The New Democratic Leadership Council (NDPC) was the Ohio version of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in the mid-1990’s, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. It had been formed, in large part, after the humiliating defeats of our candidates in the 1984 and 1988 elections.  Al From and others attempted to move the gravitational center of the party back to a more electable middle.  And an insurance agent living in South Euclid, ME, became the chairman of the Greater Cleveland chapter.

In the fall of 1995 I attended a political event and was introduced to Jimmy Dimora, the recently elected chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.  He said that he was aware of the NDPC and asked me how many votes we controlled in the party.  That hadn’t been our focus.  We were issue driven.  We were working across the state to develop a platform that could attract a cross-section of Ohioans. I answered him honestly, “a few”, and he quickly moved on to people who were more important to him.  The individual who had taken the time to introduce Jimmy to me, an elected official, was surprised and apologetic.  I wasn’t offended.  I had just been taught an important lesson.  Ideas are important, but you must be able to count and control your votes.

Howard Schultz would like to be your next president.  He is not alone.  The election of Donald Trump has caused any number of Americans to scream at their TV’s, “WTF?”  Real billionaires and successful businessmen know that he isn’t in their league.  Policy experts from the Left and the Right gasp at this ignorance.  Lots of elected Democrats believe that he can be beaten.  And over a dozen Republican Senators and Governors must live with the constant reminder that the Republican electorate viewed Donald Trump as a better choice than any of them.  So it is no surprise that Mr. Schultz would like to do what Mike Bloomberg should have done a few years ago, run for the highest elected office in the land.

Mr. Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, won’t compete for the party’s nomination. He has decided to run as an Independent.  Unencumbered by party rules, primaries, or any other part of the vetting process, Mr. Schultz can self-fund his way onto the ballots of all 50 states.  The other reason, the official reason, he has chosen to explore the Independent route is because he sees himself as uniquely alone as a presidential hopeful.  He believes that he is the only candidate who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.  That may, or may not, be true. There may be even be an unquenchable thirst for this particular mix.  I hope we don’t find out.

Much has already been written about the possibility of a Schultz candidacy pulling anti-Trump votes away from the Democratic Party standard bearer and inadvertently reelecting Trump. Dems seem to be hoping that this is all a vanity project and that his attention will be drawn elsewhere.  Republicans are cheering him on.  This post isn’t about that.  This post is about an unlikely Schultz victory.

Just to be clear, if I was describing my own politics it would be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I would have welcomed Mike Bloomberg into the 2016 race since he had real experience in both business and government.  My objection to a Schultz victory would be the legislative outcome or lack thereof.

The last ten years have shown how our system can be manipulated. The villain, the most cynical man in Washington, is Mitch McConnell.  It is only within the last ten years that nearly every piece of legislation needed 60 votes to pass the Senate.  Mitch has yielded the filibuster in ways previously unimagined.  And when Senator McConnell would ask President Schultz on the first day of his presidency, “How many votes do you control”, the Schultz presidency would be over before it got started.  A President Schultz would enter the legislative battle alone, friendless, and with limited influence.  The current president wields his twitter feed and Fox News at his opponents, in and out of his current political party.  He can threaten to support a primary challenger if a member of Congress doesn’t fall in line.  President Schultz wouldn’t have any loyalty or clout with either side of the aisle.

2020 is still a way away. I welcome Howard Schultz into the race as a Democrat.  Let’s vet his ideas.  Let’s see if he is willing to do the hard work of campaigning in the snow of New Hampshire and the county fairs of Iowa.  Let’s see if this is more than a vanity project and that he has the fire in his belly.  Let’s see if he can count and control his votes.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – A Cup of Joe – David L Cunix

Click here for the link to the song.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – A Thousand Words – David L Cunix

The movies depict an “out of body experience” as a moment when the protagonist literally floats above his body and watches the medical team perform heroic efforts to save his life. Will he return to his physical body and live?  While there, hovering between life and death, he is gifted with a moment of clarity, an understanding of what really was/is important.

I am fortunate to have not one, but two, “out of country experiences” each year. Though not as dramatic, and with a round trip ticket without any mystery about my return, these trips do provide moments of clarity.

I just spent a week in the Dominican Republic. I didn’t see a single MAGA hat the entire time, not at the resort, not even in either airport.  The current president’s name seldom came up in conversations we had with Americans and never with people from other countries.  If I had stayed off Facebook and turned off CNN, I might never have heard the name “Trump” the entire time.  This is not to say that the resort didn’t have Trump supporters or, more broadly, Republicans.  People were just happier talking about the football games, the beautiful beaches, or how awful the weather was back home.

A week without Trump is a luxury.  He dominates the news at home like no previous president.  The legitimate press dutifully explains the emoluments clause in the Constitution, his negative impact on insurance premiums and the cost of goods, and the court cases involving his inner circle.  His defenders, FOX, the National Enquirer, and his TV lawyer Rudy split their time extolling his virtues (real or imagined) and attacking female Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi.  It is all so tiring, and it is meant to be.  We are being distracted while Mitch McConnell is living the dream.

What have two years of Trump and McConnell given us?

• Two Supreme Court Justices
• Countless federal judges appointed for life
• A massive tax cut for the wealthy that will balloon the federal deficit
• The dismantling of federal safety and environmental regulations

This might excite some of you. You have a real shot of ending legal abortion in the next decade or so as the courts get packed with right-wing judges.  Or, your income might be high enough that the tax cut benefits you and your company.  But the rest of us?  I bet most of you, the ones that voted for Trump, thought you were getting something else.

Republicans blamed Democrats in 2016 for an economic that moved at a glacial pace. Sure there was job growth and the GDP, but they claimed it was too slow.  In truth, the DOW had rebounded smartly from the 2008 Bush meltdown.  What didn’t recover, what hasn’t grown, are wages.  Ask a retail worker what she is making per hour.  Ask your friends at the local tool and die shop.  Better yet, do you even know anyone working in a machine shop?  What I see is a lot of people treading water.  What I see is wage stagnation.  The price of gasoline may be down, but almost everything else is going up.  When our wealthiest increase their income through effort or tax break it is celebrated as an opportunity for the “job creators” to do what they do best.  When the working class gets a raise it is considered inflationary.

I suspect that you are less concerned about blocking your neighbor’s daughter from having an abortion than the possibility of the Cleveland Clinic blocking your access to their facilities because you don’t have insurance. What’s important to you?  For many Americans the answers are reasonable wages, access to health care, and the assurance that our kids are going to be OK.  Which of our elected leaders, if any, seem to be focused on any of those?

I’m not saying that you should/could ignore the shenanigans at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I just think we have to put it in perspective.  They didn’t bury me when they discovered my cancerous kidney.  They removed the kidney.  No out of body experience necessary.  My out of country experience reminded me of all that is good about our country.  Almost 250 years of democracy, opportunity, and freedom will not be destroyed by Mitch and Donny.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – A Day At The Beach – David L Cunix

Editor’s Note – If you are easily offended, why are you still reading this blog?

Some of my friends are shocked, SHOCKED, that a newly elected Congresswoman from Michigan proclaimed at a rally, “We’re gonna impeach that motherfucker!”  Can you imagine anyone talking like that?  Oh, the pearl clutching.  It is as if the last eight years didn’t exist.  We all remember the guy who attacked a sitting president as foreign born, lied constantly about having a team of private investigators, called most Mexican immigrants rapist and murderers, and made countless other offensive comments.  The pussy-grabber in chief, the guy who referred to Congressman Adam Schiff as “little Adam Schitt”, was extolled by his followers as someone who fights political correctness and simply says what everyone is really thinking.  And now?  Now they are upset.  But is this really just an example of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) engaging in “locker room talk”.  Isn’t she just saying what everyone is thinking?

I must admit that NO, I wasn’t thinking any of the horrific things Donald Trump said before and after he was elected president.  And, just as importantly, I don’t agree with Ms. Tlaib.  It is too late to put the genie back into the bottle.  Ms. Tlaib is simply a symptom of a time where decorum is not only not revered, but denigrated.  What we once considered as civilized is now thought to be a sign of weakness.  There are already two dozen Democrats contemplating a run in 2020.  The question hanging over every campaign is whether to take on Trump, dirt for dirt, or to attempt to rise above the fray.  Male or Female.  Candidates with real resumes, real experience, real talent, yet that is the question – “Can he/she handle the lies, the derogatory nicknames, and the degradation of a contest with Donald Trump?

The last ten years have been contentious and the next two won’t be any better.   It is only going to get worse first.  Will Trump be impeached?  I don’t know.  So much depends on Robert Mueller and his team.  It is possible that only the people, ALL OF THE PEOPLE, around Donald Trump stomped on campaign and tax laws and he was simply an innocent bystander.  But, shouting for impeachment now doesn’t help move us forward.  We lived through what can only be described as a failed bloodless coup in 1998.  We saw Republican Congressmen run to the cameras decrying the misbehavior of the then president in the day and then go back to their mistresses at night.  Impeachment, the reversal of an election, is serious business that needs to be conducted by serious people.  The people that saved us from Richard Nixon didn’t do a victory dance when he got onto that helicopter.  They breathed a sigh of relief.

There are going to be a lot of unfortunate remarks in the next few months. From both sides.  Leave your pearls in the jewelry case.  We have work to do.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – Clutching Your Pearls – David L Cunix

The entertainment team of the resort hosts activities throughout the day. It was 4 PM and time for Poker, a $20 buy-in, winner take all, Texas Hold ‘em tournament.  The last to join the table was a newlywed and his bride.  John (all names changed) was surprised when Bridget asked for $20 to play, too.  Jasmine of the entertainment team was dealing poker for the first time.  Her inept shuffling and flattering bikini were distracting, which was a problem since many of the guys at the table were easily distracted.  It was quickly apparent that this wasn’t Bridget’s first time at a poker table.  She ruthlessly dispensed with John and a couple of the guys who were more interested in Jasmine and alcohol than cards.  I’ve played poker with Sally.  I had been leery of Bridget from the start.  Rule One of Poker is that if you can’t find the sucker at the table, it’s you.  One by one Bridget and I knocked off the people who weren’t focused on the game.  She had scored early and often and was now playing big stack poker.  She bullied the table and pushed most of the guys out of the game.  And finally it was just the two of us.  She pushed and I let her.  She pushed and I let her.  And when she pushed again, too confident to play her cards or to know her opponent, I pushed back and won the tournament.

Donald Trump is a big stack poker player.  He has pushed around smaller players; contractors, employees, small-time local politicians, for years.  And when he has lost, which has been surprisingly often, he was bailed out by either his father or the bankruptcy courts.   Congress will not be pushed around so easily.  No one can bail him out.  The famous Trump negotiating style is to make his demands, loudly, and to watch his opponents cave.  Congress will not fold.  Congress will not be easily distracted.  For the last two years Donald Trump has had a Republican House and Senate.  Mitch McConnell got his judges.  Paul Ryan and Mitch got a budget busting tax cut for their donors.  What did Trump really get other than two years of profiteering at the expense of the American taxpayer?  That all ends next week.

There is an art to playing big stack poker. Bridget wasn’t an artist.  Neither is Donald Trump.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – A Full Deck – David L Cunix

What a week! Key members of the foreign policy team resigned after the President impetuously announced the removal of troops from both Syria and Afghanistan.   The government shutdown when America discovered that Ann Coulter is better at bullying Donald Trump than he is at bullying Chuck Schumer.   And the stock market reflected the chaos emanating from the White House and dropped 1,500 points.  Perhaps it was a coincidence that I heard Chris Robinson’s plaintive voice singing She Talks To Angels yesterday on the radio.  I have linked the song to this post.  Please have it play in the background and you sing these new lyrics.

He Talks To Putin

He never mentions the word creditor

In certain company

Yes, he’ll tell you he’s a rich man

But you’ve seen his bankruptcies.

He paints his shit all gold now

But he can’t hide the smell

He’s stealing from the taxpayer

It hurts us when he does well.

  You know he talks to Putin

  He calls Donny by his name

  Yes he talks to Putin

  The dictators all know his game.

He keeps the A.G. in his pocket

He’s got the Congress by the neck

He’s dodging a subpoena

From a prosecutor he’s not met, Not Yet.

  You know he talks to Putin

  He calls Donny by his name

  Yes he talks to Putin

  The dictators all know his game.

He’s got no scruples

None that I’ve ever seen

Yeah, to him that ain’t nothing

But to me it means, means everything.

He paints his shit all gold now

But he can’t hide the smell

He’s stealing from the taxpayer

It hurts us when he does well.

  You know he talks to Putin

  He calls Donny by his name

  Yes he talks to Putin

  The dictators all know, all know his game.

2018 – Insecure In America Music – No Rights Observed

DAVE

Picture – A Better Choice For President – David L Cunix

As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster! Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions. Mitch and Nancy, get it done! The Tweeter-in-Chief

Never has someone who knows so little been put in a position to opine so much. If Congress would simply tweak and rebrand Obamacare, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and rename it Trumpcare the way NAFTA was rebranded a few months ago, we could all get on with our lives.   G-d knows Donald Trump would never know the difference.  This is the same guy railing against Chinese imports while his reelection signs are being produced in, wait for it, China.

Mitch McConnell has led a ten year fight against anything Obama.  Where Trump fights with bluster and lies, McConnell has fought the inside game armed with a level of cynicism never before witnessed in American politics.  Give the man credit.  He is a champ.  For the last eight years Mitch has beat Obamacare like a rented mule.  He has never been afraid to use the filibuster when in the minority or to weaken the power of the filibuster now that he leads the majority. His major focus the last two years has been taxes and packing the courts.  The Senate no longer holds hearings on legislation.  Mitch just gathers his caucus and pushes through his agenda.  Last year’s American Health Care Act is the perfect example of why legislation shouldn’t be crafted behind closed doors.  It was the culmination of years of Mitch unchecked.  It is hard to believe that the AHCA almost passed.

In January 2019 we will have:

• A president that knows nothing about accessing or paying for health care
• A Senate leadership that may have forgotten how to craft bi-partisan legislation
• A Republican initiated law-suit that has scored its first victory in eliminating Obamacare
• A Democratic controlled House recovering from eight years’ of abuse

What should the Democrats do? If I was a member of the House leadership team, I would simply force the Republicans to finally offer a viable alternative.  I would go on every show and look into the camera and ask President Trump to tell us his plan.  I would follow up with my request for Mitch’s.  There has never been a Republican alternative to Obamacare, not a real one.

Until the success of the lawsuit Friday night, the Republicans had been allowed to bitch on the sidelines and offer empty promises.  Not anymore.  Now they have to govern.  It is going to be hard with that void of leadership at the top.

DAVE

www.againreally.com

Picture – Closed! – David L Cunix

I bet you never thought you would welcome ads for windows and Depends. Gosh those political ads are annoying.  I recall watching ad after ad attacking the two guys who were running for attorney general, Dave Yost and Steve Dettelbach.  If the commercials were only 50% true, neither of them should be allowed to hold this position of trust.  One got elected.  The other can now go on to earn an honest living.

Winners and Losers

Clearly, the biggest loser was intellectual honesty. Watching so many Republicans prostrate themselves at the shrine of preexisting conditions would have been amusing had there not been real life consequences to their previous actions and votes.  That may have worked this time.  It will be interesting to watch what they do, both in Columbus and Washington, in the next year.

Voters lost, too. Please think back to all of the Mike DeWine ads of the last year.  He sold fear, real and imagined.  Mr. DeWine only aired one positive ad.  It featured his daughter, her cross like the My Pillow Guy’s strategically hanging outside her outfit, singing her dad’s praises.  But Mike DeWine never asked for your vote.  Not once.  Mr. DeWine never looked into the camera and asked you to entrust him with the job.  He got elected by smearing the other guy.  What does he owe you?  Nothing.  What are you going to get from a DeWine administration?  Who knows?

Winner – Gerrymandering.  Congresswoman Marcia Fudge’s district, one specifically designed to inoculate Republicans from any population that might challenge their dominance, gave her over 80% of the vote.  I suspect that Ms. Fudge would win reelection in a 50/50 district.  Herding her supporters into one district allows several other less talented candidates to glide to victory as well.  The Republican sweep Tuesday night will make fair districting that much more difficult.

Winner – OHIO. Sherrod Brown was the #1 vote getter Tuesday night.  Sherrod Brown, an unabashed Liberal Democrat, got votes from people who must have also voted for DeWine and other Republicans.  The hopefully ends the ugly, divisive political career of Jim Renacci.  I recall his contentious ugly first campaign in 2010.  I was not surprised that his last act was so much like his first.

The 2020 campaign starts today. Thankfully the commercials won’t begin for another couple of weeks.

DAVE

Picture – IPod Sanity Kit

Pardon me while I take a few minutes of your time. I was on a phone call, waiting patiently for someone to answer, when I saw the above picture on Facebook.   And I stopped.  Thankfully, I got the client’s voicemail and just left a message.  The above meme left me speechless.

There are people who truly believe that post. They may even be proud of that post.  I AM NOT ONE OF THEM.

They celebrate the exclusivity of their heaven. I can’t relate.  Jewish teaching has touched on the concepts of life after death with schools of thought leaning towards reincarnation and others towards a more western concept of heaven and hell, but most of our emphasis has, like the Torah, focused on living life according to our laws and rituals.  There isn’t a reward, per se, for living righteously.  Living well is its own reward.  So the heaven thing is lost on me.  But even without a personal connection, the exclusivity of the post shocks me.

Most of us remember the dorm room conversations with the guy trying to explain to us why all the historical figures we named were barred from heaven because they weren’t his particular brand of Christianity.  The Evangelicals wouldn’t accept any Popes.  The Catholics were clear that Protestants were locked out.  And nobody was letting in Gandhi or an innocent child randomly killed in Vietnam (sorry, it was the early 70’s).  And since I wasn’t accepting the invitation du jour, I was bound for a warmer destination.  And in truth, I laughed at the whole thought.

But the United States isn’t some exclusive club. It is more than that.  The United States is a goal, a dream, the difference between life and death for people around the world.  Can we open the borders and let everyone in?  Probably not.  And I’m not exactly sure where and to who we open the gates.  The immigration argument has been raging for about 175 years.   And it is funny how similar the words some use today are to the ones their ideological forbearers used in the 1850’s.

From History.com – “The discrimination faced by the famine refugees was not subtle or insidious. It was right there in black and white, in newspaper classified advertisements that blared “No Irish Need Apply.” The image of the simian Irishman, imported from Victorian England, was given new life by the pens of illustrators such as Thomas Nast that dripped with prejudice as they sketched Celtic ape-men with sloping foreheads and monstrous appearances.”

The following appeared the Cedar Rapids Gazette in 1895:

Iowa coal operators should think twice before they begin the importation of Italians and other such people to work in their mines. After they have thought twice they should decide not to take such steps. Italian miners are not wanted… 

They are not congenial to Iowa. Our people can make no place for them in the commonwealth. They are not in sympathy with our institutions. They are not desirable elements in the population. With others of similar character they have cursed Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and other states.

They will not educate…They have poor conception of our standard of morality. They are not self-governing. Whenever they are to be found in considerable numbers, that locality bears every evidence of blight.

Life and property is insecure. Local government is unstable. Riots are of frequent occurrence. Murders are matters of every day life. Feuds and conspiracies are born with the babe and grow with the man. The pistol and the stilletto are their arguments.

They have no habits that our people can copy with benefit. Whatever they teach is a detriment to the community. They will not learn, because knowledge would overthrow their characters and cause them to cease to be the menace they have been whenever colonized in America.

If the mines cannot be worked without the aid of such men let them be closed. No business should be operated in Iowa that will not pay wages on which a man can bring up a family of Americans — citizens of whom the best of their countrymen are proud.

My family was once part of that unwanted, unloved horde. Jews fleeing from the Russian / Polish borders.  The victims of pogroms.  There wasn’t a welcome mat waiting for us in this country, this beacon of freedom, this heaven.  But we came, in part, because there was nowhere else to go.  And as I see pictures of young families, mothers holding babies, the desperate looking for an opportunity, I see my grandparents and the grandparents of so many I know.

The person who posted this picture at the top of today’s blog isn’t celebrating heaven. He is celebrating a wall.  What are you celebrating?

DAVE