The Firing Squad is Alive in Philadelphia

Philadelphians, lock your doors. Make sure your children are inside. Stock up with food and drink and stay in your homes for the next four days. The Democratic National Convention is in town.

Even at the best of times, National Conventions are rowdy affairs. Sometimes the delegates and attendees go too far. The 1972 Republican Convention saw Nixon’s men drawing up plans to smuggle protesters onto boats, where they would find booze, drugs and prostitutes to keep them busy for a few days and prevent their attendance. It is strongly believed that Hubert Humphrey lost the 1968 Presidential election because of the events at the Chicago Convention that summer. The streets of Chicago became no-go areas as Democrats clashed with police. Mayor Daly, a prime law and order mover, rubbed his hands in the manner of Pontius Pilate abrogating responsibility as hundreds of delegates were arrested and taken to jail.

Last night, the Democrat Convention opened with a disabled person speaking about Trump and his disrespect of a disabled journalist. A video of Trump, waving his arms and speaking like a demented idiot, was shown. No able bodied person could feel other than hurt and embarrassment for disabled people. The speech was followed, not by more speakers criticising the Republican nominee but by a long delay until an elderly Paul Simon came on stage to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water. His voice has seen better times. During the wait, there was a demonstration by Bernie Sanders supporters, the liveliest segment thus far.

The DNC had issued an apology yesterday over contents of leaked emails, indicating that senior staffers openly preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders during the primaries. Bern fans were angry and they let it show. On Monday afternoon, Sanders tried to mollify the situation by sending his delegates an urgent email and his supporters an equally urgent text, asking them to tone down displays of dissatisfaction with the DNC. His former campaign team did the same. It didn’t work.

I went to bed long before Sanders spoke to the Convention. It seems he had some success in delivering the “Unite Behind Hillary” message but members of the Democratic establishment must have been scared that even Bernie Sanders had difficulties controlling his supporters. For the Feel the Berners, the revolution is evidently still happening and no one can convince them otherwise.

 

Presently, I have a mental image of the Democratic Party. They are standing as a firing squad, facing each other in a circle. We'll have to see how the rest of the week pans out and how many Democrats are left standing on Friday.

 

 

 

The November Presidential Election: The Bottom of the Ticket

The relative unimportance of the vice presidency was probably best expressed by John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s choice in the 1932 and 1936 elections. Garner described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Some VPs have experienced the viciousness of the comedy circuit and the media. Dan Quayle was described as the man who was a heartbeat away from a heartbeat. Spiro Agnew was vilified for his extreme views even before he was caught up in a financial scandal, accepting bribes brought to him in brown paper bags in his EOB office.

The choice of a Vice President is usually a non-event. It often gets no more than one news cycle. This year, the media is paying greater attention. Perhaps this arises because of the unpopularity of both candidates at the top of the ticket. Maybe there is genuine interest in how the ticket will be balanced, for example John Kennedy from the industrial North East chose Southerner Lyndon Johnson. This year, the choices have shown a deep divide between the political parties. Whilst Mike Pence of Indiana and Tim Kaine of Virginia might seem to be cut from the same establishment cloth, this is not the case.

Pence, the Governor of Indiana, had twelve years’ experience in the House of Representatives. He consistently advocated right wing causes.  He had no interest in reaching across the aisle. He is Tea Party, having chaired the movement. As Governor, he signed into law a religious freedom bill which protected businesses discriminating against LGTG employees. He wants to end abortion rights enshrined in Roe v Wade. He is backed by the notorious Koch brothers’ conservative network. Trump chose Pence because he, Trump, needs to appease the base of the Republican Party. Pence speaks their deep right-wing language.

In contrast, Kaine has a crossover appeal. In his state, he is supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Since Nixon’s days, Virginia has mostly been a solid Republican state. Kaine, as Virginia’s governor and now as U S Senator, has demonstrated how Democrats can win in the southern states. Kaine is a Catholic, he spent time as a missionary and he is fluent in Spanish, a plus for the Latino community. Whilst he is personally opposed to abortion, he supports a woman’s right to choose. As Governor, he allowed eleven executions to proceed, yet he enjoys the worst rating from the National Rifle Association.

If, like Trump, Mrs Clinton felt the need to appease her party base, she would have chosen Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts US Senator who most echoed Bernie Sanders, or Tom Perez, the Labour Secretary who would have been the first Latino on a major presidential ticket. Instead, the choice of Kaine is indicative that Mrs Clinton intends to fight in Republican states where she is already polling well. Another benefit with Kaine is his ability to expose a glaring weakness on the opposing ticket, namely knowledge of national security and international affairs. Kaine served on Senate committees overseeing armed services and foreign relations.

There are any number of criteria which determines a VP choice. How will the President and VP work together? Kaine is a former Senate colleague of Mrs Clinton with a similar temperament. He will surely fit comfortably into her White House team. In contrast, Trump chose Pence despite hardly knowing him, to represent what he isn’t in terms of temperament and worldview. You could say that one choice is carefully considered for the future, the other glibly expedient.

I believe the most important question a presidential nominee must ask in making the choice of VP is “what if I die?” Mrs Clinton seems to have followed this route. Mr Trump probably believes he is immortal!

The Cleveland Convention: Harking Back to the Old Days.

I am too young to remember the days when National Party Conventions became a battleground. Rival factions would fight for their candidate, staging rowdy demonstrations on the floor whilst wheeling and dealing in the back rooms. It was not unusual to have more than 100 ballots before an announcement was made about “the next president of the United States.”

These days, Conventions are stage-managed affairs, choreographed to the nth degree, planned so that prime-time television will catch the important, tear-jerking moments as supporters of the presumptive candidate sing his or her praises. Gone are the days, such as 1948, when the Democratic Convention was delayed so much that the announcement of Truman’s candidacy came too late to be covered by national television.

And then came Cleveland, Ohio, the city chosen for this year’s Republican National Convention. According to The Sunday Times and The Huff Post, Donald Trump took upon himself and his people the task of organising the Convention there. If so, and if he wins the November election, America may well be in the hands of someone whose attention to detail needs much improvement.

Not all the clusterfucks can land at The Donald’s door. The speech given by his wife plagiarised Michelle Obama’s address eight years ago. However, instead of putting the collective hands up to being found out, Trump’s team claimed innocence for two days before an adviser claimed responsibility and apologised. Now, I don’t care what Mrs Trump does. She is not standing for election. However, the story was the lead on two news cycles. The way the problem was so poorly handled gives cause for concern if Trump is in the Oval Office when things go wrong.

More from a London heat wave in the small hours than the desire to watch television, I saw chunks of the Convention’s proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday night. I am still waiting to hear the first policy proposal. Instead, Trump children have praised “Dad” to the heights, just for doing what most fathers do for their children. Other offerings are on the lines that Donald is to be trusted. He has no governing track record on which he can be judged.

Governor Christie decided to become prosecutor and judge on Hillary Clinton, listing factually incorrect indictments and encouraging those present in the auditorium to chant, “lock her up.” For “Bridgegate” Christie, this was king size hypocrisy. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused both Clinton and Obama for failing to take action against Islamic terrorists, detailing all global outrages since 9/11. Did he mention that for seven years, a Republican was in the White House? Did he relate the efforts by Congress to derail initiatives on curbing domestic terrorism through gun control? Did he praise the removal of Obama Bin Laden? Mr Gingrich doesn’t feel the need for a balanced argument.

Last night, Ted Cruz, the last of Trump’s sixteen opponents to bite the dust, spoke to the Convention. The audience did not like what he said because he didn’t endorse The Donald. He got shouted down. Good to know that the Republicans are the Party of the Second Amendment but not the First!

It is worthy of comment that neither Mitt Romney nor John McCain, the man Trump accused of failure for being captured by the North Vietnamese, has attended the Convention. Nor have the last two Republican presidents. Why did they not come?

I know there is fear amongst a number of my American friends and relatives that Trump will be a Brexit revisited. But was Brexit just an emotional vote against elites who govern remotely from voters and a desire to curb immigration? It could not have been the former as the vote was too close. As to the latter, this is a key Trump sound-bite but could he succeed on this issue alone?

Next week, the Democrats have their say. I hope we will hear policy initiatives as well as Trump-bashing. I suspect we will hear a lot about Trump University, bankruptcies, Muslim-phobia, sexual assault allegations, Trump’s belief about shooting people on 5^th Avenue and the like. However, while Trump-bashing might appeal to the Democratic faithful, it isn’t anywhere near enough for Mrs Clinton to win the election. She needs to be positive, emphasising what is good about America and how she will build on it.

Whatever the result of the presidential election, for me the important contest is Congress. Hillary needs to keep an eye on winning the Senate, a possibility, as well as the House, an outside chance, and to gear her campaign to these goals. There is little point in her winning the White House if she gets stymied by Congress. But there is always the goal of Keeping Trump out, even if Congress stays Republican.

Slaughter in Dallas: What Next?

In this calendar year, police throughout America have killed 506 citizens. The proportion of blacks amongst the dead is more than double their percentage of the population. Is it any wonder that America’s black citizens continue to feel they are not treated the same as whites?  This week’s killings in Baton Rouge and St. Paul appear evidence of racism, as blacks were killed by white police over-reacting to perceived black danger. But what of Dallas? Five policemen were gunned down by a black, Micah Johnson, who expressed retaliatory anger in the desire to kill whites. None of these killings can be justified on any reasonable test.

The question arises, what will the President do about this glut of killings? Next week, the President will visit Dallas to support police officers and communities and “to try to bring people together to support police officers and communities in an effort to seek common ground by discussing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.” Mr Obama’s decision was announced as a Black Lives Matter peaceful demonstrations took place, objecting to the use of excessive force by police, in cities including Baltimore, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Mr Obama said all Americans should be concerned about frequent killings of black men by police. “The Dallas police feel the losses to core and we grieve with them,” he said though he offered neither solutions nor remedies.

Conservatives were quick to accuse the President of having blood on his hands when he urged white Americans to take seriously the Black Lives Matter grievances over racism in the criminal justice system. He was sharply criticised by Heather MacDonald, a right wing author. She is a proponent of the Ferguson effect, which holds that crime has spiked since the unrest in Missouri because frontline police officers have been pushed into a retreat.

In my view, Mr Obama has struck a balance, stressing that despite legitimate concerns, American should have an “extraordinary appreciation and respect for the vast majority of police officers”, describing their job as dangerous and difficult, while characterising the Dallas shootings as “vicious, calculated and despicable.” Is this all he offers?

The President is often called “the most powerful man in the world” but it’s a fallacy. Clearly, there is a serious racial problem amongst some of America’s city police forces. Killings by police have been perpetrated in the main by city or town police forces, whose authority derives from charters given by its state. “Home Rule” for police forces is the norm, so the state can wash its hands of responsibility. Furthermore, the federal government has no right to “police” any police force or any state, city or town unless the President declares a state of emergency or a governor asks for help. I am not aware of the latter ever happening.

The President’s powers to declare an emergency are governed and restricted by The National Emergencies Act, 1976. Should the Chief Executive decide to send the National Guard to police a city, he or she would likely face massive protests from that city’s mayor, the state’s governor and in all probability the state and U.S Congress. There would be screams about breaches of separation of powers, infringement of state’s rights under the 10^th Amendment and breach of an Act of Congress. In no time, the administration would be mired in litigation. I suspect the idea of sending in the National Guard when Ferguson, Missouri was in flames tempted the President but the problems outweighed the advantages.

What of the Second Amendment rights? Unlike the Orlando outrage, citing the ridiculous “militia” argument of the Second Amendment in relation to trigger-happy policemen does not work. The police forces of America are undoubtedly part of the militia. So the National Riflemen’s Association can sleep easy. They dodged the bullet this time!

The real issue here is race. Despite an Emancipation Proclamation, numerous amendments to the Constitution, Civil Rights Acts and the like, blacks still feel they are regarded and treated as inferior by white men in police uniforms. How this problem is resolved in the short term is anyone’s guess but a few town meetings chaired by a President won’t do much.

Instead, all policemen need to be told in the clearest way that firing a gun at a civilian is the last resort and that other strategies need to be used first. If a policeman kills a civilian in circumstances where other options were available, he will be prosecuted for murder. Police officers need reminding they are the servants of all the people. Perhaps some successful prosecutions for murder will make policemen think twice before pulling a trigger. Here, the federal government can intervene by mounting the prosecutions through the federal criminal justice system.

Resolution in the medium and long term will depend on improved education, training and management in the police forces. Senior managers in every police force should be obliged by law to ensure any officer who demonstrates racism is fired on the spot. Policemen need better training in how to resolve difficult situations without resort to a gun. Maybe if the Second Amendment was interpreted as it should be, so that right of access to guns was truly restricted to “the militia” alone and not the general public, perhaps America might cease to be the gun-happy capital of the world.

Finally, there should be no such thing as a second class citizen in any modern society. I readily accept this is a difficult, deep-seated problem in America which may take generations to solve but you have to start somewhere. One day the world has to turning.

Pro-life or Pro-choice. But who is Pro-child?

George Bernard Shaw observed the Americans and the British were two peoples divided by a common language. While there is much common ground between the two nations, there are issues where we are poles apart. Americans’ attitude to guns, for example, as exemplified by the NRA, is anathema to us Brits.

Abortion is another topic where there is a gulf of disagreement. In England, abortion is legal during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. If there is a substantial risk to the woman's life or foetal abnormalities, there is no time limit on the procedure. There is also no age limit for treatment. It is a matter for the woman to choose.

There is a wide choice of abortion clinics available for pregnant women. In England, abortion has not been a ‘hot’ issue since 1967. A few years ago our politicians reconsidered whether the 24 week period should be reduced but no change was believed to be necessary. When it comes to elections or appointment of judges, abortion is not even on the English radar.

In America, clearly things are very different. Since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade, where the Pro-choice case succeeded, there have been numerous attempts, both federally and by the states who believe they have obligations to the unborn child, to limit a woman’s right to choose. Inroads have been made by the Pro-lifers over the years. Not long ago there was fear among Pro-choicers that Roe v Wade might be revisited and overruled but the pendulum has swung away.

Last week, the US Supreme Court struck down one of the harshest abortion restrictions in the country. The 5-3 ruling immediately prevented Texas from enforcing a law that would have closed all but nine of the state’s abortion clinics. The court also barred the Texas legislature from passing health measures, backed by dubious medical evidence, as a way of forcing large numbers of abortion clinics to close.

The ruling will pave the way to overturn dozens of measures in other states that restrict access to abortion clinics. Indeed, Pro-choice observers believe the ruling may be the most significant legal victory for reproductive rights advocates since the right to abortion was established in 1973.

The kernel of the issue was a two-decade old dispute over how strictly states can regulate abortion, so long as they claim to be doing so for health purposes. The Texas case began in 2013, when Republicans passed a severe set of abortion restrictions. The bill, known as House Bill 2, required abortion providers to have staff privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic and clinics had to meet expensive, hospital-like building and equipment standards. Lawmakers claimed these were critical safety measures but abortion providers argued that HB 2 was just a ploy designed to shut down clinics in large numbers.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, praised the ruling. “This fight isn’t over,” she tweeted. “The next president has to protect women’s health.” Her presumptive opponent let some of his supporters down. Despite having assuring evangelicals that he would appoint anti-abortion judges and that he cared deeply about the anti-abortion cause, Donald Trump stayed silent. Republican Conservatives made their displeasure known, skewering Trump for his silence.

Leon Wolf, the managing editor at RedState.com, a Conservative blog and news source, mocked the real estate mogul: “Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a decision propping up the abortion industry in America and giving it special rights against regulation and Donald Trump, supposed champion of the unborn, said nothing. ... Can the leader lead or must he be led on this issue? If he must be led on an issue about which he is supposedly committed, I would submit he really is not that committed to the cause.” 

At the end of the week, Trump broke his silence. Trump, who boasts of much support among Christian evangelical voters, said the decision would not have come down the way it did if he had been president. "Now if we had Scalia ... or if Scalia was replaced by me, you wouldn't have had that. Okay? It would've been the opposite." Cannot Trump count to nine? Justice Kennedy voted with the Court's liberals so, contrary to Trump's mathematics, the decision would have fallen 5 to 4 against Texas had Scalia been alive.

Trump has been his usual objectionable self. For him, it’s all about Trump. The issue in the Texas case has nothing to do with Trump. It is partly about a woman’s right to access abortion clinics, partly about the right to choose what she does with her body and partly about asserting that evangelical ideology plays no part in assessing such rights.

Too often the abortion debate in America is about ideology, religion and abuse of women. I accept it is a matter for a pregnant woman to decide the fate of her unborn baby. If legislators believe differently and want to impose restrictive laws, those same legislators should accept the consequences of their law. If a state forces a woman to give birth, the state must accept the obligation of Pro-child and take responsibility, at least in part, for the child’s welfare and education up to the age of adulthood. If a state is obliged to accept this quid pro quo, I wonder how keen it would be to pass anti-abortion laws?