Day: November 7, 2018

I just saw the horrible moment at today’s White House presser when a bulky male journalist elbowed a young female staffer because she was trying to do her job and pass the mic to somebody else. He physically swatted her away like an annoying fly.

To me, this is what workplace harassment looks like. The male journalist used the fact that he’s male, which makes him physically stronger, to shove a slender woman out of the way physically. He also used the fact that he is an important, older, known journalist and she’s a nameless, faceless worker nobody gives a crap about.

And so what, cue the brave resisters, the me-tooers, the anti-sexists, the pussy-hatters? Nope. I read a bunch of ultra-super-duper-progressive sources on this presser and. . . in every single one the male journalist is the victim and the female staffer is erased completely.

We’ve been promised that after we collectively weep about the fake dramas of filthy rich movie stars, the compassion for the victims of harassment who are neither rich nor famous will somehow trickle down and we will all benefit. I’m still waiting for the trickle but it seems that they are pissing on our heads instead.

Are Republicans going to flip out now, organizing resistances, marching with penises on their heads, and wailing that democracy is dead and Nazism (communism, maoism, totalitarianism, vegetarianism, and avian flu) are going to wipe us all out immediately because they lost Congress?

I can’t wait for the shoe finally be on the other foot. I used to so enjoy the feeling of “I support the party of mature adults and not you, crazy infantile clowns!” I want that feeling back.

And it would be really really REALLY fucking really great not to see a bisillion and one post and articles on how many winning candidates are female transgender openly gay Latinas, etc. It’s 2018, for chrissakes, nobody cares what’s in their pants or who’s in their beds or ancestry.com kits. Tell us what they will do for the voters.

I was talking to N and suddenly Klara said, “Mommy, I’m frustrated because I’m trying to have a conversation with you and you are talking to Daddy.”

For the new readers of the blog, this is an interesting anecdote because Klara is two and a half, and I’ve been working very hard to teach her to express enotions with words.

I’m not seeing any of the following in the political commentary on the election, so I’ll put it here because I don’t like dishonest analysis.

The #1 reason why Republicans lost the House is that Trump hasn’t done anything meaningful on immigration. Talk to his supporters or, if you don’t know any, go to any comment section where people who voted for Trump in 2016 speak and you’ll see that there’s a wave of disappointment with his results on immigration. These voters are not attached to him personally and will go with anybody who will do something. Telling them that the issue doesn’t exist is a waste of time. These voters are ripe for the picking and you’ve got to be an idiot not to pick them up.

The second reason is that his statement on lowering drug prices came way too late to be noticed and he didn’t manage to advertise his opioid initiatives.

As for why Republicans won the Senate, it was a hard – but not impossible – task for Democrats but they blew it with the Kavanaugh hearings. I knew the Senate wasn’t going to be won five minutes into Kavanaugh’s speech. We are all very lucky the election wasn’t held the week after the hearings and people got a chance to cool down.

Trump blew it with his excessive emphasis on immigration right before the election not because people don’t care about the issue but because they see him increasingly as all bluster and no action on the subject. Voters wanted to punish him for not acting.

And a message for Republicans. You guys would have lost a lot worse if Trump weren’t out there campaigning ferociously for weeks. If you managed to keep the Senate and have half the losses in Congress that Obama had two years in, that’s all down to Trump.

And the reason – the real reason – is that Trump, with all of his enormous and obvious faults, pissed on Reaganomics and ditched it in favor of the economic positions that people can and want to embrace. People want strong social programs, large infrastructure spending, cheap medication, accessible healthcare, and a check on free markets. The only reason we got Trump is because nobody else among you had the balls to do this.

So put that in your pipe and suck on it. People don’t want politicians who are enamored with liquid capital. Liquid capital lost in 2016 and it lost yesterday. It’s too powerful to notice these losses but many people are too smart or too hurt by it to embrace it. Get over yourselves, bury Reagan’s putrid corpse already, and move the hell on.

I’m proposing that in the aftermath of the election words “racist, sexist, Nazi, fascist, totalitarian, and authoritarian” should be retired from political speech for several years.

These are good, important words that point to real, existing things but they have been so overused, cheapened, and emptied of content that all they produce is exhaustion, boredom and annoyance. A couple more years of active use, and it will be impossible to resuscitate them.