Wednesday, November 9, 2016

WHAT COUNTRY DID YOU WAKE UP IN?

By Dominique Paul Noth

I wonder whether the nation woke up in shock or glee Wednesday. Whether real or not, regardless of the messenger, even regardless of the message, the desire for change was so palpable that the voters were willing to overthrow the Constitution, the interlocked branches and the historical nature of government. Because without doing that, almost  every promise Donald Trump made is unworkable. And the world will reel while he tries to figure it all out.

That sounds harsh, but no other conclusion is left. Trump made an unusually controlled and complimentary victory speech, saying he would deal fairly with everyone, but he had to be hoping the audience would still believe  all those things he had said about Mexicans, Muslims, his sniping at the press and at Republicans who disagreed with him, since this was what endeared so many to him in the first place.

Perhaps they will forget his pending trials for fraud and sexual abuse or his hidden tax returns because, really, could that be the real him? Could he have been elected by the world’s greatest democracy if that was the real Donald? Or was the real Donald the one promising to preserve the Supreme Court, the one promising jobs and more ferocious dealings on immigration, terrorists and trade, the one who would know how to throw America’s weight around.

Half of the citizenry stood aghast at what had happened – no crack in the glass ceiling, no balance to the Supreme Court, no freedom to marry whom you love (a pet peeve of Mike Pence), no work on climate change (heck it doesn’t exist), no campaign money reform, no future for Planned Parenthood, a supermodel whose naked pictures fill the Internet as First Lady, a victory midwived by Vladimir Putin, the FBI director and an enthralled media.

The other half is probably happy – they no longer have to hide from pollsters who they were voting for.  They  may not quite see they had committed to a Barnum salesman who  would need  a different form of government than a democracy to deliver some outlandish promises.

Brace yourself.  Not only was the Democratic Party dashed, the Republican  Party was equally devastated. Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr. and Ben Carson will now dominate your living room when Donald doesn’t want to supply the outrage on his own. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t blaze a big TRUMP neon on the White House.

Brace yourself also for both the forgotten side and the bigoted side of white America to enjoy its last time at the top, because the march of demographics is irreversible, even if they find a way to deport 11 million residents.

Rail how you will that the votes can be blamed on  too much television illiteracy and other forms of ignorance, on the media’s failure to comprehend that some  college educated white voters went to very bad colleges.   The vote is the vote. The electorate must have wanted exactly the brash, nasty, in-you-face agent of change. Even those who didn’t like his words put that aside, as if the words didn’t stigmatize his character or his pledges. As one Trump voter told a TV interviewer, all men talk like that. 

Voters suffered this same short-term memory in 2010, where the electorate forgot the time capsule of FDR.

What does that mean? FDR, if you read history, took over the presidency three years into the Great Depression. By then the public was prepared for  emergency action,  even demanded it of the president.

But most Americans didn’t suffer that badly under the Bush years. He may have caused the Great Recession, but he left it to Obama to patiently solve it. The public was still absorbing pain.  Most had never experienced so devastating an economy, so their votes took it out on the president despite his slow steady repairs. Couldn’t he make the income, the jobs, the flourishing mortgage industry return?

In reality his progress had been considerable by 2016, wages were finally rising and Obama’s favorability ratings are higher than Reagan’s or any other president. But even today the electorate’s patience had not improved, the pace was steady but too slow in their frame of mind and they were primed for someone who pointed out the problems again and again, with exaggeration and no solutions.

They do not see they are acting as victims and seeking scapegoats.  But there’s also what Obama himself suggested two years ago about another Democrat succeeding him. The public, he mused, “may want that new car smell.”

Hillary Clinton thought the economy’s improvement was self-evident and offered detailed plans to pick up the torch and run with it – not the bravura of Trump to solve everything.  She knew the emails and Benghazi were simply a political distraction and thought the public would also see that, underestimating how powerful were the four years of negativity the GOP was pasting on her when they realized she would run for president. So she talked sense and policy about the economy, feeling it would be enough to remind voters of what Trump said and stood for. She never expected their hatred of someone out of office for four years would be that potent.

I didn’t see it coming – even hoped for a progressive wave.  Especially  in Wisconsin. Despite the iron grip of conservative money and control, what I saw were the small towns that have seen their schools struggle and their roads suffer under the GOP regime, the agriculturists and dairy farmers who desperately wanted a solution to the immigration issue that would keep their operations thriving.  Wouldn’t they stand up finally and vote for that kind of change?

But not only did the Democrats not pick up seats in the state legislature, two of their incumbents lost and some easily superior candidates were thrown away.  Ditto Congress, where no honest person in the state can say things have been improved in D.C. by who was sent there. Even those sent there are going to find it difficult to work with this president, in between struggling how to explain things to him.

My historical optimism?  It’s not present in this column, which may be dismissed as sour grapes by those who will all too soon learn what real sour grapes taste like. It’s really a diatribe of profound sadness, thinking how much work lies ahead to return the nation of Lincoln to equilibrium. 

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 also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as 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 and Internet and consumer news. 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 culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 


Friday, November 4, 2016

NELSON STANDOUT IN 2ND MOST WATCHED RACE IN WISCONSIN

By Dominique Paul Noth

Tom Nelson could be Wisconsin's
most important new gift to House.
Next to the Senate contest between former holder Russ Feingold and GOP curiosity Ron Johnson, the House 8th District race is the most watched face-off in Wisconsin. It has national implications while explicitly revealing the danger Donald Trump represents to his own party down the ticket.

Several races in Wisconsin reflect the generally sour mood of the US electorate in fascinating ways.

This is the state where the Republicans in the primary ferociously rejected Trump after a talk media campaign in favor of Ted Cruz, while Democrats went for Bernie over Hillary. Yet Republicans I spoke to admitted then they had no love for Cruz just profound distaste for the Donald, who later swept over Cruz like a wild river.  Democrats in contrast were hoping Bernie would keep pressure on  Clinton from the left and are now upset that his younger enthusiasts are not coming around as they anticipated.

Even today, strong “never Trump” statements stem from the state’s best known right wing talk radio host, Charlie Sykes.  To the anger of many Democrats who feel Sykes is equally divisive as Trump but only on local issues so the national media never notices, Sykes has been elevated by MSNBC of all cable outlets into one of its frequent guests. But that’s   largely because he is an outspoken conservative who loathes Trump at length. 

Support for Trump is clearly lukewarm from the state GOP, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and even Gov. Scott Walker, who made his own feeble run for the presidential nomination. Both say they will vote for Trump but Ryan won’t campaign for him, though Walker recently did. Both Republicans and Democrats find their stances evasive if not two-faced.

The Trump resistance comes at a time when he is trailing Hillary Clinton in the statewide polls by 6 percent. But his campaign still regards Wisconsin as a necessary win. Further working against him is that Republican Rep. Reid Ribble, while abandoning the 8th District race for the House, is featured in Clinton TV ads as a prominent Republican who says Trump has disqualified himself from the White House. (He is immediately followed in the ad by Sen. Susan Collins.)

This split in GOP thinking is most notable right now in the race for Ribble’s successor.  Running on the GOP side is Mike Gallagher, whose only credentials are his military service.  You might think he’d enjoy a bump given Ribble’s outspoken opposition to Trump, but no maverick is Gallagher, more the dutiful soldier to the right. He has flatly supported Trump – and when challenged says he was sure Trump “would appoint strong people around him.”

So. He envisions a weak president saved by strong subordinates, but does anyone watching Trump think he would ever listen?

As I pointed out in another column, Gallagher is being propped up by huge advertising money and by slicing a debate video to make it seem that Tom  Nelson was questioning his battlefield courage when it was clearly about his evasiveness about Trump.

He is facing in Tom Nelson a Democrat often touted for bigger office, partly because of his atypical success in regions where Republicans have frequently won.

Only 40, and still looking a bit like silent movie star Harold Lloyd dangling dangerously from a skyscraper clock in “Safety Last,” Nelson already has quite a distinctive career.  He won election to the state Assembly out of Outagamie County (northeast Wisconsin, county seat Appleton) at age 28 and four years later was named by his fellow Democrats as Assembly majority leader. In 2010 he joined Tom Barrett as lieutenant governor in the race against Walker, which they lost.

But shortly afterward he beat out a well known Republican supporter of Walker for the nonpartisan seat of Outagamie County Executive, an influential position that has allowed him to elevate his administrative reputation.  Out of this he decided to run for Ribble’s seat.

There is little polling in this race, but Nelson is apparently going strong even among Republicans at a time when northeast Wisconsin is generally conceded to Trump because of rural dislike of urban Democrats. Nelson, with his still boyish appearance and clarion policy statements, seems to have conquered that. As Assembly majority leader and again as Outagamie County Exec, he has a proven record of progressive interests, bold action and fierce frugal government.

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 also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as 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 and Internet and consumer news. 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 culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

Thursday, November 3, 2016

TWO WALKING DEAD BELIEVERS FACING WISCONSIN AX

By Dominique Paul Noth

This Nov. 8 election will likely seal the coffins of twin zombies – the misguided ideologies that have been the controlling falsehoods of the Donald Trump and Ronald Johnson’s campaigns.

Zombie One:  All the country needs is a businessman at the  top to get us out of the mess the world has become.  (Ludicrous Corollary: Sure, Trump is horrible, obscene, gross,  but Hillary is worse.)

Zombie Two:  Being a career politician, rather than signifying public service at its best, automatically means corrupt and hateful person eager to be enslaved by Washington gridlock. See Ludicrous Corollary above.

(We’ll leave aside the irony that Hillary Clinton, who has been out of office for four years, is painted as the ugly politician while Johnson,  the Wisconsin senator who gives way to every political bidding of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, still tries to sell the caveman message:  “Me businessman good,  Feingold politician bad.”)

The businessman argument has become the timeless ploy of corporate candidates, suggesting that because they survive by all means necessary  in the jungle of profits they are the ideal for success in the public environment, where choices for the people without concern for profits are the hallmark. You take one look at D.C. and you could think (without deeply thinking) that someone from the outside is needed. That hope elected  Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush the second and Obama, all regarded as outside knights to the rescue. Now Trump hopes the electorate has lost its head even further since all of those had careers as politicians.

“What this country needs is a good businessman.” You often hear Trump  voters say that despite evidence of his inadequacies and  even as their jobs have been stolen more by business maneuvers than trade deals or environmental demands from D.C.  The electorate always needs a scapegoat and right now the most successful president of the last 30 years is tagged you’re it.

That  oft-heard complaint – “we need a businessman” -- neglects how government has long mastered business tools better than the private sector has – indeed businesses turn to the government again and again as models of statistics, data and economic forecast as well as weather forecast. The proficiency of government is evident in the low-cost administration of Medicare and the high-speed reaction of first responders, who almost inevitably are government trained and licensed. Would you really fly on a plane if the government wasn’t overseeing?

Not only businesses but people rely on government regulations in all sorts of areas – food safety, drug safety, worker safety.  Businesses may occasionally struggle with those, but not the public who wants more in the way of food and drug oversight for sure, recognizing that commercial farms, supermarkets and pharmaceutical giants are the worst offenders if left on their own. The clamors are equally loud when worker safety regulations are violated for profit.  Day in and day out, hundreds of regulations guide our lives – from driving on the right side of the road to who wires our buildings. 

Nor do the conservatives do much about the regulatory mess of the tax code, a complex muddle that allows teams of corporate lawyers to dodge taxation and stop lawsuits over profits moved overseas. Everyone agrees the code warrants improvement, but the stubbornness emerges on the conservative side when you try to unravel business loopholes and on the other side when their lobbying groups get busy. Except with Clinton in the White House and the Senate back in her party’s hands, the head of the banking committee becomes Bernie Sanders, a bulldog on revising the tax code.

No, the main GOP objections to regulations fall in two areas – environmental rules and small businesses, though the Democrats have supported the small business concerns of simplifying  for years. Part of the complexity there is that while small businesses create most of the jobs, they also cause most job losses as businesses fail, and many of the rules are about that seesaw. 

The environmental objections are often inflammatory on the stump and exaggerated in reality, because the government is trying to limit toxins and reward companies that also do. Both activities require precise measurements, extensive records and red tape. We can argue about the details but not about the need to protect the environment, which makes the attack on the EPA way too simplistic.

Donald Trump demonstrates how the trickeries and boastfulness of his real estate world are the last things the White House needs. But perhaps he has dealt a death blow to the image of a businessman savior.  The good administration that public service demands and the concern about the taxpayer money are vital issues, but come on! Strengths in one area doesn’t necessarily transfer to another.  If you want to talk care with money, how much bang are these CEOs getting for their outlandish political bucks?  The gamesmanships involved in business may not even be welcome in public office. 

The politician  zombie is more difficult to kill, because there have been career office holders who have abused that privilege.  But there also have been thousands in both parties who haven’t.  The nature of government requires people willing to serve for sometimes comfortable but seldom remarkable pay, people willing to give up their normal sense of privacy and master complexities of legislation, both local and national. No wonder real business geniuses shy away from public service. 

I became more aware of the power of this zombie when the electronic media was stretching every report in the last week to find and include undecided voters (at this stage?) or unique first-time voters. They found several -- one a 69 year old woman who claimed she had never previously voted (what?) and was  big on Trump.  She said all men talked like he did (even when not wired on a media bus or preaching at rallies, I guess) and that best of all “he wasn’t one of those politicians like Clinton,” using the politician word as if she had just stepped into something nasty.

Enough politicians have been corrupt or lazy to give that vision some basis. But those examples have been hyped over the reality of how most politicians behave and why their practiced methods are vital in a democracy. So I for one hope that our next president is a good politician and has  a supporting cast she can work with.

It’s important to point out that the best of our politicians have a record of sticking with their own principles ahead of party loyalties, and sometimes ahead of their own constituents who may be stampeded by current events.  They also work  across the aisle, making deals and compromises to move forward.  There are more occasions for that kind of decent compromise than voters may realize. 

Curiously enough, two of the best at that when they’ve been in the Senate were Feingold and Clinton. Which is why they are expected to win.

The power of those zombie beliefs are strong enough to rise and walk again on another day.  Such misconceptions will always be with us. But it would be shameful to let them stagger toward the finish line this time.

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 also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as 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 and Internet and consumer news. 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 culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.