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Trump Grabs at a Presidency of Intentionality

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Ted Rall
          There are two kinds of leaders: managers and revolutionists. Most American presidents are managers. Managers have small ambitions, often so small as to be immeasurable. They may or not think that the organization that they’re taking over requires a few nips or tucks, but they believe that the fundamentals are sound. The main ambition of these incrementalists is to attain their position. The moment their buttocks sink into the big chair behind the big desk, they have fulfilled their biggest goal. It is easy to identify a managerial president during a time of crisis. No matter how bad things get and how angry voters become, managers are loathe to change much. They govern as though continuity were a given. Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, both consummate technocrats, assumed the nation’s highest office during periods of economic upheaval. Yet they did not follow the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a revolutionist, by introducing major plans or anti-poverty bills to try…
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Theory of the Non-Voter

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Ted Rall
           Non-voters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.             Pundits and political sociologists ignore non-voters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don’t vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. Nobody asks them what it would take to get them to vote, or who they would vote for if they did. Whether this lack of interest in non-voters is due to a lack of imagination or contempt based on the belief that they are lazy and apathetic, the result is that we don’t know much about the political leanings and motivations (or lack thereof) of the majority of our fellow citizens. There are tens of millions of them. They are an untapped resource and, until recently, there has been little attempt to reach out to them.             Democratic Party strategists largely assume that there is…
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Are Killers Insane?

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Ted Rall
           As is typically the case after a high-profile murder, people are speculating about suspect Luigi Mangione’s state of mind when he allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan.             We have a likely (political) motive in the form of a handwritten statement Pennsylvania police say they found on Mangione when they arrested him. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” it reads. “A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the fourth largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No, the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it…It is not an issue of awareness at this point,…
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Put the Planet First

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Ted Rall
           We face so many challenges that the task of choosing which ones to emphasize and which can be edited out for the sake of brevity is nearly impossible. So many injustices afflict our fellow human beings that, of those that make the shortlist to be attacked and redressed, determining an order of priority is best left unattempted even by, especially by, those with the best intentions. (Yet we must and we shall. This process is called “politics.”)             One matter, however, is so self-evidently far ahead of the rest that calling it an “issue” doesn’t come close to doing it justice: the environment. Without a clean, healthy planet to live on, nothing else matters. Human extinction or, failing that, the collapse of civilization as has been predicted by 2050, renders all debate on all other issues and policies moot.             Without a planet that sustains life, college affordability is irrelevant. If you are starving and there isn’t enough food,…
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Democrats Welcome the Fascist

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Ted Rall
          After an election, we make nice. The loser congratulates the victor; everybody shakes hands and promises a smooth transition of power. Spicy campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, such courtesies in service to the god of Stability are made possible by the underlying assumption that, while competing candidates and parties offer different ideas of how to achieve a better America, that’s the goal we all want because we all supposedly have similar values.             Conveying a sense of continuity was no doubt paramount on President Biden’s mind when he delivered his post-election invitation to President-Elect Trump to visit the White House. There, the two men exchanged an easy repartee before an Oval Office fire–a tradition Trump did not deign to offer the victorious Biden before slinking off to Mar-e-Lago in mid-January of 2021. Restoring normalcy, with the corollary that Jan. 6th was anomalous, is also why Biden as well as Vice President Kamala Harris will attend Trump’s inaugural ceremony.             Understandable, laudable…
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Stein Wins!

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Ted Rall
           The world of politics, as well as the globe writ large, was shaken to its neoliberal foundations this week by the surprise victory of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who did not qualify for debates and was accorded little media coverage, in the campaign for American president. Stein, a 74-year-old physician, will mark a trifecta of history as the nation’s first woman, Jew and third-party victor since 1860 to become commander-in-chief.             Going into Election Day, polls as well as Las Vegas odds makers had shown the major-party candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, locked neck-and-neck in a virtual dead heat, with seven key battleground states considered a tossup. The polls, it turns out, were dead wrong.             A majority of American voters, it’s now clear, collectively decided that the two-party system, derided by critics as a “duopoly,” was no longer serving the country or their needs and needed to be sent a message: be responsive to…
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Why Can’t Kamala Talk Dude?

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Ted Rall
           One of the most persistent challenges faced by Kamala Harris’ abbreviated presidential campaign is a vexingly wide gender gap. Men just aren’t that into her.             Democrats have deployed several approaches to convince male voters to feel the joy.             Divide and conquer: Harris’ policies divvy up guys by race. Her “opportunity agenda for Black men” would offer special loans and internships to Black entrepreneurs (no word on whether that’s been lawyered for constitutionality), fund federal studies on sickle-cell anemia and other diseases that disproportionately affect Black men and give them priority to profit from the emerging legal marijuana business (note to Democrats: cannabis equity failed in New York). Harris’ “opportunity agenda for Latino men” (see a trend?) would offer Latino guys more small business loans. A Google search for “opportunity agenda for white men” comes up empty but hey, there are still a couple hours left in the race. Kamala is also playing the class card. A spot…
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Biden/Harris, Fascist Media Censors

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Ted Rall
          Democrats centered Kamala Harris’ election campaign around the threat to American democracy posed by Donald Trump’s possible return to the presidency. The issue may not weigh on voters’ minds as heavily as the economy, but it does resonate; polls show that Americans trust Harris more to counter political extremism and preserve democracy. When it comes to democracy, is there much difference between the two candidates? Not as far as I can see. Yeah, Trump spews authoritarian rhetoric. “CBS should lose its license,” Trump wrote on Truth Social platform last week. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” “We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics,” Trump said recently. “And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by [the] National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.” Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz called Trump’s comments “dangerous” and “un-American,” and of course he’s right. But the Biden-Harris Administration is just…
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Corporations Are People. Punish Them Accordingly.

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Ted Rall
           Corporations enjoy many of the same rights and protections as an individual citizen, the Supreme Court ruled in 2010. Not only may a corporation claim the right of freedom of religion to, for example, refuse to cover birth control under employee insurance, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission found that the First Amendment grants it the right of free speech.             As every child knows and Spider-Man preaches, privileges come with responsibilities. The corporation, on the other hand, is antisocial nearly to the point of being psychotic. It exists primarily to protect its hidden puppet masters (its CEO, board of directors and other decisionmakers) from being held legally or criminally responsible if something it does or makes causes harm. If and when victims succeed at securing a substantial verdict or judgement, often after overcoming daunting hurdles, the corporation can and often does declares bankruptcy, leaving its principals free to slither off to their next endeavor without ever being held…
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Why Won’t the Government Explain the Migrant Crisis?

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Ted Rall
            I fantasize about a government that really is, if not quite by the people, at least tries to act like it is for the people and thus internalizes the principle that the people deserve to be treated like fully-vested adults rather than idiotic children.             Nothing about what the media calls the “migrant crisis” withstands the slightest scrutiny. This begins with something that right-wing conservatives and other nativists point out to such great effect that it was largely responsible for launching Trump and his Make America Great Again movement, and their hostile takeover of the Republican Party: (a) no other country allows people to enter their countries without consequence and (b) if the United States wanted to keep people from crossing its border with Mexico, it could. Point (a) has the benefit of mostly being true; while we have witnessed mass refugee flows from, say, Afghanistan to Pakistan, these incidents occur sporadically, under specific circumstances like armed conflicts and…
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