Standing By Their Man

She probably would have lost the election anyway. But there is no certainty that Hillary Clinton would have been defeated in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin (all three of which she needed) had she not remarked

I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

It was a bone-headed remark, offensive and one ripe for ridicule by Donald Trump as being "elitist."  It probably also was inaccurate because voting for a deplorable human being does not render oneself "deplorable."  It does not automatically do so, notwithstanding some of  the views encountered by Michael Kruse when he recently interviewed Trump voters in Johnstown, whom he had visited a year earlier.

In this town once dominated by steel and coal and long in decline, in an area in western Pennsylvania long in decline, the individuals who voted for Trump overwhelmingly still believe in him, don't regret their vote, and stand by their man.  When one who would still vote for Trump said "he's kept his promiises"

I asked which ones.

Border security.” But there’s no wall yet. “No fault of his,” the man said.

What else? “Getting rid of Obamacare.” But he hasn’t. “Well, he’s tried to.”

What else? “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” But he didn’t. “Not his fault again,” the man said.

I asked for his name. “Bill K.,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his last name. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

But in an area beset by opioid addiction, the real betrayal is in the matter of jobs. Kruse points to

the message Trump delivered in person at War Memorial Arena last October. “Your government betrayed you, and I’m going to make it right,” he told them. “We’re putting your miners back to work,” he told them. “Your jobs will come back under a Trump administration,” he told them. “Your steel will come back,” he told them.

“The change you’ve been waiting for will finally arrive,” he pledged.





It has not arrived, and will not. However

Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable for the nonnegotiable pledges he made to them. It’s not that the people who made Trump president have generously moved the goalposts for him. It’s that they have eliminated the goalposts altogether.

Unlike in West Virginia and Kentucky, most laid-off mine workers in Pennsylvania seemingly still believe coal is coming back.. A president of an agency which provides retraining stated "They really do want to go back into the mines. So we've seen resistance to some retraining."  Reuters reports some "say mining pays well; other industries are unfamiliar; and there's no income during training and no guarantee of a job afterward."

The reluctance is not deplorable, only unfortunate and in most cases, self-defeating. Yet, these individuals share a characteristic with the guy who excuses Trump for failing to get his border wall, rescinding the Affordable Care Act, or ending funding for Planned Parenthood.

They are chumps, easy marks for the politician who once boasted "I like the poorly educated." Donald Trump recognized his market and sold his bill of goods. At times he promised what the individuals wanted, such as coal jobs. At other times, he denounced their enemies, whether immigrants, foreigners, minorities, liberals, the foreign policy establishment, or the media.





Political correctness must not prevent us from characterizng such people honestly. "If you have been in a poker game for a while," it has been explained, "and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy." We've all been in the poker game of this presidency a while and as Donald Trump pimps for a tax bill to lower the taxes of  billionaires, it's time that the persons Hillary Clinton once described as deplorable recognize who Donald Trump is playing for patsies.




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Odoroous

Note: There are at least eight cliches in this post. Find all of them and you have won the opportunity to send the blog a comment.... or nothing, at your option.



The truism in politics is "when you're explaining, you're losing," which proves almost invariably accurate.  Similarly, in her new book "Hacks," former DNC interim chairperson Donna Brazile writes that the Clinton presidential campaign was “anemic” and had taken on “the odor of failure."

Hindsight is 20/20 and it's easy to label- without risk of contradiction- a losing campaign as one with the odor of failure.





But we now know that Brazile, grasping the low-hanging fruit- was full of organic feces.

We know this because of Virginia, the state for lovers and for Democrats. Open an old dictionary (there is no other kind) and the entry for "odor of failure" had a picture of Ralph Northam.  On November 3, The Huffington Post's Daniel Marans noted

A major national progressive group on Thursday denounced Ralph Northam, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, as “gutless” and “racist” for his remarks on immigration ― plunging Democrats into a bitter internecine squabble ahead of statewide elections on Tuesday.

In a Wednesday interview with Norfolk, Virginia, TV news channel WAVY, Northam said he would sign a bill banning so-called “sanctuary cities,” or municipalities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities, should any Virginia locality pursue that status in the future....

When you're explaining, you're losing and carry with you the stench of failure. Marans (emphasis his) continued

Speaking to reporters Wednesday night after an event with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, Northam claimed that he simply opposed preemptively banning sanctuary cities, and that his comments to WAVY were “what I’ve been saying all along.”

The explanation was not enough, however, to assuage Democracy For America, a left-leaning online activism organization based in Burlington, Vermont. In response to what DFA called Northam’s “backtrack on his commitment to standing up for immigrant families,” the group declared that it would end “any work to directly aid” his campaign.

Though showing a neck-and-neck race, polls consistently demonstrated that the wind was at Republican Gillespie's back.  As Democrat Northam's explanation appeared less a reflection of centrism than of calculated equivocation, Democrats were in considerable risk of losing an election which always was theirs to lose, one in which they were heavy favorites.

And then something happened to contradict Donna Brazile's odor of failure, stench of defeat theory. Northam won. He won, and helped carry to victory the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax.  If Donna Brazile wants to do a case study on the "odor of failure," after considering the gubernatorial race, she can assess the election for Lieutenant Governor, in which Fairfax was opposed by the very formidable Jill Vogel, Trumpist with a sunny disposition. In October, The Washington Post had reported 

“She is fearless,” said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who helped run Trump’s Virginia campaign and criticized Gillespie’s response to the president’s endorsement. “She takes positions immediately. She’s not going through a focus group. . . . She’s a shot of oxygen in a room occupied with stale air"...

“Jill has managed to balance normal policies that appeal to moderate Virginians while embracing the concerns of Trump voters,” said Ben Marchi, a longtime Virginia GOP operative. “Jill understands how to talk to normal people.”

By all appearances reeking of failure,  these two Democrats- as well as the incumbent Attorney General- rode to victory because

“The voters looked at the results of 2016 and said we need to set the ship right,” Herring said Tuesday night, after Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam won the governor’s race and the party appeared to be doing well in multiple state legislative contests. “Today, Virginians said, ‘This is the way back.’ ”

The critical lesson recognized everywhere except at Fox News is that President Donald Trump  is a major liability for Republicans.  In the swing county of Burlington County, NJ, two out-manned and out-gunned, outspent and underdog Democrats defeated two GOP Freeholder candidates.

Although resgistered Democrats outnumber registered Democrats there and most voters usually opt for the winning gubernatorial and presidential candidate, Republicans routinely win these county races and were heavy favorites to do so Tuesday. As in Virginia, voters wanted to send a message, loud and clear, to the guy in the Oval Office.

Though less obvious, the other lesson from Tuesday, especially from Virginia, is that the odor of defeat is easy to detect- in hindsight, as Donna Brazile did. The Democratic Party's  success Tuesday is not attributable to her departure from the national committee, but the Party is none the worse because she no longer is in a position of power or influence.





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Preposterous Possibility

Today's question: what is the link between Donna Brazile and Ed Gillespie, the GOP demagogue locked in a tight race for governor of Virginia?

The hint: a link among Brazile, Gillespie, and New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, locked in a less tight race (thank you, Governor Christie!) for governor against Democrat  Phil Murphy.

It's a very cryptic question to which the answer is Cory Booker, currently United States Senator and formerly the mayor of Newark, NJ.  Criticizing the response from Booker to a question asked him by CNN's Erin Burnett on January 27, 2007 about sanctuary cities, one conservative remarked

this broad, generalized view of sanctuary cities overlooks a very real case from Booker’s past involving an illegal immigrant from Peru, Jose Lachira Carranza, who was accused of violent and reprehensible acts.

Carranza was arrested once in 2006 on aggravated assault charges and twice that same year for allegations he raped a child in his care. In 2007, while Booker was mayor of Newark, he was out on bail when he took part in the execution-style killing of three college students. Carranza also sexually assaulted a fourth victim, who survived the attacks.

Newark authorities had not notified immigration officials that Carranza was in the country illegally following his arrests because of the cities sanctuary city status.

Booker had given Burnett (transcript here) a thoughtful, even somewhat informative answer in defending the sanctuary his city offered illegal immigrants.  But neither as mayor nor as senator has he wavered in his views about immigrants, legal or illegal, even though, as we learned three months ago from NJ.com, the online portion of the mainstream Star-Ledger of Essex County, NJ:

In August 2007, three friends — Terrance Aeriel, 18, and Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower, both 20— were gunned down on the playground of the Mt. Vernon School in Newark. Another 19-year-old victim was sexually assaulted, stabbed and shot, but survived. Prosecutors said five of the six men charged with the crime were members of the gang. One of the men told investigators he helped start the gang's Newark clique, and said the killings were ordered by gang members in New York a test for a new member. Five of the six received sentences of more than 155 years in prison each for their roles in the murders.

That gang is MS-13, about which Kim Guadagno has had something, and Ed Gillespie quite a bit, to say in their races.  A commentary in New Jersey noted

Kim Guadagno just released a TV ad that accuses Phil Murphy of sympathizing with the gang of notorious murderers who shot down four college students in a Newark schoolyard a decade ago, clipping a video in which Murphy says, "My bias is going to be having their back."

One problem: Murphy was not talking about the murderers.

Facts don't matter any more to Guadagno (considered a "reasonable" Republican) than they do to Gillespie, who in Virginia since late August

has run television ads accusing Northam of casting a tie-breaking vote in the state legislature to defend sanctuary cities. The spots have been widely criticized as misleading because, among other issues, no jurisdiction in Virginia actually qualifies as a sanctuary city. But over images of heavily tattooed Latino men, the ads charge that Northam’s vote “let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.” One briefly shows Gillespie talking with an African American police officer, but it ends with him walking with three white policemen—a thin blue line of defense—down what looks like a street in the outer Washington, D.C., suburbs that often decide Virginia elections.

Below is an anti-Gillespie ad, from the Latino Victory Project, which appears to have backfired. (You decide why.)





Unlike with Guadagno-who has relied upon the classic GOP fear-mongering about taxes- fear of The Other has been the focus of Gillespie's campaign, which has seen its chances of success soar in the past few months.

Nevertheless- and with then-mayor Cory Booker and now-Senator Cory Booker defending santuary cities

Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, “I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them.”

The interim DNC chairperson would have recognized at least two other factors had she been living on planet Earth. Donald Trump's hope of a political career was animated by an attack upon the first black President (Booker would have been the first black vice-president) as possibly not born in the USA, who never went to college and is "not capable of doing the job" of president. 

Then as a candidate, Trump arguably became best known for his remark, whose sentiments he echoed many times, "They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”  With all that, Donna Brazile believed Cory Booker would have been the perfect running mate for Joe Biden. The ads virtually would have written themselves and been devastating.

Brazile couldn't have created that ticket all by herself because she merely would have jump-started a process which she would have coordinated. Nonetheless, the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey as well as the election of Donald J. Trump as president should inspire in Democrats a sigh of relief that she is no longer, at least as of now, a party official.

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Churchgoers Mowed Down By Mental Illness

Time to get into our pajamas, turn out the lights, and turn in for the night. Dr. Trump has spoken:

President Donald Trump said Monday that Sunday's mass shooting at a Texas church "isn't a guns situation" but instead "a mental health problem at the highest level."

Asked at a joint press briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe if he would consider pressing for gun control measures in the wake of America's second mass shooting in a month, Trump said "mental health is your problem here," calling the shooter a "very deranged individual" with "a lot of problems over a long period of time."

In the President's defense, NBC News noted also

The U.S. Air Force confirmed Sunday that Devin P. Kelley, a former member of the USAF, was court-martialed in 2012 for assaulting his spouse and child and later discharged for bad conduct.


"It's a very, very sad event. These are great people," he said.

Of course, that does not validate Trump's opinion because we know only two things about someone who assaults his spouse and child: a) he has grievance(s) against his wife and his child, which puts him in roughly the 98% of husbands who at one time are angry at their wife and his child; and 2) he is violent. There is no third legitimate assumption, as in "he must be mentally ill."

Earth to Donald Trump: most men, like most women, are not happy with their spouse and their offspring all the time and many men are violent. When the men put the two things together, they should be punished.

But most are not mentally ill. If they were, some sort of defense by impairment would be routinely invoked, which it most assuredly is not.  And no professional in that field ever would conclude without examination that an individual is mentally ill.

Nonetheless, we know why (other than possible psychological projection) Trump was out in front, blaming mental illness, thus largely absolving the apparent perpetrator of his crime- or rather "the event." Two years ago, Texas governor Gregg Abbott (emphasis his) tweeted "I'm EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans." The invaluable Steve M. points out 

In the gun culture, it's believed that guns can solve a lot of problems. Devin Patrick Kelley obviously believed that, too -- his problem was rage, and a gun helped him channel that rage. So it was an effective tool for him.

And sure enough, the guy who instantly concluded that Devin Patrick Kelley a) was mentally ill; and b) committed the offense because of his mental illness

dismissed guns as the root of the problem in Sunday's shooting, saying "we could go into [gun control policy], but it's a little bit too soon." He highlighted reports that a resident with a rifle confronted the gunman, saying the shooting otherwise "would have been much worse."

As Kelley "emerged from the church," The New York Times reports, he "exchanged gunfire" with a neighbor, fled in his car, was chased by neighbors, and was killed when his car crashed. Concluding that there would have been no more killings had the gunman not been confronted by the armed neighbor is thus premature at best. But facts are sketchy, except in the mind of Donald Trump, who already has diagnosed the assailant.

The President has determined that firearms had nothing to do with this murderous incident. But Devin P. Kelley, were he alive, would beg to differ. He did not stab, or mow down with his automobile, 26 or more Texans, instead choosing a Ruger AR-556, an assault-style rifle. That was no coincidence, but an inconvenient fact which no amount of speculation, disguised as certainty, about mental health can erase.









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Thy Party Must Be Pure

The Democratic Party isn't trying to sabotage the Party's gubernatorial candidate in Virginia. It merely seems so. The Huffington Post reports

In a Wednesday interview with Norfolk, Virginia, TV news channel WAVY, Northam said he would sign a bill banning so-called “sanctuary cities,” or municipalities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities, should any Virginia locality pursue that status in the future.

Northam’s opponent, Republican Ed Gillespie, has run a series of misleading adsattacking Northam for a vote as lieutenant governor blocking a bill that would have preemptively banned municipalities from adopting these limits ― though Gillespie himself has acknowledged that no sanctuary cities exist in Virginia as of yet.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday night after an event with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, Northam claimed that he simply opposed preemptively banning sanctuary cities, and that his comments to WAVY were “what I’ve been saying all along.”

The explanation was not enough, however, to assuage Democracy For America, a left-leaning online activism organization based in Burlington, Vermont. In response to what DFA called Northam’s “backtrack on his commitment to standing up for immigrant families,” the group declared that it would end “any work to directly aid” his campaign.

“After seeing Northam play directly into the hands of Republicans’ racist anti-immigrant rhetoric on sanctuary cities, we refuse to be silent any longer and even remotely complicit in the disastrous, racist, and voter-turnout-depressing campaign Ralph Northam appears intent on running,” DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement.

The statement from the DFA, which had not endorsed anyone, was mostly symbolic and was followed by Howard Dean's tweet "Hope this is inaccurate because it is an incredibly stupid thing to say and deeply discredits the organization which I founded." (And cual es el problema, Doug Wilder?)





But it was not inaccurate and was followed by the untimely release of an excerpt from Donna Brazile's upcoming book in which she stated that after taking over as the interim head of the Democratic National Committee, she

found a Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

Predictably, President Trump tweeted "The real story on Collusion is in Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!"  Not so predictably, when Elizabeth Warren was asked by CNN whether the primary process was rigged against Bernie Sanders, she replied "yes."

And then predictably, an opportunistic Trump seized, now tweeting "Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept."

Unless the Senator intended to goad Trump into overreacting by obstructing justice by encouraging the Justice Department to investigate the arrangement, it was a rookie mistake.

Perhaps Warren had forgotten that there are one important (New Jersey) and one  extremely important (Virginia) gubernatorial race, as well as innumerable state and local races, the following week. It was also inaccurate because nothing revealed constitues rigging of an election. Also, it was premature, given that now we  learn that NBC News has obtained a memorandum revealing that the fund-raising agreement stipulated that

the DNC agreed to hire a communications director from "one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA." And while the DNC maintained "the authority to make the final decision" on senior staff in the communications, technology and research departments, the party organization said it would choose "between candidates acceptable to HFA."

The memo stipulates the DNC had to hire a communications director by September 11, 2015, months before the first nominating contests in early 2016.

However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates.

The primary was not rigged, the agreement did not pertain to the primary, and alleging now that the process was "rigged" probably shifts the advantage in the Virginia election from the Democratic to the Repub Party.

Other than that, it was a good move by Senator Warren. However, that probably establishes herself as a conventional Democrat at a time that the Party seems unable to take advantage of Donald Trump's flubs and flops with a simultaneous mix of extremism and cowardice.

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Some Lives Matter

After Stephen Paddock unloaded his AR-15 with a bump fire stock upon thousands of concertgoers in Las Vegas and killing 47 indivduals, President Trump could offer only the standard thoughts and prayers: "My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!"

Yet after Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov mowed down eight individuals with a Home Depot truck on Tuesday, Trump unleashed six tweets upon the public as of 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Washington Post's Phillip Bump.

They included four pertaining to policy. "I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for  this!; "The terrorist came into  ourcountry through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based"; "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter); "Senator Chuck Schumer is helping to import Europes problems" said Col. Tony Shaffer. We will stop this."

(The immigration reform proposal of the Gang of Eight, of which Schumer was a part, would have eliminated this visa program, adopted in 1990. But never mind.)

Three days later, Trump added the companion tweets "ISIS just claimed the Degenerate Animal who killed, and  so badly wounded, the wonderful people on the West Side, was 'their soldier"... Based on that , the Military has hit ISIS 'much harder' over the last two days. They will pay a big price for every attack on us!"

Only the indelicate would ask why it would take a horrific terrorist attack on the USA mainland for the nation's military to come down hard on ISIL, so I won't. Still, he has still remained silent following the crime on Wednesday night in which we learn from Salon's Charlie May

Scott Ostrem, a 47-year-old white man walked into Walmart and began opening fire on innocent people around 6 p.m. local time, according to the Denver Post. A woman and two men were killed in the incident, and Ostrem had used a handgun. The three victims were the only ones who were shot, police said.

"He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store," Victor Avila, a spokesman for the Thornton Colorado Police Department said, according to the Post.

Authorities arrested Ostrem on Thursday morning at around 8 a.m., local time, after he was seen driving "a red 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage with Colorado license plate number 882TQB," the Denver Post reported. Police informed the public to look out for the suspect and warned that he was "armed and dangerous."





Even before the mass shooting in Walmart, Bump noted

....with Saipov, Trump is quick to weigh in on policy proposals meant to address the perceived threat posed by immigrants — even if those proposals are not necessarily rooted in an accurate understanding of the issue.

Both Vegas and New York were tragedies and, in both cases, many elected officials will be looking for ways to prevent similar things from happening again. For Trump, though, the events pose dissimilar risks to the American people. One exemplifies the existential threat from radical terrorists that must be addressed. One — the much deadlier one — is just a thing that happens.

Bump is a little too generous or polite to point out that- as horrible as both attacks were- there were more than five times the loss of life in Las Vegas as in New York City.  Nonetheless, Trump was far more concerned, and far readier to express his outrage, about one than the other.  Following the Walmart murders, Salon's May pointed out

Trump, who has become notorious for quickly condemning terrorism and other mass casualty events on Twitter — exclusively when they involve a Muslim assailant — has remained silent through Thursday afternoon.

The president has repeatedly used ISIS-affiliated mass casualty events to push his agenda but has remained silent when the perpetrators were white. On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that Sayfullo Saipov, the Manhattan truck driver who killed nine people on Tuesday, should be executed.

However, while ethnicity- as you may have noticed- matters to Trump, the more important factor is firearms. Were Scott Ostrem black, the President might have spoken up but his reaction still would have been fairly muted. Just as he has pandered to the religious right, Trump has pandered to the National Rifle Association and will not challenge such a powerful organization with its influence both upon legislation and GOP politicians.  Oblivious to, or contemptuous of, common sense and the experiences of other nations, the killing will go on and on and on.




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The World Of Joe Biden

We're looking into it  very,very strongly. At a certain point in time I'll be revealing some interesting things.
- Donald J. Trump, April 21, 2011



It was going so well for Joe Biden on Wednesday before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He hit most of the right notes, including

How many of you now, whether you voted for him or not, are beginning to wonder if the roots, the invisible moral fabric that holds everything up, is eroding in a way that’s dangerous for democratic institutions? If we don’t stand up, the liberal world order we championed will quickly become an illiberal world order we suffer.

But then it happened.  Voters who deserted the Democratic Party for candidate Trump, Biden argued, "have real fears. It’s not based on race. They voted for a black man two times.”

This is not borderline ignorance. This is Trump-level ignorance.

Hillary Clinton, we are to believe, did not lose to the self-proclaimed "law-and-order candidate" who once pointed to "my African-American," condoned the beating of an African-American shouting "black lives matter,"  and has a history of racial bias.





Nor would Biden have us believe that she lost to the man who claimed that Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States of America, who on fourteen- 14!- occasions suggested the possibility the President was foreign-born.   The victor could not possibly have been the guy who maintained that the black president so accepted in white America "has been the most ignorant president in our history (who) has been a disaster as a president. He will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history."





A more sober assessment came from The Guardian's Gary Younge, who in January observed

There is a deeper connection, however, between Trump’s rise and what Obama did – or rather didn’t do – economically. He entered the White House at a moment of economic crisis, with Democratic majorities in both Houses and bankers on the back foot. Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, he chose the former.

Just a couple of months into his first term he called a meeting of banking executives. “The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability,” one of them told Ron Suskind in his book Confidence Men. “At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.” People lost their homes while bankers kept their bonuses and banks kept their profits.

In 2010 Damon Silvers of the independent congressional oversight panel told Treasury officials: “We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.” They chose the latter. Not surprisingly, this was not popular. Three years into Obama’s first term 58% of the country – including an overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents – wanted the government to help stop foreclosures. His Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, did the opposite, setting up a programme that would “foam the runway” for the banks.

So when Hillary Clinton stood for Obama’s third term, the problem wasn’t just a lack of imagination: it was that the first two terms had not lived up to their promise.

We proved America isn't racist, many conservatives insist, because we elected in a black president. Echoing that theme, the former vice president argues "It’s not based on race. They voted for a black man two times.”

Joe Biden evidently believes that racism sometime in the fairly recent past was banished from American society.  He lives in a world of puppy dogs and nursery rhymes where hostility toward blacks never enters the polling place. It is an adorable and fetching notion, made no less appealing because of its detachment from reality.





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