What's the big issue in the 2022 midterm elections?

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I have not posted on this blog for almost two years. I was going to resume with a long take on the midterms on Tuesday. But I realized I don't need a long take to figure out what voters care about this cycle. I just need to think about conversations with my wife, many friends, and co-workers.

But let's use my wife as the example: A major subject in our lives is how much more expensive it is to live. We'll fret over the costs of gasoline, or the cost of eggs, or the dairy-free margarine we prefer. Or how much more expensive it is to enjoy lunch at one of several middle-class restaurants. Or how more expensive airplane tickets will be for that special vacation we've been planning 10-plus years for. 

We are pretty fortunate middle-classers. Unlike many others, we don't have to tap into our savings, or worse, use credit cards to meet daily essential needs. Across America, lots and lots of people have to do that.

Inflation is the key issue today. It's easy to understand why. It affects virtually everyone. If you, or your family, are paying thousands more each year just to exist, it's your issue. And it's what you are thinking about. Crime and immigration are also concerns, but they pale in comparison to your pocketbook. 

It's not selfish to care so much about inflation that it's your major issue. One isn't coveting when inflation plagues us. One isn't greedy, or unfeeling to consider inflation a major issue. We just want to make ends meet. We want to provide for our children. And we want policies and politicians to prevent inflation, not egg it on. 

In my world, we're talking about inflation. Across the nation, we're talking about inflation.

Here's what my wife and I never talk about: a perceived threat to democracy if our preferred political party does not win. 

Republicans are tub-thumping the threat of inflation. It's their chief priority. I hope they continue to care about the issue if the GOP wins Congress. I'll be very disappointed if the next Congress emulates the previous Congress with constant investigations and impeachments.

Democrats are tub-thumping a threat to democracy if they lose elections. It's a bit ironic since Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars boosting -- in the primaries -- Republican candidates who they cynically thought would be easier to beat.

Maybe they will be easier to beat. Or maybe a lot of these "democracy threats" will win Tuesday, which would be even more ironic.

I don't predict elections. When I do I am invariably wrong. But I know that inflation is a far bigger concern than a temper tantrum that democracy will end if a candidate loses. 

We're a strong country. Politics is always cyclical. We abide, and we endure. And we dismiss political demagoguery.

Just what in Hades is President Trump doing with his stimulus tantrum?

--- Column by Doug Gibson 

Just what in the hell is President Donald Trump (seen above) doing with his after-the-fact tantrum/demand that the finally negotiated stimulus/budget deal be changed? The president knows that his administration was involved in negotiations that resulted in a deal that included $600 direct payments for individuals, $1200 for couples, and $600 for dependents ... depending on income.

Demanding that it be increased to $2,000, or he may not sign the deal, brings us to a situation that after today, may lead unemployment benefits to end for many. It could also shut the government down in nearly three days.  

I speak as a supporter of the president despite his checkered past and still mercurial behavior. He's done a good job in office. My support for his re-election was based on policy. I wanted him to win. I'm not happy to have a future commander in chief who I fear, by 3 p.m. every day, has forgotten what he ate for breakfast, and even lunch is a bit foggy. I also believe that the Democratic Party, the past generation, has moved further left than the Republican Party has moved right.

But he lost the election. Politics is cyclical. This was a unique year in which massive voting produced curious results. Trump gained in popularity but a consistent antipathy for Donald Trump the past four years -- truth be told tub-thumped with enthusiasm by still-influential media and arts -- made Joe Biden the getter of most votes in our nation's history.

Donald Trump is mad he lost. Everyone gets it. He believes he was cheated out of the election. He is angry and resentful that prominent GOP pols, notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are saying it's time to accept the results. This anger is what motivates President Trump's $2,000-or-maybe-I'll-not-support-this-deal switch midweek. He did it to both embarrass -- and potentially damage -- pols such as McConnell. 

Trump's frustration is so high that he is willing to hamstring two Republican U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, in which Republican incumbents are running against a pair of pseudo-socialists. The vote is scheduled for Jan. 5. If the Democrats take both seats, they will control both houses of Congress.

Democrats seized on Trump's remarks, using them for political advantage. Speaker Nancy Pelosi dragged in Congress for a unanimous consent vote for a $2,000 stimulus, meaning a single vote against would kill the proposal. No Democrats spoke, so the GOP was forced to kill it, providing "wonderful optics." This minor comedy provided Pelosi the opportunity to deflect that she refused every reasonable-OK-not-atrocious stimulus deal offered prior to Election Day, preferring the president not get a political victory rather than provide needed relief.

Let's be honest, the stimulus relief and budget deal is terrible legislation. It exemplifies everything that is bad about Congress; a hasty, cobbled together, several-thousand-page sleep-aid of mostly indecipherable legal speak, chock-full of pork, favors and personal preferences, with cash thrown at the "proles." 

But, unfortunately, what I have described is kind of the norm for Congress. It's up to voters to throw these enablers out, and we never seem to do that. 

The point is that the president knew the game, and the negotiations. If he wanted $2,000, the very public, taped demand he made could have been out two weeks ago. It shouldn't be tossed in after the fact, after the deal was reached.

Because the president did this out of personal pique, I am hopeful that later today, or perhaps Sunday, even Monday, Trump will back away from his implied threat to create chaos, and sign the budget/stimulus package. He can then resume -- to his heart's consent -- his quixotic attempt to change the election results. 

And then, after Jan. 21, we'll have a new president. I will call him my president. And I hope Republicans challenge him often, and effectively.

‘Mortality’ is an appropriate epitaph to Christopher Hitchens’ life of writing

 

(Saved this piece from Google's Wayback today.) “Mortality,” by the late Christopher Hitchens, is a slim volume that serves as an epitaph not of Hitchens’ life, but the accompanying end of his writing, which fought its death. Most of “Mortality” are collections of magazine pieces Hitchens published while afflicted with esophageal cancer. However, the volume, sans self-pity and written with a curiosity that is not morbid,  includes fragments of thoughts that Hitchens felt compelled to write on paper while on his deathbed.

Hitchens was fortunate that he died still able to write. One of the most painful sections of Howard Sounes' excellent biography of another writer, Charles Bukowski, is the brief, terse mention, near the end of Buk’s life, that he had degenerated so far that he couldn’t manage the act of writing. To a Hitchens, a Bukowski, and I suspect most writers, that is real death. In “Mortality,” it’s clear writing serves as an enemy to the author’s cancer.

To writers, writing is an addiction. I recall watching a documentary on Oxycontin addiction. The addict, trying to describe what it does to him, said that his lust for the drug had long exceeded a point where he received any initial euphoria from the Oxycontin. Instead, he said, the drug was needed so he could feel normal for a little while.

Of course writing is a positive, and painkiller addiction a negative, but there is a similarity here. Writing is not an easy act. It can be frankly, a royal pain in the ass. But as Gertrude Stein and others have maintained, “having written” provides euphoria.

I suspect, even as he lay dying in a hospital bed, writing provided Hitchens a chance, in a world of pain, to feel normal, if not euphoria.

Hitchens probably wouldn’t approve of this, but I’ll be sappy and express a hope that he’s still observing and writing.

--- Doug Gibson

--- Originally published in October 2013 in StandardBlogs.

Mr. Jones is a gut-punch of a film that reminds us of evil, and its unlikely cheerleaders

Review by Doug Gibson

I've watched the film "Mr. Jones" several times the past few days. Each viewing is a stronger punch in the gut. This is the most important film of the year, and even if there wasn't a pandemic it would likely have a limited release, with its commercial life relegated to streaming.

I watched it with my son, 15, yesterday. He's readying for 10th grade; an intelligent 4.0 student as well as an accomplished amateur boxer. His reaction to the film -- succinct and appropriate: Why haven't we learned about this in school?

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"Mr. Jones" is a true story, albeit with composite characters and some non-relevant historical license (George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) floats through the story, quoting "Animal Farm" and sharing two apocryphal scenes with the main character.)

It's the story of Gareth Jones, (James Norton) a young Welsh policy wonk in the early 1930s who had a passion for journalism. Through dogged persistence, also called shoe-leather journalism, he once snagged an off-the-cuff interview with Adolf Hitler.

The film opens with Jones, an adviser to a top British government official, warning his boss and others about the danger Hitler poses. His listeners respond with condescending laughter. Afterward, Jones is let go by his employer; not for his advice. His employer is genuinely fond and appreciative of Jones. It's the global depression; he can't be fit in the budget.

Jones has been researching Stalin and his economic policies in Russia. He can't understand how Stalin has so much money. The numbers don't add up. With a letter of recommendation from his boss, and some help from a journalist in Russia, Paul Kleb (1), he secures a press credential to visit Russia. His goal, greeted often with amusement, is to interview Stalin.

He is advised to contact a journalist for the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner named Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard). Duranty, the media star there, is known as the man with Stalin's ear. In Moscow, Jones is assigned two days (he expected a week) in a luxury hotel. He finds out journalists are not allowed to leave Moscow. He learns Kleb, who had told him on the phone he was working on a big story on the Ukraine before the line went bad -- was murdered on the same day.

Duranty is cordial but patronizing with Jones, inviting him to a party with other journalists, in Duranty's suite at the same hotel. It's a sex party, and Jones declines entreaties for sex with women, drug use, and sex with men. A memorable line comes from an intoxicated journalist telling a bewildered Jones to associate the party with Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," at least until that book is banned, he adds.

I've hewed tightly to the plot to set the film's scenario, but I'll move faster now. Jones develops a friendship with an employee of Duranty's, a journalist named Ada (Vanessa Kirby). She provides Kleb's notes on Ukraine, entrusted with her, to Jones. Using his association with his prominent former employer in Britain, Jones manages to finagle, from an arrogant Soviet official, a government-approved trip to the Ukraine area to see their engineering success. Once on the luxury train, Jones easily eludes his alcoholic minder and transfers himself to a cargo boxcar. Inside, he sees travelers herded like cattle, freezing as the train moves forward.

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The second half of the film provides historical gut punch after gut punch. The movie at times seems to  be a stream of consciousness, the viewer transported behind Jones' eyes, as he plays witness to an evil far greater than the 20-something journalist dreamed possible. It's also an evil hidden from the world, and enabled by a media unwilling to confront it.

In the boxcar, every eye turns to Jones as he eats an orange. When he tosses the peeling to the ground, more than several try to get a bite at it. At one point Jones offers money to buy a winter coat from a traveler. The seller has no interest in money, but he'll trade for a loaf of black bread. When he arrives in Ukraine, Jones quickly learns the answer to his questions. Stalin's government is transporting all the grain harvested to Moscow. Menacing soldiers push people around, ignoring dead bodies in the streets. People are starving to death.

Jones narrowly escapes capture after disembarking from the train. A starving old man, noticing his camera, accuses him of being a spy to a soldier. After escaping the city, we spend several scenes of Jones wandering through deserted, frozen country, with long empty fields dotted with mostly silent villages. The white cinematography is superb, and director Agnieszka Holland frames the land so perfectly; so beautiful but so desolate, a gorgeous hell of death and suffering.

It is very, very hard to endure some of the ensuing scenes. I'll mention a couple because this is history and no one should complain about "spoilers." The scene that hit me the hardest was Jones encountering a cart on its way, collecting the dead along the road. A toddler, little more than an infant, is crying loudly next to his dead mother. The cart's driver tosses the mother in the cart, and without a thought, tosses the crying toddler, alive, into the cart with the dead bodies.

Another scene involves Jones entering a house where three children live. They are cooking meat. During dinner Jones inquires, to the oldest child, who provided the meat. She gives the name of her brother. Is he a hunter, Jones asks. No one at the table responds. Jones gets up and walks around the house. At an open back door, he sees a corpse preserved in the snow, a portion of meat from his leg cut out.

Later, at a bread line, a woman tells Jones that millions have died. He is then captured and returned to Moscow. He is released after being forced to say that the Ukraine has no problems and the people are happy. Before Jones is allowed to go home, six British engineers are arrested as "spies."

Duranty tells Jones that he got him released. An angry Jones confronts the corrupt journalist, offering him a piece of bark --- the food staple of Ukranians -- and tells him to place it next to his Pulitzer. Duranty tells Jones it's a pity, he would have made a good journalist.

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The final third of the film covers Jones' return to Britain and his attempts to tell about the forced famine, only to be hit with a continued barrage of fake news. A successful attack on his credibility is led by the Pulitzer-winner Duranty. Seventeen years ago, Sarsgaard effectively played an ethical journalist in the film, "Shattered Glass,"' about the New Republic plagiarism scandal. But the now-older actor is even better as the hobbling, slithering esteemed liar Duranty, happy to perpetuate fake news that feeds a famine. As National Review's Kyle Smith points out in his review (linked in this paragraph) Duranty was not a stereotypical hack or useful idiot, he was "a deeply evil man."

Even Jones' ex-employer demands he retract his claims. He won't. But he enters a journalistic and cultural purgatory that, frankly, is not uncommon in history. His principles insist he do what is right, rather than what is easy (apologies to "Albus Dumbledore").

Norton's Jones is a contrast. A deferential, glasses-wearing, mild young man with resolve of steel and a moral code that can withstand the taunts of the 1930s' version of Twitter and cancel culture. He doesn't take his blows without showing injury. Gordon's Jones cries as he is mocked.

He endures, and he finds an opportunity to get the truth about Ukraine in print, boldly barging into publisher William F. Hearst's vacation home and pitching his story. Hearst accepts it, seeming to take pleasure at taking on Duranty and the Times.

The movie ends with Jones' reports in the press and being widely discussed. Hearst ran a conservative empire so, like today, I'm sure Jones' reports were tagged as "conservative propaganda" by Duranty and others. But the facts got out; and that is what is important, as Jones' notes to a skeptical Ada early in the film.

While the film is about Stalin's Holodomor (Holocaust) it is also about fake news, and there are parallels to today, although of course not to the extent of covering up an event that killed millions. The past four years a fake Russian conspiracy charge against the current President, and many others, has been propagated, debunked, and nevertheless still propagated by both politicos and prominent media. One can read definitive accounts noting this hoax by journalists from the right and the left. History perhaps, doesn't change as much as we think.

Back to my son's questions: Why don't I know of Gareth Jones? Why does Walter Duranty still have a Pulitzer? There's a simple answer. Truth and courage does not always provide a great reputation among the world.

Jones was murdered about a year later in Mongolia while reporting. According to the film, his guide was associated with the Russian secret police. Duranty lived a cosseted, comfortable life, dying in Florida at the age of 73.

(1) Kleb, a composite character, is obviously in name an homage to Paul Klebnikov, a journalist for Forbes murdered in Russia in 2004.

Bill O'Reilly gets inside the mind of Donald Trump

Review by Doug Gibson

"The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America," By Bill O'Reilly, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2019. (Amazon link here).

This is a book that has unfortunately aged too quickly in the nine months since its release. That's not O'Reilly's fault. President Trump's life is so volatile than any book that has not captured 2020, the feeble impeachment trial Democrats launched with popguns against the President, followed by Covid-19, followed by the current rallies and riots, is out of date.

Nevertheless, using his familiar narrative style, mixed with exclusive interviews he got with President Trump, and others -- particularly Donald Trump Jr. -- O'Reilly gets inside the mind of  Donald Trump to some extent.

Some insights into Trump's life:

-- Trump was both a talented athlete and "rambunctious" teen, rambunctious enough that his father placed him in a military school.

-- Trump has very few close friends. He's very reluctant to trust people. However, he's very amenable, probably more than the average pol, to work with a political rival in order to accomplish a policy. In that sense he is a pragmatic leader.

-- Trump differs from his late father, Fred, a very successful businessman also, in that the son -- besides craving success in business -- also sought fame and global recognition. Donald Trump Jr. mentions that his grandfather, Fred Trump, was content to just live quietly in Queens. Trump sought, as O'Reilly the New Yorker notes, to be bigger than Joe Namath.

-- Trump is a supportive, but not hands-on father. He's not big on compliments. He sees things pretty clearly; one is either a winner in a conflict, or a loser.

-- Donald Trump will never admit he is wrong, Donald Trump Jr. told O'Reilly. The son has learned that when his father begins to initiate small talk in a conversation with his children, it's a signal that he knows he is wrong.

-- O'Reilly writes that Trump's short-lived embrace of the discredited "birther" conspiracy against President Barack Obama was designed to lock in support of conservatives and Republicans who despised Obama.

This underscores something that has baffled many people regarding Trump. How does he embrace positions despised by elite media and political opinions, as well as the millions of "social media privates and corporals" who follow the elite, and be successful?

O'Reilly says that Trump's huge success with "The Apprentice" (I admit here I never watched an episode), provided Trump with the training he needed to run his unconventional 2016 campaign.

He understood, far more than his hapless GOP opponents, and Hillary Clinton, how alienated and frustrated many Americans were after the Wall Street corruption of 2008 crashed the economy, followed soon after by the badly botched Obamacare roll out.

In an irony perhaps only Trump is capable of pulling off, he connected with high-school educated, working- and middle-class voters, many of whom had regularly voted Democrats. He was perceptive enough to see that these voters -- so many in the Rust Belt and other swing states -- were up for grabs.

Unlike a Mitt Romney, for example, Trump understood that criticizing immigration policy was a more effective talking point with these new voters, or re-energized voters, than extolling the virtues of the Chamber of Commerce.

Clinton did not try to connect with these voters. As O'Reilly notes, she helped Trump enormously by referring to them as a "basket of deplorables."

Another important insight into Trump is that he will go with his instincts. He's done that all his life. Writes O'Reilly: "Donald Trump is not going to change. He will not modify his behavior, stop tweeting, or begin wearing jeans. He will stay the way he is until the grave." 

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We live in a vicious political environment today. Social media has perfected the cancellation of individuals, and candidacies. Look how quickly Michael Bloomberg was taken out by Elizabeth Warren, who castigated him for alleged sexism. Although Bloomberg did not realize it, his campaign was kaput after 30 or so minutes of his first debate.

So, how does Trump survive in this environment? About a month before the 2016 vote he was caught on tape boasting loudly about sexually harassing women. Yet he defeated Hillary Clinton.

O'Reilly believes that Trump survived because we are jaded with all the political "scandals." He also believes people were turned off by perceived hypocrisy from disapproving pols. Hence many decided to overlook it, and gave Trump a pass.

Trump has survived too many "scandals" to count during his first term, as well as a partisan impeachment effort. Right now just about every poll says he will lose this November, just like most polls were saying four years ago. They may be right. Who knows? In the era of Trump, consistency and certainty are more rare.

I think the secret to Trump's success, and his political survival, is that he has placed the elite media, and much of establishment politics, into a bubble that constantly talks to itself, and its millions of progressive acolytes.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc. have moved --- in the minds of one half of the nation --- from the usual impartiality of its news departments to becoming news reporters of "The Resistance." Media have abandoned a long-time promise, sometimes broken admittedly, of disinterest. They are against Trump; all the time. Within this bubble, a guy who lives in said bubble, like Bloomberg, can be easily crushed when he upsets the bubble. There is no fallback for a Bloomberg. Trump's base has no use for him.

But Trump thrives outside the bubble.

Back to the aforementioned elite media (I'm not talking about local media, which has its own unique issues). They will never regain the trust or respect of "the other "deplorable" half." And frankly, I don't think they care. After Trump, their economic survival will depend on feeding "news reports" to progressives, with correspondents such as Jim Acosta, and finding a never-ending supply of pedigreed Washington policy insiders to criticize conservatives; as unnamed sources, of course.

This is not my favorite Bill O'Reilly book. I prefer the informative, narrative style history books he co-writes with Martin Dugard. But he does a passable job of deciphering Trump, an often amoral man who nevertheless has proven himself a far stronger advocate for traditional social conservative values than the previous three Republican presidential candidates. Another irony; Trump's full of them.

The book underscores this truth. The 2020 election is not really between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The latter is a long-time Democratic Party man who arguably appears to be bordering on senility. Biden backed into the nomination. Donald Trump just had a rally in Tulsa as I write this. In the cautious era of Covid-19, it didn't fill the arena, but I'd wager it was watched on TV and via streaming by several million.

Joe Biden right now couldn't fill the "banquet room at the Blue-View Motel," or garner 500 streaming viewers.

This November's election is between the magnetism of Trump and the influence of the elite media and political establishment. Both are powerful. Both have a lot of sway. We'll see who wins. Another irony is that whatever the result, life will go on for all of us, pretty much the same.

Hate Inc. a provocative, and often accurate, take on the elite media

Review by Doug Gibson

The cover of journalist Matt Taibbi's book, "Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another," OR Books, 2019, is an iconic representation of today's boutique small-sectors-sought "journalism" of the type hawked on cable TV news, much of the Internet, and many of the most prominent newspapers, within opinion and even news pages.

Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, Taibbi notes, are working very hard to turn us into ideological teams battling other ideologues that they describe as dishonest, loathsome and even downright dangerous to the future of our nation.

A key theme of Taibbi's book is the secret for success --  in today's broadband Internet world -- for media is to make us very angry and resentful. THEY WANT US TO BASE OUR POLITICS ON WHO WE HATE (emphasis intentional). Whether it's Fox News rallying the new Trumpian conservatism (and that gets the highest ratings) or MSNBC rallying progressives, or CNN clamoring to accommodate the outrage from anti- and never-Trumpers, they are all satiating their audience with fear and outrage, 50 percent of it subtle, the rest more blatant.

This has spread to major newspapers. The New York Times and Washington Post have become opposition media to the current administration and the majority of the Republican Party. There exists print media as pro-Trump and Republican as the aforementioned are pro-Democrat, but they are less influential than the Post or the Times. Fox News Channel is still the major engine for movement conservatives.

This is how Taibbi, who writes for Rolling Stone, describes "outrage media" and its red and blue armies and officers such as Hannity and Maddow, etc. Taibbi is no conservative. In fact, I see him as a man of the left, and I doubt he would disagree. Another theme of "Hate Inc." is all this back and forth rancor and fearmongering that triggers we corporals and privates of social media and cable news watching distracts us. Here's another key theme of Hate Inc. -- that outside of high-emotion issues (abortion, anthem kneeling, the Russian collusion pitch, illegal immigration ...) the parties are not too different on economic issues, foreign policy, defense, and criminal justice.

This places Taibbi in what I would describe as a reform progressive movement that while opposed to conservatism, Trumpism -- Glenn Greenwald and Krystal Ball are pundits who fall into this category -- frequently annoy conventional liberalism with their criticism of establishment pols such a Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The previously mentioned "hot-button" issues, Taibbi argues, are embraced by an aging media which struggles in the post-Sept. 11 Internet world for customers, readers and watchers.

Finding a theme that heats up an audience and builds circulation is the primary goal, rather than any consistency in doctrine. Taibbi notes that many media organs were tolerant of, even friendly toward Donald Trump, during the 2016 presidential race. One example is Morning Joe on MSNBC, and its media star Joe Scarborough. Once Trump won the election, wide swaths of the elite media, sensing anger from their loyal consumers, moved to a far more consistent negative portrayal of the president. It's a marketing decision that continues today. A similar example is right-wing media often swallowing with enthusiasms the many inconsistencies of President Trump, as well as many rightists  cheering his budget-busting economic plans.

Taibbi, I would argue, would see that even despite this constant media rancor, and assorted hyped party-versus-party squabbles prior to passage, that the Covid-19 stimulus package just released is still far from providing reasonable economic security to the many millions either thrown out of work or bankrupted by the crisis. It's a middle-of-the-road package that fits within approved economics of the major parties, which enjoy sizzling the steaks but then share the barbecued meat equally.

It wasn't always this way for the major media. In the old days, Taibbi, argues the main problem with media was that it had a "fairway" of accepted media debate. Stepping out of the "fairway" resulted in a consensus that the viewpoint was out of the mainstream; adherents could be compared to "John Birchers" or "communists." "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" were more cordial.

While the loss of media gatekeepers, thanks to the Internet, has widened the fairway beyond what anyone envisioned several generations ago, the establishment, at least within the Democratic Party, can quell an uprising. Witness how quickly Bernie Sanders went from solid front-runner to has-been and Biden from has-been to presumed nominee a month-plus ago or so. I'm not spouting any conspiracy theories. It's just a fact that in today's Democratic Party if a candidate like Sanders gets too close, the party leadership will mobilize, convince candidates to drop out, thereby providing the majority that any front-runner would have in a two-person race against a socialist.

"Hate Inc." is a fascinating read. I enjoy Taibbi's intellectually rambunctious and snarky style. The book was originally a series of online posts and it has a going-here going-there style. It travels across the world, to Vietnam, Afghanistan, ... even to England long ago where Taibbi describes how minor disturbances in locations were hyped as a major safety danger. Over-hyping is another theme of the book, though. If an issue can get the masses angry, or at least enough of the masses worked up, they may forget about their real problems. Taibbi is quick and snarky in criticisms of colleagues, but he is honest enough to criticize himself as well.

I think enough of us from all sides of the ideological aisles who are skeptical of pols and major media will find "Hate Inc." a read worth pondering.

Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and The Making of the President 1972

By Doug Gibson

Last summer, I finally got around to reading "The Making of the President 1972," a classic on-the-scene insider account of a presidential race by Theodore H. White, who won a Pulitzer Prize. It details Richard's Nixon's successful re-election against George McGovern.

My intent in reading it was to probe for any similarities between Joe Biden, who last summder was the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, and the late Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, who was the presumed Democratic presidential front-runner before his candidacy cratered in mid-early 1972. Also I wondered if Bernie Sanders, Vermont's socialist U.S. senator, bore any resemblance to the leftist candidate, the late Senator George McGovern, of South Dakota, who was Nixon's hapless Democratic nominee, easily defeated 48 years ago.

Let's say that Biden finishes fourth or fifth in New Hampshire's primary tonight. If that occurs he will be pretty well done. Biden has also ran two miserable previous presidential campaigns. He was a top-tier candidate initially in 1988, but dropped out soon after being caught plagiarizing. In 2008 he ran a weak campaign but after it ended he was fortunate enough to be picked as Senator Barack Obama's running mate. He served as VP for eight years.

Muskie didn't announce his bid in 1972 until January, although everyone knew he was running. He actually won New Hampshire's primary, although he was damaged politically by appearing to cry while criticizing a New Hampshire publisher for alleged media attacks against his wife. He also won four more primaries but eventually withdrew in April after his campaign momentum had stilled.

McGovern's leftist politics for that time, particularly his consistent stand against the Vietnam War, fit well with a Democratic Party moving to the left, fueled by younger Americans, who eagerly supported the Wisconsin senator. Muskie's establishment credentials made him less appealing.

Sanders has been around for a while. He's not the new breath of fresh air that McGovern was in 1972. But he is also fueled by young voters, as well as older white liberals, who have turned progressive in the past generation, seeking socialist solutions to issues such as health care and student funding for universities and colleges. The leftist tilt of the Democratic Party works for Sanders, who embraces it loudly and without apologies.

McGovern outlasted his opposition through attrition, over months. If, as expected, Sanders wins New Hampshire, establishment Democrats will try to wear him down over the months before the nomination, with a series of potential foes. It's looking as if Biden may not be one of the last survivors of the "Anyone-but-Sanders" brigade. How ironic it will be to the proudly progressive Democrats of 2020 if a plutocrat, Michael Bloomberg, is the candidate who triumphs over Sanders. Personally, I think Sanders will relish that fight.

Nixon won in a landslide against McGovern. The South Dakota senator's campaign peaked with his nomination. After that, the McGovern campaign suffered from organization chaos, a lot of sloppiness and a reluctance to have a designated leader running the campaign. A vice presidential pick from McGovern was botched, forcing a replacement. The press also toughened its coverage of McGovern as November drew nearer. In voters' opinions, President Nixon appeared a safer, more stable choice. Interestingly, despite his landslide win, Nixon did not have coattails. In fact, an under-30-year-old pol named Joe Biden surprised by winning a U.S. Senate in Vermont over Republican incumbent Caleb Boggs.

Some Republicans today, looking at the wobbly Democratic field in 2020, fantasize that Trump can win a landslide this year. That's unlikely. Polls still jump around, although I suspect a lot of voters are not telling pollsters they will vote for Trump. Support for the constantly-hated-by-the-elite (and their minions) current president can be a private sentiment.

If however, the president faced a Sanders whose support cratered among the middle class and working class voters he needs, it's not impossible for the president to win re-election with 350 electoral votes or more. James Carville, an establishment Democrat who guided Bill Clinton to the presidency, in essence, warned his party recently that it cannot win if it prefers pushing politically correct, far-left policies such as socialized medicine, not having a border, and nominating candidates as far to the left as Sanders.

However, even if Trump were to win with a huge electoral vote majority, it's still more probable that he would lose the popular vote to a Democrat. There would be no Nixon-like popular vote landslide. The reason is simple. Democrats control a five million to six million plurality of voters in two states -- California and New York. Republicans cede that huge tally in the popular vote immediately. This is a key reason Democrats are pushing for a change from the electoral college determining the president to the popular vote.

"The Making of the President 1972" is a fun read, manna for political junkies, especially those who love history as well. Although it's fun to draw comparisons between insurgent candidates such as McGovern and Sanders and establishment candiates like Muskie and Biden, there's still a several-generation gap between the two eras. It just can't honestly be used as a predictor for 2020. Cultural trends, media changes, and technological advances have made today's average voter a far different individual than the 1972 voter. Campaigning, also has changed with the times.

Nevertheless, if Trump wins, even easily, this November, perhaps disappointed Democrats will grab copies of Theodore H. White's classic book, and start saying, "Nixon might have won big over a progressive candidate. But facing impeachment, he resigned less than two years later."

No doubt if the party retains the House of Representatives, Democrats will energetically seek to turn Trump's second term into Nixon's second term.