Trump, Truth, And A Day Of Despair

It is hard not to despair for the future on days like yesterday. The afternoon began with CNN host Alisyn Camerota becoming absolutely dumbstruck by the claims of Trump voters she had gathered for an interview. These voters claimed that illegals were allowed to vote in California and that at least 3 million of them had. In addition. President Obama told these illegals that they were allowed to vote and encouraged them to do so. When asked were they saw this news, the voters claimed it was all over the news. They had seen it on Facebook and you could even Google it. In fact, the voters seemed incredulous that the anchor did not know about these "facts". Despite Camerota's attempt to tell these voters that nothing of the sort happened, they were impervious to what she was saying. You rally have to watch the whole video to believe it.

That was followed by Trump supporter and surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes on the Diane Rehm show where she said this. "One thing that’s been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts. They’re not really facts. It’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts."

How are you supposed to have a reasonable political conversation with people like this. The things that they believe can be entirely made up of whole cloth and any presentation of evidence to the contrary is simply dismissed as not being relevant or factual. It is almost worse than trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak the same language. I don't see how Democrats are ever going to reach voters like this because policy and even reality do not exist for them.

I had to go out for dinner and, when I returned, I turned on MSNBC to hear Trump claim at his rally in Cincinnati that he had won the election "in a landslide". I changed the channel. Of course, this latest Trump lie comes as Hillary Clinton's popular vote margin increased to over 2.5 million votes and nearly 2% more votes than Trump. In addition, the combined total of Trump's victory across the three states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania has shrunk to less than 80,000 votes. At the risk of infuriating all those Democrats who are also Hillary haters, I would just point out that if the all the people who voted for Jill Stein had instead voted for Hillary in those three states, she would be the President-elect today.

The day ended with a reader in Boston who gave me the heads-up on the event at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The event has been an annual gathering since 1972 where officials for both campaigns gather to have an intellectual discussion about what happened during the campaign. The reader was upset by the fact that there were no protests against the appearance of Kellyanne Conway. Back in our day, the Harvard campus would have been in turmoil over an appearance like that. In any case, the fireworks really happened inside the event when an emotional Clinton staffer Jennifer Palmieri challenged Kellyanne Conway and David Bossie, saying, "If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost. I would rather lose than win the way you guys did." This provided some insightful analysis from Conway, who responded, "No, you wouldn’t. No, you wouldn’t. That’s very clear to me. No, you wouldn’t. Respectfully." Bossie usefully added, "You guys are pathetic." Such is the level of debate from the Trump campaign.

But, actually, David and Kellyanne, I myself, and I think I can speak for virtually all Democrats when I say this, would totally agree with Palmieri. We would much rather lose than win by appealing to the virulent racists and white nationalists in this country. The proudest moment for the Democratic party was when LBJ threw the racists out of our party in the mid-1960s and stood up for the stated ideals this country was built on. And we have paid a price at the ballot box ever since then because of it. But the reason we have Medicare that has saved millions of Americans from an early death, the reason we have Social Security which has save millions from poverty, the reason African Americans can now vote, the reason they could say "I'm black and I'm proud", the reason lesbians and homosexuals could come out of the closet and be full participants in our nation, the reason women can build careers and contribute to our economy, the reason we elected a black President and a woman won more votes than 10 other Presidents and every other white man in history is because of the Democratic party. And the Republican party and its racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist supporters fought us every step of the way. Kellyanne and David, you will be remembered as little rich, and perhaps richer now, sycophants who helped enable an ignorant, racist, xenophobic, criminal, serial sexual predator and abuser who may end up destroying the democracy we have known for the last 240 years. That is now and forever will be your legacy.

I despair. Rant over.