved in an uprising of thousands orchestrated by right-wing extremists and goosed by Trump himself, though the courts will have to weigh in on placing blame. The public at large no longer doubts that his refusal to accept that he lost the election was the engine of revolt, but what can be proved to a criminal jury of citizens remains to be seen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">During my time of watching, rumbling with anger and thinking, I admit a violent distaste came over me for local as well as national Republicans. They were pushing bills that got in the way, both nationally and locally, or fought for no good reason against long needed efforts on climate change and gun control. Coteries of fall-away Republicans <a href="https://accountability.gop/campaigns/" target="_blank">warranted more positive attention</a>, and yet their own party blocked their efforts at course correction. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">All this left many Democrats with a strange taste in their mouths, such as admiring a hawk with a hated last name, Liz Cheney, for clinging to reality in the face of threats that turned the other leaders of her party into wimps.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I did blame the entire party for going along with all this -- and then realized I was condemning families I once liked. I was forced by memory to recall how many decent Republicans (or people who voted Republican) I had known over the decades, even the many who lived in those bizarre WOW counties that surround Milwaukee and keep voting topsy-turvy. Frankly, the Madison legislature cannot allow this to continue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">What is amazing is how long the Trump horror has lingered and how long those so-called decent Republicans have let it go on. A full 18 months after losing office, Trump conducts rallies and horrible endorsements, hosts a Saudi funded golf tournament and pretends he was a force in world affairs, while his absence is assuredly welcome across the globe.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Consider how strong the American economy was to survive him. It didn’t totally succumb to all his bizarre tariffs and authoritarian machinations, though such violent tics left the nation four years behind on several issues it is late in tackling.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Now, finally, we can move on climate change, strengthening NATO, fixing the health system, address gun violence, accept the ups and now downs of inflation. The worry for Democrats is that the November election will be determined by the price of chicken! Just have to hope the American voter is not that shallow.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Biden’s pace may be too slow for some, but evidence suggests he knew what a dark place the country was heading toward, and he believes optimism and slow and steady progress are the way out. The contrast with Trump is amazing – he wanted the dark place to rise up and he tried to rush the nation there.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">One of my realizations during this time – and I wish more journalists had shared it – is that the US is undergoing a basic change in its two-party system. For years and almost by chance, American voters had divided power between Democrats and Republicans, one party atop the other and then vice versa – for fear that one philosophy would dominate. It was almost a magic wand, looking at the final voting totals, resulting in a 50-50 split in the Senate, while Biden needs a few more to get big things done. Now November worries center on the House.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">For families who voted Republican, Trump is not the problem. History is. It is hard despite common sense to jump over to support a Democrat after generations of going the other way. Now Democrats are hoping – certainly in Wisconsin legislative races – that the current GOP voter is not as stuck in an alternate universe as suggested by the warped Madison legislative priorities of those its party continues to elect. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">A lot of people don’t pay much attention to politics until after Labor Day, so there are some intensive months ahead. Even those who put the economy first have to note the sharp drop in gasoline prices at the pump, the recovery in the goods shipping market, the escalation of repair in the chips and semiconductor field -- even the awareness by many Democrats chafing for faster action that Biden’s methods are actually getting things done.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There is another factor that may change the almost accidental balance created by the two-party system. First, it is hard for anyone to regard the two parties as equally working for America, resulting in a <a href="https://www.peoplesdefender.com/2022/06/23/america-seeing-growing-trend-in-independent-voters/" target="_blank">massive growth of Independents.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Mainly, the game of US politics has been Internetted. No longer do people only play in their statewide elections but in every other state’s races down to the House and Senate seats – and sometimes plunging even deeper than that, judging by my emails.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Money is solicited from everywhere though you can only vote in your district or state these midterms. The sheer power of speaking up everywhere in November politics extends beyond money. I know people who have friends and families in other states and are busy soliciting their votes and activism. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It's a big enough deal to put many Democratic candidates in many locales on a surprisingly strong funding base to tackle Republicans, who used to dominate with money. Moreover, the enthusiasm among Republican voters may be waning, while issues like abortion rights, gun control and the climate breathe fresh activism into Democratic possibilities.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So, I’m back, hoping that a sensible America is also coming back, too, and that my columns can help.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ubYFIS0CwfR1tYYwwbZKpLB3MFRv1aWrJbW7mxv1uoLkuwp9_jmASp4ymi8l5W1UGBpDGyA540hIHzkMFuvW4j-ov54R4GOYtRYRP2HAQaU8mSLVwnVcqO42MC7VGbF42RIPZx-wC3irfkAdyb8wwbxlhc49neGRUoli0F9gMQfKl7ZwmilyZIRW/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ubYFIS0CwfR1tYYwwbZKpLB3MFRv1aWrJbW7mxv1uoLkuwp9_jmASp4ymi8l5W1UGBpDGyA540hIHzkMFuvW4j-ov54R4GOYtRYRP2HAQaU8mSLVwnVcqO42MC7VGbF42RIPZx-wC3irfkAdyb8wwbxlhc49neGRUoli0F9gMQfKl7ZwmilyZIRW/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee</span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-30274206609125305852021-11-10T20:58:00.000-08:002021-11-10T20:58:04.604-08:00 RITTENHOUSE JUDGE BRINGS A NOTED ACTOR TO MIND<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Those who have been glued to TV coverage of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial from Kenosha probably have many reactions to the process and the disputes between the judge and the prosecuting team about procedure and rules of evidence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzP0Lgi_zGwvf0_717wEzeyH9wa2YQ7qWG0p1fIs01yCOPdKoEZazsAYPj9FgexeABH2QMTF_kyZhtgqtiGNbM17PwYvdpkEDv89N1dKqOotmk86dVfF4__2OqS7LeoYk09jdMCotErRU/s513/Schroederjudge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzP0Lgi_zGwvf0_717wEzeyH9wa2YQ7qWG0p1fIs01yCOPdKoEZazsAYPj9FgexeABH2QMTF_kyZhtgqtiGNbM17PwYvdpkEDv89N1dKqOotmk86dVfF4__2OqS7LeoYk09jdMCotErRU/w390-h400/Schroederjudge.jpg" width="390" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Judge Bruce Schroeder, an accidental<br />gift to actors.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;">I have a contrary reaction. Watching the behavior of Judge Bruce Schroeder, one of Wisconsin’s most experienced and feisty trial judges, all I could think was the apology we all owe to actor Jeffrey Tambor.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I covered Tambor when he was a formidable member decades ago of the Milwaukee Rep company – famous for stealing scenes with his comic ability. And then I followed his career though movies and TV series. He was much praised for taking on the key role in the TV series “Transparent,” for an honest portrayal of a father dealing with the eruption of his feminist feelings and behavior, a role that won him many awards and respect from the LBGTQ Plus community for his sensitivity. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">All that came crashing down in 2018 when the MeToo movement talked about his previous sexual behavior – some said abuse -- as a man, with a number of former female co-workers coming forward to attack him even as other female co-workers defended him. </span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlby1Cc4W4oqWl3gm0mpn9GkPBLXEXgvcUs9DXsmlaXZP0okv9NonASc7hggVUi7YDyUzydIkiBurn3Ar_MukWBhzvd7i5eutwbafhcMw-vWVnei_Prt4qHgFZvU5Z4MQB13n7H-RUNNM/s2048/Tambor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1707" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlby1Cc4W4oqWl3gm0mpn9GkPBLXEXgvcUs9DXsmlaXZP0okv9NonASc7hggVUi7YDyUzydIkiBurn3Ar_MukWBhzvd7i5eutwbafhcMw-vWVnei_Prt4qHgFZvU5Z4MQB13n7H-RUNNM/w334-h400/Tambor.jpg" width="334" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actor Jeffrey Tambor</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The upshot? He was fired from “Transparent” and has virtually disappeared from our home screens, after being the go-to actor for eccentric comic and savagely serious portrayals, many in the courtroom, from “And Justice for All” and his frequent outings on “Hill Street Blues” – and one on “Murder She Wrote” – as the sort of judge we feared ever getting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">What has that to do with the Rittenhouse trial? Examine the TV shots of Judge Schroeder, exploding at being challenged, fidgeting in his seat, chastising the lawyers while admitting his ignorance and defending himself as a “just one of those guys” applying common sense. His facial mannerisms, his twisting bouts of logic and anger, his sense of the restraint required by his robes at war with his time-bomb personality – all are mannerisms an actor like Tambor would relish. Schroeder dances on that precipice between long-admired no-nonsense judge and . . . something else.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">For years we thought it was Tambor’s acting genius more than his observational skills, pulling his portrayal of judges into comic excess – full of themselves, insisting on protocol that they can quickly abandon but no one else dare, proclaiming opinions out of nowhere and refusing to apologize for error. But every one of the character quirks that Tambor had fun with are there for all to see in Judge Schroeder, made more pointed and comic by TV scripts, of course, but the roots are there. As an acting study, Schroeder is God-sent.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I know nothing of Tambor’s problems and how righteous or wrongish were the decisions affecting his career. All I do know is real life has elevated respect for his acting ability. Comedy is not far from tragedy as the Rittenhouse case demonstrates, and frankly as Tambor’s performance career also does. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRYg8JoL1l9d9GRpq2PPce3Z9YKqyw8J1lCmRJ9MX3EPje6mZyeaNdtGD-Luww6kQVo_srgrV6R3ITaijkvJIA2Gxl4Ci2JVOzf8FYfUTMWxv4q51lZgBnWv3ONfnSGomGoXj-30sDjg/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRYg8JoL1l9d9GRpq2PPce3Z9YKqyw8J1lCmRJ9MX3EPje6mZyeaNdtGD-Luww6kQVo_srgrV6R3ITaijkvJIA2Gxl4Ci2JVOzf8FYfUTMWxv4q51lZgBnWv3ONfnSGomGoXj-30sDjg/s320/NothatPfister.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></h4><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-72690014055023428562021-10-18T14:50:00.000-07:002021-10-18T14:50:19.572-07:00METHINKS IT’S TIME JOE MANCHIN STOPPED BEING COY<span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>Had we but world enough and time</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>This coyness, Manchin, were no crime </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX9soswW503Ciwrc1mu1rwVvXNeDnXe0H8uBsrmn5_P9SLH2XDK_zED2MM9zeR_984iO67ebi5kNWwZvNv2-9zpkhDpJxqO6CkdtyNkqQ-rkscpPuUikdMw8mPvRP6g9hyphenhyphen3QdHTOY6eqc/s278/MarvelAndrew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="278" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX9soswW503Ciwrc1mu1rwVvXNeDnXe0H8uBsrmn5_P9SLH2XDK_zED2MM9zeR_984iO67ebi5kNWwZvNv2-9zpkhDpJxqO6CkdtyNkqQ-rkscpPuUikdMw8mPvRP6g9hyphenhyphen3QdHTOY6eqc/w320-h208/MarvelAndrew.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrew Marvell</td></tr></tbody></table><br />With apologies to 17th century poet Andrew Marvell, who was writing to his imaginary “Coy Mistress” in one of the most famous poems in the English language, the vision of what Joe Manchin was doing to the Democrats’ agenda flooded my mind.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">If only we had time to play his games in opposing $150 billion aimed at speeding the transition to clean energy by big utilities . . . If only we had a couple of years to argue the need for infrastructure developments … If only parents could wait another few years for helping early childhood education while millions stay home rather than risk their families . . . If only just the elderly could decide on additional protection before they die … If only minority rights were something we all believed in rather than relying on idiocies like the filibuster … If only we could wait two more years for America to come to its senses, as it probably will, and elect a few more Democrats in the House and the Senate in 2022 to make the votes of Manchin and Krysten Sinema not the powerful blockade they are now. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But in the meantime, climate change is destroying the Earth. Our infrastructure is fading fast.
COVID has a frightening grip on our imaginations. The $3.5 trillion correction bill has not been sufficiently explained for those who worry about price tags (which they didn’t seem to worry about when Trump’s unpaid tax bill added $2 trillion to the national debt).</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We Americans don’t seem to feel the urgency in our guts though the sky may well be falling faster than we like, and the Democrats are rightly fearful that if they don’t get something done, the Republicans will switch from attacking vaccines, voting rights and racist realities to scoff anew at how the Democrats are great at proposing stuff but lousy at passing stuff, and how the progressives and moderates are consumed with fighting each other though they actually agree on the goals.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The intelligent reality is not ours to rationalize with -- of simply waiting until 2022 when the Democrats’ general vision of what is good for the country will win. That may be just another 16 months to pass bills, but we are an impatient country and we can’t afford to wait for change.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Not as the vaccinations seem ready in the next year to pull the world toward normal, despite the fools who think wearing masks indoors to protect their communities is somehow an attack on personal freedom. Not as fire, rain and choking skies are running circles around us.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Democrats do not seem to believe strongly enough in their own vision – they sure act as if their world may collapse in two years rather than grow stronger. But political realities do suggest this is not the time to wait even for what seems like obvious common sense to gain traction.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So Biden and most of the Congress want to do something now, and this is deeper than a game of chicken. As tempting as it must be for Biden to throw up his hands, back his full package and let Manchin and in some ways Sinema take the burden of obstructionists, daring them to oppose what every other Democrat is willing to compromise on, there is that political reality of needing to get something done.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Had we just world enough and time, Manchin, we could afford to play these games. You of all senators should realize that.
The time is ripe to do something. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>But at my back I always hear</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDzz8h_tbEmlfEbw7RaUivMufCE3tAq0aFZehF_m_404jn7jX9QCDVlSVaVZkKjhqhyphenhyphen9jvSFCLt5Wy7VKgRIGSjyUEyhjD6nv6uxIo4LHxEslo3Thj0Kvj96ZkpiPre5uHkkb-r3Lnpo/s960/nothbymaria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDzz8h_tbEmlfEbw7RaUivMufCE3tAq0aFZehF_m_404jn7jX9QCDVlSVaVZkKjhqhyphenhyphen9jvSFCLt5Wy7VKgRIGSjyUEyhjD6nv6uxIo4LHxEslo3Thj0Kvj96ZkpiPre5uHkkb-r3Lnpo/s320/nothbymaria.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-11770922179502547262021-09-13T00:22:00.000-07:002021-09-13T00:22:21.096-07:00WHAT NEXT WILL BIDEN GET TOUGH ON? HOW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?<p><b> <span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">By Dominique Paul Noth</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">He takes seriously his job of protecting every child in America, so don’t get grandpa angry! That thought leapt to mind when President Biden, a grandfather of exactly my age, lost his patience Sept. 9 and told Republican governors opposing his vaccination efforts to get out of his way – especially when it comes to suing schools trying to protect children.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0TQDjHMhDyw1HmNYd9sWcyWuC8Q-8WrTfbkw-zLKpoxu61yEk-kYah5MfnqzPck_XwqpfRfqtlxdIKFMgXpvaY4EP2IFJh-stGm7v-ADesNq8rLLaW3qSCuPB_RdbiPMRnlBF3gjiVgw/s640/Bidenangry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0TQDjHMhDyw1HmNYd9sWcyWuC8Q-8WrTfbkw-zLKpoxu61yEk-kYah5MfnqzPck_XwqpfRfqtlxdIKFMgXpvaY4EP2IFJh-stGm7v-ADesNq8rLLaW3qSCuPB_RdbiPMRnlBF3gjiVgw/s320/Bidenangry.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The president got angry</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">“Don’t mess with grandparents. We’re madmen,” the president of “West Wing” warned his staff in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKTH1YXbO7M" target="_blank">a memorable episode of the hit series</a>. Granted, Josiah Edward (Jed) Bartlet (alias Martin Sheen) was a liberal fiction in a fictional White House, but his warning was part of a probing moment in which Josiah used his levers of government to support a Senate filibuster, of all things, by an angry grandfather seeking more funding for his grandchild’s autism, and the president pushed aside his own agenda to help.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Real life provided a reminder that the GOP was miscalculating yet again that kindly grandfatherly Joe, who believes in such antiquities as congeniality and comity, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/us/politics/biden-vaccines.html " target="_blank">wouldn’t show his teeth</a> when necessary.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">They thought he would be a pushover for their snarling resistance to even common sense proposals. He’ll fold, they thought, rather than give up on his hope for bipartisanship, even as extremists – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/10/hyperbolic-gop-reaction-bidens-vaccine-mandate-shows-why-its-necessary/" target="_blank">labeled hyperbolic in one newspaper </a>-- sought to undermine his presidency for political reasons. Accused of grandstanding he told Republican governors who wanted to sue him, “Have at it.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Legalities aside, and the legalities are on his side at this point, he flat out wants every employer with 100 workers to get them all vaccinated or regularly tested – a necessary safeguard until we can vaccinate children under 12 or force down the Delta variant explosion caused by those governors.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">GOP talking heads – such as FOX, which requires vaccination for its employees – are criticizing Biden for changing his mind since last December, when he was the president-to-be and said he’d rather not make vaccinations mandatory, which he hasn’t. But events just toughened his rhetoric. He actually said, “Just like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide, I'll do everything in my power as President of United States to encourage people to do the right thing.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Now he’s labeled a tyrant by those claiming he is violating people’s freedom to go naked (not at the ballpark or where children are present, please). As mild as Biden is considered in manner, by September his anger was visible, and I suspect that GOP obstruction was something of a shock to his vision of a mutually supportive America when it comes to issues of our health and the planet’s health.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The vaccine anger – we’ve got the solution, why fight it? – looks like just the first Biden salvo in getting tougher when his agenda makes overwhelming sense – such as his broad program to address climate change and greenhouse gases as part of the infrastructure bill.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">It’s become as silly to deny climate change as it is to pretend the COVID vaccines don’t work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Biden, after 36 years in the senate and eight as vice president, has earned trust on his knowledge of levers and his pace – and remember how his patience runs out. I expect more of his determination, even strong-arming, with the infrastructure bill and certainly its energy component.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguw2Ja7roaARTANj4OriYCZi0jLEY1ohD__ivMWEAkNHzkwf-HpbJAj-tbIYv-13j8IJReW9Jf-eUtjKY2SSQdPUQvjPvySdpzPQNAVSLF-C9U0Hdu5MIbarPAGrp_5ULijpM4IJGgOTQ/s1440/solarpanels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1440" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguw2Ja7roaARTANj4OriYCZi0jLEY1ohD__ivMWEAkNHzkwf-HpbJAj-tbIYv-13j8IJReW9Jf-eUtjKY2SSQdPUQvjPvySdpzPQNAVSLF-C9U0Hdu5MIbarPAGrp_5ULijpM4IJGgOTQ/w378-h248/solarpanels.jpg" width="378" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A stock photo of solar panels being installed</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">With experienced advisers behind him, I believe Biden is going to stand tough against simplistic progressives and simplistic conservatives alike. If Sen. Joe Manchin is feeling his oats as a needed vote and balking at the infrastructure $3.5 trillion price tag over 10 years, Biden knows that all this is just math and Manchin hasn’t filed any absolute objections to the goals. There are a lot of ways to get there without reducing Biden’s desires or his pace. So let’s not confuse math, which has a lot of wiggles to its behavior in legislative affairs, with targets.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">His energy program is demanding <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/business/energy-environment/biden-solar-energy-climate-change.html" target="_blank">something even progressives doubt can be achieved</a>, increasing the use of solar energy from 4% of the nation’s power grids now to 35% by 2035 and virtually half – 45% by 2050. The first goal is only 14 years ahead.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Energy policy is confusing to the public – as are the blunt realities of energy efficiency, which attacks the 50% waste into the atmosphere now caused by reliance on fossil fuels. Biden’s goal looks a lot easier when the Department of Energy’s efficiency offices are pushing the edges of science on energy storage and multiple wizardries – some of which are discussed in a far-ranging NPR “Fresh Air” interview with the New York Times main writer on the subject (<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016418278/us-faces-crossroads-on-renewable-energy-future-go-big-or-go-local" target="_blank">link gives you text or audio</a>).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Hbr56tVpGGfOreJL9Xy6pgNSzSPU6tylW-ZCQwJ41y48JAAbhI7X3FbalBkj6lWzRvr8AUBFkqRvyR7WQoNXseWJcA0ZtPp-BY_mahFYAmc-BaAbGoHhuDXVD25_Hcxlhm20cajb9ec/s619/PennIvan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="571" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Hbr56tVpGGfOreJL9Xy6pgNSzSPU6tylW-ZCQwJ41y48JAAbhI7X3FbalBkj6lWzRvr8AUBFkqRvyR7WQoNXseWJcA0ZtPp-BY_mahFYAmc-BaAbGoHhuDXVD25_Hcxlhm20cajb9ec/s320/PennIvan.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Journalist Ivan Penn</td></tr></tbody></table></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">If I have a problem with Biden’s outline it is that in trying to make sure big business gets on board, the president is underselling how vital house by house community action can be – and how quickly it can cause change. Writer Ivan Penn touches on that, but even his own NYTimes stories emphasize the big business financing. As a longtime journalist I suspect why.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Frankly, the public swoons into invisibility when told how individually and easily they can make changes in the power grid and bring costs down – the general public figures this is the job of the big boys in money and marketplace But look at the reality – 50% waste currently using fossil fuels. Energy grids are built on big companies maintaining constant power, but they often come up short on reliability, perhaps because they are required by law to provide universal coverage and <a href="https://grist.org/politics/biden-is-eliminating-fossil-fuel-subsidies-but-he-cant-end-them-all/" target="_blank">know full well who has the money to pay for it all</a>. So who gets response in emergencies or mechanical failures?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">We sure haven’t seen reliability or redundancy in the big merchants’ decisions in Texas, Louisiana <a href="https://www.mynspr.org/news/2021-06-01/pg-e-reaches-12-million-zogg-fire-settlement-with-shasta-tehama-counties " target="_blank">and even California</a>. Biden is so busy selling “big is better” as a solution to greenhouse gases that he is underselling how much you and I can do to influence the power grid.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The power grids seem such a gigantic thing to tackle until you recognize the gains in energy efficiency the average Joe and Jane can be a part of.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Such Jane and Joe thinking has not yet made it prominently into mainstream stories, perhaps because our eyes roll out of our heads when journalists start talking megawatts, microgrids and zinc-ion electrolytes (nodded off, didn’t you dear reader?).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">But climate change is not only changing the world. It is changing how ordinary humans must react. There are those who believe in the vaccines and those who don’t, and those who believe in climate change and those who don’t – yet climate change is shaping up as a vital call to action.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">People have learned to put their family and community weight into the response to COVID, and similarly this is happening with the climate. We have to absorb more knowledge of the methods of resolving mankind’s damaging influence on the atmosphere.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Whether you agree or disagree with Biden’s maneuvers (remember the Manchin guy from coal country has only made tsk-tsk noises about moving too fast against fossil fuel companies), at least Biden is maneuvering and time is short. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The details of Biden’s total infrastructure blueprint, a cradle to grave attempt to help citizens, includes a $2.3 billion focus on jobs and energy. It is clearly hard for both legislators and the general public to understand. It raises the specter of wonkiness when experts try to explain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">But some realities about power grids are simple to frame:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><b>Much of public believes </b>the future need for electricity can only be met by growing the power grids’ generation capacity. But it may simply be a matter of cutting radically into the 50% waste in fossil fuels now required by big companies to operate those grids. This is why several states and mom-and-pop operators are looking at ways to change the basic equation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><b>Much of the public believes </b>– even after the disasters exposed in several large scale companies – the problems of climate change are too big for individuals or communities to attack without enormous financial resources. Biden is understandably focused on sizable corrections involving big businesses. But his Department of Energy is also exploring a range of smaller-scale solutions that average citizens can implement, from solar panels on the roof of homes and apartment buildings to converting garages into plug-in stations for electric vehicles (aside from the headline-making plans to provide plug-ins along the nation’s highways) from battery storage that doesn’t require use of rare minerals to microgrids used by offices and hospitals to relieve pressure (or even replace reliance) on power grids. It is belief in those efficiency options that led Biden to put so much faith in solar energy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><b>Much of the public believes</b> – as Biden seems to – that the ability of big companies to invest in huge offshore wind turbines may be a new frontier technology solution, though the average citizen can’t fund this. Much of the technology of building and anchoring the huge turbines in ocean waters is not yet proven. Meanwhile, local energy companies question the massive use of materials and ocean lanes involved and the hazards of failure compared to the more reliable solar panels – and sure enough, solar is where the Biden administration has put most of its efforts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Community leaders also worry about continuing the trend of society to put the haves ahead of the have-nots, since to this point it has been higher middle class and even richer buying into the solar solutions in neighborhoods and cars. The poor communities and societies of color may have the most to gain in cost savings and better climate, but as usual they get the hind end of discussion in the efforts to change.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhizTAPhsKhKJQKSedaBRREpimqPKWZAmbma0UYm-8IzvFvpflrj06SoUTyvLEZOP50KM-Z7kWtkTxisx2tvnEmuM3lPNrZ0hVBVBauGf3aGqzcnjEs69N7Koo07vtZtV7D4in-f6lHC8Q/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhizTAPhsKhKJQKSedaBRREpimqPKWZAmbma0UYm-8IzvFvpflrj06SoUTyvLEZOP50KM-Z7kWtkTxisx2tvnEmuM3lPNrZ0hVBVBauGf3aGqzcnjEs69N7Koo07vtZtV7D4in-f6lHC8Q/s0/nothgoogle.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><br /></p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-81002151098427529332021-07-19T14:16:00.009-07:002021-07-19T15:26:21.766-07:00SANITY NOT ENOUGH FOR WISCONSIN DEMOCRATS TO WIN IN 2022<p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size:x-large;">There are more voters in Wisconsin who lean toward Democratic policies than lean to the current weird makeup of the Republican Party. And it may make no difference.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Yes, theoretically there are more state votes backing Democratic candidates -- in total. Yet the GOP dominates the legislature and the state’s highest and now highly partisan court, whose decisions constantly disturb my piece of mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">So tilted by the last decade are the political scales that Democrats will have to work extra hard not to fall down in 2022 or even not to fall below what they achieved in the past, despite what looks like an advantage in numbers and actual success by the Democratic platform.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: courier;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC1whgSp9qvqvLbuZc1pOAYcQB9irQay3G6WRH8iXdFyCp2WRMxU1shyZlig5t63FobrVZcSHGZKz-cXnp57j88CmI2B8Qv8ZNM371XW0PAplrWHvs89jj9Q6htfP70Pp6ZibhBuc85s/s534/NelsonTom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="534" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRC1whgSp9qvqvLbuZc1pOAYcQB9irQay3G6WRH8iXdFyCp2WRMxU1shyZlig5t63FobrVZcSHGZKz-cXnp57j88CmI2B8Qv8ZNM371XW0PAplrWHvs89jj9Q6htfP70Pp6ZibhBuc85s/w320-h263/NelsonTom.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is there still time or<br />interest in Tom Nelson<br />for US Senate race?</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">They must also resist those circular firing squads the Democrats tend to create. That’s when good friends and people with similar viewpoints have to criticize each other to fight for a US Senate seat and even for a successful governorship and for what will now be a new lieutenant governor (this a race that has not yet taken final form but faces an August 2022 Democratic primary).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Progressives, liberals and moderates snipe at each other though they all in the end are pulling in the same direction.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Hopes for fair redistricting of the Assembly and state Senate have been shattered by the Republicans’ favorite toy – a biased Wisconsin Supreme Court that relies on money and philosophy from the bowels of the Republican apparatus.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Reversing lower court rulings in a case not yet decided (but clearly stating that Republicans are likely to win) the four conservatives on the high court who have relied on GOP money and power to get elected will let <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/15/wisconsin-supreme-court-reinstates-redistricting-lawyers-gop/7986506002/" target="_blank">the Republican legislature hire private gerrymander-friendly lawyers at taxpayer expense</a> to pursue its vision of redistricting maps, allowing thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to work against the taxpayers’ hope for fairer maps that reflect the state’s independent and Democratic power!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">State Republicans are trotting out the clout they have developed in changing the rules of elections since 2010. At a time when Democratic policies are clearly gaining national popularity under Biden the Wisconsin GOP is relying on its aging structure to impose a grip on voters. They may prove feeble in the future, but for now they are throwing down the gauntlet to Democrats who more blithely want to debate issues or weigh candidates -- as should be the custom in a democracy. The Republicans are hoping to make these sorts of internal argument look like signs of weakness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The Democrats do enjoy such dithering, and the media enjoys any fight among friends. The Republicans are simply happy to put a meaty thumb on the scale. They expect the Democrats to give up to their superior nastiness, polished over a decade. As a new progressive action committee, Law Forward, points out, Wisconsin has <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/10/22/new-law-firm-taking-on-progressive-causes/" target="_blank">the most partisan gerrymandering of state districts in the nation</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Even Marquette University, in poll watching sometimes criticized as too conservative, concedes the partisan nature of Wisconsin gerrymandering, though it often takes an “on the other hand” analysis to the complexities of developing fairer maps. <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2021/02/why-do-republicans-overperform-in-the-wisconsin-state-assembly-partisan-gerrymandering-vs-political-geography/" target="_blank">Rather typically of the “on the other hand” analysis</a>, research fellow John Johnson flatly says: “There is no serious question that the State Assembly districts drawn in 2011 are an extreme Republican gerrymander. However, that fact does not establish how much better Democrats could have done under a fairer map.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">But that statement is also a succinct summary of the Democrats’ problem in motivating sympathizers. Few doubt that the obstinacy of the Republicans in the state legislature has slowed important gains for K-12 education, for COVID relief, for Medicaid expansion, for better transit solutions and on and on – all vital issues to the voters paying attention. But in rural Wisconsin the GOP can still wave abortion issues, tax and spend myths and general generational beliefs about Republicans, as if the party hadn’t gone through a frightening devolution into silliness in the age of Trump. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The only hope is that the GOP underestimates the way Democrats wait till the last minute and don’t jump into lock step behind the candidate with the most money the way the Republicans do. There may be later strength in the current tendency of Democrats, liberals and progressives to argue among themselves – and sometimes choose the candidate with the less funds and brighter personality!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">For instance, in the race to take the US Senate seat away from Ron Johnson, the candidates don’t even know if it will be Rojo one of them will face! He is making noise and raising money as if he will run as the most Trumpian Republican in captivity, but if he doesn’t gain more than his current 25% in state polls, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/fb8u8dcy" target="_blank">he may run for the hills</a>, leaving the field to other candidates while almost all the Democrats are beating up on the eminently outrageous Rojo. They may have to switch in midstream to a more coherent Republican presence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The Democratic field for the Senate has become enormous but only one of the relative unknowns, physician Gillian Battino – she’s a Wausau radiologist – has made such an articulate presence in Q and A sessions that she is clearly steps ahead of such other newcomers as Steven Olikara, Adam Murphy and Peter Peckarsky, all of whom I expect to drop out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The most experienced candidate is Tom Nelson, a former leader of the Assembly when it was in Democratic hands and two-term Outagamie County executive, an interesting combination of Russ Feingold style points and Bernie Sanders politics. He also is a progressive who has won in rural territory, but his main chance is to creep up from the outside and be seen as more in the vein of such former Democratic US senators as Bill Proxmire, Gaylord Nelson and Feingold.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfgJw7IVWeVEFZWXIZ_4Ho71E7_biXL8tGpZNYbB7ToY5vleupWvXMadO22j2aeerjy8KP8caPxs0PoIH4rAnvko7odzdeUg96SwnlUbBAKoDNjIgQD_qo4NiBJ6cLbPmil3dwVzQNMrY/s336/Barnes2021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfgJw7IVWeVEFZWXIZ_4Ho71E7_biXL8tGpZNYbB7ToY5vleupWvXMadO22j2aeerjy8KP8caPxs0PoIH4rAnvko7odzdeUg96SwnlUbBAKoDNjIgQD_qo4NiBJ6cLbPmil3dwVzQNMrY/s320/Barnes2021.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mandela expects to jump in<br />and change the<br />dynamics in US Senate race</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">There are two other experienced progressives in the race – state Sen. Chris Larson and state treasurer Sarah Godlewski, the former drawing heavily from Milwaukee, the latter heavily from Madison. Both have reason to be miffed at Mandela Barnes, the current lieutenant governor who, if not announced at this writing, will soon leap into the race (he has such announcement events scheduled for July 20) – and both these candidates were in it in part because they thought he wasn’t.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Wisdom suggests they will not publicly say anything negative about Barnes, though both have gently raised the criticism of “lacking experience” against the little known candidate they, Nelson and Barnes have the most to worry about, Alex Lasry.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGg7ouiWKn60iyFGTmSN19nsB2gnj3P15LZ7atuk5jgSxs53_Xp7N1zWwMMOF0_AJ1FvSElWCEZYBPN3GcsfMr1JJe_Bqvmn5Ngc0iV4MfGdWx7klUiQ-dsUQvysZm2LnxdPURg9tGQOA/s620/LasryAlex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="620" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGg7ouiWKn60iyFGTmSN19nsB2gnj3P15LZ7atuk5jgSxs53_Xp7N1zWwMMOF0_AJ1FvSElWCEZYBPN3GcsfMr1JJe_Bqvmn5Ngc0iV4MfGdWx7klUiQ-dsUQvysZm2LnxdPURg9tGQOA/s320/LasryAlex.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Do good vibes for Bucks<br />translate for Lasry?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Aside from genuine progressive credentials Lasry has the Bucks aura to wave about. A Bucks vice president on leave of absence, son of hedge fund part-owner Marc Lasry – and hence the best heeled candidate in the race – he has the money and campaign team to speak out on every issue, plus the perception that he has something to do with the positive feeling the state has about the Bucks and their new home. Your email box reflects the frequency of his messaging. In fact, this is the strangest race because only by innuendo should the candidates criticize each other based on similar platforms.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">History suggests that none of them should get into a spitting contest.</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_o06l5axgId25dOVRvKEpSbQ6DoMq9zZAtR_b1F1jf9lAfnTG5kh6nXAhzMg0JHLaySv4bRtlyJTLjG__3ATVUJXYlv72QliIOR1QUgeArT7DA-yjYpyISM0hCloOef02eNdP1-ph3I/s189/Doylemistake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="189" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_o06l5axgId25dOVRvKEpSbQ6DoMq9zZAtR_b1F1jf9lAfnTG5kh6nXAhzMg0JHLaySv4bRtlyJTLjG__3ATVUJXYlv72QliIOR1QUgeArT7DA-yjYpyISM0hCloOef02eNdP1-ph3I/w320-h283/Doylemistake.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Recalling Doyle blunder</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Back in the Gov. Jim Doyle era, that Democrat made his preferences clear for both attorney general and lieutenant governor (the choice voters have in a primary). His preferences were not chosen by the voters. They went, rightly in my view, with the late Peg Lautenschlager for AG (she later ran into legal trouble that Doyle seized on to discredit her; her son, Josh Kaul, now holds the same office and deserves re-election) and the engaging Barbara Lawton as lieutenant governor.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">They were both strong progressives that Doyle should have made more use of. Instead he wasted months stewing about losing his choices. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Evers will now face a similar political situation and may be well advised to let the voters choose his LG running mate in an August primary. He and Barnes were an effective one-two punch, with Barnes more nimble on social media and Evers more Biden-dogged in sticking to his guns against ridiculously negative GOP legislation. Few in the public realized Evers and Barnes were not close personally and just checked in every week or so to orchestrate ideas. Politics encourage convenient bedfellows.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Barnes has an independent streak – some would say stubborn – that make him an attractive progressive politician willing to take chances, but it’s a style that peeves some people. Many believe he thinks he is the automatic front-runner for US Senate, but I think he has to overcome the fiction that he is abandoning Evers. Nor is it clear that he can outlast Lasry’s money. Clearly some African American politicians who have come out for Lasry are now in an awkward position given Barnes’ good image in the black community (he was an organizer and worked for Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope.)</span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2_ZbTJ-4B4-LYG1KMhLUdr5g2Oht0fCOhZl7hU_rX4lH-AJJLPrBaCziS1SfA5dLCjqgA3XO4nj5USvMC_bH2yAg1dlX_QShJOmIXWzPHSPSE5GVNjqDRCUO_WVH_2YEQEBpMcRzMS4/s275/GodlweskiSarah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2_ZbTJ-4B4-LYG1KMhLUdr5g2Oht0fCOhZl7hU_rX4lH-AJJLPrBaCziS1SfA5dLCjqgA3XO4nj5USvMC_bH2yAg1dlX_QShJOmIXWzPHSPSE5GVNjqDRCUO_WVH_2YEQEBpMcRzMS4/w266-h400/GodlweskiSarah.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Should Godlewski<br />switch races?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Actually, it might prove smart politics if Godlewski switched to running for lieutenant governor.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">She would automatically be the hottest candidate with statewide drawing power, a contrast in styles but not in politics with Evers and well heeled in her own right (so known that her Madison contingent may think she can win the Senate race, though I think the field is too tough).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Personalities are important in these state races and the final maps are unknown at this point for Assembly and state senate races (quite different than statewide contests for AG, treasurer, LG and governor). In 2018 the Democrats contested more legislative seats and seem to intend the same energy in 2022 even if the maps don’t tilt their way.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">But they have yet to recognize how hard-nosed they are going to have to be to make any gains. The GOP is even more desperate and nasty this time around. The Republicans hope their better organized lesser numbers and hardened geography will make the difference.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKkyNv1uR56Pf1DgxZqv_lIEjuOtdqMocHv7EdsUO97WAv8Cz79FH_9kNC72JxyBjcgSArrOat46E_ucQCXE1wWtYffAd39OpycxS8jIq8Ln-HLzmWbhGZzJGIE4vG-pfzjXwO0PdE6Sc/s501/Noth2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="451" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKkyNv1uR56Pf1DgxZqv_lIEjuOtdqMocHv7EdsUO97WAv8Cz79FH_9kNC72JxyBjcgSArrOat46E_ucQCXE1wWtYffAd39OpycxS8jIq8Ln-HLzmWbhGZzJGIE4vG-pfzjXwO0PdE6Sc/s320/Noth2020.jpg" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><br /></p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-1039184129324237712021-05-19T20:46:00.008-07:002021-05-20T11:47:36.678-07:00WHAT POSSESSED THE CDC TO TREAT AMERICANS THIS WAY?<p> <span style="font-family: courier; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">How dare the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention! What could those bureaucrats at the CDC been thinking of! They are treating the American public as rational sentient human beings rather than bovine herds that need to be rounded up like cattle and shipped to waiting corrals. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The main herd is the obedient one, willing to follow orders from people in authority, though they have some confusion about whether those people are politicians or medical experts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The smaller more boisterous herd is the stiff-necked one, interpreting any rule as a blow to their personal freedom, whether it be motorcycle helmets, seat belts, carrying guns into retail shops, smoking in restaurants or wearing a mask when mingling in public. What could be clearer as an attack on personal freedom than a government mandate to care for your neighbors, wash your hands and maintain some social distancing?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Into this stampede of competing herds steps the CDC, sticking with the dictates of science and a rash belief that people can think for themselves. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">The CDC has landed on the side of common sense -- not insisting on 100% protection from this strange pandemic that has frozen the US for over a year. But more than enough protection in a new America under Joe Biden that has already vaccinated 61% of us and has ordered so much vaccine that everyone over 12 could be vaccinated by the summer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">In the interim the science confirms a general safety for the fully vaccinated. Broader information about protective antibodies in the nose are far outweighing new concerns that COVID can be slightly more airborne than thought. The result is a parody of the “The Karate Kid” -- wax on, wax off, VAC on, VAC off.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Parents and private businesses, while generally heeding the rules of the road, can decide for themselves how to behave in a freer environment. The media, when not hysterical about the exceptions (we all wish for perfect clarity), offers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/briefing/covid-guide-vaccinations-mask-guidelines.html" target="_blank">valuable avenues of help</a>, recognizing that families can match their circumstances, not rely on one size fits all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">It’s uncomfortable in rich America to think of us as the self-congratulatory privileged, but there is a whiff of vaccine apartheid when we remember India is still a pandemic graveyard while America looks ahead a few more weeks for full normal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Once a real president got going, though, he reinforced the value of our democracy. And while we all should still feel guilty that we have not grieved sufficiently for a half million dead, we at least now have a president who understands the responsibility of grieving. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">How free the CDC made you feel still depends on location and circumstances. If you are union nurses in California, where statewide mask mandates have been extended into June and COVID stubbornly keeps surging, or if you work in a school or are crowding extra work hours into a slaughterhouse, darn right you want to take your time. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Let’s also be honest with each other. Children statistically are relatively safe from serious COVID illness, but “relatively safe” is not a phrase that will convince all moms and dads.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Dr. Fauci rightly warns not to shame people without masks or those with them. Shaming is a self-defeating social tool, mainly because we can’t know enough to pass judgment on other people’s concern. I know parents who don’t want to go back to work till their children are fully protected. Their definition of “fully” may differ from yours.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">Nor do I endorse an honor system of trusting your unknown neighbors. Knowing how many patients tell their doctors they are following the diet or exercise ordered – when they’re not – I’m keeping my mask close at hand. Which seems to me fully compatible with the CDC guidelines.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">But then we stumble into the worst behavior of the unruly herd. These are the people, once the CDC issued new advisories, who whipped off their masks gleefully to say “See? We were right all along! No reason to ever wear them!”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">They are not persuaded by the facts, such as how -- long before vaccinations became commonplace -- the US death toll dropped 81%, largely because we were careful around each other.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: x-large;">This is the dumbest of the dumb herd not worth the saliva we are tempted to spit on them. Just be thankful the CDC is finally out of his clutches.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdKcvCEjTGm0vvQVI_KgI1ccE86fty-5ePb8hV6XS-tfZEMXzqfjggwZFFHaxmQAxvApmhTdlU1OtKxmJ_l1z4d0RPUESyveOUUmUqv2XUbPKYyDpAEeqPToLkG_Ctl26rycIYISQNZU/s501/Noth2020.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="451" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdKcvCEjTGm0vvQVI_KgI1ccE86fty-5ePb8hV6XS-tfZEMXzqfjggwZFFHaxmQAxvApmhTdlU1OtKxmJ_l1z4d0RPUESyveOUUmUqv2XUbPKYyDpAEeqPToLkG_Ctl26rycIYISQNZU/s320/Noth2020.jpg" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-25908619818238189532021-05-16T16:19:00.000-07:002021-05-16T16:19:10.720-07:00HOW ISRAEL OVER 7 DECADES LOST ITS GRIP ON US THINKING<p><b> </b><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Not</b>h</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">I was born the same year as Joe Biden (how nice to have a hero old enough for the World War II generation) but I suspect my awareness of the demand for a Jewish state was even earlier than his.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">My parents, after all, were known anti-Hitler activists who had to flee from Germany to France in 1933 and then to the United States in 1941. She was a secular Jew who converted to Catholicism in France, partly through the influence of such intelligentsia as Darius Milhaud, Paul Claudel and Gabriel Marcel (she was a successful opera singer influenced by their work). He was even better known as an anti-Nazi editorialist and language scholar whose lack of religious leanings was pronounced, as was his love of alcohol, poetic excess and self-pity as the self-proclaimed forgotten John the Baptist of Germany’s descent into Hitler.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivy8DkIb8zXUDGH1xb487FX3gev-1o9EDF3VPunE6dD7_N-vBcxqqHwbf6CwyDAm-KzEJc8J1q4EJa5kGk5SpMAYv6ilOUQccwe7dQ1DmdoqIFbJADMEevRE3DVByHSHEqOLQQnKMq5Go/s916/gentlemenpeck-and-revere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="916" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivy8DkIb8zXUDGH1xb487FX3gev-1o9EDF3VPunE6dD7_N-vBcxqqHwbf6CwyDAm-KzEJc8J1q4EJa5kGk5SpMAYv6ilOUQccwe7dQ1DmdoqIFbJADMEevRE3DVByHSHEqOLQQnKMq5Go/w400-h309/gentlemenpeck-and-revere.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Gregory Peck and Anne Revere as his mother in "Genlemen's Agreement" (1947), a powerful expose of anti-Semitism, slightly romanticized in its lighter US form than Jews had seen practiced against them in Europe.<br /></span><br /><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><br />Out of that mix, as the first US born of their children, ferocity for a Jewish homeland was inevitable -- as was facing the genteeler form of anti-Semitism in the America of “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), genteel compared to the open hatred so many Jews had experienced in Europe and still conveyed in America by Middle Eastern college students my parents encountered.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">My earliest memories (I must have been 4 or 5) were of the refugees from the war flooding into our home apartment on Manhattan’s 89th St., wanderers with broken limbs, scarred faces and gaunt skin seeking a friendly greeting, many of whom found US refuge teaching around the country. In a strange echo of today’s Dreamers, many found homes through an underground network of sympathetic Americans who pretended to be relatives and knew how to maneuver around the US brand of anti-Semitism.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">From such an upbringing, even a child who didn’t comprehend or care about politics was moved, as so much of America was in 1948, by the creation of Israel, the so-called Palestinian Mandate immediately supported by President Truman. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">My, how those <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/israel-palestinian-gaza-war.html" target="_blank">childhood beliefs have soured</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Recent polls confirm<a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/" target="_blank"> the drop in allegiance</a>, even among American Jews, where two-thirds of those over 65 still admit an emotional attachment to Israel while it drops to under 50% for younger generations of American Jews.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Israeli’s early success in armed conflict was easily transformed in the minds of children to brave righteousness over population might. The world may seem different today but for decades after 1948, there was swelling pride as Israel beat off wave after wave of Arab attacks, mightier forces that in our minds were routed by heroic determination to never again succumb to the Holocaust mentality.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">I suspect that same sense of loyalty to the Israeli cause explained the hefty military buildup supported by US policy. The belief in Israel ruled Biden’s early years in the Senate in the 1970s. He said then, I have read, that if Israel hadn’t been created by the United Nations, the US should have done it. That sense that Jews needed protection from their zealot Arab neighbors dominated US thinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The thinking continued even when Arab nations subdued their attacks. It was pushed to the front of American headlines by how cowed and fearful the region was when Hamas used rockets and terrorist methods against nearby domestic Israeli citizens. It was a scenario viewed by many, somewhat uncomfortably, as more unconscionable on the Palestine side than the Jewish right-wing settlers side, seizing Arab land in Jerusalem and other locales despite generations of legal claims and actual occupation by Palestinians. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The history is complicated. Israel’s claims to this land are not anywhere near as pure as its American allies have suggested. Nor can anyone clearly explain to me what belief in the Rapture or the Messiah’s second coming has to do with Christian support for Israel against its enemies. This sidelight of selling Christianity on the basis of keeping the Jewish state is <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/abs/why-do-evangelicals-support-israel/F8AB8C41F0B019FD8413A30EF218EBE4" target="_blank">one of the craziest dogmas out there</a>, but it sure has been exploited by pastors and politicians raising money.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The once enthusiastic support of earlier generations has clearly faded, mainly thanks to Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and Israel’s move to the hard right (while understandable given the dangers they live under). Many people I know question the simplified vision they long maintained. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/bernie-sanders-israel-palestine-gaza.html" target="_blank">They are asking serious questions.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"> Much of the change of heart is the tragic circumstances of the Palestinian people – poverty, always present occupation, fear of movement, instant death from the skies whether you fight or not, ineffective foreign pressure. The same violation of basic human rights that brought so much empathy to Jews after WWII has now been transferred to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/photos-pro-palestinian-protests-global" target="_blank">unsettling visions</a> of the Jews as the new blitzkrieg. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Americas are now going through this uncertainty. The strongest argument for Israel is the right to protect their families from enemy hatred. The current reality is that Bibi, not able to form a new government on his own and remain as prime minister, has some unnatural incentives to make war with the Palestinians.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">When Trump was president and so clearly in Bibi’s pocket, Hamas leaders knew that violent reaction was not going to help them one bit, so they held off. With Trump gone, Bibi knows that pushing Hamas to its extremist tendencies would draw in the Biden administration and put the US lifelong support of Israel to a new test. <a href="https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/chicago-and-nationwide-demonstrations-demand-end-to-attacks-on-palestinians/" target="_blank">That new test is now underway.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Israel has something else going for it – the blind hatred against it. More than seven decades after its creation, the Arab rhetorical virulence toward Jews seems to have inflated, not diminished. No imam worth his salt from Saudi Arabia to Syria, from Iran to the Emirates, can raise money or followers without vindictive quotes against Israel. Amazingly they are even more virulent than Israeli quotes against Iran, which are plenty bad on their own.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Ehud Barak, the famous former Israeli prime minister born in 1942, the same year as Biden, once remarked rather sadly that if he were a Palestinian of a certain young age he would probably join a militant group. But Barak also said rather more famously: “The Middle East is a region where predictions go to die.”</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnwRCS-vYUR5IIoigB9hyJNy1v2sqPMeBhuZm_qZ612qpFOP_cxldh53q3AAZVoTyibsjMt0LnaqJcjhHEKUKkpHdvy7ohbtRxCELI_OEtXfcXgnYUpVtO47e4DPeWXlltNanb25Innq4/s501/Noth2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="451" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnwRCS-vYUR5IIoigB9hyJNy1v2sqPMeBhuZm_qZ612qpFOP_cxldh53q3AAZVoTyibsjMt0LnaqJcjhHEKUKkpHdvy7ohbtRxCELI_OEtXfcXgnYUpVtO47e4DPeWXlltNanb25Innq4/s320/Noth2020.jpg" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.</span></h4>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-82440865306549275672021-04-25T21:12:00.014-07:002021-06-12T12:14:16.908-07:00DEMOCRATS LINING UP TO RESCUE WISCONSIN FROM RON JOHNSON<p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><b>[Editor's Note: </b></span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">Since I wrote this story, Steven Olikara is exploring a run and Chris Larson has entered the race. But my speculation about Mandela Barnes and my remarks about Rojo remain intact.<b>]</b></span></p><p><b style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">By Dominique Paul Noth</b></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">We are a quarter of the way into 2021 and still not rid of the pandemic (though too many people are pretending that it’s gone). Yet an election that doesn’t take place for 19 more months (!) – November 2022 – is intruding on Wisconsin political thinking. It’s too early for the public to make decisions but what an interesting cast of hopefuls are vying for the Senate seat now held in ruthless anti-intellectualism by Ron Johnson.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The poll numbers say Rojo should not run again, as he firmly promised he wouldn’t in 2016. But he is clearly determined to test the Wisconsin waters. <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/300251-ron-johnson-will-retire-after-second-term " target="_blank">Promises be damned.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">That is why he has spent the last months trying to behave even stupider than Trump by claiming Jan. 6 was not a threatening event to anyone in Congress, that Trump despite facts and his oath to defend the US Constitution had every reason to fight illegally against Biden’s election, that Johnson is the national answer for the confusion roiling the nation’s Republicans and that all this hubbub about getting vaccinated is <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/04/23/ron-johnson-i-see-no-reason-pushing-vaccines-people/7349801002/" target="_blank">stupid even if your neighbors aren’t yet protected</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">He’s even deliberately positioned himself to appear at a GOP event with a speaker <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2021/04/14/johnson-kleefisch-join-speaker-who-says-jan-6-riot-staged/7219129002/" target="_blank">who is so far up Trump’s behind</a> that he can’t see the daylight of common sense. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Pundit after pundit points out that all Johnson’s shaking the tree has not budged the roots an inch. In fact, he looks far more devious than when first elected in 2010, posing as a “responsible” back bencher who would quietly slip in as a citizen businessman. He squatted in the Senate for nearly 12 years doing nothing. Now he blathers almost daily but no one is listening.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Clearly he hopes that acting more and more like Trump will elevate his Wisconsin poll numbers – and you can see his thinking. It’s not totally crazy, <a href="https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/polls/wisconsin-senator-ron-johnsons-in-trouble-and-what-else-were-up-to-at-ppp " target="_blank">given how bad he’s doing</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The GOP can’t seem to shake Trump’s grip on the party’s most extreme base. Johnson doesn’t want to shake the grip he wants the extreme base to wrap him in their arms. We’re not talking about the 73 million people who voted for Trump. But even if only 30 million are left (as seems most likely), thousands may be from Wisconsin and they are vicious toward RINOs (Republicans in Name Only, which these days are anyone who speaks against Trump). Rojo wants their votes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/22/trumps-grip-republican-party-isnt-strong-that-his-base/" target="_blank">even as this brand of Republicans may be fading fast</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Other elected Republicans are trying to ignore how popular Biden policies are even among moderate Republicans. The real base is moving further away from GOP elected officials, with Johnson pleading for the extremist members to stop moving away and look at him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The Democrats lost a few seats in the House in November 2020 while tying in the Senate, but much of that loss was before they took office and people weren’t sure if they could do any of the things they promised. The country was still splitting its voters among the two parties unsure, despite four years of disappointment under Trump, which would really deliver. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Now the vaccination effort and the economy are bouncing and support grows for broad infrastructure relief and basic voting and gun rights. The new administration has proved to be doers even with thin margins, and 63% of the country is impressed. The House and the Senate look even more like areas for Democratic gains in the near future, and the GOP knows it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">This is Johnson’s situation. His answer is out-Trump Trump despite what voters thought about him in the past. He can always withdraw from the race at the end of 2021 if his hysteria produces no results. The likely replacements waiting patiently in the wings include Reince Priebus and Mike Gallagher. They won’t make a move until he signals them. </span></p><p><b></b></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiALJzz1InHcvxKKFClBz-PP42okfU6v_CrQa1y7SqwG5WtmJi3RPDEtZxfLTkeq1c3jdvS-8sTEED9_mImewtn4KqG5KFxf0lnXwtxcbxuY7FUja_jvXt6EqR_6hWLnUFfmaRvNktEG9Y/s902/NelsonTom2020.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiALJzz1InHcvxKKFClBz-PP42okfU6v_CrQa1y7SqwG5WtmJi3RPDEtZxfLTkeq1c3jdvS-8sTEED9_mImewtn4KqG5KFxf0lnXwtxcbxuY7FUja_jvXt6EqR_6hWLnUFfmaRvNktEG9Y/w266-h400/NelsonTom2020.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A galaxy of Democrats forming in<br />this race include a veteran state<br />lawmaker, Tom Nelson.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Meanwhile a storm of interesting progressives</span></b><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> are mounting on the Democratic side, making the primary on August 9, 2022, the real election.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Leaving aside the unknown radiologist Gillian Battino (she is big on health care and the environment), the announced Democratic field includes the most successful progressive lawmaker in recent state history (he led the Assembly when the Democrats had control), the combative dynamic lone woman progressive who won statewide office in 2018 and the richest if unknown progressive newcomer in the race who has already wrapped the aura of the Milwaukee Bucks around himself and hopes the voters will confuse him with the former owner of the Bucks, who for years was rich enough and known enough for his community beneficence to advertise himself as “nobody’s senator but yours,” Herb Kohl.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgU0oXON_rncA7d35qAN9qUlJWhnZcE_5zM0VlCukcq3GhxatcmZj9pdMk8Os4a9cEvO4IUVVGtup8mZ-AFWyJUoTLGucNjfwMD0wUEyaxCm8rnE3vTGJSVvCMSWENcf0VP5K6bxBaDso/s620/LasryAlex.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="620" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgU0oXON_rncA7d35qAN9qUlJWhnZcE_5zM0VlCukcq3GhxatcmZj9pdMk8Os4a9cEvO4IUVVGtup8mZ-AFWyJUoTLGucNjfwMD0wUEyaxCm8rnE3vTGJSVvCMSWENcf0VP5K6bxBaDso/w200-h141/LasryAlex.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Alex Lasry ain’t Herb Kohl. But so powerful is the atmosphere of unlimited campaign money that the unknown Lasry is already placed in the lead pole position. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">A senior vice president of the Bucks whose father is the billionaire hedge fund operator and part owner of the Bucks, Alex Lasry has a winning PR way at age 33. His wife is a leader in Planned Parenthood and he has already made the right noises, email ads and commercials to attract Democratic names. But it bothers some that he has leaped into large recognition on the aura of the Bucks community benefits agreement, of which he was just a part, and is heavily advertising those accomplishments on email (“We need someone who knows how to get things done”) while two of his opponents on the Democratic side have proven experience in getting things done in public office.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">No wonder voters are asking “Who is this guy?” But there is an expectation of powerful family financial connections getting attention – in Milwaukee the tradition of rich scion rising in local politics was Chris Abele, elected twice as county executive.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The appeal of big money initially overshadowed the two names who should be getting more attention – and I expect soon will.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Tom Nelson has served two applauded terms as Outagamie County Executive. Still youthful in appearance, he was majority leader in the Assembly when Democrats had control under Gov. Jim Doyle, and is the prime example of a pro-union progressive thinker who has proven again and again his appeal outside Milwaukee and Madison (though Milwaukee and Madison votes are emerging as his main problem). He also ran as lieutenant governor candidate on Tom Barrett’s first 2010 ticket against Scott Walker.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7mECScgy2zqgwfUsTewkirSjwhJGw6YiVUn7d8z6UMQDazu5JUIz_xOoG-zXCjUfV35xQLnsXbEqHWUght_V8nWDnNXCPOoWHcFgnLuxYWrP6AaW27wC8PuiIZtoieAg5XazlbfQJV0/s406/Nelsonbookcover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="270" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7mECScgy2zqgwfUsTewkirSjwhJGw6YiVUn7d8z6UMQDazu5JUIz_xOoG-zXCjUfV35xQLnsXbEqHWUght_V8nWDnNXCPOoWHcFgnLuxYWrP6AaW27wC8PuiIZtoieAg5XazlbfQJV0/w266-h400/Nelsonbookcover.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">I was sent an advance copy of Nelson’s first book: “One Day Stronger: How One Union Local Saved a Mill and Changed an Industry -- and What It Means for American Manufacturing” (2021, Rivertowns Books), now available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and local Milwaukee independent Boswell Books. The title is an echo of a famous union slogan and once a USW motto: “One day longer, one day stronger.”</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">It is a compelling story if, like me, you like the sometimes wonkish blow by blow legal details of how the union at Appleton Coated paper mill talked the new owners into another path than closing the plant and dumping the jobs and the union. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">The union, using all its resources, offered a way to fight in the courts and got a noted Republican state judge (Greg Gill, who in April <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/02/22/republican-influence-wisconsin-appeals-courts/" target="_blank">used right wing campaign money to win an appeals court seat</a>) to agree that if there was a way to keep the plant and the jobs that should be explored. It was and the union in effect won. Nelson at most was coaching from the sidelines.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Known as a strong union ally throughout his career, Nelson’s point is that all sides can be convinced if good jobs and good community revenue stem from such efforts. Judge Gill may not be his partisan cup of tea but he helped the union take a chance to save more than 600 jobs. Nelson offers this story as a guide to how progress can be made in a state as partisan-split as Wisconsin. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">I expect as the campaign unfolds, the book and his theme will become a large part of the Nelson campaign, but he is flying in the face of voters’ demands for instant action, not the slower steadier approach his career has demonstrated. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP05N0z_sULn0m599KR6LQOcYhfWofFZaU91F7Z55hdsWIf0fy9tbIJ8C5wtkUxiNTHmYlSih8ppLoASEYUARxBt48p9xAaAJoEyejHz7DDHwtsjYBZTDELkf1tm1PbdbLlZQrNBNgj7A/s275/GodlweskiSarah.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP05N0z_sULn0m599KR6LQOcYhfWofFZaU91F7Z55hdsWIf0fy9tbIJ8C5wtkUxiNTHmYlSih8ppLoASEYUARxBt48p9xAaAJoEyejHz7DDHwtsjYBZTDELkf1tm1PbdbLlZQrNBNgj7A/w213-h320/GodlweskiSarah.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarah Godlewski</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">To my mind, he will be fighting for progressive voters mainly against Sarah Godlewski, the elected state treasurer who has proven feisty in the face of a ferocious Republican legislature and already has come out of the gate with ads taking chunks out of Ron Johnson’s hide. Godlewski is already a heroine on the progressive side, with a reportedly well-to-do family than can support her campaign – and she is worth hearing.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Whether she and Nelson can be heard above the din that Lasry money can create is another issue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">There is actually another name that appears in all the media coverage on this race – but as of this writing is unannounced, though the media sure seems eager for him to jump in. Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has the right to pick his own time for any announcement and he has to be aware that if he jumps into the Senate race, he is a.) automatically the biggest name on the Democratic side and b.) the monkey wrench in the governor’s race, forcing Tony Evers to pick a new running mate for the same November election while fighting pressure tactics from the Republican legislature anxious to wrest back control of the governor’s mansion (and legitimately worried about losing their legislative power base if the Democrats get busy up and down the ballot).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Right now, Evers is the only veto proof the state has against some heavy-handed right wing proposals on the economy, voting rights, justice reform, the environment and more. Barnes has been a key proponent and salesman in many aspects of the Evers campaign, a more relaxed and appealing politician. Many pundits feel Lasry went out of his way to lock up noted African Americans in Milwaukee politics and government to keep Barnes at bay.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">Barnes has long had an independent streak, part of his appeal and partly the danger of anyone anticipating which way he will jump. He proved that in 2016 <a href="https://www.wuwm.com/politics-government/2016-08-09/mandela-barnes-fails-to-unseat-incumbent-lena-taylor" target="_blank">when he abandoned what would have been a shoo-in Assembly race </a>to take on Lena Taylor for a state senate seat, knowing he was a distinct underdog. He rebounded from that into winning the statewide race with Evers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-large;">I can’t imagine he is happy with how his name is being thrown about in this race – unless he announces. Even without his presence, there is a formidable lineup against Rojo that is stirring a lot of discussion.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4DlmsgKnJsVW5ZCeTd9zD47GQWpT1ZiHO2QYw2aGQ7G_GhL7dDHZJbB1GSbbKAcIxPB_8dP6qPff3E2LbzVCw_YIuBjv2vkvdm-CNY1-tC5TtkcEXh6LVZ3WqHkaTCzXM4rc7gyy-mMA/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4DlmsgKnJsVW5ZCeTd9zD47GQWpT1ZiHO2QYw2aGQ7G_GhL7dDHZJbB1GSbbKAcIxPB_8dP6qPff3E2LbzVCw_YIuBjv2vkvdm-CNY1-tC5TtkcEXh6LVZ3WqHkaTCzXM4rc7gyy-mMA/s320/NothatPfister.jpg" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><br /></p><p> </p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-66690308304449556482021-03-19T00:34:00.000-07:002021-03-19T00:34:53.108-07:00POLITICS PUTTING WISCONSIN IN RACIST SPOTLIGHT<p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Standing out from the hundreds of political email solicitations I receive each week was one March 18 from <i>A Better Wisconsin Together</i> (a new <a href="https://abetterwisconsin.org/" target="_blank">research and communication conduit </a>for progressives) bluntly stating “It’s racist!-- Wisconsin is better than Ron Johnson,” and then asking for funding to oust him in 2022.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I applaud the sentiment – but I’m a political realist and I have to ask why Johnson is turning more Trump than Trump, defending the “good people” who brutalized police and the US Capitol Jan. 6, painting the Black Lives Matter people as akin to pagan devil worshippers and, I fully expect in the next few days, coloring Asian women as sex traffickers – all the old tired saws of bigoted white supremacists. Does he hope the voters in Wisconsin will rejoice in such racism?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yes he does. He’s gambling that this sudden harsh extremism – from a Senate back-bencher who has been more relied on for keeping his mouth shut and his voting geared to the rich business world he came from – is just what will raise his shaky poll numbers. And cunning Ron, he has an escape hatch. If his numbers don’t go up, but instead go down because Wisconsin is not as racist as he hopes, he can always pull the plug on running for a third term, as he once vaguely promised.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">The horror for Wisconsin is that we will be attracting some of the most outrageous Republican attacks in the next year and live with the confident GOP expectation of victory because of how extreme the GOP gerrymandering of districts in 2011. Statewide elections like governor or senator are one thing the Democrats can win though apparently only by small margins, but when you dip down into US House districts and state legislature districts, the GOP imbalance defies the real majority vote. In 2018 Democrats may have received 205,000 more votes than Republicans, but the GOP has a 27-person advantage in the Assembly. All this has caused a newspaper that has eschewed editorials </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2021/03/17/wisconsin-gop-locked-power-gerrymandering-open-process/4716318001/" target="_blank">to actually run on</a></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2021/03/17/wisconsin-gop-locked-power-gerrymandering-open-process/4716318001/" target="_blank">e</a>!</span></p><p></p><div style="font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfGo74yoiBsB1s1rq6CXHgjz51z_-Ca9nZWIoBN6Oyzmz14Y5L3T1RyR5UtiHBep_sgzUcSvAvMjMIokHmR_Sl6heV1cEWXZVpThH-pLwfEbBasYjT2wyzkid0DL1Jl8vqXbsR4nmSk4/s354/WisCongMap1993.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="330" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfGo74yoiBsB1s1rq6CXHgjz51z_-Ca9nZWIoBN6Oyzmz14Y5L3T1RyR5UtiHBep_sgzUcSvAvMjMIokHmR_Sl6heV1cEWXZVpThH-pLwfEbBasYjT2wyzkid0DL1Jl8vqXbsR4nmSk4/w373-h400/WisCongMap1993.jpg" width="373" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">The split in the state is more than rural versus urban, more than white versus black and brown. Compare the House district maps, so understandably blockish before 2010. Then compare with the map used since 2010. A lot of communities will weep, but note the impact on minority isolation, particularly in the Milwaukee area</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Republican Party has happily made itself the ugliest side of the creature it was 50 years ago, elevating the racism that was a smaller but effective part of its message. That was the time the GOP attracted many Wisconsin families as it encouraged white flight from the big cities and warned the working folks that the Democrats would tax them to death. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvwGG0Ku-NptgHsUDDqnNVCYKWOz2DEVEWTh9Z_gyIQphpbzUrCVDPGPnqQ2OtGwJ5PmaY4ipciJ7asYERKBASz629_3Tc-YKdR0JtRkxy5y7AyGQH96CMaXBf61W8YqTu63LUMEXVa7Y/s773/Wisconsin_2010_Congressinal_District_Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="732" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvwGG0Ku-NptgHsUDDqnNVCYKWOz2DEVEWTh9Z_gyIQphpbzUrCVDPGPnqQ2OtGwJ5PmaY4ipciJ7asYERKBASz629_3Tc-YKdR0JtRkxy5y7AyGQH96CMaXBf61W8YqTu63LUMEXVa7Y/s320/Wisconsin_2010_Congressinal_District_Map.png" /></a></div><br />Under the new GOP and the new map, the controlling taxing party is the GOP and the hostility has gotten worse, slandering gentler politicians like Gov. Tony Evers and US President Joe Biden as if this was still Walker's Wisconsin. The basic humanity of the Democrats in charge make the GOP even more excessive in their barrages because the party is finding it harder to convince voters.<p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Turns out the Wisconsin Republicans can still rely on gerrymandering to continue these attacks without much fear of losing. So they are attacking unions, attacking worker incomes, attacking immigration, attacking the mail-in ballots they once relied on and promoting tax cuts for the rich (their vision of the people responsible for creating jobs). </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Meanwhile the Democrats tried to make headway with a big-tent approach, a sincerely meant but difficult to believe reaching out to GOP politicians. That sort of comity made the Democrats look weak and now many in their camp are demanding a harsher willingness to fight.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Once thing is for sure. The Republicans won’t give them any power. By the thinnest of margins, the Democrats did get power – led in the state offices by Evers and now led in the nation by Biden. Frankly, I knew Biden would win Nov. 3, 2020, though the networks had to wait painfully for the numbers to unfold over days. I believed, despite many doubting Democrats, that the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff would survive in Georgia, giving the Democrats the tiniest of margins in the Senate to go with the House.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">But I also knew Mitch McConnell would begin immediately plotting to turn the Senate back in 2022. State legislatures controlled by Republicans would be the key – and they have introduced some 250 bills across the nation to make voting by minorities harder.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Wisconsin bills to cut down on minority voters will be vetoed by Evers, but the gerrymander will be hard to change in the next year. The fate of the entire country hangs on a thread and Wisconsin already is showing frays.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue bill is actually astonishing out of the gate, collecting eight bills within it, any one of which would be a headline. But it didn’t get a single Republican vote, and the maneuvering is hot and heavy to bend the senate filibuster rules to see if anything else gets passed, since there is only one more time for anything else under the senate resolution rules of 50-50. Otherwise it has to be 60-40 under the sort of bills Biden wants. There may be more intelligent GOP senators around than Ron Johnson – there may be several who believe in voting rights and background checks and other issues the majority of America supports. The Democrats are hoping, perhaps in vain, that they can inch up on the filibuster rules.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">But Johnson is testing the Trump hold on the American voters in Wisconsin. Progressive feelings about that November election are still partly glum because while seven million more voters went for Biden, Trump did get 73 million voters. Think about that. I suspect those supporters have shrunk in half, but 30 million is still a big deal that the GOP must deal with and coattails are a weird thing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">In states that Trump carried in the electoral college in November, there were better Democratic candidates running for the Senate for both incumbencies and open seats. Several even led in the polling. But every state whose electoral votes went to Trump picked the Republican senate candidate, just like every state that went for Biden picked the Democrat (Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">When you put names to the losses, the pain magnifies, <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2020/10/election-comes-down-to-who-biden.html" target="_blank">as I wrote about in October. </a>Wasn’t Teresa Greenfield a better liked candidate in Iowa than Joni Ernst? Polls said so, but Trump carried the state and so did Ernst.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">In 2022 Chuck Grassley will be 89 but <a href="https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/grassley-unswayed-by-latest-polling-approval-numbers-hints-he-will-run-in-2022/article_14797187-d144-5867-9346-b2a1a8654250.html" target="_blank">he is thinking </a>of running as he has since 1980 – who will take the field against him in a state that actually longs for Biden-like agriculture gains, more wind turbine business and climate change realities? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">In Kansas it was Barbara Bollier, a former Republican physician supporting health care who led the polls against an Obamcare-hating doctor – and yet he won because Trump had the state wrapped up. Again and again this was the story – the Carolinas, Maine where the electoral college split, Texas where the female candidate against John Cronyn was less known but polled strongly, indicating where Texas might like to go.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">This time Biden squeaked by with Senate control even as he dominated in the popular vote. But if the Republicans are no longer a national party, they still are a state party and they are going to use those levers for all they can, forcing the Democrats to contemplate a level of combat that the personality of their new leader has avoided.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">All this current political tempest may be forcing change on a tried and true American voting pattern. Almost unconsciously voters have split control among the two main parties – still do even in an era where the ranks of Independent are growing, many of them fleeing according to polls from Republican ranks. But from fearing one party would run away with the process, the voters may be wishing the country would run rather than lamely waddle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">We may be reaching the point – contrasting Biden’s successes with Trump’s shenanigans – that the voters may be jumping more to the progressive side, forcing the Republicans to count even harder on their state controls to keep them in the game.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">On March 16, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez broke a Senate custom on the floor to not use derogatory terms to describe a colleague, but he did and I applaud him. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/bob-menendez-calls-ron-johnson-racist-senate-floor-over-capitol-n1261256" target="_blank">He called Johnson a racist.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Explained Menendez: “Look, I get no one likes to be called racist, but sometimes there's just no other way to describe the use of bigoted tropes that for generations have threatened black lives . . . I don't think the senator is ignorant of the fact that for centuries in this country white supremacy has thrived on using fear to justify oppression, discrimination and violence against people of color.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yet Johnson is depending on this approach as appealing to Wisconsin voters. Are we really the people he thinks?</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMWVhe6g441GgUvAsboLFVcC4YJmtoP9y3NHVIh2gM7M6qh51iFd0kk1qKuU2IrJgApZOT2OtTrZn6_3WQhtE1Yg5VORyhlf5yilhE-h4IFdZO42kS_5kqFLUeD0UywRT0GfmOrO7koAc/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMWVhe6g441GgUvAsboLFVcC4YJmtoP9y3NHVIh2gM7M6qh51iFd0kk1qKuU2IrJgApZOT2OtTrZn6_3WQhtE1Yg5VORyhlf5yilhE-h4IFdZO42kS_5kqFLUeD0UywRT0GfmOrO7koAc/s320/NothatPfister.jpg" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-54440791831339748772020-10-13T21:33:00.002-07:002020-10-14T13:01:38.618-07:00STATEHOUSE ELECTIONS ALSO IN NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b> By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">In Wisconsin, we don’t have a statewide election on Nov. 3, just a series of littler ones, county by county and district by district. Sen. Ron Johnson should go to bed every night thanking his corporate gods that he is not on the ballot this year. <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/10/07/murphys-law-not-many-approve-of-ron-johnson/">Imagine how quickly he would be gone</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">I know there are still national worries that the state won’t go for Biden. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yy846cw9">I'm beyond that</a></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">. I’m even holding out hope that the Democrats may pick up a seat in the US House, knowing I’m mainly alone on that one. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: times; font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi70zQb4n_ouxODm-GNGBaXFN_glHD00HJJj4wOFkKrd9RHXV71siSOnVoFe97hwRkMhCLxPhtEvrLBQl-dhLvZDbwGQrXiCI0WRweqEpfSYca3ezblPloNCWzSPMkhXxT4d5ISD_UU0E4/s321/Wisconsin_District_5_Map.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="321" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi70zQb4n_ouxODm-GNGBaXFN_glHD00HJJj4wOFkKrd9RHXV71siSOnVoFe97hwRkMhCLxPhtEvrLBQl-dhLvZDbwGQrXiCI0WRweqEpfSYca3ezblPloNCWzSPMkhXxT4d5ISD_UU0E4/w400-h309/Wisconsin_District_5_Map.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: times;">There’s a simple reason. I know many who live in Wisconsin District 5. They’re sort of neighbors if you live in Milwaukee County. Many families moved into that district 40 or 50 years ago out of white flight from the city! Horrible reason. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">But some families have grown up beyond that. Certainly their children, some of them, have set bigotry aside. I know many today who worry about their own children, about the environment, about basic fair treatment.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">I just can’t believe in this age of covid-19 and a moderate Democratic governor, Tony Evers, trying to do a few basic things to protect the people, that ANYONE SANE would be voting for Scott Fitzgerald! Yes, even in a district that clung stubbornly to Jim Sensenbrenner, but he at least could cough up a few hairballs now and then about civic rights. He was not quite the one-man blockade on the state social highway that Fitzgerald has become. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Fitz is also a coward, hoping others will do his dirty work. He runs half of the GOP legislature as senate majority leader and has openly defied Evers, but he also knows that health care and pandemic protection are important to voters. So rather than openly oppose Evers’ 60-day emergency mask mandate, which the governor can renew, he tried to get a right wing legal stalking horse to strike it down. <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/12/judge-denies-gop-effort-end-tony-evlers-statewide-mask-mandate/5967227002/">A state judge in October saw through the deception.</a></span></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQVjewq0KfayXhCBmeFLGPuqU7IkSNpuBhsruhf9BNLJjuKzf_dpAMVX5Lf1NLwM7VvvG_etSj97q79QU40L3ECU17a8LJ97OIjo3-HgS6ggJwWWxOeA4ro_gPgZIDuI3JLBE6FQCLIw/s180/Palzewicz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="129" data-original-width="180" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQVjewq0KfayXhCBmeFLGPuqU7IkSNpuBhsruhf9BNLJjuKzf_dpAMVX5Lf1NLwM7VvvG_etSj97q79QU40L3ECU17a8LJ97OIjo3-HgS6ggJwWWxOeA4ro_gPgZIDuI3JLBE6FQCLIw/w400-h287/Palzewicz.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tom Palzewicz<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But common wisdom says the Fitz will beat Tom Palzewicz, a moderate Democrat and business guy with true empathy for residents. I just can’t understand how a 5th District voter can put Tom and Scott side by side and not leap into Palzewicz’s camp . . . but in a hyper partisan age, it takes all kinds to doom their district for the next two years!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">I digress. What I wanted to emphasize was how, despite Biden and Trump on the top, Wisconsin voters need to work down the Wisconsin ballot as well as look at other state races, too, and there are national movements to help do that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">It’s among the aspects of Internet freedom at everyone’s fingertips. No race is too far away to get financial, computer and telephone help.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">One such group is openly dedicated to underwrite Biden by changing the nature of the state legislative chambers lined up against him, looking at the local issues as well as the national ones and weighing who will approach those intelligently. Few people know the names or abilities of people running for the statehouses in Michigan, Florida or states far and wide.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">In fact, few people in one Wisconsin district know the name or the issues of those running next door or a few county highways down the road. <a href="https://assemblydemocrats.com/meet-the-candidates/">Everyone needs help to figure out those races.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Now meet </span><a href="https://everydistrict.us/" style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">EveryDistrict</a><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">. It has set out to vet state legislative candidates around the nation, the ones that don’t have the money or the reach of US House and Senate candidates. It’s blunt about what it does: “We have tabulated the latest competitiveness, demographic, polling, and fundraising data to chart out which of our candidates would most benefit from your hard-earned dollars in these final weeks. These candidates don’t represent everyone we would like to win – that’s all of them – nor do they represent the people most likely to win. These are </span><i style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">the on the bubble candidates</i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;"> where that next dollar will make the most difference.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">EveryDistrict offers direct links for choices to <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/">Act Blue.</a> It is one-step fund-raising.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Not every state and not every race, though, as would be expected from the Democratic Party’s own activist groups. EveryDistrict remains cautious that their choices also have the active grassroots campaigns to succeed. They don’t dump the book of state houses on visitors but select out the chambers they believe that voters can impact. Right now they’re big on Kansas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Wisconsin is likely to emerge as a state that goes whole hog for Biden in the electoral college but remain in Republican hands in the state legislature, causing more migraines for Evers. Our state’s difficult situation also causes headaches for the folks behind EveryDistrict (who include some well known government experts in the state).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">One reason the GOP expects to remain in state control is the lopsided gerrymandered GOP majority in the Assembly, 63-36, built up over years of jiggling the demarcation lines. EveryDistrict reminds voters they have to flip 14 (!) seats to take back the Assembly but they identify every Democrat running and pick the most likely in the Assembly (using yellow Endorsed and pink codes) and ways to contribute to everyone, always emphasizing those they think have a chance. Even lowering the margin of GOP control could pay enormous dividends, restoring the power of the Democratic vote throughout the state.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">On working <a href="https://everydistrict.us/map/wisconsin-house/">through the website,</a> I noted of the 16 in the Assembly they had endorsed I agreed with every one – and had actually written about several. EveryDistrict is also hosting online sessions with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and city of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Individuals can also use the site to directly donate to the Wisconsin Fund on Act Blue, which will split donations evenly among 7 different Democratic campaigns whose data and polling shows they can win, but are candidates who need resources in the final weeks of the campaign. As usual, 100% of proceeds will benefit campaigns.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">EveryDistrict is not optimistic about the Wisconsin Senate, though the Democrats are much closer, <a href="https://everydistrict.us/map/wisconsin-senate/">needing only to flip three seats</a>. But only half the Senate is up for election in 2020 and EveryDistrict has just two senate seats high in its likely flippable list. The Wisconsin Democrats have more. But EveryDistrict admits bluntly that “the Wisconsin Senate is not a target chamber in 2020,” while “the Wisconsin Assembly is one of EveryDistrict’s priority chambers.” One reason is that the organization wants to see action on the ground and if more senate districts get organized that could change. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">Certainly the mood of the state is changing, largely as positive covid-19 tests climb to epidemic proportions. Many in northern, western and rural communities that thought they would be untouched are being touched harshly – grandparents, kids, money earners, essential workers. After going blithely along and allowing politics to intrude on safety precautions, they and their children are facing some ugly droppings. Yet the Republicans in the state legislature continue to attack the Democratic governor’s health-based instructions to wear masks and follow social distance protocols. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">The GOP legislature out of vicious politics is resisting common sense, it seems to me, and more and more rural voters and educators I contact feel the same way. It’s even producing stories throughout Wisconsin <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/09/oshkosh-bar-owner-icu-coronavirus-blames-trump-crisis-covid-19-oblio/5936996002/">like this one in the Journal Sentinel.</a> That disappointment and anger are filtering through communities that once never thought of voting Democrat.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">I don’t know how that will affect the final vote, but one thing is clear. The lingering pandemic has changed the bloc voting expectations of the political parties.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0x3BsYk9DSWf9KOZp6zoBiy7HBEiOfbV_nDU-l7v-ycYjj0GuLPGX3cZJegK9b5nUVPfmAESL-NKxPnP2kbpbckTGiKI8XVZNjRimOqb6wVbrLr-JD9jrWDH82ukgfTTucc-5xyKNnjU/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0x3BsYk9DSWf9KOZp6zoBiy7HBEiOfbV_nDU-l7v-ycYjj0GuLPGX3cZJegK9b5nUVPfmAESL-NKxPnP2kbpbckTGiKI8XVZNjRimOqb6wVbrLr-JD9jrWDH82ukgfTTucc-5xyKNnjU/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></h4><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-57028028291522198162020-10-10T12:28:00.023-07:002020-10-11T10:03:21.270-07:00ELECTION COMES DOWN TO WHO BIDEN CARRIES WITH HIM<p> <span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Trump turns down a virtual debate because he can’t throw his arms around a computer screen and slobber his voters to death. Biden says he’ll debate anywhere anytime as long as he is not locked in a room with a slob shedding virus. And so the debate to debate goes, canceling the second and leaving the third in limbo. But it won’t matter because we will count the votes Nov. 3 (and maybe a few days longer) and realize the real results are not just a Biden victory, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/921596963/npr-electoral-map-biden-lead-widens-again-with-less-than-a-month-to-go">which seems assured.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But who will he carry with him across the finish line, particularly in the Senate? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Suddenly national media is starting to explore those other names, even offering profiles here and there. These largely are names unknown to most national voters – and more names than ever because of a staggeringly expanded map unlike anything the pollsters guessed a few weeks ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">If Biden does hold town halls with voters, despite the push of his advisers to make all such appearances about national issues, he would be well advised to indicate his hopes state by state. With seven million already having voted, it is high time to start introducing to the public the Senate hopefuls he is counting on, and thus encourage voters back in their home states to fill in more than his name on the ballot:</span></p><p><b></b></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQT6iByNQJ_0b0xYBqI2KDV3E4TbB2CIHOYCzNg_jFd9Qp909foq6fYrvlLfj3cgdlsiIayT_qkfu7saQqg24DOiJrzVYNH65Ggu_zrLbbutotQ-Sq0YThX3QL2gelLv1FirIZlSzAnY/s1000/bollier.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQT6iByNQJ_0b0xYBqI2KDV3E4TbB2CIHOYCzNg_jFd9Qp909foq6fYrvlLfj3cgdlsiIayT_qkfu7saQqg24DOiJrzVYNH65Ggu_zrLbbutotQ-Sq0YThX3QL2gelLv1FirIZlSzAnY/s320/bollier.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barbara Bollier<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Barbara Bollier </span></b><span style="font-family: times;"> of Kansas, a former Republican and respected doctor who is running ahead of her senate opponent in the weeks before the finish line, a closing kick that is scaring Republican money to death in a state long put in the GOP column.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Sara Gideon</b>, a Maine legislative leader who is several poll points ahead of Susan (“maybe I will be independent , or maybe not”) Collins. I have described Collins as so wishy-washy she is likely to test both positive and negative in the covid sweepstakes. She surely is in peril of surviving.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Mark Kelly</b>, former astronaut and well known spouse of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/elections/100000007297620/gabrielle-giffords-speaks-dnc.html">Gabrielle Giffords</a>, a national spokesman on sensible gun control who in Arizona polls is destroying an existing GOP senator appointed by her own party. This is another win the Democrats long to lock up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: times;"></span></b></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNj8B1iOQmTijCK1fyIqypsp8eftjSlXRcqZT-4pEz8B18XEjdk0mWA7d_SGXGuXH9eJWflt8x6ug8g-cK4_5LzIQAPMlqm4IHIO-nuKmFwoZcZ_rlJoCahST-jWgI05FSU5oSOPCdSo/s1389/greenfield.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1389" data-original-width="990" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNj8B1iOQmTijCK1fyIqypsp8eftjSlXRcqZT-4pEz8B18XEjdk0mWA7d_SGXGuXH9eJWflt8x6ug8g-cK4_5LzIQAPMlqm4IHIO-nuKmFwoZcZ_rlJoCahST-jWgI05FSU5oSOPCdSo/s320/greenfield.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Theresa Greenfield<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Theresa Greenfield</span></b><span style="font-family: times;">, now slightly ahead in Iowa polls against Joni Ernst – in a state that no longer seems happy that it went for Trump after twice supporting Obama. Greenfield is a fascinating life story, a farm kid who went to college, was widowed young and now is in a second marriage with grown children and a progressive agenda. She’s got a deeper broader home-spun appeal t</span><span style="font-family: times;">han Ernst ever had.</span></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Cal Cunningham</b>, a retired military officer and state </span><span style="font-family: times;">politician who is beating Trump enabler Thom Tillis in North Carolina. He ran into some headwinds with some sex banter he had long distance but even with that cross – exploitable in the South – he is out-raising and </span><a href="https://myfox8.com/your-local-election-hq/tillis-cunningham-debate/tillis-cunningham-square-off-in-second-us-senate-debate-tackle-covid-19-relief-marijuana-legalization/" style="font-family: times;">out-arguing Tillis.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>John Hickenlooper</b>, a former Democratic presidential candidate and popular Colorado governor noted for posing with a beer and a banjo. He is slightly ahead in a tight race against incumbent Cory Gardner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Steve Bullock</b>, again a former presidential candidate and popular governor who may turn the usually red Montana blue in his seesaw race against incumbent GOP unknown backbencher Steve Daines.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b></b></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmI0WWql2ktK3WZdxYTcxfUyZEao-UBt09j4b6mPUC4TegUh0zJmo4XEdGXYoPVFD7R6zegoU92JllN2QxUBB7nzhdjIUhqOa2Te33VSCCq6_eH20-1CRoz-_wncB86gAaJJ9zSSE72Ms/s558/Harrison.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmI0WWql2ktK3WZdxYTcxfUyZEao-UBt09j4b6mPUC4TegUh0zJmo4XEdGXYoPVFD7R6zegoU92JllN2QxUBB7nzhdjIUhqOa2Te33VSCCq6_eH20-1CRoz-_wncB86gAaJJ9zSSE72Ms/s320/Harrison.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jaime Harrison<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Jaime Harrison </b>of South Carolina, a veteran Democratic leader who is tied or ahead of GOP’s Lindsey Graham (depending on which poll you credit). It’s a turnaround in a state that many thought would remain red. But thanks to Graham’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=330585524822593">constant flip-flops</a> he is in deep trouble in a flurry of ads using his own words to confirm his foolishness!</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Amy McGrath</b>, running tight against Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mitch-mcconnell-vs-amy-mcgrath-kentucky-senate-election-2020">No one fully believes </a>a former military pilot with scant political experience can beat the canny Mitch, but she has raised considerable money on the Internet and has shown experience in campaigning while he struggles to hold his troops together. Will his push for a new conservative justice please voters or stir the opposition? How long can his turtle-like conservativism keep him in the game? Or is his likely loss of the majority a growing factor driving voters to McGrath?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>Jon Ossoff</b>, a former investigative journalist and security analyst is leading GOP’s David Perdue, a sitting senator fighting corruption accusations in Georgia polls. Georgia! A once Trump state where there is also another senate race the Democrats eye:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>The Rev. Raphael Warnock</b>, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Church, is ahead in a special Nov. 3 election against both appointed senator Kelly Loeffler (another corruption accused) and her internal GOP challenger, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/collins-sets-aim-at-the-conservative-vote-in-his-us-senate-bid/XPIJ4CTJCVCQVDR2GSBW2KPUYE/">fast-talking Rep. Doug Collins</a> (they are both trying to cling to Trump’s backside). The top two finishers face off in January if neither gets 50% on Nov. 3, and did I mention Warnock has the edge? In Georgia?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHMn2fJ4LCFVDvB8RDpO2RIzzvYyDcfBHv3gwMHWpqV9DySCuDynX7XSv0SjlqcOFmrhEC6qC99XptL4L-2GcdL-wjGNZF8FoDiW8QKN4Skn4hJh-xoglkyXSz7XuNkfHwX1wvJkRDwOU/s231/Hegartatooad.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="223" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHMn2fJ4LCFVDvB8RDpO2RIzzvYyDcfBHv3gwMHWpqV9DySCuDynX7XSv0SjlqcOFmrhEC6qC99XptL4L-2GcdL-wjGNZF8FoDiW8QKN4Skn4hJh-xoglkyXSz7XuNkfHwX1wvJkRDwOU/w386-h400/Hegartatooad.JPG" width="386" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MJ Heger<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And now Texas, too! <b>MJ Heger</b>, another retired female military pilot, is making muscular inroads against Sen. John Cornyn who has been flailing trying to explain his negative health care votes and allegiance to Trump. It’s another race that no one had on their charts until the last few weeks.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">These are the most likely victories or close contests in an expanded election map, but Trump’s continuing failure and weakening threats have actually raised hopes even in the states the Democrats didn’t consider. The list keeps growing. Among the Democratic Senate candidates behind but charging hard are:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Alaska! Yes, commercial fisherman and physician <b>Al Gross</b> (not the best name for a candidate but easy to remember) is creeping within percentage points of his Republican opposition for Senate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnsefZIJQPJZIIZ95HBSmvtNKZiT0LajK9SuHN8RZ-e6YtsuRtpNVoWN-cvmi2_vGgyQnylvICiMLj0atHJUScBrOcaRYOy5tNL1K3EW2ZAtKKKd7rgv4dmiWR9izl8fb7ZOPgLNOOrZg/s2048/GrossAl.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnsefZIJQPJZIIZ95HBSmvtNKZiT0LajK9SuHN8RZ-e6YtsuRtpNVoWN-cvmi2_vGgyQnylvICiMLj0atHJUScBrOcaRYOy5tNL1K3EW2ZAtKKKd7rgv4dmiWR9izl8fb7ZOPgLNOOrZg/s320/GrossAl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Al Gross<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi! A state once assured for Republicans sees former Clinton cabinet member <b>Mike Espy</b>, an African American, making inroads against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith who has wrapped herself in Confederate glory at the same time as the state is trying to shed the mantle of its past. If Mississippi starts asking itself what power will their senator have if Biden is the president, Espy could jump higher and faster by Election Day.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Idaho! Guaranteed Trump territory where noted tribal activist <b>Paulette Jordan</b> is fighting for attention from way behind and has been helped mightily by the health care issue and <a href="https://www.emilyslist.org/">Emily’s List</a>, an influential organization devoted to encouraging progressive Democratic women.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOj9GUV53NQIOxyQkM5TN1_r4L5FjwZPOMTqsWxao8WLBErw4yKLJRMy27JD_tTDJ24pAXHOiUxhcUbWQudXnzFdGaMhSsX3JLKpHYaDGmyDVWrYCacE7kT3cXq_JiT6BAleulk7b_msM/s225/PerkiinsAdrian.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOj9GUV53NQIOxyQkM5TN1_r4L5FjwZPOMTqsWxao8WLBErw4yKLJRMy27JD_tTDJ24pAXHOiUxhcUbWQudXnzFdGaMhSsX3JLKpHYaDGmyDVWrYCacE7kT3cXq_JiT6BAleulk7b_msM/s0/PerkiinsAdrian.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adrian Perkins<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Louisiana! There are special election rules Nov. 3 putting GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy against a slew of Democrats, the two top vote-getters advancing to a January face-off if neither gets 50%. But now the Democrats seem to have coalesced behind <b>Adrian Perkins</b>, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/senate-elections-john-bel-edwards-bill-cassidy-shreveport-louisiana-06bdc3603e974d927a2592c76ef2f2f5">independent and forward looking mayor of Shreveport</a> who is turning the Louisiana race into something worth noting. Fifty percent seems too high for any candidate, which means Perkins may face off against Cassidy in 2021 when a Democratic senator will be even more appealing.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Even West Virginia! It’s the longest of long shots. But <b>Paula Jean Swearengin</b>, the coal miner’s daughter and environmental activist who did poorly in the 2018 primary against very moderate Democrat Joe Manchin, now is trying to make inroads against very right wing GOP incumbent Shelley Moore Caputo. She acts undaunted by Caputo’s 17% advantage as of Oct. 8.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">One reason for optimism among the unlikely as well as the quite possible is the clear Biden surge. Campaign money flows toward the winning side. Even a hundred to one shot like Swearingen is like a Las Vegas betting pool – someone will buy a ticket! And Alaska, Louisiana and Mississippi are locations of fast moving change that confound traditional expectations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Even most Democrats trying to preserve their seats – Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Chris Coons of Delaware – seem in solid shape. Mitch McConnell and Betsy DeVos are raising big money against Gary Peters of Michigan. Tina Smith of Minnesota and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are also facing deep pockets but I think voters in those states won’t be fooled by the ad blitz. Far more threatened is Doug Jones of Alabama given the enthusiasm but political ignorance surrounding the former football coach he faces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The size of the Democratic senate takeover chances is impressive and explains why third party GOP money, voting lawsuits and dirty tricks are on the climb. So are Republicans trying to embarrass Biden by ignoring their own insistence on packing the court system to demand Biden tell them now what he will do if Amy Coney Barrett makes it to high court (which would make her the third justice packed in under the worst president in US history).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Trump and the GOP won’t climb down from the suicide ledge before the election, but progressives shouldn’t join them out there. They should welcome Biden holding his tongue, even making noises that he is not interested in expanding the supreme court.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There are practical and logical reasons to hold his fire. He not only has to win the Senate but he has to look at – and talk to—those he wins the Senate with. Democrats are not the stoic monolith party the Republicans have proven to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Look at the field! All in a general sense are progressive and support Democratic initiatives. But they range from moderate to left, from former military officers to physicians, from commercial fisherman and other businesses to community activists. Biden will need some time to hear what they want and will vote for. There are already some 400 bills Mitch has bottled up and a lot of clamoring voices to outline the important solutions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Mitch and his fading sources may enjoy a few months of self-congratulations but it will be followed by a slate of new laws that could protect and expand the Affordable Care Act and other issues not directly on the SCOTUS calendar, like Roe v Wade.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And that ACA lawsuit only gets oral arguments November 10 and the right wing could itself be surprised since the Supreme Court may simply section off one part of the law and keep the rest even before Biden steps in with new expansion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So let Trump enjoy his act of sounding deliberately crazy – claiming he won’t leave office whatever the voters say. He will fume and fuss (and the dutiful press will cover every tantrum) because he wants America to forget how correctable are the levers of government he presumes to control and how entrenched are the forces that will make even Donald behave.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">To give Biden the forces he needs to bring changes and corrections, voters around the nation, particularly those who don’t live in the states in question, had better charge up their phones and open their wallets. Even during a pandemic, the influence can reach across long distances to impact the results in other states.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And the future of the US Supreme Court? The election may remind SCOTUS of the danger of being far out of step with the public. For Biden to commit to what he will do before he knows what he can do would be foolish.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPzNc5cc5a5NKMxL4o28iaDIpkC9G2OmemfxhNZ3acHepEfUA4WGqxwBNDPFFT6u6zic6XguL5rL4st24_Pznt3jmSgmw-Ei5qAQsp1_xGf2DxjyY8C5X4IHK6KR5cFHgc89_HOTGcmus/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPzNc5cc5a5NKMxL4o28iaDIpkC9G2OmemfxhNZ3acHepEfUA4WGqxwBNDPFFT6u6zic6XguL5rL4st24_Pznt3jmSgmw-Ei5qAQsp1_xGf2DxjyY8C5X4IHK6KR5cFHgc89_HOTGcmus/w296-h400/nothgoogle.jpg" width="296" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-45338250354628263372020-09-19T17:25:00.033-07:002020-09-22T14:28:21.161-07:00FUTURE LOOKED BRIGHTER – AND THEN RBG DIED: UPDATED<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The election elation about how well Joe Biden was doing in the polls and in campaign appearances dwindled into dread September 18 with the sad news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had succumbed at age 87.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqV8MC-r-C72zMjVt3mnM_3gvJl_WhbxlnII5YipKdbEZ5ZkyX4fxvQplaasS7ghjqjuyAf5N2mpsyG-U_etydy-Nf-AxPp5QL4rGoqN3zRzB8PP6g0rhn89uUwITTGeiLMysbZOllzpU/s780/Ginsburgrecent.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="780" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqV8MC-r-C72zMjVt3mnM_3gvJl_WhbxlnII5YipKdbEZ5ZkyX4fxvQplaasS7ghjqjuyAf5N2mpsyG-U_etydy-Nf-AxPp5QL4rGoqN3zRzB8PP6g0rhn89uUwITTGeiLMysbZOllzpU/w389-h259/Ginsburgrecent.jpeg" width="389" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Politics cut into mourning time for RBG<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">If ever a legal catalyst deserved a lengthy mourning period free of political maneuvering and punditry, it was the diminutive RBG. Her decisions, dissents, personality and quotes were important to all sides beyond transforming our understanding of the law. There were literally novenas being held for the last few years praying that she would survive her bouts with cancer so that a respectable president could pick her successor.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Now, given the nature of the partisan divide and the politics of D.C., and given a presidential election Nov. 3, this is a period of sorrow the nation will not give her. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Quickly the Democrats’ senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, threw back into Sen. Mitch McConnell’s face his pledge 11 months before Obama left office that it was too close to the election (10 months!) to pick Merrick Garland to replace RBG’s good friend and opinion rival, Antonin Scalia:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” The fact that Scalia was conservative and Obama was not, of course, had nothing to do with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The very thought that so venal a man as Trump could name RBG’s replacement fills the majority of voters with disgust as well as fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But there is no question that Mitch will play politics days before the election – even maybe try to protect some threatened members by waiting until Nov. 4 to start the nomination process so they don’t have his flat reversal of a promise wrapped around their necks at the ballot box. (It usually takes 70 days to choose, interview and hold hearings but Trump is in office until Jan. 20 even though he is likely to lose.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Mitch looks to be plunging right away – and to hell with backlash on his buddies. The White House will pursue fear tactics, arguing that Trump is still close despite the polls and now closer with RBG’s death, so we can’t have an eight member high court deciding a disputed presidential election. That argument is a blatant attempt to turn Trump’s false attack on mailed ballots into reality. The media is helping this vision of a protracted election season, which would be great for ratings but not likely if voters own up to the importance of the vote despite the pandemic. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">What might stop Trump cold, some say, is Republicans who in their hearts <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51394383" target="_blank">know they should have impeached Trump in February</a> and today will resist more blatant violation of norms. Relying on GOP conscience was always highly dubious.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">What will spur Trump is his own cult. Many are only voting for him to make the US Supreme Court solidly conservative. It might not last long given the age of the justices, but what else can galvanize the diminishing Trump base? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The wrong timing could spur loss for some Republicans. Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins, who are in tough races to keep their senate seats, at first pledged to not select anyone for the high court before the election – and Graham is chair of the judiciary committee! Graham has already flipped -- in fact, intends to lead the charge. So has former chair Chuck Grassley who signed the pledge. But other Republican senators facing tight races – Joni Ernst in Iowa, Cory Gardner in Colorado, Thom Tillis in North Carolina and newly threatened John Cornyn in Texas – will jump to whatever tune Mitch plays, whatever they pledged in the past.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The math is simple. Four members of the GOP must bolt. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and Collins herself have taken principled stands of waiting for a new president, but only one of two conservative traditionalists who are retiring have spoke up – Lamar Alexander said he won't resist, but there is also <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/04/pat-roberts-announce-2020-plans-1081334" target="_blank">Pat Roberts</a>. There is even a D.C. press pool on how long it will take Collins to wimp out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">No one expects Trump to honor Ginsberg’s deathbed plea: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." His backers expect defiance to remain the Trump mantra and McConnell has already signaled he will put any Trump nominee before the Senate. Within hours of her death, gleeful Trump backers were planning how to raise campaign funds on her corpse.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It does make one wonder <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/10/21429431/trump-supreme-court-short-list-josh-hawley-ted-cruz-tom-cotton" target="_blank">if Trump got any medical heads-up September 9 </a>when he trotted out a number of candidates for a then unpredicted Supreme Court opening. Or was he just trying to excite his base?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The news of Ginsburg made Democrats even more skittish about the presidential election – reducing her death to “another rabbit the evil magician had pulled out of his hat.” It will become Trump’s best opportunity to shift attention from his failures in handling the pandemic and explaining 200,000 bodies. Some foolish voters may think a conservative blockade on the US court system will balance his proven ineptness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But this dismay among Democrats was within hours followed by renewed determination to elect Biden in a landslide. Now it has to be landslide, politicians were saying, because a flipped Senate was even more essential for Biden to get things done. There will even be talk, which Biden will probably resist for fear of agitating the extremists further, that if they can’t stop Trump replacing her, Biden should look at new laws to reform the US court system.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN3f_tU8tuv8qctvzgrU-Xl-tzPoloDZchWaOe-JIryv4fsQmi1BUkmBrym7HhLgSFmINsIHl0z895ZBroIqgcuGxsBygrKSKALVVZU7EpfZ1l_IF5Vylu54_jT8Krwfnp8YicKzPn2z0/s2048/Kaul2018.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN3f_tU8tuv8qctvzgrU-Xl-tzPoloDZchWaOe-JIryv4fsQmi1BUkmBrym7HhLgSFmINsIHl0z895ZBroIqgcuGxsBygrKSKALVVZU7EpfZ1l_IF5Vylu54_jT8Krwfnp8YicKzPn2z0/s320/Kaul2018.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">State AG Josh Kaul spells out loss.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The consequence of her death was spelled out by Wisconsin’s Attorney General Josh Kaul: “Another Trump appointee on the Supreme Court would almost certainly mean the end of Roe v. Wade. It could well mean the end of the ACA and policies that reduce the transmission of the coronavirus. Rules that help fight climate change and other environmental harms would be more likely to be struck down. And that’s just the start.”</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In other words, the emboldened progressive American agenda Ginsburg helped form was in jeopardy – not just from Trump’s attempt to extend his reign but in how her death had put in blunt relief the central crisis of this election and the hard work ahead regardless of who wins. Her death may also shuffle the deck of Democratic priorities, pushing to the top new laws on voter rights.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">These events also turned a previous column of mine too”conservative” (a term hardly ever applied to my writings). But I <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2020/08/flipping-senate-now-brims-with.html" target="_blank">signaled 10 Republican seats in the Senate that good turnout could flip</a>. And a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/16/senate-seats-most-likely-flip-november/" target="_blank">Washington Post opinion piece listed 13</a>! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I not only agree but have become aware of a few other races both my story and the Post opinion missed – things are so fast moving and our minds have been stuck on the presidential sweepstakes, not down the ballot where voters have to start looking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTpGGCwqrrJW1Ij-Wra7NeOFH8XmQciUhQWO11JScOOvM207hazVMqwYVAaRIC0Z90XoT9U1UpfrmEuXIzlnf-euYQ-EubK9bzfsw8iJ_VKCVdyjmDEQvV3pnpHX4PAXbS-Not9CWcuf4/s225/PerkiinsAdrian.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTpGGCwqrrJW1Ij-Wra7NeOFH8XmQciUhQWO11JScOOvM207hazVMqwYVAaRIC0Z90XoT9U1UpfrmEuXIzlnf-euYQ-EubK9bzfsw8iJ_VKCVdyjmDEQvV3pnpHX4PAXbS-Not9CWcuf4/w320-h320/PerkiinsAdrian.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br />The races missed are longshots that a <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/" target="_blank">Biden tsunami could change</a> in states given to Trump on the electoral college map. One race fits the curious Nov. 3 profile of a special election that takes place inside a general election and has multiple Democratic candidates right now. But popular Shreveport mayor Adrian Perkins has been climbing forcefully against <a href="https://www.michigandaily.com/section/government/college-republicans-hold-qa-sen-bill-cassidy-republican-party-020-election" target="_blank">GOP incumbent Bill Cassidy</a> (who tested positive for covid in the summer but says he has recovered).</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">From a shoo-in for Cassidy, the race is now regarded by local newspapers as competitive.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Also unlikely but growing in interest: Idaho Sen. James Risch is 20 points ahead in a red state but rising in the polls and backed by <a href="https://www.emilyslist.org/" target="_blank">Emily’s List</a> is Paulette Jordan, already known from her 2018 run for governor and <a href="https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article245018455.html" target="_blank">her work for the Coeur d’Alene tribal council</a>, advocating for progressive policies such as health access and better rural education.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PbgbvrmtZpT0RnJHMi-5dHMXOruAxF_JDAO-W8Ojqt82o_cPKZP7t5KERYkfEx3aEcxg1mvgTQlM8co1hHWQns6v0HwlLJ4w5v667rqnE4GanWKn0bJheRfbUbbeUz05fRf4l5jR8vw/s570/jordanpaulette.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PbgbvrmtZpT0RnJHMi-5dHMXOruAxF_JDAO-W8Ojqt82o_cPKZP7t5KERYkfEx3aEcxg1mvgTQlM8co1hHWQns6v0HwlLJ4w5v667rqnE4GanWKn0bJheRfbUbbeUz05fRf4l5jR8vw/s320/jordanpaulette.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paulette Jordan<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br />The Trump administration’s delays to the USPS delivery system, which Risch cited as no problem for Idaho, have become a campaign issue for Jordan in a rural state rethinking what being rural means.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Though Biden is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-07/biden-has-71-1-chance-of-winning-election-fivethirtyeight" target="_blank">now expected to win 71% of the electoral college delegates</a>, there is a tendency to overlook senate races in states where Trump has a predicted electoral college edge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Such as Mississippi. The state is changing (claiming the highest number of black elected officials in the country) with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mississippis-removal-of-a-confederate-symbol-from-its-flag-should-be-celebrated/2020/06/29/567105ea-ba38-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html" rel="" target="_blank">some clear diminishment of Confederate heritage</a>. Mike Espy, a black former Clinton cabinet officer, has cut in half the GOP edge of incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, who has been proud to pose with an old rifle and Confederate memorabilia. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgtzBFjUWS-GUAP-DmKVX_3aQBXYruvO88JuWa0pMhFUKoU5gDlnH2QCeXZPQrfb5vKcTXw4ITwgbLyeKCgw3dzfdqcfEbslowLq6coZsYiCwdh5M6Q9m38Pjxq7Sj0xEsT6V9ubVr9I/s1000/bollier.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgtzBFjUWS-GUAP-DmKVX_3aQBXYruvO88JuWa0pMhFUKoU5gDlnH2QCeXZPQrfb5vKcTXw4ITwgbLyeKCgw3dzfdqcfEbslowLq6coZsYiCwdh5M6Q9m38Pjxq7Sj0xEsT6V9ubVr9I/s320/bollier.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barbara Bollier<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br />In a Republican heritage seat in another Trump electoral state, Kansas, the Democrats’ Barbara Bollier, who left the Republicans in 2018 to gain an economic reform reputation, is today the good doctor to all sides, getting endorsements from a former GOP senator. She is definitely </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> leading many polls against Roger Marshall, the doctor who wants to end the ACA.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Then there’s South Carolina, long put on the Republican electoral college list but in the Senate race Jaime Harrison is astounding the pollsters by leading Graham – and Biden is also leading in electoral polls.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That was also true in the summer in Kentucky, which stung conservative sensibilities in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/15/913246572/city-of-louisville-to-pay-settlement-to-breonna-taylors-family" target="_blank">its Louisville embrace of Black Lives Matter concerns</a> and with former Marine pilot and lieutenant colonel Amy McGrath raising enormous small-donor social media money to compete with McConnell -- and actually leading the polls for months. In recent polls and employing some big money, McConnell has tied her – though his shenanigans with the Ginsburg case may bring McGrath more voters.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And Georgia, long regarded as red clay, could lose two Senate seats to Democrats! Jon Ossoff is leading the polls against David Perdue and the Rev. Ralph Warnock is leading against the likely GOP survivor Kelly Loeffler, an appointee to the Senate who like Perdue has run into fraud complaints. But the Warnock race has some wrinkles, since the GOP’s Doug Collins is also running and the two top finishers Nov. 3 compete in January. Warnock is leading but not with the 50% that would prevent a runoff. That’s a confusion of election law that makes it harder for outsiders to peek in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The Democratic National Convention did a sterling job for Biden and his VP pick, Kamala Harris, but I was struck by how few of the Democratic candidates for senate were featured, a determination to be political but not opportunistic that right now (post RBG) I wish the DNC had resisted.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Local politics historically don’t play well on national TV, but money raising now plays in every state in the union for every other state and many of these candidates mainly need financial help. The voters outraged about Trump had better turn to those Senate races, where thanks to the Internet everybody can provide money and support. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There are also <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y5ptjrdq" target="_blank">a few Democrats seeking help</a> to keep their seats. Most are in good shape (Dick Durbin, Tina Smith, Chris Coons and Jeff Merkley) and were inadvertently featured in DNC videos.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgokd84T73XhxD6AIHqP7sAOUedvzXxA4c41PsNvsjkLr6ZuO6i0ksnto-cPz4AHTwni_xRXAH6SA07jamLZF6_chn8FDUZ1R6_oan_sNFXXNKkqb_5Luo2vmFsX7V5TgrBOFUqwcnukXY/s533/JonesDoug.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="533" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgokd84T73XhxD6AIHqP7sAOUedvzXxA4c41PsNvsjkLr6ZuO6i0ksnto-cPz4AHTwni_xRXAH6SA07jamLZF6_chn8FDUZ1R6_oan_sNFXXNKkqb_5Luo2vmFsX7V5TgrBOFUqwcnukXY/s320/JonesDoug.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doug Jones<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br />The most threatened is Doug Jones of Alabama, but his <a href="https://youtu.be/bMorlvFT9OU" target="_blank">media campaigns have enabled him to score big points </a>against the know-nothing football coach he’s facing. It’s another Trump state where he could upset expectations.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">And the Democrats have put <a href="https://www.woodtv.com/news/national/failure-to-deliver-sen-peters-releases-usps-investigative-report/" target="_blank">front and center in the USPS campaign</a> Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who is favored though being outraised by a Michigan consortium of Trump and Betsy DeVos money.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAX9KUjky6gX6oeVnoghV9YHCcY9jZFa-pERq8dtcpyWZ8ZNWwGBUeuuWEeMvW_M1-K00hV94kuCpHXdxjMm0SsgA5pdS0hUZm8tbc1SOV4zw7Nm9Iiz-5b9OmwhDAbg7zXOlri2EEckI/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAX9KUjky6gX6oeVnoghV9YHCcY9jZFa-pERq8dtcpyWZ8ZNWwGBUeuuWEeMvW_M1-K00hV94kuCpHXdxjMm0SsgA5pdS0hUZm8tbc1SOV4zw7Nm9Iiz-5b9OmwhDAbg7zXOlri2EEckI/w309-h400/NothatPfister.jpg" width="309" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></h4>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-28261207366489857992020-08-26T22:39:00.024-07:002020-10-28T17:09:21.265-07:00TOO EXTREME FOR THE NAZIS AND STILL PERVASIVE – THE U.S. CASTE SYSTEM<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The timing and the content couldn’t have been worse for Nikki Haley (former South Carolina governor and Trump official) and for the handful of black speakers at the Republican National Convention as they proclaimed that the United States was in no way a racist country, no more than their great leader Donald Trump was racist -- even as the family of Jacob Blake was gathering in Kenosha to face the grim future of the father, brother and son <a href="https://madison.com/news/local/jacob-blakes-family-makes-an-impassioned-plea-for-justice-outside-courthouse/article_6e4ec976-8cfc-563c-bd78-f3fa47930565.html" target="_blank">paralyzed by seven police bullets fired into his back while his children watched</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The speakers -- particularly Haley who is often touted as the future of the Republican Party – were either demonstrating intellectual naiveté far beneath their stations or, more likely, unbridled hypocrisy to sound like they were tight with Trump despite his behavior. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There is an argument to be made that the word “racist” is thrown around too readily by Black Lives Matter people, making every white who doesn’t feel racist angry that they are so described.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But all the whites who defend themselves that way should be reading <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653196/caste-oprahs-book-club-by-isabel-wilkerson/">“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” </a>Isabel Wilkerson’s compelling new book that explores the idea of “racism” being an over-used pejorative but compels readers of all skin colors to brush away their cosmetic thinking and delve deeper into American and world history.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>There they must confront the controlling scaffolding of prejudices that reach centuries back in human behavior and in the weaponry of domination. Readers can’t escape how deeply </span><span>racist, even unknowingly racist, the dominant white society has been in the US.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUO_yLgdOv8K6u6qHr-5QNm_ECplD0j1XPD5BEYIEdYmBpB8467OGKgpTINMSt7cSXgEwKLlew6x7-g_c3VQdjo62ukhzgcwwwoUuQqDQGVIAikIEi2rgHRVUZ6f7qH4Jf8lzgvOU9-c/s181/WilkersonIsabelbest.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="167" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUO_yLgdOv8K6u6qHr-5QNm_ECplD0j1XPD5BEYIEdYmBpB8467OGKgpTINMSt7cSXgEwKLlew6x7-g_c3VQdjo62ukhzgcwwwoUuQqDQGVIAikIEi2rgHRVUZ6f7qH4Jf8lzgvOU9-c/w261-h283/WilkersonIsabelbest.jpg" width="261" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Author Isabel Wilkerson<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Wilkerson is not engaged in linguistic trickery but true revelation by substituting the terminology and structure of “caste” for what many writers have called layers of racism and white privilege (terms worn out from overuse). She forces readers to re-examine every encounter they have had from infancy in accepting social norms of a dominant caste and gradations down to the bottom rung of “Untouchables” or subhumans. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In America that bottom rung has been blacks however educated, whether brought here as slaves or self-motivated as immigrants. The dominant caste in America is white and has wielded the biggest determinative influence on all of our upbringing and social treatment. That high caste determined and rigidly taught that black skin denotes lower intelligence, a constant need for the whipping rods of abuse and rape and the shuddering fear of possible infection if allowed to share swimming pools or water fountains.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There is no scientific basis for this viewpoint, which dates back before our Founding Fathers. It is a harsh conditioning in a nation where we still talk of American exceptionalism without realizing what a horror of prejudice was built up as gospel for generations of people who seldom questioned this relentless contrivance from the crib to the coffin. And even today the inheritors of this caste system don’t recognize how the original artifices linger or have been restrung.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Wilkerson’s book -- a pinwheel of revelatory fireworks -- spins out more shocks of discussion than can be dealt with here. But let’s build on a few. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">To begin with, “caste” whatever the system is an artificial ranking of human groups, one group selected as superior, sometimes based loosely on ancestry but involving and redefining other traits. In the US it was “whiteness” as understood as European Caucasian, though “Caucasian” is <a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/what-does-caucasian-really-mean.htm ">a ridiculously narrow term</a>. White men with property were given special standing in the original US Constitution and often that property was slaves counted as three-fifths of a person. White women were originally not included in the Constitution since they had other ways than property or income or the vote to generate a semblance of dominance -- at least that was the nicer part of the thinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The lowest caste was “the blacks” applied to many groups hijacked from Africa, then graded to encompass native Americans though they provided no lasting threat or plantation value and could even be viewed as quaint, then India, China, Asia and South America, all quite different even within themselves in physical appearance but generally reflecting a darker or different skin color, so only over time could some of them escape into a different compartment of the basement.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Ironically, any sincere study of American immigration shows how European groups from Rumania or Southern Europe were originally portrayed like “darkies” in American political cartoons until they proved “worthy” of being considered white.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It turns out that “white” is a purely US concept, since variety of pigmentation has been generally accepted elsewhere in the world or over time didn’t matter. In the US, as Wilkerson explains, racism “does the heavy lifting” for our caste system, taught from childhood as a more powerful code than grammar, an “invisible guide” to how we process information about others. Whites instinctively react to a black person in the room, even recoil, trained by centuries of built-in attitudes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The world’s most famous caste system is in India, allied with religion and social hierarchy and passed down for centuries. Skin color plays a minor part. It is more where you were born – which side of the tracks? -- what your family is named and what the family first did for a living. But ingrained are haughty attitudes, manners, stepping aside, a social deference to the higher castes. This creates resentment, often subdued, among the lowest (the Untouchables or Dalits) who are made to feel like base servants however high they rate in intellect or ability. Modern India knows this is a horrifying antiquity, but the built-in attitudes linger.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Wilkerson relates how, on a visit to India, the Rev. Martin Luther King originally bristled when he was introduced as a leading figure from “America’s untouchables” until he thought about it and agreed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Aside from India and the US, Wilkerson explores the caste system of Nazi Germany and many readers will be dumfounded to realize how deeply Hitler and his party in the 1920s and 1930s drew their planning from the most extreme caste system in the world, the United States.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In fashioning their language and treatment of Jews and non-Aryans to create their <i>Undermenish</i> – their Undermen or subhuman bottom caste – they consciously decided they could not go as far as Americans had done. In our country, “one drop of black blood” rendered you unfit to be considered white, but Germany had a problem. Hitler had black hair and non-Aryan features, as did many in the Nazi Party, so America’s rules had to be adjusted, even allowing some grandfathering while forbidding any more mingling of Jews and other Germans.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Nazis deeply studied popular American eugenicists in the 1920s to evolve Hitler’s theory of Aryan supremacy, even contemplating if they could take the Jews and the rest of the “inferior stock” and weed them out and sterilize them, but in the end decided they could not go as far as the Americans had with the blacks. Amazing to think the concentration camp ovens would eventually be created because the American caste rules were too extreme.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">My late mother, obviously and proudly Jewish, an opera singer who had to flee Germany in 1933 as did her blond husband, an anti-Nazi writer, recalled to me in both amusement and deep anger how some of the Jewish girls she grew up with looked more blond and Aryan than the Third Reich leaders. Yet she was luckier than they to run away. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">She would have found the Republican 2020 convention mind-bending. Maybe as Wilkerson forecast when she described how the then dominant class in Germany 1934 “underestimated his cunning and overestimated his base of support, which had been the very reason they had felt they needed him in the first place. At the height of power at the polls [this leader] never pulled the majority they coveted and drew only 38% of the vote . . . The old guard did not foresee, or chose not to see, that his actual mission was ‘to exploit the methods of democracy to destroy democracy.’ ” Wilkerson was talking about Hitler – who did you think of? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The choices of the dominant caste about who will occupy the basement are never a matter of science but of training. It is a matter of who is defining the castes and setting the rules. The outcomes can be strange. Blacks in a bizarre echo created divisions based on lighter or darker black skin, associating lightness with the white masters centuries before who had forced themselves on black slaves. Whites sometimes put those “whiter” offspring in fashion ads, which today forces another form of black rebellion in the arts community. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The caste system allows the dominant whites to adjust to society-imposed differences from 400, 100, even 50 years ago, while still retaining control. That results in subtler forms of discrimination but also in permutations the top caste never imagined but leaps to contain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Wilkerson makes you think about all this with example after example. She describes encounters from real life that may casually sound like some white person having a bad hair day or a short temper which we all suffer – until you examine how often it is dominant caste against less dominant and how often it involves, as the India caste system does, lording over someone you assume has less power than you have.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">She reminds you that black and brown people, and all the other minorities, are almost chafing in anticipation of 2042 when whites are projected demographically to become a minority in this country. But she also reminds us that 2042 is a rather useless change in the math. White domineering finance power and influence are projected to last for nearly three more centuries! And remember, the dominant caste can decide who to accept as members and they are looking hard at Ted Cruz and others in the Latino community, a more fertile field than the occasional Clarence Thomas, Tim Scott or India-heritage Haley.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Caste” forces all manner of thinking on its readers – as I said it is hard for any “white person” not to re-ponder the many engagements in your own life as not just exercises of white privilege but of caste assumptions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>For all skin colors, caste works on our subconscious as well as on our conscious. Caste believers dismiss any self- blame if shootings on the streets of Kenosha are traced to white power, </span>arguing that if only the protesters would have stayed home nothing would have happened. Out of caste training, they tend to want blacks and Jews to behave meekly as they did in Trump’s fictional good old days. On the other side of the caste line, there is a push for rebellion as some sort of payment for centuries of pain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It is hard not to be moved by the tolerance and patience of black parents – and yet to wonder if years of bending to caste dominance may partly explain the unbelievable Christian compassion of so many in the black community when their family members are crushed in a hail of bullets.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">And it’s even harder to recognize that “Caste” may reveal that Trump is on to something, however immoral it may sound in the daylight. There may be a rationale for his constant savagery and harping back to dark days ahead if his followers dare buckle.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In a 2004 best seller, Thomas Frank asked “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” a scathing and revealing examination of why white working class and lower middle class members voted again and again against their own economic self-interest. It seemed to many sociologists a pure blindness to actual financial realities <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/08/20/murphys-law-ceo-pay-has-risen-1167-since-1978/">then and now</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Trump may be sending out a perverse message to re-elect him as the keeper of the caste system because retaining caste structure may actually be the self-interest of the white subsets attracted to him. Under Trump, the poorest and lowest white person in America can still feel superior to any black. “Caste” politics may never bring them a reward. But the poorest white can go to his covid grave pretending there is someone he’s better than.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeeXfwmMp9fUhs2mkiGKSM6VRt8qjQ1sst0QmWBZhIr8wnqmNuia1juXgyRJHLVuHZum7gEA0xFFW9tkUI-XrnxL1ogrrOXRrIbhI_4r1iWBdy0-oeUoLnFnVwrflkPAlvqgoT_3bR4PM/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeeXfwmMp9fUhs2mkiGKSM6VRt8qjQ1sst0QmWBZhIr8wnqmNuia1juXgyRJHLVuHZum7gEA0xFFW9tkUI-XrnxL1ogrrOXRrIbhI_4r1iWBdy0-oeUoLnFnVwrflkPAlvqgoT_3bR4PM/w313-h423/nothgoogle.jpg" width="313" /></a></div><br />About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-653033307698810412020-08-11T22:35:00.000-07:002020-08-11T22:35:50.937-07:00WHEN MASK WEARING LOSES BY A NOSE<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">By DOMINIQUE PAUL NOTH</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I’m starting to think that the biggest needs in this country are for online courses, video games and TV shows devoted to mask etiquette and efficacy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">One thing that brought out that feeling was all the cable news interviews with people who are on the angel side of wearing masks, pointedly criticizing those people trying to make it an issue of constitutional rights to refuse, which I have never understood.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But look closer at these truly loving parents worrying about their children going back to school. Watch the extensive videos of food workers lamenting a company’s lack of covid-19 protections on the job. Peek at concerned teenagers seeking to encourage their colleagues to wear masks – or urging their schools to go to staggered dismissal times to halt that crowding in the hallways when the bell rings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> A worrisome number of those thoughtful interviewees are leaving their noses exposed while they keep a mask around their mouths.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That, of course, defeats most of the purpose of mask wearing. Unless it covers both mouth and nostrils, and not haphazardly, it’s hardly fulfilling the medical concern. My friends have started wearing plastic lids – those see-through face and eye coverings -- because of all the people at hospitals or grocery stores, as well as on the street, pulling their masks down to chatter or just to move from counter to counter. The face shields are a needed form of protection against these people, even if it makes them look like government agents pursuing “E.T.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In the early days of the AIDS crisis, as a journalist and editor in arts and entertainment, I was collecting a lot of names of important culture figures who were dying of the disease. I had even gone to Marquette with a number of them and knew about others from covering theater and films. There were friends among them whose families became fearful of my inquiries. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">AIDS was a disease stigma attached to being homosexual in those Ronald Reagan years and there was a natural anxiety among relatives (not to mention editors) of even suggesting that AIDS was a cause of death in a story. I understood the concern. But then AIDS moved strongly into the heterosexual community and blood transfusion victims. That and social attitudes about homosexuality began to change. Suddenly we could start reporting the numbers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I never expected social stigma to attach to a disease again, particularly not a pandemic. Yet here we are. That’s what seems to have happened partly thanks to Trump’s confusing messages and people’s ridiculous association of mask etiquette with politics. I would have thought it was natural to expect a higher number of death from an assisted living facility (don’t they naturally have a higher number of deaths?) or from prisons or from food processors and similar facilities that crowd workers close for profit as well as efficiency.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The difficulty is that there will always be people who move through the virus with minor symptoms or none at all – and maybe they will tell tales to their grandchildren about how hard and brave they were to survive or how Nervous Nelly the rest of the country was. The world went on after 1918, they seem to be saying, though 50 million died – they’re just being hardy like that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They clearly don’t understand the pandemic, nor the requirement on all of us to look out for the other guy. Mississippi recently went into conniptions when more than 20% of those tested for covid-19 came back positive, but while that’s a frighteningly high number it also indicates that a majority of people won’t feel affected – well, at least for years since there is some evidence of lingering harm in the asymptomatic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/face-masks-really-do-matter-the-scientific-evidence-is-growing-11595083298?mod=wsjtwittertest19">Kansas offered hard proof </a>when several counties followed the mask mandate and did far better in slowing covid growth than the counties that didn’t. Evidence just keeps growing despite the naysayers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The doubters are sort of like the GI who came out of D-Day without a scratch boasting that the invasion was no more dangerous than a rowboat in the park. I’ve never met a GI who felt like that. They just count themselves lucky. That’s how everyone should feel moving through the pandemic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The failure of the federal government in handling testing and when and what to open up remain big worries. No question the size of Trump’s incompetence has added to the fears of many. So does the experts’ admission of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/11/health-202-coronavirus-keeps-spreading-least-we-learned-more-about-it/">needing more facts even as they are learning</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">How long does the aerosol side of covid-19 linger in the air aside from the more direct exchange of coughing and breathing? Will the young’s ability to survive a bout of the virus include lingering health problems? How huge – apparently very huge – is the role of physical distancing combined with mask wearing? How does natural childhood romping affect teachers, parents and fellow students? We simply don’t know enough – yet. These promises about an imminent(!) vaccine have made us careless, since there are some realistic suggestions that it may only be partially effective and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-10/most-americans-won-t-be-able-to-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine-until-well-into-2021">will be a long time coming</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So there’s something to be said for online classes. There’s also a lot to be said for more companies admitting when they have heavy loads of positive cases tied to their business purposes (food processing, grocery shopping, guarding inmates, helping with elderly care).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">I do wonder if some people’s willingness to skip the mask mandates or treat masks as a political issue stem from businesses being so cautious about letting people in their communities know what they are going through. Because these people go back to their homes in these communities, or have children attending school with their neighbors. And many a truck leaves a food processor or a prison as part of a far-reaching transportation route. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Wouldn’t we all behave better during a pandemic if we knew the real cost?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There’s a strong case to be made for more openness as well as mask etiquette in our struggling nation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNo4UQMNkHjglgMaUlmU2zVSUB1IPn9q57_-s4MPrmahIJPn7xdPMV3FGLXKYIvdeEBFp95XoC8eFLeRDQ0icNsKpmQA0a9g9Sy1i-udUGWMoPojUEVDjyNM4Bh48bzQ_5rCqZLJL2Cx4/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNo4UQMNkHjglgMaUlmU2zVSUB1IPn9q57_-s4MPrmahIJPn7xdPMV3FGLXKYIvdeEBFp95XoC8eFLeRDQ0icNsKpmQA0a9g9Sy1i-udUGWMoPojUEVDjyNM4Bh48bzQ_5rCqZLJL2Cx4/w313-h423/nothgoogle.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></h4>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-83363435539396012982020-08-09T21:33:00.000-07:002020-08-09T21:33:41.577-07:00FLIPPING SENATE REQUIRES PROTECTING DEM INCUMBENTS<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> <b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The Democrats’ desire to take the majority in the US Senate – <a href="https://domsdomainpolitics.blogspot.com/2020/08/flipping-senate-now-brims-with.html">explored in depth in a recent column with photos and links to all the candidates</a> and certainly likely if there’s a Biden blowout – should not overlook those incumbent Democratic seats that are in play in the November election.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">There are fewer contestable seats than the last time round. Several hardly need help given the popularity of occupants or the safety of their location: Mark Warner in Virginia, Dick Durbin in Illinois, Jack Reed in Rhode Island and Cory Booker in New Jersey.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Nor am I much worried about Jeff Merkley in Oregon or Chris Coons in Delaware though Coons’ opponent won’t be chosen until Sept. 15 and is expected to draw big GOP money.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">More threatened, and still waiting to hear if her opponent is an extreme right winger (retired brigadier general Don Bolduc) or a self-funding Trump billionaire (Bryant “Corky” Messner), is Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">She is <a href="https://www.wmur.com/article/shaheen-campaign-raised-more-than-dollar25m-in-second-quarter-as-senator-bids-for-a-third-term/33312422">building her campaign coffers quickly in anticipation</a> of a financial blitzkrieg either way it goes. In 2016 Trump lost New Hampshire by a fraction of one percent and is so steeped in the past that he is putting pressure and money on defeating Shaheen in this contest. A good friend and former colleague of Biden, Shaheen early took herself out of consideration as his running mate. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRVm-EzG22VYhEggxzpUZLW3h7mTS23pd1v9jbDnEQHCZvXpR0d1ED3uRNN0Id4ZWb6hblLYK8ImJslguKkKGfeoyVV8XpOGGNDXuKct__WRLRjqhEnWv_dc5gBa7qLr8ShTurwP4Zz2I/s533/JonesDoug.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="533" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRVm-EzG22VYhEggxzpUZLW3h7mTS23pd1v9jbDnEQHCZvXpR0d1ED3uRNN0Id4ZWb6hblLYK8ImJslguKkKGfeoyVV8XpOGGNDXuKct__WRLRjqhEnWv_dc5gBa7qLr8ShTurwP4Zz2I/w341-h338/JonesDoug.jpg" width="341" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doug Jones of Alabama,<br />despite great success as<br />senator, is the most<br />threatened Democrat.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">No, it is generally conceded that Doug Jones is the most threatened Democratic senator, whose unlikely victory in 2016 for Jeff Sessions’ remaining term was seen by Republicans as something of a fluke. It was a fluke of their own making, letting the sexual clouds of Roy Moore envelop the campaign.</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They may have created another fluke this time around since Trump turned on Sessions, who was seeking to regain his former Alabama seat, clearing the way for a Trump supporter with absolutely zilch political experience, football coach Tommy Tuberville, whose record at Auburn ending in 2008 was astounding. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But don’t forget the Tuba happily blew out of Alabama for Texas Tech and then to the University of Cincinnati for bigger money, leaving hurt feelings and an out of court settlement in a fraud case in his wake before returning to Alabama to find political religion as a Trump acolyte. An Auburn Tiger only when the money was right, he is hugging Trump like he’s found his Brett Favre. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Jones, a moderate Democrat with an imposing civil rights record, has not dragged Alabama to the hard left as many conservative diehards feared <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/politics/alabama-tommy-tuberville-doug-jones.html">but reassured the middle</a>, as a recent newspaper profile indicates.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Voting with Trump 36% of the time, as estimated in the article, is both the mark against him and proof that he works for Alabama. Some think that’s not selective enough, but his ability to pick and choose has drawn admirers. Alabama remains a deeply red state but Jones is counting on his record and the voters changing before Nov. 3 (the pandemic and Trump’s back to school blindness may do it).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGSdUCGcWil80NwP12D_jJKunYpMBvYnMJDeywkyiQb4GCByBS6ELGSKLtylmm0Y8psth_BDQQm8I79FSXQKEuALqUTxl3Ejy_tZctlMGihJ5iwxBJ910M2_YCGIrL3eytEuUoD6mJ6-0/s325/PetersGary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="325" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGSdUCGcWil80NwP12D_jJKunYpMBvYnMJDeywkyiQb4GCByBS6ELGSKLtylmm0Y8psth_BDQQm8I79FSXQKEuALqUTxl3Ejy_tZctlMGihJ5iwxBJ910M2_YCGIrL3eytEuUoD6mJ6-0/w325-h306/PetersGary.jpg" width="325" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gary Peters<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>While any win by Jones means coming from behind, the other Senate races looking for donations find the Democrats ahead but worried by lack of name recognition or their quiet heads-down work ethic. (Perhaps recognizing that lack of public awareness, the Democrats are putting <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/19/michigan-senate-battle-peters-stabenow-1466877">Gary Peters in front of the TV campaign</a> to protest Trump’s cuts to the US postal service, a fresh scheme to confound the November presidential election.) Trump's forces retain the illusion from 2016 that they may be able to eke out a Michigan victory.</span><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Aside from Peters in Michigan, Mitch McConnell’s PAC money and GOP operatives are targeting <a href="https://www.emilyslist.org/candidates/tina-smith-20">Tina Smith in Minnesota </a>(appointed to fill Al Franken’s term). </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Jones is most vulnerable but Smith and Peters can anticipate strong negative advertising coming after them.</span><h4 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIzsfzefdOEytrm1g645uWOiKgl5kcuYdBa8dYco72D7-ob7O0nuyYHM-Cnyeucg195kxyP52PRORo4JihnncRb5H34g6iZZ1drW2EyH0XX_E33UGWVysqPv0eb3i_vbIwvpzNU0zngGI/s501/Noth2020.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; font-family: georgia; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="451" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIzsfzefdOEytrm1g645uWOiKgl5kcuYdBa8dYco72D7-ob7O0nuyYHM-Cnyeucg195kxyP52PRORo4JihnncRb5H34g6iZZ1drW2EyH0XX_E33UGWVysqPv0eb3i_vbIwvpzNU0zngGI/w289-h321/Noth2020.jpg" width="289" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;">About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. </span>He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-69975088665784472882020-08-06T22:40:00.036-07:002020-08-07T13:34:06.922-07:00FLIPPING THE SENATE NOW BRIMS WITH POSSIBILITIES<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">An article chock full of helpful links</span></h3><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0batrk-l9SNgmGHFKyGs_EKmJvDConDSnvPb7ku6p3ULgHOYm76fm0TnmtWVeQPFtQ4r05oUhPdOoI6FURXKK_KjGF0XNPVC1X5pSSGRHNKi8naD2vE_XrehDuozdx33jnoPKfRocNY/s400/Cunningham.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0batrk-l9SNgmGHFKyGs_EKmJvDConDSnvPb7ku6p3ULgHOYm76fm0TnmtWVeQPFtQ4r05oUhPdOoI6FURXKK_KjGF0XNPVC1X5pSSGRHNKi8naD2vE_XrehDuozdx33jnoPKfRocNY/w500-h500/Cunningham.jpg" width="500" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Easily overlooked in flipping the senate is the strong<br />North Carolina campaign of Cal Cunningham.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The cry has gone up throughout the land: Who needs my money to win the election in November?</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That fever is mounting. It’s clogging email and snail mail boxes, infecting cable TV and social media. Every time the common man turns around, it seems that money is the decider, but partly because – however inept and corruptible the GOP is at the top – the party seems to be swimming in money as well as gerrymandering advantages. The Democrats may have <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/">better grassroots funding in many state races</a> but sound desperate even when the polls put them ahead. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Such is the fear that Trump will manipulate another win by attacking the mail service, by deepening his pandemic “it is what it is” disinterest or by plowing through the protesters on the public streets. It’s not a logical fear, but nothing about Trump is logical.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Yet another signal has gone out across the land – this one among the GOP in desperation to keep control of the Senate: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/politics/senate-mcconnell-trump-firewall/index.html">If you need to separate yourself from Trump</a>, they tell their own candidates, so be it. And some cautiously are, running on quite different issues in a tacit admission that they can’t openly criticize their beloved leader but can walk away from some of his outrages.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They will do anything to prevent the flood that <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bidens-polling-lead-is-big-and-steady/">the polls say is heading their way</a>, while Democrats know they not only have to elect Biden but flip the Senate and keep the House. That has made potential donors in every state a target for Senate and House candidates in every other state – a flood of Internet requests that leave the physically distant recipients sometimes mystified about where to put their money. The dilemma is producing articles like this one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB7TiFBWkjVY1CQRch0YuMdEGa-HjsP8SNoNGMDPnhsLcKtkKxErMbouYiJ9NGulnnoXa-HQ8WqHSNkutCF0eFXVF7IedPvY75RjhcMRSUKpzx6m0ney83UDby52oWByGabVrgvrd4kg4/s534/Gideon.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="530" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB7TiFBWkjVY1CQRch0YuMdEGa-HjsP8SNoNGMDPnhsLcKtkKxErMbouYiJ9NGulnnoXa-HQ8WqHSNkutCF0eFXVF7IedPvY75RjhcMRSUKpzx6m0ney83UDby52oWByGabVrgvrd4kg4/w424-h427/Gideon.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sara Gideon leading in Maine<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The field of Democratic opportunity has expanded in both the House and now the Senate beyond the three or four flips most talked about by TV’s talking heads on cable news.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">These likely Senate flips start with Sara Gideon leading Susan Collins in Maine. Collins has tried to slide along the road of tsk-tsking Donald while voting with him, which has angered much of her state as well as<a href="https://www.washingtonblade.com/2020/07/15/human-rights-campaign-snubs-susan-collins-endorses-sara-gideon/"> equal rights groups</a> that once were duped into regarding her as slightly independent – this is Maine, after all. But when it comes to put up, she shuts up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> Meanwhile Gideon – well known as speaker of the state house – has put together <a href="https://saragideon.com/meet-sara/">a platform that speaks to rural voters as well as progressive values</a>, and she’s leading or tied in polls.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlXKtHlvhQwm6FjeKraAwxIc8riHbwMFCR4iOI_AYd0jz5t5j4kDK7_KV9BOMdwK_LbrpHpd8jDYHDwYuPRzO82LPl3-BzNkhucPHJcBdmlUY9UkC0kS6cfdq1EIP7jFCGitxVsb5pfmg/s408/KellyMark.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlXKtHlvhQwm6FjeKraAwxIc8riHbwMFCR4iOI_AYd0jz5t5j4kDK7_KV9BOMdwK_LbrpHpd8jDYHDwYuPRzO82LPl3-BzNkhucPHJcBdmlUY9UkC0kS6cfdq1EIP7jFCGitxVsb5pfmg/s0/KellyMark.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Kelly on campaign trail<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In Arizona, a former astronaut known as the devoted husband of Gabby Giffords and a TV commentator on space issues <a href="https://markkelly.com/issue/gun-safety/">as well as gun safety</a>, is leading in what once was thought a red state. Mark Kelly is ahead in the polls versus the governor-appointed senator, Martha McSally, who has clung to Trump and attacked every convincing social argument from Kelly. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">McSally’s </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2020/05/04/sen-martha-mcsally-support-trump-visit-arizona-sad/3081522001/">stubbornness in clinging</a></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/elviadiaz/2020/05/04/sen-martha-mcsally-support-trump-visit-arizona-sad/3081522001/"> to Trump</a> (after being beaten in 2018 by a quixotic Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema) is one of her many missteps in this campaign. She didn’t get the GOP message or know how to safely disassociate herself from Trump.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjen02O8OTLYLNT6WaTWl0Ym4Z5We6PS7a1Z0nWMMWXtg8L6Q2PUxQ6PgbflCtnsuXyIiZ9g6NNTNbv3pWL4FKQy4ETsXVK7lRjNDOt1eqQWNZV8t-fFReaCddW7PRJBUp4cTVA161-CkM/s400/hickenlooper-obama.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="400" height="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjen02O8OTLYLNT6WaTWl0Ym4Z5We6PS7a1Z0nWMMWXtg8L6Q2PUxQ6PgbflCtnsuXyIiZ9g6NNTNbv3pWL4FKQy4ETsXVK7lRjNDOt1eqQWNZV8t-fFReaCddW7PRJBUp4cTVA161-CkM/w500-h415/hickenlooper-obama.jpg" width="500" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When Colorado governor, John Hickenlooper couldn't<br />wait to drink a beer with Obama.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">In Colorado, the Republican senator, Cory Gardner, stays in Trump’s shadow while ignoring Trump’s main issues on the campaign trail, mainly selling his own outdoor recreation credentials, always popular in that state. His even more popular opponent, <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2020/06/30/hickenlooper-wins-the-dem-senate-primary-will-face-cory-gardner/">the conservative Democrat who ran for president</a>, has a “drink a beer with me” personality: John Hickenlooper. Despite some fits and starts in his campaign switch to run for the senate, his brand of fiscal conservatism incorporating Democratic principles made him successful for eight years as governor. He remains ahead in the polls.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So is, though less noticed, the popular progressive Cal Cunningham, who is better than neck and neck with a largely unknown North Carolina GOP senator -- Toady Thom Tillis. Cunningham’s image as a “get things done” leader is <a href="https://www.calfornc.com/priorities/ ">clearly key to his attraction</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZcx21Bv_D3M8SMnG3kuyE1gFnfAh4vwmvp-RpaMU_hVlUc2hIuTCs-OuLMlkLM-B7CSv82I39r9spO7y3KRMDPdDRNeUvK891y2N-BfoyPoaRQgh2-Bk-pamaCZrfAYsplb_QoU70gAE/s1389/greenfield.png" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1389" data-original-width="990" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZcx21Bv_D3M8SMnG3kuyE1gFnfAh4vwmvp-RpaMU_hVlUc2hIuTCs-OuLMlkLM-B7CSv82I39r9spO7y3KRMDPdDRNeUvK891y2N-BfoyPoaRQgh2-Bk-pamaCZrfAYsplb_QoU70gAE/s640/greenfield.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Theresa Greenfield<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Among the surprise new prospects as the Democratic map expands is <a href="https://greenfieldforiowa.com/issues/">Theresa Greenfield</a>, running hard against Republican Joni Ernst in Iowa. Partly because Iowa was early in presidential primary importance, it’s become a politically tuned state and Ernst looks more and more like a feeble Trump echo in a region eager to move with the times, which Greenfield has come to represent. Local papers <a href="https://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/columnists/column-a-fiery-start-to-a-tough-campaign/article_2bcb38fd-d62a-51d0-8d68-9ba70578b040.html">flirted with sexism</a> describing this as no race for sissies.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It is <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2020/06/13/iowa-poll-theresa-greenfield-leads-joni-ernst-tight-senate-race/5346215002/">no small issue in many such states</a> that if Biden takes over the White House, they want a senator on the Democratic side.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That is one of the spurs underlying Steve Bullock’s campaign in less populated and usually red Montana. A former Democratic presidential candidate and a popular governor, Bullock is </span><a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/montana/" style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">neck and neck in the polls</a><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> against Steve Daines, the former Procter and Gamble exec who enjoyed one term already in the US Senate and is wrapping himself in Trump anti-gay anti-protest and anti-Obama flag-waving. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HIdKnbQiGRPO5JBIlkwMdt2wrEyWxBbdqwodBBFw6lpvi_j8aSIfi2vWGnWOYHyaXqA4de4W3RMbuFbEct1aOfDkmFO2lWjqbEatSLpyyKOHxcWwOUmdQGnKLxlWGGx9wIGJO8n4Aw0/s254/BullockSteve.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="199" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HIdKnbQiGRPO5JBIlkwMdt2wrEyWxBbdqwodBBFw6lpvi_j8aSIfi2vWGnWOYHyaXqA4de4W3RMbuFbEct1aOfDkmFO2lWjqbEatSLpyyKOHxcWwOUmdQGnKLxlWGGx9wIGJO8n4Aw0/w249-h318/BullockSteve.jpg" width="249" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Bullock<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">How will that fly in Montana? What does fly is Bullock’s ability to speak intelligently on issues, which impressed many when he ran for president.</span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Another surprise is there are now two Senate seats available for Democratic takeover in the red clay of Georgia. In a campaign strongly supported by the late John Lewis, youthful Jon Ossoff (he’s 33) has inched ahead in respected polls against former Dollar General exec and wealth accumulator David Perdue, who is <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/election-2020/ct-nw-georgia-senate-race-david-perdue-jon-ossoff-20200728-k3qovpljc5b6topuocrd4kajre-story.html">becoming known for political gaffes</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EcdIY06fPevNsmnLmex2tbgwFsGMRVtXgVaYtgOOnWEGYoF0PbDiso8rB5UFvQK0D8LaE4DUPCPMMEtL4kAmpVzPPsXhBVQF4Qjbp-WWkKOTfBM4BOIk1us9lFqAXLnE7BODn7KvcTo/s831/OssoffJon.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="731" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EcdIY06fPevNsmnLmex2tbgwFsGMRVtXgVaYtgOOnWEGYoF0PbDiso8rB5UFvQK0D8LaE4DUPCPMMEtL4kAmpVzPPsXhBVQF4Qjbp-WWkKOTfBM4BOIk1us9lFqAXLnE7BODn7KvcTo/w450-h512/OssoffJon.jpg" width="450" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jon Ossoff<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Perdue and the other GOP senator for the state, Kelly Loeffler, are best known for their GOP funding chops (<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/08/01/georgia-senator-kelly-loeffler-defends-oann-host-accused-of-ties-to-white-supremacy/#3994a4793c12">she was appointed by the governor to an unfinished term</a>; he has a chicken friendly last name) and both are under investigation of insider trading charges linked to their public hearings. One of these senate seats is technically a special election runoff Nov. 3, with Loeffler hoping to edge <a href="https://gen.medium.com/doug-collins-is-trumps-madman-attack-dog-9c08f4cdd93b">another rabid Trump backer</a>, Rep. Doug Collins, and praying the Democrat doesn’t get 50% of the vote. The top two finishers face off in January 2021.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">But either will be facing a strong Georgia name unknown when they entered. Their opponent is <a href="https://fairfight.com/">backed by Stacey Abrams</a> (often touted in the early speculation to run with Joe Biden and believed by many to have been cheated out of winning the 2018 governor’s race) and many in the nation know this candidate well though have not yet linked <a href="https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/raphael-warnock-and-sunday-sermon-for-shell-shocked-city-atlanta/EcFL2Tz9TuxvgB3fIgxosN/">his oratorical prominence to his candidacy</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYfwgsP5t60e7JyjNuzEYVWI9s78HCvDhNWbuDESVkUl3Gp6y6d121l3L-gCJwolA9I1Oku1-ELlh5ujm-oXYHo_nRmtLDYBqfJeVJUd57QrNzAOYG50Y4-smzMNUg8JSpJIcJC16-7oo/s765/WarnockRaphael.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="599" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYfwgsP5t60e7JyjNuzEYVWI9s78HCvDhNWbuDESVkUl3Gp6y6d121l3L-gCJwolA9I1Oku1-ELlh5ujm-oXYHo_nRmtLDYBqfJeVJUd57QrNzAOYG50Y4-smzMNUg8JSpJIcJC16-7oo/w401-h512/WarnockRaphael.png" width="401" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Reverend Raphael Warnock<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>He’s the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who presided over the eulogies for Lewis at the Atlanta Ebenezer Baptist Church most associated with the late Martin Luther King Jr. But senior pastor Warnock is also notable for his social justice stances – which puts him in stark contrast to either of his GOP opponents. Republicans are furious because the three-way Nov. 3 special comes at the same time as turnout for Biden and Ossoff.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Defeating Mitch McConnell in Kentucky is the secret wish of every Democrat (more on that contest later) but it’s not the biggest event on the red state map or the place where a Democratic candidate needs the most outside bolstering. That was clarified in the August 4 primary in Kansas, where the popularity of the Democratic candidate seems tied to the extremeness of her opponent. She didn't get the most extreme but she wound up with an important contrast.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Bollier has strongly emerged to face the well-heeled but lesser known GOP candidate Roger Marshall, also a retired doctor but the one who wants to kill Obamacare while she works to expand it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zXyfQdUSWk9WbXmahlh6Z4ZrTHH8d2NOuLtgz2TZ_MskhLwwCSGp_Rbrbr31viG4LIomPX2XQWSk_QIelRYm9igjqqx9jXagqThH5fOTQO-pdA03O0haXVXF7IMPVeh21OHVvBWQDC8/s1000/bollier.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zXyfQdUSWk9WbXmahlh6Z4ZrTHH8d2NOuLtgz2TZ_MskhLwwCSGp_Rbrbr31viG4LIomPX2XQWSk_QIelRYm9igjqqx9jXagqThH5fOTQO-pdA03O0haXVXF7IMPVeh21OHVvBWQDC8/w410-h410/bollier.jpg" width="410" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barbara Bollier<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Bollier, a state senator who switched to the Democratic Party to be part of a coalition that put Kansas on a better economic footing, has led a quiet campaign of basic service that contrasts with the image of the current GOP. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/510033-gop-scrambles-to-fend-off-kobach-in-kansas-primary">It was Republicans</a> who worked hard Aug. 4 with big money to defeat their biggest hard-core conservative </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">nightmare, Kris Kobach, who tried to become Trump’s border czar.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">They succeeded, hoping that Marshall isn’t as harsh a name since he has shown some moderate malleability to help him against Bollier. His slight money advantage and the long GOP history of Kansas are the background noise in this contest, but Bollier <a href="https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article244276627.html">seems the ideal mix </a>of pandemic and political common sense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLEl3g8OK21EGCxgE_OW5MQvGVTJIiP7EFnZtAF7-pLt94EIvEl-v7ubklKjpysJzWulI5w-fLwIbGUxmd_Wfa4w1BvyN_RBjD9zIiuDuMZMo1txFHlQW3AHg1G6yGk2HbD2yZjyzWKU/s558/Harrison.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="558" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLEl3g8OK21EGCxgE_OW5MQvGVTJIiP7EFnZtAF7-pLt94EIvEl-v7ubklKjpysJzWulI5w-fLwIbGUxmd_Wfa4w1BvyN_RBjD9zIiuDuMZMo1txFHlQW3AHg1G6yGk2HbD2yZjyzWKU/w446-h372/Harrison.jpg" width="446" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jaime Harrison<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Let’s not forget that the most politically troublesome Carolina is the state below North. But the Democrat there, Jaime Harrison, has strong support among South Carolina’s 22% black Americans – in fact he is leading the state in some polls and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/28/jaime-harrison-is-chasing-lindsey-graham-like-cheetah-running-down-an-impala/">nipping at Lindsey Graham </a>in others. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">That, <a href="https://lincolnproject.us/team/">plus embarrassing ads</a> put together by the GOP Lincoln Project showing how violently Graham contradicted himself on both Trump and Biden, have become a big part of what makes Graham a genuinely threatened Republican senator. I have long joked that when John McCain died he seemed to have taken Graham’s soul with him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Harrison, former leader of the state Democratic Party, is both politically savvy and a believable common man orator with deep roots in the Carolina soil. He’s given a genuine chance at drawing national support for what could be a major upset despite Graham’s years in the spotlight. Were Lindsey not feared for his $15 million war chest and his history of pulling surprises out of a worn hat, he would be considered a fading if not totally gone goose given how much ground he’s lost three months before the finale. But this is South Carolina where all sorts of strange things happen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Intensely disliked in his state’s polls is Kentuckian Mitch McConnell, the turtle avatar constantly onscreen in TV news as the senate majority leader who has blocked some 400 bills from the Democratic House. He has spent 30 years getting re-elected in Kentucky – at times in spite of a lack of personal popularity. The rumor is he has dropped so many federal dollars in key voting corners over time and even has a wife, the secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, making sweetheart deals for the state that he will be hard to dislodge in a state so wildly red.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskL8AzfyacXZ3lmvF2VCJB7ycgm1D9xZ-XLPJxIPQwQcyEEwFHebu6OZPQOazsuJqlFoleku-ZzI56IKWTbfyoZM5PDDrLFhueRMWYh0LZ8UhyphenhyphentJ_wYgTuOspmI0y72z0wtZb6gW4zT4/s716/McGrathAmy.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="650" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskL8AzfyacXZ3lmvF2VCJB7ycgm1D9xZ-XLPJxIPQwQcyEEwFHebu6OZPQOazsuJqlFoleku-ZzI56IKWTbfyoZM5PDDrLFhueRMWYh0LZ8UhyphenhyphentJ_wYgTuOspmI0y72z0wtZb6gW4zT4/w372-h410/McGrathAmy.jpg" width="372" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amy McGrath<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">His opponent lacks political experience in handling an old shrewdie like McConnell – but <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-democrats-have-a-candidate-in-kentucky-but-can-she-beat-mitch-mcconnell/">if Kentucky longs for a breath of fresh non-D.C. air </a>and more clout once Biden takes over, Amy McGrath could run away with the race. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">A moderate Democrat, she also brings a remarkable military record (the Marine’s first female combat fighter who retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel), plus a social media campaign that has given her the money to nearly match Mitch. Her views on the economy and health care seem to fit the emerging nuanced political profile of what has long been a red state. The key may come down to whether Kentucky voters, who have seen McConnell join the Trump mishandling of a pandemic and of health care, will grasp for change or merely suffer the status quo.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QTejOpc69etF57a9Lv0HBylHNa6FCWrsiwDrefqRNH1HuvLjVRhtb05rg1R6wPgl2ArVQD0srH5EpUy7mdlb_gLH4EhxyeRQQgEGoAfrv1nOUGRqxnkKz4pPmpB7LjqBcCYg7n2oDvw/s689/Hegartattoo.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="536" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QTejOpc69etF57a9Lv0HBylHNa6FCWrsiwDrefqRNH1HuvLjVRhtb05rg1R6wPgl2ArVQD0srH5EpUy7mdlb_gLH4EhxyeRQQgEGoAfrv1nOUGRqxnkKz4pPmpB7LjqBcCYg7n2oDvw/w398-h512/Hegartattoo.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Urged by a supporter at a campaign event, MJ Hegar <br />displays her military tattoo.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Over in Texas, long thought GOP property, another inspirational retired female fighter pilot, MJ Hegar, is struggling for name recognition and funding as Texas trends more progressive. She is eight points behind John Cronyn, seeking his fourth term, but despite his years in office his popularity rating is 35%, suggesting she has room to maneuver. Especially during a pandemic hitting Texas hard while <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/19/coronavirus-china-cornyn-blame/">Cronyn is on record last March blaming China</a> for even the 2009 swine flu. This is a contest to decide how out of touch Texas wants to be in the 21st century.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Don’t forget Mississippi, always considered safe GOP country – but maybe not anymore. The Democrat, Mike Espy, was the Clinton agriculture secretary and the first African American from the Deep South given that job. Now he has soared back into attention to oppose the governor appointed senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, who has <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/cindy-hyde-smith-wins-senate-election-d0fc87928182/">earned the title of most racist senator</a>. But Ole Miss is changing under her feet. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">It has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mississippis-removal-of-a-confederate-symbol-from-its-flag-should-be-celebrated/2020/06/29/567105ea-ba38-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html">abandoned putting the Confederate flag in its state flag</a> and even its most famous university has abandoned many of their Civil War trappings while Hyde-Smith tries to live down<a href="https://www.wxyz.com/news/national/photo-surfaces-showing-mississippi-sen-cindy-hyde-smith-posing-with-confederate-artifacts"> posing with Confederate artifacts</a>. Moreover, Missis</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">s</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">ippi has been spiking in the covid numbers, for a while topping 20% in positive tests and belatedly imposing a mask mandate while Republican leaders try to fudge on Trump’s K-12 order to automatically reopen brick and mortar schools.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju56Epyd49HiuxGPATb_yHj9KMFot8P628nfcO3f6NJVhaN9bBuNwlwTt7Sh40O2USoeeEkYSeMoJs5KyMdwMFCki1XB4bf05dW-zOUaNoZDofZBdr2JIJ_ouXpib85ww3hZG6rskXj14/s972/EspyMike.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="732" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju56Epyd49HiuxGPATb_yHj9KMFot8P628nfcO3f6NJVhaN9bBuNwlwTt7Sh40O2USoeeEkYSeMoJs5KyMdwMFCki1XB4bf05dW-zOUaNoZDofZBdr2JIJ_ouXpib85ww3hZG6rskXj14/w386-h512/EspyMike.jpg" width="386" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike Espy<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Let’s not pretend Espy isn’t a long shot but Hyde-Smith has lost more than half of the 17% lead Trump gave her in 2016. GOP PACs are pumping money into states they once thought shoo-ins, and this seems one of many, including Texas, Kansas and Georgia.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">So while Kelly in Arizona, Gideon in Maine, Greenfield in Iowa, Hickenlooper in Colorado and Cunningham in North Carolina are the best shots to see your donations succeed, I have not in my giving overlooked Bollier in Kansas, Ossoff and Warnock in Georgia, Harrison against Graham in South Carolina, McGrath against McConnell, Hegar in Texas and – following my heart the strongest – Espy in Mississippi. </span></p><p><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eNKERdBkk9keymP9UP-_eIiS4FPq0Zl6e5N_V5spD8vLRwyh_gqspNbtDNtncbdYUGH28_ZHEb_b964rRIcCbvrjfmi8XTNomkbmQBi7t1wFPjb3XZGPKfxaOO7NFfpCu25br0jkFeE/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eNKERdBkk9keymP9UP-_eIiS4FPq0Zl6e5N_V5spD8vLRwyh_gqspNbtDNtncbdYUGH28_ZHEb_b964rRIcCbvrjfmi8XTNomkbmQBi7t1wFPjb3XZGPKfxaOO7NFfpCu25br0jkFeE/w313-h423/nothgoogle.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </span></h4><p><br /></p><p> </p>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-9185035419962515502020-07-20T12:09:00.002-07:002020-07-21T11:37:16.015-07:00EVERYTHING HOARY ABOUT TRUMP BECOMES NEW AGAIN<div><font face="times" size="5"><b>By Dominique Paul Noth</b></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Partly his own foot-in-mouth, but also much to our national shame, there has been a flourishing publishing industry built around Donald Trump’s endless prattle and tabloid sordidness.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8vIC5m6tThaDROBpJKgBBA_eLOZIhlEPQuwmEMoGKmFRhO-k92v8flOdjAKaxTl-I2ils5mr02rJkfH19DRtkitAGhhTCUANnDtg98WHSoG61jkon-BxpX_sjoDdFKYvVAaTD6aqwlm4/s487/trump+mary.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="487" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8vIC5m6tThaDROBpJKgBBA_eLOZIhlEPQuwmEMoGKmFRhO-k92v8flOdjAKaxTl-I2ils5mr02rJkfH19DRtkitAGhhTCUANnDtg98WHSoG61jkon-BxpX_sjoDdFKYvVAaTD6aqwlm4/w400-h304/trump+mary.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mary Trump <br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Now some old and shopworn gossip has gotten new enthusiasm in the public sphere because it comes from the inside, the tales from her childhood into her 50s by his only niece, Mary Trump, who is cannily introduced as a “trained clinical psychologist” to apparently give some depth to what are largely retreaded digs into the family dirt in “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.”</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Never forget this book, while leading national sales, is largely a rehash to veteran New Yorkers. Three and a half years into his presidency, they remain amazed at how Trump ever fooled a sizable portion of the nation with the same behavior they had long grown tired of. How Trump talks about blacks and other minorities, how he treats workers and business partners, how he preens with self-aggrandizement – all that is old stuff on his home turf. </font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">That’s been much overlooked in the media coverage -- that the details in Mary Trump's book are already familiar fodder. Virtually everyone in NY knew what a racist and PR tool Trump was and real thinkers had grown sick of it over decades. The nation’s foolishness, encouraged by NBC’s pursuit toward the top of ratings by wallowing in the bottom of reality TV, turned Trump and his “Celebrity Apprentice” clown show into an elevation for much of the nation, while folks in Manhattan have known his blather inside out for generations.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Trump’s penchant for tabloid fame and plated fool’s gold had so long been a laughingstock in New York society that you can find published examples going back 40 years. He was only tolerated for his family’s money and the savagery with which he attacked those who attacked him. Savagery always delights the Manhattan press and public. He was long the media’s poster child for how arrogant belligerency can lead to tabloid reputation if you flash enough money on your way to bankruptcies and TV ratings.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">While NYC residents thought they had his number, there was a whole misshapen mass of voters in the United States who could still fool themselves into seeing freshness in his tired tropes.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhei00iG092Mx5140cEe-w5VLn5ExPapsCd3PQV00eoy98SO5r58X3qXAIDz3EPgzjxhAy7Cwndg10YG65wc26otvbQzObakTtojgixXlJEnSyVaVYMVDPdmkt4ryiOW5VR9qVT5u__dq8/s346/waterson1975.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="321" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhei00iG092Mx5140cEe-w5VLn5ExPapsCd3PQV00eoy98SO5r58X3qXAIDz3EPgzjxhAy7Cwndg10YG65wc26otvbQzObakTtojgixXlJEnSyVaVYMVDPdmkt4ryiOW5VR9qVT5u__dq8/s320/waterson1975.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waterston in 1975's "The Killing Fields"<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>While researching a story on actor Sam Waterston – long the famous prosecutor on the “Law and Order” series but with a longer reputation for stellar stage and film work, I stumbled on essays by a famous Pulitzer winning journalist, now deceased, the feisty stubborn Sydney Schanberg, central figure in the movie “The Killing Fields” (Waterston won an Oscar nomination for portraying him) and long known for speaking truth to power. In fact, he cut his own close ties to the New York Times because his editors didn’t like it when he criticized their own coverage.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">But before then, in 1983!, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/04/opinion/new-york-trump-for-mayor.html">he had written a sarcastic piece</a> for the New York Times about a Trump proposal to move the homeless into one of his buildings scheduled for demolition.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font face="times" size="5">And then, on September 14th, 1987, now writing for Newsday, Schanberg provided an editorial anticipating by 30 plus years (!) the likelihood that the Trump brand, so scoffed in New York, might work for a while in national politics. </font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTP-ot6UM1WQyo9_9cYdVPc7-sha4JrUmVob1XhHvn5AbYpU9eTocUlcvK6Q19tkMUQyYNvAURnWywdpDnEYplRVaiqualqTzJTd2941fnTi9QPHdx1fBct6fYnvTgyoxM8dT7AEvEqKc/s379/Schanberg70s.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="263" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTP-ot6UM1WQyo9_9cYdVPc7-sha4JrUmVob1XhHvn5AbYpU9eTocUlcvK6Q19tkMUQyYNvAURnWywdpDnEYplRVaiqualqTzJTd2941fnTi9QPHdx1fBct6fYnvTgyoxM8dT7AEvEqKc/w348-h500/Schanberg70s.png" width="348" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sydney Schanberg in 1980s<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Entitled "Donald Trump -- Public-relations master" his prominent editorial called Trump a "public-relations virtuoso," described an ongoing feud with then NY Mayor Ed Koch who Trump called a "moron" and "a jerk" (sound familiar?), provided numerous instances of Trump's claims of superior intellect ("It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. I think I know most of it anyway."), and Schanberg then bluntly warned, "He can deny all he wants any designs on the White House, but Trump has the kind of instincts that are perfect for the age we live in -- the age of stage smoke and magic mirrors and imagery. In short, he sees the kind of men we admire and elect these days and he naturally asks: Why not me?"</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"> Schanberg ended the piece with, "In an age where smoke is everything, Donald Trump can blow it with the best of them."</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">I always thought “Celebrity Apprentice” was a ridiculous concept designed for morons and fully believed back in 2011 that most of America was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/watch-inside-the-night-president-obama-took-on-donald-trump/">laughing along with Barack Obama</a> at the presidential press dinner where he poked fun at Donald deciding between Meatloaf and Gary Busey about who to better run a company.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Yet behold, the obnoxious high ratings crap that TV brought home to America seemed to make just enough people believe in an egotistical moron to elect him!</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Today it is clear the public mood is finally done with Trump -- and yet … and yet. There still seem enough jerks around during the pandemic who think wearing a mask while shopping is some sort of attack on their constitutional rights, not some effort at saving the people around them. Finally, now that children as well as adults are being put in harm’s way because of Trump’s egotistical behavior, the dawn is coming to people who once envisioned him as a salvation and are finally joining New York City’s upper echelons in rejecting him. </font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font face="times" size="5">Yet the fear remains. Maybe there are not enough people around still fascinated by his branding games but fear is powering voters this year who are ready to defy the virus if that’s what it takes to vote him out. They are seriously worried about the damage Trump wants to do to mail-in voting and <a href="https://www.theusconstitution.org/blog/trumps-attacks-on-the-post-office-threaten-democracy/">his attacks on the US Postal Service</a>.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font face="times" size="5">They are scared that he may send federal officers in camouflage to every city that doesn’t obey him (and most are hardly in a mood to obey) and believe he won’t follow normal democratic procedures once he loses. His mere existence at the top has done so much damage to our normal sense of human behavior and decency that the entire country is out of balance in how ferociously to put him down. It’s turning us all into mini-Trumps in how viciously we want him gone.</font></div><div><font face="times" size="5"><br /></font></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><font face="georgia"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzWl7_FDxRUgsyiCdcmY3SEYLS-BwsivVXcwjoTXv08lmu1uLaq089vlQC4kcikI1LromC89C6R-_YfZCUi3Z4VIsSpJwf-Ws7mKc38a2V-XSLw7jF1ALA3d5Ut-k1tY27q2CVDN8z7Os/s600/NothatPfister.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="463" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzWl7_FDxRUgsyiCdcmY3SEYLS-BwsivVXcwjoTXv08lmu1uLaq089vlQC4kcikI1LromC89C6R-_YfZCUi3Z4VIsSpJwf-Ws7mKc38a2V-XSLw7jF1ALA3d5Ut-k1tY27q2CVDN8z7Os/w386-h500/NothatPfister.jpg" width="386" /></a></div>About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. </font></h4><div><br /></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735428625592791276.post-15580921162178890582020-07-12T22:32:00.003-07:002020-07-14T11:49:34.600-07:00A COLD SLAP OF REALITY ABOUT COVID AND TRUMP'S ACCOUNTABILITY IN DEATH TOLL <div><div><b style="font-size: x-large;">By Dominique Paul Noth</b></div></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">I understand and even agree with not blaming Trump for everything. Yes he is the symptom not the disease. No, he’s not entirely to blame for the national gridlock. Yes, ousting him is only the first November step in the nation’s recovery. It must be accompanied by wresting control from those deaf dumb and blind Republicans of the US Senate and retaining Democratic control of the House (passing most of those 400 plus bills McConnell has blocked) if we really expect President Biden to correct the damage.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">Amusingly Biden has already said that on Day One <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/503392-biden-vows-to-make-daca-permanent-on-day-one-if-elected-president-after">he will make permanent DACA</a>(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and also on day one <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/506506-biden-says-he-will-rejoin-who-on-his-first-day-in-office">rejoin the World Health Organization</a> that Trump in a moment of pandemic pique pulled the US out of.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="5">But Biden is going to have one hell of a busy Day One given the clamor to fix health care, remove kids from border cages, put the economy back to work, help Congress fix immigration, rejoin the world on climate change, reclaim Obama’s environmental efforts, restore the rule of law, try to renew the Iran deal, return our global standing to normal and on and on in a numbing litany of damage to US reputation that Trump still has six full months to wreck even further.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">But I do blame Trump first and foremost for the deaths he has caused in mishandling coronavirus – not something that he is just a symptom of. He is the root cause. Unlike his claim that he could shoot a follower on Fifth Avenue and not be prosecuted (actually he would be), there are so many levers involved in his covid decisions that here he is getting away with murder.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">His belligerent inaction has killed hundreds of people I know and tens upon tens of thousands I don’t personally know. There is no escaping that reality.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">With the best of presidents we still would have lost thousands of our citizens – pandemics are not easy to deal with and knowledge of how covid-19 is acquired over time is proving essential to addressing it. Failing to put knowledge first has proved quite horrifying. Trump’s refusal to face up to the task is worse than any games of secrecy China played. The fact that the US is painfully last in the world (next to a Brazilian Trump-like fool) is a direct consequence of his stopping and going, flunking basic messaging, in not trusting science over his own stupidity, in blocking sustained testing and research – yes, all that I blame him for.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">His attitude that it is now up to the governors, not the federal government, is absurd if not criminal. His delays and denials were not for the purpose of gaining knowledge – nor was the whip he used to run the taskforce -- or for admitting that we didn’t yet know enough, which is why scientists early on were uncertain about masks because they didn’t have evidence that the asymptomatic spread the disease.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">Their uncertainties developing knowledge are explainable. His refusal to help develop that knowledge and then resist organized testing has now made the nation once regarded as the world’s strongest look the most confused and untrustworthy. More than likely now, another nation will develop the vaccine and let’s hope they are friendlier once Trump is gone.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOP30y1VAx9Sua7g7hS_eMv2-x1KVdzEj8H6CxD8UsvsErkWELjViAN8KBGXATkv1PS45voqtI4TMczNjLjJS244oHKCL7SQIQNf8qNRGgXmUOqdRzIPGF4JN9JFZqMnux-Ec5IZ98So/s780/covidfridgetrucks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Refrigerator trucks serving as hospital morgue in New York City." border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOP30y1VAx9Sua7g7hS_eMv2-x1KVdzEj8H6CxD8UsvsErkWELjViAN8KBGXATkv1PS45voqtI4TMczNjLjJS244oHKCL7SQIQNf8qNRGgXmUOqdRzIPGF4JN9JFZqMnux-Ec5IZ98So/w400-h225/covidfridgetrucks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Refrigerator trucks serving as temporary <br />hospital morgue in New York City</td></tr></tbody></table>We are now months if not years away from getting out of this. In wasting six months we have jeopardized current and future generations. We were so short of protective supplies that we demanded people not hoard them from first responders. We limited testing and treatment to those that showed symptoms. Even today, despite the numbers Trump keeps touting, citizens cannot go out and get a test. Nor are all of them exposed to the best treatments available because sometimes the doctors don’t yet know which are the best treatments.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">We are only now starting to get a handle on the role of asymptomatic carriers, whether antibodies play a protective role, whether once negative turned positive can turn negative and then positive again.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">We believe, mainly from other countries that have done better controlled tests -- and even these are not conclusive -- that elementary school children can suffer the virus and walk through it better than their teenage friends. And we believe the teens do better than the college age students, who do better than the adults under 55. So just as we are comforted – comforted! – that 50% of the deaths are people 60 to 80, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/coronavirus-school-age-children-wellness/index.html">we are learning that thousands of younger adults</a> are even now increasing in hospitalization and dying and even teens and children are facing morbidity even when parents are doubtful if they have other underlying health issues.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="5">A state like my Wisconsin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/12/coronavirus-update-us">stayed off the national radar until July 11</a> when it climbed into the record-setting daily positive covid rate alongside Texas, South Carolina, Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Idaho, Oregon and Hawaii.</font></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="5">Simply put, the pandemic disaster in the US – not in the world -- is of epic proportions and we still know too little in the world’s most technologically advanced nation. And that, no matter how you slice it, is Trump’s fault. After killing thousands, he is demanding putting thousands more at risk by insisting that all 13,000 public school districts reopen schools.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">He has a secretary of education who sounds even stupider than he does when she goes on TV to say there is nothing dangerous for kids going to school. Yet meanwhile the World Health Organization that Trump discounts has concluded that the virus is airborne in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/health/coronavirus-schools-reopen.html ">which sure sounds to the New York Times </a>like a description of many American schools</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><font size="5">Nor do we know because of huge gaps in contact tracing and research how children become infected and how, if and when they transmit the virus. Trying to re-open would seem to require just the sort of research and discussion that Trump opposes.</font></div><div><font size="5"><br /></font></div><div><div style="font-size: x-large;">Yes, there is research from other countries that loosely suggest younger children are less likely than teenagers to infect other people, but from that point scientists are forced to guess why. Could it be that elementary school children don’t have the lung capacity or the vocal strength to spray droplets as far as teenagers do? In that case, you’d better stifle any budding Julie Andrews or Judy Garlands among your young ones and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pF1_zndkZc ">probably drown any future Brenda Lee</a>.</div><div style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><div style="font-size: x-large;">Or could it be that, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/spanish-flu.html">unlike the 1918 pandemic </a>that killed hundreds of thousands mainly young people, this virus doesn’t impact the younger as it has the older citizens with underlying health conditions? Or, since we have never successfully developed a lasting vaccine from nasal covid infections, could it be that the covid-19 in its so far harmless mutations has another kick in the age breadbasket coming?</div><div style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><div style="font-size: x-large;">Scientists simply don’t have enough evidence to speak with certainty – and after six months of on again off again direction, whose fault is that? Parents and school leaders are forced to take the gambles and make the decisions even as epidemiologists predict the fall could be even worse. Who can blame the people for not expecting any sensible advice from Betsy DeVos or Trump?</div><div style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><div style="font-size: x-large;">I admit that I am a prime candidate to be felled quickly by the pandemic – in my seventies, with a Pacemaker and with lingering COPD even after I stopped smoking 15 years ago. I don’t blame Trump for how the pandemic tossed out my pleasure of attending plays, films and concerts that I long enjoyed writing about – that departure was a common sense reality imposed by covid. As is my family's steps toward full quarantine.</div><div style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><div style="font-size: x-large;">But when I think of my grandchildren, and all the grandchildren, and how their future education and survival have been threatened by the actions of our current president, when I think of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html">140,000 whose deaths he careless dismissed</a> as the price of running a nation, I can’t wait for him to be gone. There is no punishment that fits his crimes.</div><div style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWD0Oz9IJeR6hIKPWJpwNsil_MKoRVliSoMdANA8kp4HvuG6djxnP675goFgjdjCvVfGaRWhkaAWfwi0bCZe2z52EcNZG_jkDJ8CyxfJfyZ-GAggSrG2PkUx4muQ5-QtTHBznUFOR0vns/s270/nothgoogle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="200" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWD0Oz9IJeR6hIKPWJpwNsil_MKoRVliSoMdANA8kp4HvuG6djxnP675goFgjdjCvVfGaRWhkaAWfwi0bCZe2z52EcNZG_jkDJ8CyxfJfyZ-GAggSrG2PkUx4muQ5-QtTHBznUFOR0vns/w313-h423/nothgoogle.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. <font size="5"><br /></font></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Dominique Paul Nothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12081403597565070566noreply@blogger.com0