Because We Are Democrats...

We are the most diverse political party in the nation. 

In the long political history that has brought us to where we are, this party, which began in a completely different time, in every possible way, has survived since 1828, a mere 39 years after the first Presidential election under the newly ratified Constitution, though its roots go back to Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party first formed in 1792.  We are the oldest political party in the world, and the fact that we are still capable of winning elections and operating the most powerful Constitutional Democracy in the world is a testimony to our success.  

On October 10, 1975, four days after turning 18, I walked into a voter registrar's office in Phoenix, Arizona and registered to vote as a member of the Democratic party and the following November, I voted in a Presidential election for the first time, proudly casting my ballot for Jimmy Carter.  Since then I've voted, contributed, participated in precinct meetings, volunteered, was elected to serve as a delegate to state level conventions, and on top of that, I taught high school government, economics, American History and civics for over 20 years, across three states.  

I'm one of millions like me, who can be defined as "grassroots" Democrats, voters who are reliable supporters of the candidates who are nominated through the primary process.  We celebrate victories, mourn defeats, pay attention to what is going on, hold politicians accountable and, knowing how politics works, and being observant, understand that it doesn't always go our way, some of the people we elect are disappointments, not up to the job, didn't really represent themselves or their position well when they were running, or failed in some way.  We are far from being in agreement with every single point every candidate makes, we have different positions on different issues in elections, and in this party in particular, represent a very wide diversity of opinions.  

But what we have in common, as Democrats, at least, from my perspective, is the strength that is found in diversity, under the rights and freedoms and limitations of government power found in the United States Constitution.  The values that our party has adopted and reflected, over time, include mutual respect for each persson and their freedom of conscience, and the absolute equality of every human being regardless of their race, ethnic background, religious beliefs, economic status, social connections, language spoken or gender.  That's who we are.  

What's Happening Right Now is a Huge Disappointment, and Disrespectful of Those Values 

I support Democrats running for office within the restraints that exist which have a way of limiting that support.  I don't know where I fall in terms of others who do the same, I just know that the limits I have make what I do a sacrifice of money and time.  I've lost a few friendships that were valuable to me, not because I was hostile or overbearing, but because I wasn't voting for and supporting Trump.  In some ways, those, too, were sacrifices, though I've accepted the reality of this kind of attitude and try to adjust my attitude to feel somewhat better off. 

So the developments which have occurred within the Democratic party, surrounding President Biden's debate performance three weeks ago now, have been very disappointing, have created a high level of anxiety and worry as far as I am concerned, and are appoaching a point where I am now concerned that this issue, which I had hoped was over when it was obscured by the assassination attempt on Trump, will cost us the one thing that is at the top of just about every list of priorities for the 2024 election, and that is the complete loss of our Constitutional Democracy because of a Trump presidency.  

I wonder, am I off in left field somewhere, in seeing this as the most important issue in an election that is four short months away?  Have I put myself in some kind of left-wing extremist fear and picked up on the idea that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, in those exact terms, when other Democrats don't feel as intense as I do, and believe they can still win Congress and neutralize him?  

Is there something more to it than just the sudden panic created by the President's admittedly poor debate performance, and that has been and is being hidden from those of us who are just as committed, working just as hard, and making sacrifices to contribute?  Because I am finding it difficult to figure out why one debate performance, which turned out to have almost no effect in a cluster of very dubious polling data, would cause members of Congress to speak out, and put pressure on the President to get out of the presidential campaign.  What I am hearing, from the reports in various media sources, is that there is a segment of Democratic party leadership that has lost its confidence in Joe Biden's ability to win the election and serve a second term.  

And while that's what we are hearing, we are not hearing anyone actually come up with some kind of plan, or alternative candidate, who can win the election.  

What's disappointing, and disillusioning about that, is that we "grassroots Democrats," who are contributors and supporters, though with tens and hundreds of dollars, not millions, are either being completely ignored, or deliberately kept in the dark.  And neither of those things is a value that I have ever associated with the Democratic party.  

What's even more disconcerting and disillusioning, is that some of these Democrats sound like they have already conceded a second Trump presidency.  That's extremely disappointing, because what they are saying, and doing, is giving up, telling us who are fighting against it that it is not worth the fight, and the work we have done is in vain.  That's not a leadership quality, and that's not what someone in a position of leadership should ever do.  And that opens up a very legitimate question about the integrity of those who are doing this, and whether they should ever have been put in leadership to begin with.  

So please, we need to get our act together and know where we stand.  Please tell us the truth about what is really going on.  We do not deserve to be left in the dark.  

From My Perspective, Nothing Has Changed

I still believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American Democracy.  He will, with the help of everyone who supports him, working as hard as they can, attempt to subvert the constitution, impose all kinds of restrictions on individual freedom, put this country in irreparable danger from its enemies, and destroy 240 years of Constitutional Democracy.  It has become clear that the federal court system is already in a position to help him do this, and has already struck down Constitutional principle of the rule of law.  I will continue to work, sacrifice and support the candidacy of President Joe Biden because I believe he is the one candidate who is best equipped to defeat Trump, has done it before, and will do it again.  

He's also got plans in place for cleaning up the mess that four years of Trump left behind.  A lot of that has been swept into a pile, but there's still a lot of it that needs to be weeded out and discarded.  

I'm not going to "take my football and go home."  There are those in whom I've placed a lot of confidence, and for whom I've had a lot of respect, who will have to convince me that they are worth my continued support if there is a move to take the President out of the campaign without solid, justifiable, evidence that all Democrats have had a voice in considering.  In spite of the anger and disappointment I know is already welling up inside, I will never switch to the other side and I refuse to cast a ballot for any candidate other than the Democratic party's nominee.  That's how critical I see this.  I only hope that there are enough Americans who feel as strongly about the threat of Trump to do the same thing.  

We haven't even had our convention yet.  Why do you think this polling data, that is pretty dubious, all over the place, and has had some spectacular fails in the past two years, is such a powerful indicator of failure?  

Earn my trust.  Because if you earn mine, you'll earn that of millions of other Americans who are genuinely frightened of another Trump presidency.  

President Biden is Poised to Win Re-election in 2024 So What Caused "The Scare"?

There must be a whole lot more than polling data showing what is basically a dead heat, and one poor debate performance that got some Democrats scared about President Biden's age, and his staying in the race.  

It is understandable, given Trump's first and only win in a Presidential election coming as the surprise that it did, over Hillary Clinton.  But even though Trump had high negative numbers, so did she.  And she brought several other disadvantages to her Presidential campaign.  For one thing, she was a woman, and while it is the twenty-first century and all that, the fact of the matter is that our culture and society in the United States has not yet come to the point where being a woman is no longer a disadvantage.  We've come a very long way, but not quite that far.  

Hillary Clinton was not only a woman, but she was an accomplished, self-assured, confident, successful and competent woman.  And the only way a woman like that gets ahead of a man in the same field is if she knows how to make money and get it in his pocket without him being intimidated by it.  

That has been Trump's single electoral success, and it was not a popular one. He got 81% of the white, Evangelical vote in 2016, but while scoring a similar percentage of white Evangelicals in 2020, their actual numbers were down by several million.  He lost the popular vote by 8 million.  And I believe 2020 was when he reached his peak.  He lost the support of millions of voters with his incitement of the insurrection and his behavior at the end of his first term who will either vote for Biden, or not turn up to support him.  And that's been a fact that exit polling from Republican primaries has documented.  

The Issue That's Always Been There Has Been Biden's Age

Biden's age was an issue that came up very early in the last campaign, mentioned by the group of challengers in the primaries as his most significant disqualification.  There wasn't really much about which they could challenge him, when it came to issues, most of what they were running on and supporting had originated with him, or had been helped along through the legislative process by him.  It was the only way most of them could distinguish themselves from him, so it came up a lot.  

The Democratic National Committee is a pretty politically savvy outfit.  I can't imagine that when the time came to discuss whether or not Joe Biden would be the nominee of the Democratic party one more time, his age didn't factor into the discussion  There's not been much doubt that Trump would not make another try at it, and I can't imagine that the committee didn't run through all of the possibilities, such as an open primary, or giving their endorsement to Vice-President Harris as a candidate who would energize and expand a potentially huge group of voters who are anxious to see this country have a progressive, black female President.  

And if that decision was made when the President first announced that he would run again, wouldn't that have been the time to bring up his age, and demonstrate some concern over whether that might become a disadvantage in winning what it seems most Democrats consider a vitally important election, one that must be won to prevent an existential threat to American democracy from gaining Presidential powers?  

I'm not a political scientist, or analyst, but I'm pretty observant, I've been watching politics for decades and I do get it right quite a bit.  I am of the opinion that any one of a dozen leading Democrats could easily defeat Trump.  It seems that people expressing the idea of having someone new, and younger, run for President this time around doesn't just apply to Biden.  About 65% of the voters would also like to see someone on the GOP side besides Trump.  

Perhaps, if a candidate had emerged from a field of potential candidates on the Democratic side, had Biden not been running, we would have someone who, against Trump, would be an easy winner.  But there's no way to know that for sure, and I think we've got a winner with the President, his record of accomplishments, and the long list of negatives with which Trump and Vance must now campaign. 

What We've Got vs. What They've Got

I think we have talked ourselves into believing that people have become so desensitized to Trump that his evil manipulations, lies, and his criminal behavior is meaningless when it comes to people deciding who they're going to support for President.  There are a lot of people who are blind to Trump and are not capable of seeing the truth, or who have been deceived beyond rescue.  I'm reminded of a couple of bible verses when I hear this, in 2 Corinthians 11:14, where Paul says, "for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light," and another one in Matthew 24:24, quoting Jesus, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect."  

But it seems that what still counts in politics, enough to push aside the flotsam and debris, is a genuine record of achievement and a solid plan for the future, both of which the Biden Administration has done in a way that the Trump administration visibly failed.  Trump and the Republicans are campaigning with cliches and playing to a base that is not large enough, by a long shot, to win a Presidential election.  They've lost a fair share of their own party, and while it remains to be seen exactly how many of those people will vote Republican out of habit, and how many of them will drift away, or not vote, Trump didn't get to 80% of a primary vote in which he was the only candidate for three fourths of the time.  

President Biden can run on a record of success that can be fact checked and proven.  Every economic indicator, GNP, job growth, the stock market, are all strong and soaring.  Everything they've done in combating inflation has worked.  Yeah, it took time, as the President said it would, but he can also make the case that not all the high prices are due to inflation.  There's a lot of profit margin in there, and there's a lot of healthy wage growth.  The crime rate is provably down, and the only thing Trump has when it comes to securing the border is a record of turning it into a political issue that resulted in the President having to go around an obstructionist House and issue an executive order to get done what the Repubicans wanted done, but failed to do.  

On the negative side, Trump and the Republicans have no plan, only off the top of his head rantings about the last election, and tired themes that cause even his hard core MAGA crowds to pick up their chairs and leave his rallies.  I haven't had the stomach to watch the convention, but I've heard it's been pretty bad.  

And the biggest vote getters for Democrats include the continued publicity surrounding Project 2025, which is going to be a bigger disaster for Republicans than they ever realized.  In fact, it already has been.  When some of the provisions of this plan are revealed to the electorate, I think Trump loses the clear majority of the women's vote, and any ethnic or racial minority voters who were thinking about taking a look at what he's offering will run the other direction pretty quickly.  And of course, Democrats are pushing for legislation that will establish the provisions of Roe v. Wade permanently, something that over 65% of the electorate wants to see.  Those issues are glass ceilings on any potential growth in Trump support.  

I also tend to think that Trump's continued harping on having the 2020 election stolen from him is his biggest liability.  Given the number of Americans who clearly believe this is a lie, combined with his attempted coup on January 6th, I see no reason to think that the electorate will do anything but return President Biden to the White House.  

I've watched this fradulent, lying cheat since he first started running for office.  We've become desensitized to his shenanigans so that when he does something that would cost any other candidate thousands of votes, we don't pay much attention any more.  But he's past his prime.  And before the election cycle is over, he's going to provide voters with more than one reason to get off his train.  

The Opportinity For Democrats to Control the Narrative

We are fighting not only media bias, but media competition for ratings with sensational headlines and attention-grabbing sound bytes.  Since the debate, the effort that the Biden campaign has made to get control of the narrative, and push it forward has been remarkable.  While some party leaders were expecting crushing news in poll numbers, the exact opposite has occurred.  As of today, post-debate, post-Trump shooting, pre-GOP convention, 538 gives Biden a 53-47% chance to win 277 electoral votes. That's actually a 4% increase over a week ago, when it was 51-49.  

There's no issue or character liability for either of the Democratic candidates and their positions on the issues are crystal clear, unlike the duplicitous Republicans, who are trying to hide an unpopular agenda.  The job will be more one of motivating a segment of voters who are independent, moderate Republican, Green party and even a few libertarians, to cast votes for Biden instead of staying home.  The age issue is the biggest liability he has now, and placing an emphasis on factually attacking the GOP and Trump and the danger that poses to Constitutional democracy is the other end of the message.  I have every confidence that a seasoned politician like President Biden, who is far more popular personally than polling data shows, can do this with relative ease.  

Democrats have President Biden, Vice-President Harris and a plan, Republicans have Trump, and now the flip flopping opportunistic J. D. Vance. They also have election officials in red states who will do their dead level best to cheat Joe, so there's more than just getting voters to the polls to be done.  

A Call to Democrats, Independents, Green Partiers, Moderate Republicans and All Americans Who See the Danger we are Now Facing: Now is the Time to Step Forward!

The past three weeks have brought a cataract of bad political news.  I'm 66 years old, have observed politics since I was 10 or 11 years old because of the interest of my West Virginia-born parents, working class Americans who built their family by hard work and lived by and believed in values like honesty, integrity and trust, interdependent friendships and a sense of community support, and were true patriots.  My father was a World War II Navy veteran, who volunteered upon graduating from college as a chemistry major, trained as an air conditioning mechanic and spent the war servicing equipment on cruisers and battleships in the Pacific.  My mother worked to support him and the family, as a hotel desk clerk, housekeeper, and as my sister and I were growing up, a child care worker.  They were Democrats, and they passed those values on to their children.  

It's been beyond appalling, over these past weeks, to see where things have been headed.  The Supreme Court's declaration that the President of the United States, by example one former one they want to protect in particular, is above the law and immune from criminal prosecution while performinng official acts related to the Presidency has left me absolutely dumbfounded.  Any reasonably educated and politically estute American should also have been horrified and troubled by this ruling.  This is a consequence of some past apathy that permitted the appointment of three justices who lied during their hearings in  the judiciary committee.  The value of honesty and integrity took a hit on this one.  

The debate performance of President Biden opened the door to a partial cave-in of support from his own party.  This has also been an appalling development, especially four months out from the election and less than a month from the nominating convention.  With the other side working as hard as they can to make it difficult to vote, and on ways and means to overturn votes they don't like, to have something like this happen is potentially disastrous.  The media hasn't left it alone.  And today, a tweet from Jake Tapper, of CNN, left me as angry at a reporter as I've been in a long time, hinting that some "high Democratic party officials are already preparing for a Trump presidency."  

Is the media conceding this as well, based on their own misinformation, or on their corporate ownership's instructions?  Are they trying to get on Trump's good side before he gets in there again?  

Also today, we learn that Aileen Cannon, the unqualified occupant of the federal bench in Florida appointed by Trump, in the event that he would need a favor at some point that she could provide, has blithely dismissed the document theft case against Trump, not on the merits, which may include evidence of unauthorized disclosure of the contents of those documents to certain foreign governments, but on a technicality related to the appointment of a special prosecutor.  A few media sources, from a legal perspective, have said that her motion "doesn't hold Constitutional merit," so it may be likely that the appeals court would give the case to someone else, but it will not go to trial in any kind of a timely way.  

On top of that, we are seeing a media making "both sides" responsible for the assassination attempt on the ex-president in Pennsylvania yesterday and attempting to put the blame on Democrats and their political rhetoric.  We've lost, somewhere along the way, our free press.  Let's not forget who incited the insurrection against the Capitol on Janary 6, 2020 that took the lives of five people.  The Democrats were not responsible for any of that violent political rhetoric, nor have they been the ones calling for civil war and threatening violence if the election does not go their way.  

Perhaps the only good news is that Trump chose an equally irreputable and deplorable individual as a running mate.  

Folks, this is all gross injustice.  It's not coincidental.  This country is headed for chaos.  The enforcement of the law has been taken away from us.  Our constitutional rights are next.  And we better wake up now, stand up and do whatever we can do to make sure this country remains a Constitutional democracy under the rule of law.  

A Call to Step Forward Now!  

Here's what I'm asking.  

Whether this has all been orchesstrated somewhere, or it does happen to be a series of random occurrences, the time is short and the options we have at our disposal are a major and massive show of support for the President's re-election.  It is unfathomable, given the seriousness with which our party leadership has taken the Trump threat, that anyone in that group is preparing for a Trump presidency, conceding that American democracy is over.  They need to hear from us in massive numbers.  

And if there is anyone still not convinced that the direction we must now go, to support President Biden and assure his re-election, along with Democratic majorities in both Houses, is not the way to go, please step aside, and keep your opinions to yourself.  We'll appreciate your vote, if you're still a Democrat, but if you're not going to be supportive, please be silent. 

Get online, use social media, go to the call-in shows.  I've watched, this week, as the bad news piled up, so did the line of callers waiting to get on the local political talk shows that are run by progressives.  I've managed to get into a few conservative shows, and get some digs in before getting cut off, especially those aimed at a local audience.  And it may be old fashioned, but letters to the editor still get printed in a lot of newspapers.  

Technology has helped in many ways, so those who live in blue states can help the phone bank and calling efforts of Democrats in battleground states.  I've made so many phone calls to people in Wisconsin that the algorithms on my social media are full of Wisconsin ads.  The DNC sends frequent texts of opportunities to help.  So please do!  

I've been blogging on politics here since 2020.  I'm not after money, or a viral post or a huge audience.  I want to help Democrats win political office.  We've built up a monthly readership of between 2,000 and 3,000 people.  And I will continue to blog, pointing out aspects of this abberation that should get people's attention.  I've had people tell me that reading some of what I've written, especially about how this has corrupted the conservative church in America, has helped them see the light, so to speak.

Whatever you are committing to do, it must be now!  Are you with me?  We must put a stop to this slide toward despotism.  It's time.  We can wait no longer.  

Reflections After Some Really Bad News For Our Country

"The country is in chaos."  

That's been an ongoing theme of political and religious conservatives that has been used to characterize their view of how things are going politically when Democrats have control of the government.  Regardless of reality, the media bubbles and silos they've created enable them to use this theme and imply that because there's a Democrat in the White House, life cannot be good.  Crime must be up, there are drugs and alcoholism everywhere, the economy is in a shanbles because prices are high, immorality is everywhere, and the whole country is going to hell in a handbasket.  

I'm certain that this was the theme in countless churches across the country yesterday, in the wake of the assassination attempt at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.  It's a theme that generally emphasizes impressions, ignores facts and looks at reality only from a conservative political perspective, influenced heavily by a conservative, Evangelical religious perspective.  Here's just another example of a world gone crazy because America no longer has a government that is "faith friendly," according to them, and that is becoming increasingly hostile to the morals and values of the good old days.  

As far as yesterday goes, that ignores the fact that this shooting took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, a county where local law enforcement is very much in sympathy with the Trump, MAGA cult, and where everyone has a gun and there's no restrictions on obtaining or owning one is the law.  So how is it, in the middle of a place like that, a 20 year old, just two years out of high school, connected to a very conservative gun ownership club, apparently climbed a building in plain sight of the open arena where Trump was speaking, and got off two shots from a high powered assault rifle that was legally purchased by his father?  

It also ignores the fact that right wing Evangelical Christianity in America is in chaos.  I was raised Southern Baptist, and have been involved in the ministry activity of a local, conservative, Evangelical church for most of my life, sometimes vocationally.  I've seen the emphasis shift in the preaching and in the leadership of churches, as the Christian gospel found in scriptures Evangelicals claim are inerrant and infallible, is set aside in favor of political themes.  I've watched as the core values of the gospel, things like turning the other cheek, loving your neighbor, loving your enemies and becoming sons of God by being peacemakers, have given way to militant themes.  I've seen churches make the transition from claiming dependence on spiritual power through the Holy Spirit, to advocating for political power to achieve their own ends.  

And it has had an impact on the church.  The denomination in which I was raised, the Southern Baptist Convention, has seen a membership decline of 25% since Trump took office in 2016.  That is no coincidence, and the numbers don't lie.  The annual reports to the convention have reflected membership losses of more than 400,000 in just a single year.  Leadership has tried to explain this away by widely conflicting reasoning, but numbers don't lie.  And while they are loathe to attribute the loss to the increasing political intrusion of godless, worldly Trumpism into the church, along with a growing influence of white supremacy and Christian nationalism, if you ask the people who are leaving, that's what they'll tell you about why they're going.  

Jesus' Sermon on the Mount has been attacked by Trumpers and characterizes as "liberal talking points,"  They particularly find "turn the other cheek" to be deplorable, something that gets them nowhere in their world of money and corporate greed.  "Liberal talking points" is the term some church members have used to describe sermons based on the Beatitudes, the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus outlines the values of the Christian gospel.  Humility, mourning the lack of righeousness, and peacemaking are "woke" values.  And I can tell you that this shift away from the preaching of the gospel, as much as some have tried to hide it or couch it in different terms, is visible, along with the anger and advocacy for violence that is a clear indicator of the presence of a false gospel having intruded into conservative American Christianity.  

Investing Partisan Political Power Has Corrupted the Judiciary Branch

The federal judiciary and the justice system have also fallen victim to a similar intrusion, and displacement of trust, honesty and what were core American values with deceit, subversion and the partisan use of judicial power to get around the will of "we, the people," as expressed in election results in this Constitutional Democracy.  Republicans have been aiming at control of the court system since they realized, when President Clinton defeated George W. Bush in 1992, that their legislative power would be limited.  

One of the biggest turning points in this fight was Mitch McConnell's denial of President Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the court, based on its being "too close to the election."  But the expectation of those appointed to the federal bench, to be as partisan in their rulings as possible, and to do favors for the President who appointed them, is a practice unique to Trump.  

Groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Coalition have long been making lists of candidates for the judiciary out of conservative law schools operated by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and from Catholic institutions that are influenced by right wing political groups within the church.  Historically, the Catholic church has been very adept at using political influence to enforce dogma and church practices, and to figure out how to channel tax dollars into their schools so it's not a surprise that five of the six conservative justices on the court are Catholic.  

The Country is in Chaos, and Has Been Headed That Way for a While Now

Under President George W. Bush, attempts were made to divide up the assets of the United States govenrnment and sell them off to the highest corporate bidders, to "privatize" operations and services and give control of everything to the billionare class.  Fortunately, a recession, caused by Bush's disastrous economic policies, got a Democratic Congress elected to put a stop to the corporate takeover of goverment, in time to keep Social Security from being privatized and bankrupted by the profiteers.  

Politically, what kicked over the can, so to speak. was the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency.  This election, in 2008, was, incredibly, the first opening up of government to a segment of the American population that had been excluded and shut out for the entire existence of the nation.  I lived in Texas at the time and I can say, from observation, that I've never seen people get so furious, enraged, and have their perspective completely distorted by their bitterness, over the fact that a black man was going to be President of the United States.  

Somewhere in that period of time, amid all of the vitriol being spewed and hatred being displayed, the core group of white, Evangelical Christian leadership and their followers lost their salvation.  I was there, and I saw it, in the church.  An anger and resentment unlike anything I've ever witnessed boiled up and for many Christian pastors and church leaders, that justified stepping outside of the boundaries of the principles, values and morality of the Christian gospel to engage in a culture war that based itself on distored interpretations of Old Testament passages that led most of American Evangelical Christianity down the short path to apostasy. 

And let's not forget that the instigator, the man at the bottom of the incitement of the vitriolic, racist hatred that blew up in an explosion when President Obama took the oath of office, was Donald J. Trump.  This is the man who, without any evidence whatsoever, declared that President Obama was not legitimate because he was not a "natural born American citizen," but that he was actually born in Kenya.  That's not all of the vitriolic rhetoric that Trump spewed.  But that's the point we can identify when he became the focal point of the cult of racists and bigots that would become his political base.  

It's Unfathomable, But it is the Political Reality of Our Time 

It took just four years of a Trump Presidency to set the country up for the dissolution of its democracy and the destruction of its Constitution.  But this is where we are.  

Personally, I try to be as optimistic as I can be, defending the trust I've placed in certain institutions of society.  I was raised Southern Baptist, and involvement in the ministry activities of a local church has been a huge part of my life.  But I watched all of that come apart, not because of any specific event, but because, over time, the priorities of the church shifted visibly as reflecting the characteristics of the Christian gospel became "liberal talking points" and "wokeness," and things like turning the other cheek, loving one's enemies and becoming the sons of God through peacemaking gave way to sharp political rhetoric, characterizing Democrats as evil and worldly, and Republicans as the bearers of revival.  

But Trumpism has brought no revival.  On the contrary, it has split the church, causing an exodus of millions from congregations where the gospel has been replaced by extremist right wing politics.  The Southern Baptist Convention has lost 25% of its total membership in less than a decade since 2016, and while their leadership blames it on everything else, and is loathe to admit that the influence of extremist right wing politics has pushed faithful people ou the door, the numbers do not lie.  

And here we are, today, the day after an assassination attempt on the former President, by a 20 year old whose father walked into a gun shop and bought the AR-15 rifle capable of firing long distances, without any restrictions, under Republican-sponsored gun laws.  Are we living in chaos, when anyone can purchase assault rifles, not for the purpose of hunting deer, but for killing people?  What message does that send to our society?  

Yes, Our Country is in Chaos

We've just seen six members of the Supreme Court do what George Washington warned us about in his farewell address as he stepped down from the Presidency.  They are no longer administering justice and interpreting the law, they are inventing precedent and playing politics, and they know they suffer no consequences because they have a lifetime appointment, given in a day when trust in the honesty and integrity of judges was a requirement to serve.  But we've just seen six justices demonstrate that they have no integrity and are not honest.  Two of them should have never been put on the court, because the lifestyle they lived, and their previous behavior, should have disqualified them from service. But hypocritical Republicans, more interested in power and influence than in morals or character, did appoint them.  

And now, these judges are using their political power to protect a criminal former President from justice.   Today, Aileen Cannon dropped the whole documents case, not because it had no merit, but on a technicality that will eventually wind up at the Supreme Court to interpret.  The fact that Cannon, a Trump appointee, ever was given jurisdiction over this case looks like a plan to me.  Trump's judicial appointments are all corrupt, in that they carry the expectation that the judges will not rule based on law, but based on what is favorable to Trump.  

Did anyone really believe that any of the more than 90 criminal indictments against Trump, all based on evidence, would ever come to trial?  Only the case in Manhattan, which fell outside the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, reached a verdict, and even that is being challenged by the corrupt Supreme Court ruling on a concept of presidential immunity that never existed until they established it now.  I don't expect that the case against Trump for inciting the January 6th insurrection against the Capitol will ever see the light of day.  

And with all of this court corruption going on, we have the Democratic party splintering over whether or not Joe Biden has the stamina to run for a second term.  Look at this from my perspective, just an ordinary, everyday, professional wage earner, living largely from paycheck to paycheck, about to retire on Social Security and a very small pension.  I must ask this question.  How seriously are Democrats taking Trump as an existential threat to our democracy?  That's been the theme since his attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.  But elevating a debate over the fitness of the prospective Democratic nominee in the middle of this chaos is inexcusable.  

I, for one, do not believe that Trump can gather enough support to win the 2024 election unless too many good people stay home and don't vote.  He's not winning any new voters.  And it looks like we will have to fight more than just to get people to the ballot box.  I have a feeling, with all of the current chaos, that once the votes are counted, if Biden comes out to be the winner of the electoral vote, there will be all kinds of court challenges, certification delays in red states or by Republican governors, and attempts to turn the vote the other way.  So what I'm seeing now, is not encouraging when it comes to holding on to American democracy.  There's a lot of money going into defeating it.  

I am fighting back with what I have.  I'm contributing, and I'm setting aside everything I can, including gathering the change I find in my car, to give more.  I'm calling to try and motivate people to register.  That's been encouraging because we have seen an increase in Democratic party voter registrations where we are working, in a swing state, and that's very important, as getting them to the polls in November will also be.  I will continue to post here.  We see about 2,500 monthly readers, not a huge number, some conservatives because of the comments I get, many deleted because of their inappropriate language.  But we're here and we will continue to advocate for what is right, and call out what is wrong.  

And maybe, just maybe, all of this chaos, and all of the corruption, will stop the apathy and get people up off their rear ends in order to save something they've taken for granted all of their lives, their personal freedoms and our country's constitutional democracy.  We are fighting against a whole array of obstacles, including the potential disenfranchisement of votes cast by people supporting the President, and Democratic party candidates for office, especially in red states.  This is all we've got left.   

America's Values Have Changed Considerably Since the Constitution was Ratified

George Washington, in his farewell address, warned Americans about the dangers associated with partisan politics. He, like all of the other founders, considered parties to be one of the drawbacks of republican government.  The Constitution which they drafted set up a government with a balance dependent on separation of powers, expected, equal accountability that was designed to avoid factionalism and the extremes that came with it.  

There had already been examples of regional prejudices and protection of special interests had led to violence.  This was one of the dangers of the formation of political parties Washington warned about, along with the fact that partisan interests, in a representative government, could lead to the election of representatives of the people who represented only their own special interests, leaving opposition groups without a voice in government.  He saw factional strife as potential development of despotism. 

"Natural to party dissention, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism," he wrote.  "But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.  The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual."  

His warning was based on his observation of the factionalism that had already developed in Congress, starting around 1793, between "Federalists," an informal group who supported the ratification of the Constitution, and the "anti-Federalists," who opposed it.  Two men who served in Washington's cabinet, including Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, along with James Madison, an ally of Washington and member of Congress, are the main players in the development of political factions in American government.  

Washington's warnings came from experience.  During his presidency, he actually led federal troops to put down what was known as the "Whiskey Rebellion" over a tax placed on the sale of whiskey.  Federal officals attempting to collect the tax were intimidated and attacked, and at one point, an organized mob was formed in Western Pennsylvania, though it dissipated before the federal troops arrived.  

Unfortunately, this was a lesson that has been left unlearned from history.  

Who Could Ever Have Imagined? 

But who could have imagined that a criminal, a man who has been a business fraud, pathological liar, and sexual deviant and rapist, for most of his adult life, could ascend to the Presidency on the votes of the people, though it was the irregularity and undemocratic Electoral College that got him there?  The founders didn't have any forethought of that happening.  But here we are.  The predictions prior to his election to office, that he would become a corrupt despot, and use the power of the Presidency for his own self-serving benefit came true in his first few months in office.  

In fact, he was already deeply engaged in corruption, according to the Mueller Report, prior to his election, as he surrounded himself with criminals who had no respect for the law, and who had, because of their power and influence, evaded arrest and conviction.  One is in prison now, because he couldn't help himself from committing crimes even after he was pardoned.  The others are out, only because Trump pardoned them.  

Up until the latter half of this century, government in America worked largely because even though there was a partisan and regional divide created as a result of multiple social, economic and political fault lines, in order to accomplish things on behalf of the people, compromise and working out differences was a requirement.  That's gone now, thanks to the influence of extremists in the media, such as Rush Limbaugh, who advocated for killing compromise in order to rig the system so that one side always gets its way, and the other side, which is accorded no respect because it thinks differently, is denied the benefit of government of, by and for the people.  

What's Really Wrong with This Country?  

What's really wrong is that we have two Americas.  The system that has produced the current crisis we are facing, one which could open the door to a true despot ending our freedoms and taking over as dictator, deals with people on different levels.  

If you are a regular, wage-earning, working American, with no appreciable wealth or the influence that comes with it, you are subject to the law.  If you are arrested and indicted for a crime, you do not have the means to access legal services which can maniulate the loopholes in the system, or gain the favor of judges, that will allow you to put off, delay, obfuscate, have charges reduced or eliminated, or appeal a case where the trial was a mess of incompetent bungling by attorneys interested only in their paycheck.  

If you are wealthy, you already have law enforcement and officials in the justice system who will defer to your requests and needs.  You can afford competent attorneys whose specialty is subverting and cheating the law, making deals, using insider information and playing on a system of mutual back-scratching that will lead to reduced charges and sentences, or to buying juries to get acquittals.  

We saw what happened to mountains of evidence, published in a volume over 500 pages in length, of collusion and cheating done in order to win the 2016 election by Trump and his cronies.  He appointed one attorney general who was a little too old fashioned and thought the justice department was to serve the American people, not the President, so he fired him and hired Bill Barr, known for his ability to be corrupted, to bury the cases and never let them see the light of day.  He had a complicit Congress at the time, which is another thing desperately wrong with this country, and so high crimes and misdemeanors among the worst ever committed by a sitting president were ignored.  

We are also now seeing what happens when the same influences are brought to bear on a justice department controlled by Democrats.  A full congressional investigation, mountains of evidence presented, making the case for an easy and swift DOJ prosecution, took more than a year to get moving, have a special counsel appointed, launch an investigation impeded by slow moving action from the department, and stalled long enough to give our corrupt Supreme Court a chance to kill it altogether by a ruling on immunity that has Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton and the rest of the founders rolling over in their graves.  

Our justice and legal systems run on money, not justice.  And that's one thing that's wrong with this country.  Values have changed.  The difference between "wrong" and "right" is no longer discernable.  

What Else is Wrong?  We're Ignorant and Uneducated

A strong public education system, providing an educated electorate, was supposed to be one of the keys to preserving a Constitutional democracy.  That's what those who founded American public education believed.  In fact, one of those founders, John Dewey, actually believed that education done right could actually be an agent for positive social change, raising the educational level of the population, helping them have the tools necessary to get better jobs with better pay, and have the critical thinking skills and discernment necessary to make good decisions that have a positive effect on their future.  

But public education has also been one of those things that, because of economic and social inequity, has become beneficial only to those who have the wealth and the ability to access the better schools, while those who live in more impoverished communities have difficulty finding the funds to provide quality education, can't keep good teachers, or administrators, and do not share in the benefits of public education.  In the years since the 1980's, since education is a business that does not provide a profit motive, but costs taxpayer dollars, even the good schools have seen the quality of education decline and fall rapidly, as budget cuts, low teacher pay and lack of resources, thanks to Republican budget cuts.  

It is no coincidence that the states with the most abysmal public school perforamce are in red states.  ALL of them.  

And because of these GOP budget cuts, schools have had to focus on a more technical, skills based education than on one rich in history, sociology, civics and government.  The minimum standards to pass courses in Constitution and history, which some states actually do enforce, have declined significantly since the Reagan administration.  So we have a lot of people out there who are prone to join cults like MAGA, because they don't know any better and have no ability to discern the information that gets thrown at them on social media or from more extremist media outlets.  

Here's Where we Are

On one side, we have a current sitting President whose accomplishments in his first term have included economic policy that has not only prevented recession, but increased the GNP, dropped unemployment to its lowest level since the 60's.  His policy mediated the recovery from the COVID epidemic that was grossly mishandled by his predecessor, and his legislative initiatives have kept inflation from being much worse than it could have been, and have brought it back to reasonable levels.  However, on the economic prosperity we have experienced, average wages have increased in amounts exceeding inflation rates.  And that's a fact that can't be denied.  

The sitting President restored the world's confidence in the United States as its leading democratic military and economic power.  He brought NATO back together and strengthened it in the teeth of Russian opposition.  He successfully got the United States out of one of its costliest wars ever, in Afghanistan, rescuing over 100,000 Americans and Afghans in a matter of a few days through an airlift while his predecessor seemed content to continue spending billions on futility and undermined the democratically elected government by dealing directly with the Taliban.  

There's no comparison in terms of the character and morality required to be a leader, something that Evangelicals once claimed was more important that the issues, between Joe Biden and his opponent, a multiple-bankrupted, adulterous womanizer, a convicted rapist and fraudulent business operator, an election cheat and a pathological liar.  And on top of that, an opponent whose term in office was rated as the worst in all of American history by a group of respected, non-partisan Presidential scholars.  

His opponent has been convicted of rape in a civil court, and convicted on 34 counts of felony fraud in a scheme to cover up his affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and raising an infant son.  He has also been indicted on multiple other felonies related to inciting insurrection against the United States and to the theft of classified documents related directly to national security, including the unauthorized showing of the documents to people without security clearance.  He sold the country's diplomacy out with his cowering to Putin and to Kim Jong Un, so he can get advantages in business deals in their countries.  

This shouldn't be close.  It is, because we are educationally, economically and spiritually incapable of dealing with it.  And the real question is, can it ever be fixed?  

Evangelicals Are Directly Connected to Project 2025: It's Part of Their Christian Nationalist Vision for the United States

The Democratic Party has been subjected to the criticism that it is the party of "no religion," while the GOP claims itself to be the "party of God."  And while that is absolutely false, it is a fact that conservative, Evangelical Christians have an outsized influence over the Republican party because they have planned and plotted since the days of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Robison, Ralph Reed, the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition to infuse themselves and their leaders into the party's leadership, to use it as a vehicle for transforming the United States into a Christian theocracy that they run on their terms.  

Those Democrats who have either never paid much attention to religious beliefs, or who have abandoned it after being raised in it and coming to the conclusion that it was not what it claimed to be, and did not "save their soul," should probably make themselves very familiar with the political movement that has developed out of this infiltration and blending of Evangelicalism with Republicanism that has created an extremist movement with the intention of destroying the America that the founders established when they wrote and ratified the Constitution.  It is a movement which has effectively abandoned the Christian gospel but which still uses terminology and methodology lifted from it, but distorted and interpreted in a way that would not be recognizable to Jesus or his apostles who preached it and established the Christian church.  

They've made a deal with the devil when it comes to Trump.  They have a Christian nationalist agenda, they want the power and control over people's lives that they do not now have, and they see him as a useful tool in achieving their goal, and they couldn't care less whether he's one of them or not, because being Christian is just a means to an end for them, as well.  Their ends are the wealth that comes from the power of control over people's lives.  That's quite visible in the fact that many of the leaders of churches and movements within Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity who are the biggest supporters of a Christian nationalist agenda run their churches in exactly that way, to direct the wealth into their own pockets without accountability and to have control over the congregations of people who bow at their feet and surrender their loyalty.  

For his part, Trump, who openly denies the Evangelical version of Christian conversion by claiming he has never done anything requiring God's forgiveness, gets the support of Evangelical leaders, who have dictatorial and ideological control over their congregations, and gets their endorsement and votes.  These Evangelical leaders think that implementing this draconian plan, which violates every American's constitutional guarantees of individual freedom as well as a good portion of the biblical doctrine and theology of the Christian church, will bring about "revival" that will push more people into their churches, increasing their power and their wealth, including the personal fortunes that most of them have amassed at the expense of the members of their churches.

And that greed, more than anything else, is their common bond with Trump.  Obtaining it means that the same rules which they use to control their flock do not apply to themselves.

But the use of political power has never brought about revival to the Christian church.  Not ever at any point in its entire history.  What the connection between church and state does is corrupt the church, replacing the authority of scriptural teaching with the state's bending and twisting it to use for its own political purposes.  That is the entire history of Christianity, from its founding, right up to the present.  Political gain and personal prosperity become the focus of church leadership that is put in place because of its concession to state control, not because of its commitment to Jesus or its dependence on God.  And this brand of Christian nationalism, developed by the merger of extremist right wing politics with Christian fundamentalism and Charismatic "spiritualism", corrupts and defies the Christian gospel of Christ just like every other political corruption of the Christian church has done.  

Jesus himself, whose life and teaching are the criteria by which all of the rest of the Christian gospel, and the Bible, are to be interpreted, deliberately avoided creating a theocratic relationship with any country, nation, or political entity, because at the core of Christian theology, conversion is a matter of individual, not collective, conscience.  And America's founding fathers, as a direct result of their own experience with failed, oppressive, and manipulated state churches, deliberately intended to set Americans free from imposed, state mandated Christianity.  Both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson made this very clear, directly addressing the issue and proposing what eventually became complete religious liberty and what Jefferson described as a "wall of separation" between church and state.   

Project 2025 breaks down that wall by using the state to enforce religious principles and doctrine by law.  It makes the government, rather than the church, the primary vehicle of Christian evangelism, though the consequences for exercising personal religious liberty are anti-Christian in their execution.  Christianity that is enforced by punitive consequences of the law, not by conviction of conscience, is not Christianity.  

Examining those individuals connected to the Heritage Foundation and what the Evangelical Christianity from which they have emerged actually looks like, it is also pretty easy to conclude that a Christian spiritual revival is the furthest thing from their own intentions.  These are people who have made themselves fabulously wealthy off their peddling of the Christian gospel and their salesmanship of power and "bigness" and Trump is a useful and willing politician in their scheme to get the wealth and power they are after.  

There's very little, if anything, in their intentions, methodology, or means of operating their churches that resembles the Christian gospel or that is consistent with its core principles and values.  Spiritual power is imparted to individual Christians, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is the result of conversion and a covenant agreement between God and the Christian and requires no pastor or church leader to mediate, control or dictate practice.  Likewise, American idealism, made very clear from the writings, speeches and eventual drafting and ratification of the Constitution by the founding fathers, also has as its core value the empowerment of the people and the protection of individual, "God-given" rights, which they identified as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

There is absolutely nothing in the written documentation of Project 2025 that remotely resembles either Biblical Christianity or American idealism.  And those who promote it as the major component of the platform of their political party should be flatly and absolutely rejected as unAmerican, unpatriotic and anti-Christian.  That includes the Heritage Foundation and Donald Trump.  Any church or Christian leader who does not unequivocally denounce and reject this brand of politics, and this politician, is being unfaithful to the Christian gospel.

 

Are Democrats "Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory"?

There's not any way to make the post-debate panic in the Democratic party look like anything but a party in disarray.  Former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who served on the January 6th committee in the House and who has endorsed President Biden's re-election campaign has tried to put a positive spin on the confusion and chaos by saying that all of the discussion about Biden getting out of the race is a sign that Democrats appreciate the opinions of party constituents, while with Republicans, they kick the dissenters out of the tribe.  And he should know.  

But President Biden's debate performance, two weeks ago today, had absolutely no effect on his polling numbers.  In fact, depending on which set of polls a media source selectively decides to cite, he either gained ground and is leading in most of the battleground states, or he didn't appear to move the needle much.  It seems that nothing much is moving the poll number needle, which indicates to me some shenanigans going on behind the scenes with pollsters, paid by corporate interests, trying to make it look like President Biden is headed for defeat, in order to give Trump as much momentum as possible.  

Up to this point, no Democrat who carries any consequential weight of reputation in the party has pushed for the President to stop his campaign and let someone else run.  A scattered few members of Congress, unrecognizeable by reputation, are insisting that he step down.  The only Senator who got close, Mark Warner, of Virginia, backed away from the edge.  Even Joe Manchin has come out and said that re-electing President Biden is the best thing for the country. 

It's the media that keeps pushing this, mostly because they like the ratings they get when there's sensational news to report.  So they keep pushing this story to the top of the pile, beating a dead horse, because no matter how shrill they get or whiny they become, President Biden has been elected as the party's nominee by the over 14 million people who voted for him in the primaries.  It is his decision alone.  Those Democrats who have been hunted down to make comments are publicity seekers, and their continued presence in the media, which helps keep this chaos going, betrays their priorities.  It's their own power they're protecting, they don't care about the threat that Trump poses to American Constitutional Democracy.  If they'd say "NO!" to the interviews, this would dry up fast. 

And while the idea of allowing all of the factions to have their say is very much a Democratic party value, the value of this conversation has run its course.  Take a hint from the people, who have poured millions of dollars into his campaign post-debate, setting records in terms of both cash received and number of donors providing it.  There's a message in that, coming from the people who support this President the most.  

Stop it!  

Reality Check:  This is What the President is Running Against 

It's craziness like this that gives Trump enough support, and alters the course of the election, making his candidacy viable.  There's a serious political dysfunction going on in this country that has brought us to the point where a corrupt, now convicted felon, former failed President who tried to subvert the Constitution and steal an election he lost by inciting a mob to attack the Capitol while Congress was in session, has the kind of apparent political support that he does, with the backing of the Republican party.  Put this same set of circumstances into the mix in any other election in this country's recent history, and it would be seen as a coming landslide for the Democrats across the board, from the White House through Congress to the state houses.  It should be that now. 

So someone please explain to me why it isn't?  

Much of it is that the media no longer operates like a free press, but has divided into camps with special interests.  It's made up of outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, that are propaganda mouthpieces for the conservative extremists, or the major networks, including CNN, that survive as corporate interests, with those owners more interested in the bottom profit line than in reporting the truth.  That leaves the independent media, a small group without the resources to reach large audiences.  That's part of the problem.  

But the other part of it is that Democrats are having their traditional difficulty with their ability to grasp, control, and publicize the narrative, and with their traditional habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  We, as a party, tend to make mistakes at the most inopportune moments, squander advantages like all of the political negatives Trump keeps on giving us, the latest being his 34 felony convictions, his own miserable debate performance full of lies, his gift of three of the six most corrupt, biased, partisan Supreme Court justices in history, his core Evangelical constituency's producing of a platform they call Project 2025, a draconian set of promises that will prove incredibly unpopular, and his name appearing on the Jeffrey Epstein contact list multiple times.  

Over the top of all of that, some Democrats are working hard to direct the attention of voters away from all of those negatives, and focus it on a ridiculous and unnecessary crisis of their own making, in their own party.  

We've already muffed messaging promoting the Biden Presidency as one of the most successful of the current century, and since the Second World War.  There are so many positives that have just been completely missed, that would be making a real difference in people's perception of this President's job performance.  The same old problem, not being able to control the narrative, has reared its ugly head.  

Now, the attention that we are getting is covering up Trump's massive trail of corruption, and focusing on what appears to be a party in disarray, fretting, fussing and fighting because, as one media source put it, "they know Biden is losing this election."  I know no such thing, but it sure doesn't look like anything else.  Once again, we've lost control of the narrative.  

Here's some evidence of what we are missing.  The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project, Made up of Presidential Historians, Ranked Trump as the "Worst President in American History."  They ranked Biden 14th.  

So someone, with a reasonable measure of common sense, who is educated, articulate, and politically experienced and savvy, please explain why this race is, at best, a dead heat, and if the polls are anywhere near accurate, why Biden is trailing?  

I'm giving sacrificially, out of social security benefits, every month, and giving up a weekend to drive to a battleground state to help register Democratic voters, and making phone calls and spending hours a week writing and promoting this blog.  

Please, can someone in the Democratic party who knows and has confidence, assure me that I am not wasting my time?