The Picture Going Into September

The New York Times reports that only 10 Democrat candidates remain in the running--for the debates, anyway; not all remaining hopefuls have conceded.

The list for the debate is (in no particular order): Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Julian Castro, Andrew Wang, and Cory Booker.

I can imagine any one of these being president; any of them will form a refreshing contrast to the present incumbent of the White House (though the latter is no doubt doing his level best).  Having said that, I would strongly prefer that Joe Biden would not be the president, even if the aged and demented Baby Boomers think that no one else could do the job.  Do the job?  Nobody can do the job unless the Democrats mobilize the vote like crazy; if there is a good turnout, any one of these 10 could get elected with the party behind them.  But that's a big IF.  If the Boomers feel overconfident and stay home, we will have four more years of mad Tweeting from the White House; and the same result if the Millennials go into a sulk, and do not vote.

Electoral Engineering is a dangerous game.  I don't like the idea of anyone gambling on the likely statistics of voter turnout (though I'm sick and tired of every damn election being an existential crisis for reasonable groups of people).

I'm extremely sorrowful to see both Marianne Williamson and Kirsten Gillibrand not appear on the lineup.  Kirsten has actually withdrawn.  (I'm embarrassed to say that Ms. Gillibrand really appealed to me; she reminded me of so many feisty women who have wagged their fingers at me in my youth!)  Kirsten was just a little too nice for this moment; I can imagine her landing like a ton of bricks in a future election year, looking a lot grimmer, and a lot more determined.  She seemed to imply that she would accept the role of a running-mate, if that was offered.

Marianne Williamson might not be completely out of the picture.  The DNC has a criterion of the candidates having to poll a certain minimum level on certain specific national polls, and I believe that's what eliminated Ms. Williamson from this next debate.  That's a pity, because she did bring a certain moral clarity to the discussion.  Can we afford the luxury of morals, when matters are at such disastrous state?  We can always afford to be moral; jettisoning morals is something that other parties do, not that the Democrats should consider themselves intrinsically superior.  They've just held the moral high ground in the very recent past.

Tulsi Gabbard's departure is also sad.  She came across to me as someone who had done her homework, and was being restrained.  Restraint probably seems high on the list of needed characteristics in a leader for the moment.  But Ms. Gabbard did not seem confident enough.  She was also one of the very youngest in the set of candidates at the last debate, but I definitely feel that Ms. Gabbard is not about to go away soon.  Running a state would give her the weight that voters are looking for in a future nominee for president, but it is unlikely that the State of Hawaii will take my suggestion seriously.

Many of the Senators who had been on stage at the debates in August have chosen to run for Senate instead--including Michael Bennett and Kirsten Gillibrand.  John Hickenlooper is also considering running for the Senate.  There are at least a couple of hopefuls running to replace Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat, including a veteran fighter pilot, Amy McGrath, who is battling for political survival against the extremely well-financed, but intensely disliked McConnell.  In Maine, a very plausible challenger, Sara Gideon, has come forward to contest Susan Collins's Senate seat.  If at least half of these seats go to the Democrats, the dynamics of the Senate could change dramatically.

To summarize, the situation seems very hopeful to me.

Those making electability calculations are puzzling over the problem of pushing for Joe Biden.  Younger voters are unable to feel confident in the ability of Biden to understand, let alone respond to, the problems facing the nation and the world.  He's more an aging politician than a mental giant; his heart has been essentially in the right place for lo these many years, but his is the wrong face to put on the nation for the next few years.

If Trump had not decided to disrupt American Politics, the transition to a younger generation of leaders would not have been so difficult.  But now some Democrats are trying to puzzle out which Democrat candidate would most appeal to those demented conservatives who voted for Trump in the last election.  I say: don't even bother.  Those who voted for Trump for economic reasons will be thinking carefully about the consequences of these trade wars.  Those who loved Trump's infantile rhetoric are likely to love it still; courting them is throwing pearls before swine.

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Bracing Ourselves For Political Unpleasantness!

I observed with mixed feelings the departure of a couple of presidential candidates from the race: John Hickenlooper, and Jay Innslee (Inns-Lee).

Hickenlooper: To me he seemed a little behind the times with his ideas, just a little too moderate for progressives to get behind.  He also seemed insufficiently forceful and charismatic, but those are forgivable shortcomings; we can't expect a good president to be charismatic and progressive and moderate and of good character . . . can we?  If he runs for Senator from Colorado, that would be fabulous.

Innslee: His departure seems a serious loss.  I could see Jay Innslee being an excellent president, but I could also see the vast, unimaginative wasteland of American presidential tradition viewing him with disapproval, saying that even Trump would be better.  But Innslee seemed comfortable with assessing ideas from many sources and selecting the best; he did not have to be persuaded that action on Climate Change was necessary; he was not defensive about his candidacy (that I knew about, anyway), he seemed personable, and promised to have cordial relations with all the constituents in Washington.

Tragedy and Aftermath
There were shootings in El Paso, Texas (August 3), and Dayton, Ohio (August 4).  After the El Paso shooting, Candidate Beto O'Rourke canceled his appearance in Iowa (where many candidates were going, in preparation for the Iowa Caucus), and stayed home in El Paso, to express sympathy and solidarity with the mourning city residents.  We should not view this as merely a political move, but it certainly promises well for those sorts of actions from a future president, who has to respond to tragic events that are only too likely to take place during his term.  As a businessman, Trump simply has never had the experiences that would prepare him to handle these sorts of situations.  Trump essentially dealt with it as business as usual.  Experience in business, I must reluctantly say, does not prepare one for anything at all, except to increase profits.

Joe Biden gave a speech, deploring Trump's response / non-response, and lack of moral leadership.  It was well phrased, and hit hard.  Clearly, Joe B. would do well as a focus for moral outrage in cases like these.  If that were all we needed, Joe is clearly our man.  But, in my assessment, Joe is a much better Indian than a Chief (to use a figure that might be frowned upon by the Metaphorical Police).  In the next decade or so, we're going to need a president who isn't starting to think about the various issues that were already rising to the surface before Trump took office, and which have arrived front and center in the last couple of years.  We need a president who has thoroughly understood the issues, and isn't just holding the crib-sheet that the Business Lobby has handed him.

Age
I was somewhat dismayed by how comedian Stephen Colbert (The Late Show) handled the several points above: the shootings, the Trump response, and Joe Biden.  He seemed to find Biden amusing, simply because of his age.  Of course Biden is from an older generation than even Trump (though some of Trump's gaffés betray a mental age far younger than those of any of my readers!), but it is far from axiomatic that we are at a generational moment; that is, that the present battle is between those who want a younger president, and those who want someone of the Joe Beiden / Bernie Sanders generation.

We do know that, historically, older voters have gone to the polls, especially white male ones.  If the elections were to be held tomorrow, we know that there would be a massive turnout.  But we have a year and a few months in which we can use up the interest of the public, which has been squandered over the past several weeks, and to some degree sabotaged by disgruntled young white male nobodies with guns.

The youngest among the candidates are Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Julián Castro, Andrew Yang, Tim Ryan, and Cory Booker (in no particular order).  All of them have potential, though some of them need to cook quite a bit longer, in my very humble opinion.  Some of the best candidates, again in my humble opinion, are quite a bit older, though I would be reluctant to say outright that it is their age that gives them their edge.

Business
We in America cannot remember a time before Business had arrived as a political force.  There have always been lobbies, of course; even in the 19th century, we have reports of Congress being petitioned by various individuals, who are the predecessors of lobbyists as we know them now.

Business came into its own very early in the history of the USA, when it was recognized that the Economies of Scale led to great profits.  If you can make money making pottery, for example, you can make a lot of money making a lot of pottery.  Similarly for cars.  Similarly for houses.  Similarly for shopping malls.

Now, without jumping to conclusions, but without being afraid to arrive at conclusions which are inevitable, we must look at business long and steady.  Is it impossible to conceive of a business that does not do whatever it does on a massive scale?  Wherever we look, we can only see businessmen who live by the rule: bigger is better.

Even landfills are now being created on vast scales, because the lifestyle which we love so well requires discarding vast quantities of ancillary materials--packaging--that comes along with whatever we buy.  Of course, all of us are familiar with the problems with recycling plastic.  But none of us are willing to join the dots.

Dare I say it?  Part of the problem is that making cheap gewgaws out of plastic has been the brainwaves of generations of Entrepreneurs.  If we were to call a moratorium on new business ventures that involve plastic, we would dash the dreams of millions of baby would-be venture capitalists who have been groomed to create brightly-colored new businesses with plastics, which create dozens of new jobs, and contribute to the drowning of the world in yet more plastic.

At the moment, the voices raised against the plastics industry are few, and about as unpopular as the gun control movement.  But, however powerful, the plastics industry, like the NRA and Big Oil, has to be confronted and resisted.  The Road More Traveled, the Road of Plastic, must be phased out.

While we're trying to develop clean energy, and while we bundle those individuals who desperately cling to fossil fuels, kicking and screaming, into suitable padded cells, we must also find ways to make the declining years of those who live and breathe Plastic into productive and pleasant ones.

It will not be easy, because New Technology is on the rise, and unfortunately, the material components of New Tech is often heavily plastic-based.  We're not going to find organic substitutes for those shiny new plastic telephone cases very quickly, so we do have to continue to find new and creative locations for almost as many new landfills as we currently have.  But unless we phase out the profligate use of unnecessary hardware, we will soon be reminded of the landscape of Wall-E.

Start small.  Stop your grocery checkout clerk flooding you with unnecessary plastic bags.  Act to minimize junk mail.  Shop at used-clothes stores, like we do.  Wean yourself of the culture of meaningless gifts!  (That's hard; people expect gifts on various occasions.  It may be several decades before we evolve so far as to stop expecting gifts such as for Valentine's Day, for instance.  Hallmark alone has probably set this planet back several decades.)  Don't buy new guns, for instance; there are probably used guns you could easily get, going into the landfills.  Jokes apart: where do old guns go to die?

Eventually, though, we must prepare to be more thoughtful about: what we discard into the sink.  We already collect used cooking oil and grease in bottles, but we throw them in the trash anyway.  We know that these bottles of used cooking oil and grease will someday pollute the ground water.

We will have to be thoughtful about pouring hot water into the sink.  Part of the problem of global warming is the warming of domestic waste water, which eventually flows into rivers, and ultimately, the oceans.  But the temperature of the rivers is rising; in our case, the Susquehanna, and the Chesapeake Bay.  Sure; nobody likes to be told that they're killing off the fish in the Bay, but let's change our behavior before we have to!

Changing
It is easy to view the challenges we're going to face as externally enforced rules which constrain us, and prevent us from doing the usual, merrily destructive stuff that we've done forever, without even realizing that it was a privilege that we're going to have to give up someday.  I remember how we used to tease girls mercilessly back when I was a kid; who knew we were going to have to treat girls like human beings?  And they can vote, too.  And they do, dammit.

The thing to do is to change your angle on things.

Everybody is going to have to deal with our uncomfortable future.  But if I prepare my own kid carefully to deal with the restrictions of the future, it won't be as painful for her or him as it will be for a child who has been brought up with a sense of entitlement about irresponsible behavior.

For instance, there are kids who litter simply because hey, this is a free country.  Of course, litter is unsightly, and reduce the tone of a neighborhood.  But worse, litter gets swept into storm sewers during a rainstorm, and into the river.  Not everyone appreciates a nice, clear river, but nobody appreciates a river full of garbage.  An important first step is to get your kids to appreciate the river in the first place.  The clean-ness of the river just cannot be appreciated if the child never notices the river in the first place, except as a distant geographical feature that is irrelevant to him or her.

It is important to take kids to state and national parks, and to appreciate scenic beauty.  Natural beauty is fast disappearing, and it is a good idea to appreciate what we have, and yet try not to burden them with a sense of foreboding about the future of those features.  It is better for them to have happy memories of the beauty of their childhood environment than to not have experienced them at all.

Travel, and foreign experiences affect different families in different ways!  Sometimes, traveling to distant destinations brings us in close contact to desperately unsightly views of Third World countries.  They try very hard to keep the more disgusting vistas out of the sight of tourists, but sometimes they fail.

Some tourists are appalled, and return home, desperately relieved, and grateful that those same problems have not yet arrived at our shores.  Others are also appalled, but are determined to help any organizations that are dedicated to remedying, or reducing those problems in creative ways.

Company
Finally, one of the most pleasant aspects of deciding to be pro-active about environmental issues, in the most general sense, is to join in the company of like-minded individuals, and their families.  No matter how trying the future can be, it will be far less trying if the young people have friends who feel as they do, that there are things that can be done to make the environment better, and as good as it can be.

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We Must Not Take Away Hope From Young People

We adults have been listening to the dire warnings of how things are spiraling out of control for many years.  We react to it with horror, or with tired cynicism, or scorn, or anger, according to our personalities, and of course, according to how much background we have.  The discussions often get heated; sometimes because our friends argue with us out of frustration.

But other ears are also listening, and taking note: little ears, and not-so-little ears, which do not have the experience (the ‘wisdom’), to put the talk of these end-times in perspective.  Well, let me take a step back; none of us have successfully negotiated the End Of The World before.  But many of us--not all, I must confess; and we should have some compassion towards our friends who are not mentally well-equipped to cope with disaster without going all Jonestown on us--many of us are able to brace ourselves, and address the problem as logically as possible.

From the Adult point of view, we really don’t know whether, when things start going kaplooey, whether it will happen (A) relatively suddenly, or (B) gradually.  We also don’t know whether things will become impossible everywhere at once, or whether it will start in some places, and spread to other places.

I personally believe that, when talking about climate change / global warming, or CC/GW, especially to children, we should take the view that it is going to be gradual.  Things are gradually going to get worse, and we need to push back so that things either get better, or get worse more slowly.  We’re not doing this only for ourselves; we’re also doing this because poor people will suffer relatively more than rich people (which is why this Green New Deal is something we middle-class and working class people want so desperately, and most upper-class and 1% folks do not want at all).

There’s other interesting attitudes that are sort of amusing.

• A very elderly person without any family left, and with some financial resources, is probably not going to be too upset.  He is going to die in less than a decade, probably; has the money to deal with the added needs of these last years, and has no responsibilities.
• The patriarch of an affluent family: well, he has to survive a decade or two, but can pass along a lot of his personal fortune to his aging rug-rats, and once he goes, it becomes their problem.  We know some people in this category, don’t we?
• What about a middle-class matriarch with an enormous family, which family has come to depend on her leadership for many years?  What can she do to adjust the attitudes of her more capable family members, so that they do not throw in the towel too quickly?  What can she do to combat the extreme and paranoid attitudes of the dumber drones among her menfolk?  (Obviously I’m drawing upon some broad stereotypes here, but we’re running out of time . . .)

If things take the best possible course, we have to make some mental adjustments, and get accustomed to sane ways of doing things, ways that have already been adopted in many countries, and which we have been in the habit of ridiculing for decades.

1. We must stop burning things.
   Let me explain.  Smoke screws up the air, so that’s one reason.  Burning converts fuel to carbon dioxide, which--at the moment--is causing problems with keeping the planet temperature in balance.  (Too much CO2 prevents the planet cooling fast enough.)  Also, grilling and barbecuing heats up the air; and though we don’t want to get our kids panicked to the point where they start yelling at anyone who has an open fire going, it might not be a bad thing to get them thinking that discouraging open fires--or any sort of fires, for that matter--is something that we’re going to have to do sooner or later.
2. We must stop using plastic.
   There were about 10 years when it appeared as though we had the plastic pollution problem licked.  But we should have known better; we only kicked the problem down the road.  Our politicians are afraid of taking action on anything that does not benefit some business or other, and the plastic recycling business does not promise easy enough profits.
   The US does a better job with plastic than they do in the Third World, but that does not say much.  Plastics end up near the homes of the poorest in the land, who are at most at risk with rising ocean levels, and continual flooding.
3. We must stop putting crap in the water, or pouring it down the sink.
   I remember a time when I did not think twice about scrubbing filthy car parts, and pouring it down the sink.  I don’t do it now because I don’t do my own repairs.  But dirty water becomes the problem of the Water Authority, and in many parts of the country, the budgets of these departments get cut every year.  Pretty soon, just as a lot of our supposedly recycled plastic is shunted to the landfill (and not recycled at all), a lot of our water that should be filtered is simply sent into the closest big river.  Only fishermen get upset.  But the really, really rich do not go fishing, it appears.
4. We must support clean electricity.
   As we start using cleaner-running cars, the power for those cars will increasingly come from the Power Stations.  This is great, because we can focus our attention into making these power stations efficient and non-polluting, which makes the clean-running autos really mean something.
5. In the near future, we should get away from personal transportation.
   The faster we do that, the further we postpone the time when life becomes really difficult.  Buses and trains are already available for those of us who live near the big cities to go most places conveniently.  Planes, at this point, are not really efficient, as far as I know.
   There are also those who work in big companies, whose productivity is measured by how much they travel.  It is very difficult to change the culture of big companies, but this culture of gratuitous travel has to be tailed off.

Then, there are more difficult things we can do, such as: eat less meat, pay more attention to difficult school subjects, spend less money on defense, elect smarter leaders, and so on.  But our young family members must be persuaded that:

Even if we cannot make the deadlines that the Global-Warming-scientists say we must make to prevent the sea temperature from becoming too high (and that is a serious critical point), we can still make the Post-Apocalyptic World a slightly more comfortable place to live in by getting started.

All the things that need to be done are common-sense things that reasonable people have thought of doing for centuries.  For many years, Businesses have encouraged us to Buy More!  Spend More!  Eat More!  Travel More!  Fly More!  Because it’s Good for Business.  But it seems to me that what is good for business is bad for the environment.  I suppose business leaders will leap to their feet to contradict that claim.  But I don't see any reason to think that there are any environment-friendly businesses to make much of a difference.

Conclusion

It is important to convince the younger members in your circles that there are things they can do, even while the adults are out there screwing everybody over.  And we can expect bad weather all through the year, most years, but as long as we continue to push back against the Burn / Drive / Pollute  aspects of our culture, it is possible to keep our mental equilibrium.

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Debate 2019 Part 2, Day 2

Well, Day 2 was disappointing.

Many of the candidates seemed to be simply marketing themselves, and being clever.  Of course, eventually, one of these people--from the entire group of candidates, not just the Thursday ones, to clarify--has to be ultimately selected, and being simply a slick salesman is not a deal-breaker.  But after three years or so of Trump, who is simply a salesman (and one who only appeals to a certain not-too-bright, and another completely cynical, demographic) and not much of anything else, after enduring all that, to buy into another candidate who is first and foremost a salesman, is repugnant.

Michael Bennet, the senator from Colorado, seemed rather a stick-in-the-mud.  He comes across as a person with good values, and will be OK at a pinch, but he strikes me as being difficult to persuade to any new idea.  Last night he was a lot easier to understand--in terms of his diction, only--than he was in the previous debate.  Maybe I'm just getting accustomed to his speech...

Tulsi Gabbard, the Congresswoman from Hawaii, also seems to have all the right values.  She had done her homework, especially relative to Kamala Harris's record as Attorney General of California, and her failings with the Police Department.  So we know she is well prepared, but I did not see the sort of confidence in dealing with her fellow-candidates that would promise certain aspects of presidential leadership if she were voted into office.

I have nothing terribly bad to say about Kirsten Gillibrand.  As she confesses, she has certainly enjoyed white privilege all her life, and she and I tend to differ on certain aspects of what we call PC speech; I don't know whether we're ready for a bionic Sunday-school teacher, which is what KG comes across as.  But it seems wrong to score her down simply for being white.  She has some very likeable qualities, and when she makes a mistake, she has a sort of Hermione Granger reaction that is--annoyingly--quite endearing.

Julian Castro performed well.  He spoke clearly; he had his facts figured out; but figured out just a little too specifically.  He always mentioned a specific piece of legislation that made his point for him, otherwise, he stated a general principle that everyone seemed to agree on.  He needs to study the issues a lot better; there are things that others are interested in, that he might not be as interested in.  Also, I'd like to see him a little more relaxed; he comes across as a tiny bit defensive, and that has to stop.

Cory Booker was quite a star (or "quite the star," as they say these days, especially when they do not approve of the stardom).  But there was a little too much double-talk in his attacks and his responses.  We know he falls on the right side of most of the issues; unlike Republican blacks, he is moderate, and unapologetic about black issues.  He went on the offensive against Joe Biden, who was partly responsible for some of the legislation that has now been identified as being particularly harsh on African Americans.  On one hand, Biden must answer to these accusations; on the other hand, there is no reason to be obnoxious about it.  (But can you make accusations about failed policy without being obnoxious?)

Joe Biden was the target of a lot of attacks.  There was general agreement that Joe Biden is not a racist.  But he seemed reluctant to confess that certain pieces of legislation that he supported were wrong-headed.  There was no attempt to say that they were bad choices, basically because their effects were not known in advance.  Well, in hindsight, he could say, it does appear that I screwed up.  But that could be a disaster, because such things are amplified by the media, which is interested in capitalizing in extreme ways on anything that appears controversial.  And pro-Trump media very much wants Biden out of the running, because Trump is worried about him.

Kamala Harris was on the defensive this time around.  There was a whiny sound to her speech that was annoying, and it seemed as if she did not address the points brought against her by some of the other candidates--notably Tulsi Gabbard--and by the moderators.  Charisma-wise, she made a good showing, but I'm not sure that the accusations that were made against her can be successfully countered.

Andrew Wang was 500% better prepared this time than during the last debate.  He gave good responses to every question that was asked; he might view the issues most definitely from a HT Business perspective, but they were on point.  He most definitely is not an orator, and his approach might not impress voters who have to battle their instincts to distrust someone of the 'wrong' ethnicity.  Wang's approaches to climate change seem to be a sort of Leave It To Business approach, from the little I had time to absorb.  But without the charisma, I'm reluctant to spend the time to learn all his policy ideas!

Jay Inslee, too, had all the right values, and in addition, he was proud of having implemented a great many initiatives in the State of Washington, while he was governor.  But the question is whether it would be possible to implement similar initiatives with a diverse Congress, a diverse Senate, all consisting of cantankerous reactionaries looking out for their pet Business Interests, as successfully as he did in the State of Washington, whose population is about 12 adults and 3 children, in comparison to the US, with a vastly larger population, and also much cattle?  But I loved his manner towards his fellow candidates; his outgoing, friendly nature; the gentleness with which he phrased remarks criticizing the current administration, about policies and decisions that he undoubtedly felt very strongly about.  An awesome guy, and I wish he could find a place in the new administration!

Bill DeBlasio is a tough customer, and I enjoyed how he went on the offensive against Joe Biden.  (I'm sure he knew that that was entertaining!)  Biden's mistakes have to be faced, and New York, and New York City had to deal with an unfair share of the fallout from Biden's legislational stumbles.  DeBlasio is also an astute politician with a clear eye for the implications of policy decisions, and a good man to have in any White House.  But I would imagine that people from the great middle of the country might be just a bit tired of New Yorkers, after four years of Trump.  Of course Trump is not a typical New Yorker; he's more of a sort of Hollywood guy, who's stuck himself in the middle of Manhattan, on his way to establishing an outpost in Moscow.  (He would probably prefer to be the Maharajah of Dubai!)

Anyway, there you have it.  A likeable bunch, and one wishes that they could all be elected to hold office in some way.

I started out saying that Day 2 was disappointing, but only because I wished that the candidates had a good opportunity to articulate their views on policy matters that they might actually agree on.  The moderators were more interested in hearing them attack each other, than in hearing how much they agreed.

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