DMZ America Podcast Ep 132: Middle East War, Could Biden Lose New Hampshire?, Dead Tree Publications Even Deader

Editorial cartoonists and political analysts from the Left (Ted Rall) and the Right (Scott Stantis) discuss and explain the latest news and events in a unique format where disagreement and debate occurs without yelling or stupid insults.

First up this week: War across the Middle East assumes a “Guns of August” vibe as Iran and Pakistan become the latest countries to launch crossborder missile attacks, with the victims being ethnic Balochis. Ted lays out how Iran is emerging as the big winner from the Israel-Hamas War. Scott pushes back from the American perspective, questioning whether the Islamic Republic is committing diplomatic suicide.

Second: The 2024 Presidential Campaign moves from Iowa to the bizarre New Hampshire primary, which is being skipped both by President Biden and Governor Ron DeSantis. All GOP eyes will soon turn to South Carolina—will the Palmetto State be the last stand for Haley, or DeSantis, or both? Meanwhile, New Hampshire threatens to torpedo Biden for his Big Snub.

Third topic: More depressing news from the world of dead trees, where the Washington Post is losing $100 million a year and the Los Angeles Times is down $50 million despite their deep-pocketed and supposedly brilliant owners. Ted asks Scott, who has worked at numerous papers, why can’t these supposed genius billionaires turn these sinking watchdogs of democracy around?

Watch the Video version of the DMZ America Podcast: here.

The U.S. Is Not a Democracy

            Is a system working as well as possible? Inertia lulls people into believing that legacy products are great—even that they’re perfect—without objectively considering whether it’s really true. The QWERTY computer keyboard works but the 1936 Dvorak version is superior. Skim milk makes you fatter. The U.S. may still be a shining city on a hill but our Constitution has become so out-of-date that new nations no longer refer to it as a template for their own legal charters.

Ask yourself: if our political system were created today, by a group of intelligent people, what would it look like? If the real-world system we see now falls short of that ideal, there’s room for improvement.

            What if we were to scrap our centuries-old Constitution? What if we built a shiny new government from the ground up, without considering legacy or precedent?

This is a complicated question. Only one of out of four Americans would vote to repeal the Second Amendment, so the right to bear arms might make it into a new charter. Much of that support, however, derives from voters who own the hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation. An America without a legacy of individual firearms ownership would be much less likely to codify it as a fundamental right.

            So what would an ideal representative democracy look like for the United States, 2023 edition?

Nothing like what we have now.

            Every citizen of sufficient age to exercise sound judgement should be allowed to vote. Our society currently says 18. But there are strong arguments in favor of allowing children to vote as well as for raising the age of enfranchisement to 25. If mental acuity matters, what about the one out of ten Americans over age 65 who suffers from dementia, or those with very low IQ?

Among those permitted to cast ballots, each vote ought to count equally. The principle of one person, one vote is almost universally accepted.

Yet the current system falls dismally short of our professed ideal. Due to the electoral college, the vote of a resident of Wyoming in a presidential election counts 3.6 times more than that of someone who lives in California. People in the District of Columbia enjoy no vote at all; nor do the 4 million Americans who reside in overseas territories. Gerrymandering through redistricting has radically reduced the weight of a vote cast by a Black citizen compared to a white one. Forty-eight out of 50 states either ban convicted felons, people in prison and/or on parole from voting; the U.S. has some of the most vicious disenfranchisement laws in the world.

If a representative democracy is healthy and vibrant, voters ought to be able to choose from a broad selection of candidates who represent a wide range of ideological viewpoints that reflect the broad diversity of opinions in our vast country.

In this respect, the U.S. is not a democracy.

We only have two major parties. But not by choice. 62% of Americans say they want the option of a third party; dissatisfaction with the Democrats and the Republicans helps explain why the U.S. has one of the lowest voter-turnout numbers in the world. Smaller parties are barred from presidential debates, don’t receive coverage in the press, are stymied by draconian ballot-access laws drafted by Democrats and Republicans, and bludgeoned by nuisance lawsuits filed by the big two in order to drain their resources and block them the ballot.

In many elections, there aren’t even two parties. In 2016, 42% of races for seats in state legislatures were uncontested, meaning there was only one candidate on the ballot. There’s no word whether any of them was named “Saddam.” In 2022, a whopping 57% of state elections for judges were unopposed. I live in New York, where the Working Families Party provides an illusion of choice by appearing on the ballot next to the Democrats. But the WFP’s candidates are the same as the corporate Democrats.

Ranked-choice voting, promoted by progressives, sometimes leads to anti-democratic results. California’s small state Republican Party rarely has one of its candidates among the top two vote-getters who move past the first round to the general election.

Party primaries can be coronations, as when Barack Obama and Donald Trump essentially ran unopposed in 2012 and 2020, respectively.

            Candidates are not legally bound to carry out their election promises if they win. Evolving circumstances or further reflection—or dishonesty—may prompt a politician to change course after victory. But there is accountability for perfidy, whether real or imagined, in a vibrant representative democracy. Rather than outsource politics to a political class every two or four years or whatever, citizens in a high-functioning representative democracy keep informed beyond the carnival of election season, express their opinions and hold their representatives’ feet to the fire with public protests and demonstrations, as we’re currently seeing in France after their imperious president ignored popular will by increasing the national retirement age without holding a parliamentary vote.

            The U.S. does not have a high-functioning representative democracy. Voters are uninformed, don’t trust the media and can’t agree on the facts at the heart of stories and issues like whether climate change is real or Biden won the election.

            Worst of all, we fail to hold our representatives accountable when they ignore us. Abortion is no longer legal in most states, 85% of American adults favor abortion rights, yet the streets remain calm and protester-free. Two out of three Democrats want big immediate action against climate change, yet they don’t have anything to say to President Biden—who probably blew up a major gas pipeline and created an ecological disaster, and authorized oil drilling in the ecologically fragile Alaskan wilderness.

            If we were to create a new political system out of whole cloth, it wouldn’t look anything like this.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Say Another Go Ain’t So, Joe

            Well, Mr. and Mrs. Biden, the holidays are over. You know, the holidays during which you were going to decide whether or not to run for reelection. So, what did you decide?

            This being a democracy, we hope that you came down on the side of the 70% of voters who don’t want you to run in 2024. Even if that figure reflects the feelings of every single Republican (and it probably doesn’t), it includes a lot of Democrats too.

            At your age, Mr. President, decision-making can take a little extra time. Let me help you weigh the pros and cons.

            Pros: You get to try to beat Donald Trump again. You have some legislative achievements to brag about. You’ll make history as the oldest person to ever run and perhaps win.

            Cons: You have low poll numbers—and we may be heading into a recession. You might lose, which would suck, especially if it were to Trump. The Hunter Biden laptop investigation could turn ugly, maybe even implicate you in criminal wrongdoing. You won’t be able to campaign from your basement this time; a real presidential campaign is grueling and you’ll be 81. Actuarily, there’s a strong chance you would die during your second term, elevating the deeply unpopular Kamala Harris to the Oval Office. She would tarnish your legacy and hurt the Democratic Party.

            You’re still sharp enough to see the right choice.

            Next up: what to do about the vice president?

            With only 28% of Democrats saying they would vote for Harris in the 2024 Democratic primaries, she would be far from a shoo-in for the nomination, which ought to be a given for a sitting vice president. She was a terrible campaigner, I would say in the 2020 primaries, but she didn’t even make it into 2020. The former prosecutor, who still hasn’t worked to release the innocent Black men she sent to prison, could easily face a devastating, even lethal, primary challenge from the left.

            Cutting Harris loose is the smart, arguably required, move. But she’s a woman of color. Sidelining her will look racist and sexist. The only way to ease her out of the race somewhat gracefully is to make it look like her idea. Convince her that her only future in politics is a humiliating defeat. Find her a soft landing: university president, NGO CEO, MSNBC anchor.

            Being a lame duck won’t feel good. Run again or retire, Mr. President, you’re a lame duck either way. Republicans control the House, Democrats barely have the Senate, campaigning begins this fall. Legacy-defining legislation is in your rearview mirror.

            What matters now is nominating the strongest possible person to run against the Republicans next year. The best way to accomplish that is to subject the contenders to trial by fire. The nominee must be battle-hardened in preparation for the general election.

            2016 shows what happens when a candidate has the nomination handed to her by superdelegates, cheating, backroom deals, and other DNC shenanigans. Hillary Clinton was smart and experienced but also arrogant and entitled. And why not? The nomination was handed to her. If she’d gotten accustomed to having to fight for every vote, she might have felt the hunger and drive to campaign in Wisconsin in the general or refrained from insulting Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

            Clear the field, stand aside and give potential contenders as much time as possible to fundraise and organize their campaigns. Mr. Biden, as eminence grise and de facto leader of your party, you can pressure the DNC and top Democrats to abolish what remains of the superdelegate system and scrupulously refrain from endorsing or criticizing any contender for the Democratic Party nomination for president. Progressive or liberal, let the best person win and lead the party you have served for a half century to a victory that will serve as a lasting legacy of your wisdom.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

The Good News about Michael Bloomberg Is That He Won’t Bug You

Michael Bloomberg won’t be in the first primaries. He won’t be in the debates. He doesn’t have any policies. If he becomes president, he probably will never hear about him anymore than the people of New York heard from him when he was mayor. So maybe he would be a good president.

Too Many Choices! Some Candidates Need to Drop Out!

Americans suffer from the so-called “tyranny of choice” every time they step out the door and enter a market place. Doesn’t seem to affect them. And yet, somehow, when presidential primaries have more than one or two candidates, the pundit class pretends like it’s a national crisis. They must drop out! Too many choices!

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Hillary Cheated

Who are you going to believe: us, or your lying eyes? That’s the good word from Democratic Party powers that be and their transcribers in the corporate media, in response to the “allegations” by Bernie Sanders supporters that the nomination was stolen by Hillary Clinton.

I used scare quotes around the word “allegations” because the truth is plain to see and undeniable by anyone with a microgram of honesty: Hillary Clinton cheated. If the rules had been followed, Bernie Sanders would be the nominee.

As with all things Clinton, of course, definitions matter. It depends on what the meaning of “cheat” is.

To most people, “cheating” means breaking the rules of a contest. By this standard definition, there’s no doubt that the Clinton campaign, its political allies and the Democratic National Committee cheated in favor of Clinton and against Sanders. They broke the law. They disenfranchised voters. They broke party rules. And they violated long-standing customs that are so widely accepted that they are essentially de facto rules of the Democratic Party and the American political system.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, ran a clean campaign.

Like many other voters, I subscribe to a somewhat broader definition of cheating in political elections. To me, Richard Nixon-style “dirty tricks” – the disgusting tactics George W. Bush used against John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 – rise to the level of cheating because they deny voters the facts that they need in order to make an educated decision in the voting booth. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that people are entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts, and outright lies about your opponent’s – and your own – positions and experience not only violate Moynihan’s dictum but constitute the essence of cheating in the political arena.

If Hillary Clinton manages to dodge both an Emailgate-related indictment as well as fallout from her husband’s corrupt tarmac rendezvous with the now-tainted Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the next few weeks and formally secure the nomination she’s been working on since at least the year 2000, it will be a historic moment for identity politics. But it is absolutely imperative that no one watching the first woman to accept the presidential nomination of a major American political party be fooled into believing that she did it on the up and up.

Hillary Clinton did not run a clean campaign.

She cheated.

If we want to be the kind of country that doesn’t care about that sort of thing, if fair play isn’t an American value, fine with me. But let’s go into this general election campaign with our eyes wide open.

Caucus after caucus, primary after primary, the Clinton team robbed Bernie of votes that were rightfully his.

Here’s how. Parties run caucuses. States run primaries. The DNC is controlled by Hillary Clinton allies like chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Democratic governors are behind Clinton; state election officials report to them. These officials decide where to send voting booths, which votes get counted, which do not.

You thought this was a democracy? Ha.

In the first in the nation Iowa caucus, Bernie Sanders pulled off a surprising tie where he was expected to lose badly — Hillary won by just 0.2%. However, party officials never bothered to send vote counters to the most rural parts of the state, where Bernie was favored over Hillary. About 5% of Iowa caucus votes were never counted. At other caucus sites, Democratic officials loyal to Hillary purposefully undercounted Sanders caucusers. No doubt about it, Bernie should have won that one, as well as votes in other states that would have been affected by a big Sanders upset.

Voters in pro-Sanders precincts in Arizona faced long lines because pro-Hillary elections officials didn’t provide enough voting booths. With lines of three hours or more still to go, the media called the state for Hillary.

New York State was arguably the most important contest of the primary season. Had Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in her adopted home state where she had served 1 1/3 terms as senator, he would have dealt her campaign a blow from which she might never have recovered, along with a pile of delegates. Because of her local roots and the fact that New York was a closed primary state in which independence were not allowed to vote, it was a long shot for Bernie. But like the LAPD in the O.J. Simpson case, the Clinton team wasn’t taking any chances.

Did they drop a line to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who endorsed Clinton? Or did state elections officials act on their own initiative? Either way, Bernie Sanders stronghold, the borough of Brooklyn where he was born, was targeted for massive voter suppression. At least 125,000 New Yorkers were illegally purged from the rolls, had their votes lost/thrown away, or were not permitted to vote due to broken voting machines – all in Brooklyn.

Even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who endorsed Clinton, was angry. “It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists,” De Blasio said. “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”

The skullduggery continued through the last major primary, California. The night before, the Associated Press put its thumb on the scale, declaring Hillary the nominee in an epic act of voter suppression. Who knows how many Sanders voters decided to stay home once they heard it was all over?

Hillary Clinton was declared the winner by a substantial margin, but after it turned out that state election officials, who report to Governor Jerry Brown, who endorsed Clinton, didn’t bother to count a whopping 2.5 million provisional ballots. According to investigative journalist Greg Palast, the nation’s leading expert on the manipulation of elections, Bernie Sanders actually should have won the state of California along with the majority of its delegates. (Disclosure: I work with Palast as a Fellow of his Investigative Fund.)

One of the most disreputable moves of the campaign was the Associated Press poll of party superdelegates, party insiders who are allowed to vote for whoever they want but, because they are party insiders, inevitably support the establishment candidate. Truth is, the superdelegate system itself is official cheating. But the AP survey made a terrible system even more deadly to democracy.

If they cared about free elections, the superdelegates wouldn’t have stated their loyalty in public. The DNC ought to have told superdelegates that they would lose their status if they expressed their opinions before the convention. As it was, Bernie Sanders started the race miles behind the finish line.

The only way Bernie could have caught up would have been to have scored one landslide win after another. As it was, he came close to doing that. His surprising early momentum, big rallies and popularity with younger voters might have convinced superdelegates to back him, but after they told the AP they were for Hillary Clinton, it was too late for them to change their minds.

I’m out of space. So I can’t get into the DNC’s attempts to deny Bernie Sanders airtime in the form of widely seen debates against Hillary Clinton, her ridiculous claim that she supported Bernie’s $15-an-hour federal minimum wage at the same time that her website confessed that she didn’t, the Nevada Democratic convention in which Sanders supporters were denied seats by Clintonites in charge and then falsely accused of violence, and Clinton’s sleazy “I was for the TPP before I was against it, and now that the primaries are over, I’m for it again” gambit.

That stuff isn’t the usual hardball.

It’s cheating.

(Ted Rall is the author of “Bernie,” a biography written with the cooperation of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. His next book, the graphic biography “Trump,” comes out July 19th and is now available for pre-order.)

“Democrats”

As the Democratic Party gears up for a second presidential primary without a real challenger to the predetermined candidate, one has to wonder why it’s called “democratic.”

Los Angeles Times Cartoon: Two Democrats, Both Running as Republicans

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week: Under new primary rules in California, the top two winners in a race go on to the general election, regardless of their party. Now the perverse result is that candidates of party A, which is overwhelmingly popular in their districts, must appeal to party B voters in order to win.

Occupy the Cheesecake Factory

Democrats and Democratic front groups like MoveOn.org are trying to channel the Occupy movement back into the system with such “Astroturf” actions as “Occupy the Ballotbox” and “Occupy the Primaries.” What bizarre co-option schemes can we look forward to next?

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