Tag: Hillary Clinton

UNDECIDED MILLENNIAL VOTERS AND THE FOG OF BOOMER MEMORIES

There is a lot of handwringing in the Hillary Clinton camp over a sizeable contingent of recalcitrant millennials whose electoral preferences right now are either a third party candidate or none of the above. I’ve also noticed a few angry Facebook jabs at the younger set from fellow baby boomers wondering what is wrong with kids today? I was all set to the hit the like button on one of the them, but was interrupted by a 1968 flashback, my room covered with Eugene McCarthy banners and my father yelling at me: “What the hell is wrong with you kids today?”

Like it or not, we boomers are handing the demographic baton to our millennial progeny on Nov. 8. This will be the first election where those born between the early 1980s and 2000 outnumber us. According to recent polling, this generation prefers Clinton over Trump by 50% to 18%, leaving a whopping 32% of the country’s largest voting bloc up for grabs. It’s a tough nut to crack for both major party candidates because, frankly, one third of these young voters think the whole system sucks.

Take Jo Tongue. She’s 31, a Fort Collins, Colorado mother of two with another on the way. She told the Washington Post that she can’t make herself vote for either Clinton or Trump and feels “bummed that we’re at a place where it all feels like a joke.”

Then there is Nathan Mowery. He’s 26 and lives in Gainesville, Virginia. He told the New York Times this week that, as a Muslim, he would not vote for Trump, but finds Clinton to be uninspiring. He plans to vote for a third party candidate and, according to the Times, was unapologetic about his decision. “I’m casting a protest vote because it makes it visible to major parties that there are people who are motivated to vote but are unwilling to vote for either of them,” he said. “I hope that whoever runs in 2020 will get their act together and one of the parties will put somebody up that younger voters can align themselves with.”

To the progressive boomer crowd, this is heartbreaking. We lie awake at night, shuddering at the thought of a Trump Dystopia, a toxic cornucopia of everything we have spent our lives fighting – racism, misogyny, xenophobia, autocracy. This is a close election and these votes are desperately needed, not just to stop Trump but to elect as president, for the first time, a superbly qualified woman. Why can’t those kids see that?

The answer is in my 1968 flashback. To me, back then, the major party candidates in that election, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, symbolized everything that was wrong with this country – a horribly immoral war in Vietnam, rampant racism and an entrenched old-white-guy establishment that refused to share power. If I had been old enough to vote then, I would have rejected them both and written in “Clean Gene” McCarthy, the lefty peace and love candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to Humphrey. Through the wisdom of hindsight, of course, that was a bad call. Humphrey, the Father of Liberalism, helped deliver the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and the Test Ban Treaty. If he had gotten a few more votes in ‘68, we would never have had Richard Nixon and Watergate to kick around.

Yet, in that 1960s moment, while our friends were dying in an endless war, many of us young boomers yearned to reject the entire political system that created that cancer. We had no desire to be either realistic or pragmatic. We wanted to start over with something new. That was our vision, our dream. Youth is a time for dreaming, even when it produces bad choices.

I say let’s cut the millennials some slack. First of all, half of them are already supporting Clinton, mirroring the population at large. A far smaller group, 18%, is backing Trump, who according to most polls is over 50% with baby boomers. As far as the progressive cause is concerned, our young friends are doing better than us geezers. That leaves the pox-on-both-your-houses crowd, a third of this gigantic youth demographic. Within the next few weeks, some of them will undoubtedly discover that the House of Trump is far more dangerous than the other one. But let’s respect their process. They aren’t exactly inheriting a perfect world from us. Let them dream, let them learn, let them grow. Even if it means making mistakes. Like we did.

DECISION 2016: ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE VERBAL ABUSE A CHANCE

This presidential campaign is quickly emerging as one of our country’s darkest hours. Public policy discourse has taken a back seat to brutal name calling. Poetic rhetoric has been replaced by angry noise. Civility is out. Personal attack is in. The worst part is that this venomous angst is seeping through the pores of the body politic, infecting all of us – our relationships and our families. Roughly one third of people polled recently

A House No Longer Divided
A House No Longer Divided

said they have been attacked, insulted, or called names on the basis of their political opinions. One in four of those surveyed said a recent political discussion permanently damaged a relationship.

Facebook executives recently told the Associated Press that U.S. users sent out four billion political messages during the first seven months of the year. Although the network claims not to track unfriending metrics, a spokesperson told AP that such communication cutoffs are on the rise. That includes people who left FB in disgust over political posts, as well as those who stayed but selectively weeded friends based on partisan rants. The news service quoted Scott Talan, an American University communication instructor who tracks social media and politics as saying he has seen some fairly hostile Facebook exchanges recently. “They range from pretty harsh, graphically laced, attacks upon people. . .to statements of ‘if you support this person, you can no longer be my friend.’”

My 90-year-old uncle, Jenner Nelson of St. Cloud, Minnesota, encountered an analog version of this Facebook estrangement and adroitly moved to rectify it. He’d been lobbied for months by the Trump and Clinton factions within our family and decided to let us all know where he stood by posting both candidates’ signs on his lawn, as pictured above, but only after covering their names with large X’s of red duct tape. “To heck with them both,” he said. Although the gesture didn’t dampen any of our partisan passions, it helped, at least momentarily, put a political campaign in perspective.

A couple of factors brought us to this point. But first, these words from our two major party candidates for president: “racist”, “bigot”,  “crooked”, “totally unqualified”, “dangerous”, “dishonest”, “incompetent”, “fraudulent”, “basket of deplorables”, “lose cannon”, “stupid”, “unfit”, “weak”, “total disgrace, and “pathetic”. And those are just for starters. The word cloud emerging from this campaign is horrendously strident. Put that together with the political intransigence that has paralyzed Congress for the last several terms and we are left with . . .well, a lot of people yelling at each other. One recent survey indicated that the incivility of political discourse is so bad that 40 percent of classroom instructors are hesitant to teach about the election for fear of adding to what is already a serious bullying problem in their schools.

Yet, there is something else going on here. Families, friends and coworkers have always differed on political choices, usually without creating an interpersonal crisis. My parents used to joke about canceling each other’s vote on election day. Nobody is laughing now. The difference with this election is that it goes to deeply held values, the kind of stuff that is part of our core, that defines who we are. We can have friendly disagreements over health insurance or NATO funding without a lot of existential angst. It’s a whole different situation when you are talking about keeping Muslims out of the country, deporting undocumented immigrants, building a wall around Mexico and issues of equity and justice for African Americans and the LGBT community.

This is visceral, heart and soul stuff. We are in different places because we’ve had different experiences that have contributed to our conflicted wiring. My 1960s childhood turned me into a passionate human rights advocate. That means I’m against the wall, the Muslim ban and for amnesty-based immigration reform. That also means I see Donald Trump as a pariah, someone whose world view is totally contrary to my values. On the other hand, there are good, decent folks out there who see jobs disappearing and their communities filling up with people from other countries and cultures. They long for the days when America was a different kind of place. They want to recapture what’s been lost. To them, Clinton is the pariah and Trump is the one with a map to their promised land.

Our vision for the future could not be more different. Yet, they are both so clearly valid to us that, particularly among people who share a connection, it is painful to talk about politics right now because it is a conversation that, by necessity, challenges and threatens our deeply held conflicting views of the world. This interpersonal quagmire could be mitigated by national leaders who would engage us with a vocabulary of civility and accommodation instead of name calling and polarization. Sadly, those cards are not on the table. All we can do right now is follow the road that is right for us and respect those we care about who take another path.

CLOWNS: AN UNMEASURED DEMOGRAPHIC

As if this crazy season of identity politics wasn’t screwed up enough, somebody in the Carolinas decided to send in the clowns. You may have missed the New York Times’ exceptional coverage of this alarming clown crisis. After all, it’s barely been 24 hours since Apple revealed its decision to omit the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. A person can take on only so much emotional trauma at one time. So here’s a recap:

It started two weeks ago in Greenville County, S.C. with multiple sightings of “creepy clowns”. Depending on the report, the clowns either offered children money to go into the woods with them or simply stood under a late-night streetlight and waved. Once, the Times reported, a clown jumped out of nowhere and stared at a woman as she left a laundromat. Then the action moved to North Carolina where Winston-Salem police responded to a number of calls complaining of clowns offering treats to children. No arrests have been made, and the Times described the situation in both states as one of “panic.” It noted local news reports from Greensboro, N.C. of a man with a machete who chased a clown into the woods but did not catch him.

(As an aside, the male pronoun is being used here because eye witnesses described the clowns as men wearing white overalls, white gloves, large red shoes with a white face, bushy red hair with a matching red nose. With that disguise, however, there is enough gender ambiguity that these clowns need to be very careful in choosing a public restroom in North Carolina. It is a crime there to enter a loo not designated for your birth sex. A wise clown would do well to tape a birth certificate to his seltzer bottle; an even wiser clown would stay the hell out of North Carolina.)

It took less than 36 hours for this bozo calamity to evolve into a political issue. Enter one Michael Becvar, with the clown name of Sir Toony Van Dukes. He runs the website Just For Clowns and he told the Times that his people are being unfairly profiled and persecuted. He wondered aloud to a Times reporter what would have happened “if instead of clowns, people were dressing up as aliens, witches, zombies or doctors? What if they were wearing hospital scrubs, lab coats and a stethoscope around their neck? Would the news report that doctors were hiding in the woods trying to lure kids with candy?” Mark my words: Sir Toony will have a “Clown Lives Matter” sign on his clown car before the end of the week.

This must be driving the pollsters crazy. North Carolina is a swing state where Clinton and Trump are running neck and neck, but nobody has been measuring the clown/anti-clown vote. Given the white face description of the suspects, along with the speculation that they are men, it would be easy to assume that the clown vote will break for Trump, particularly if they never graduated from clown college. Then again, we have no way of knowing what is under that disguise. Peel off the white face paint and you might find a female Latino with an advanced degree in theology. But it is highly unlikely.

Of course, this election is not just about identity politics. It’s also about fear. The demographic of people who are afraid of the Great Other – anyone who doesn’t look, talk or act like them – is breaking big for Trump. He might just tap into that constituency by promising, within 30 days of taking office, to round up all the clowns and send them back to wherever they came from. “Make America Clown Free Again!” would fit well on a red baseball cap. In other words, Trump could end up with both the clown and anti-clown vote. Where does that leave Hillary? Right back on Saturday Night Live, singing the chorus from that old Stealers Wheel tune:

“There’s clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am
Stuck in the Middle with you.”

THE DIFFICULT HUSBANDRY OF HILLARY AND HUMA

 

There was media speculation today that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign might be jeopardized by the fact that both she and her top aide are married to men who cheated on them.  I wouldn’t have given that nonsense a second thought if it had appeared in the National Enquirer, the official organ of the Trump campaign.  Instead, it was on the front page of the New York Times. It  was in a piece about Anthony Weiner once again getting caught with his iPhone at crotch level.   The sexting former congressman is married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime assistant. This from the Times:

“Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clinton’s own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.”

Really?  Does our culture change that slowly?  It took 144 years for women to win the right to vote in this country.  They’ve been given a ballot since 1920, but until a few weeks  ago, not one of them has ever been nominated for president by a major political party.  Hillary Clinton finally breaks through the ceiling’s last shard of glass, only to be told that she should have kept her husband from straying if she wanted to be president.  Either that, or divorce him.

Bill Clinton not only cheated and lied about it, he was subsequently rewarded with a 73% approval rating in his second term.  But Hillary is somehow disqualified  because she didn’t stand on her man or kick him to the curb.  And now poor Huma is in the same sinking boat, a powerful woman too busy with her career to properly service her poor husband, who had to go out and find an app for that.

This is all very reflective of American life in the 19th century, except for the app part.  Marriage was an asymmetrical institution, more about property rights than partnership.  A wife was supposed to tend to her husband’s every need in exchange for his bringing home the bacon or, in vegan households, an appropriate soybean substitute.  A husband who frequently strayed from the marital bed brought disrepute upon his wife for not taking sufficient care of him.

I totally get where we have been.  What I don’t understand is why is it taking us so long to move on?  Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are among the most powerful people in this country.  To blame them for the caddish and ribald choices their husbands made seems so yesterday.

Look, this is not a paid political advertisement for the Clinton campaign.  Although I look forward to voting for her, I respect legitimate objections to her candidacy.  Many of her public choices have landed her in jams she could and should have avoided.  If you don’t trust her, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her position on trade, don’t vote for her.  If you don’t like her tax plan, don’t vote for her. But rejecting Hillary Clinton on the basis of her husband’s sins is taking us back to a place we should have left a long time ago.