Culture of Sexual Harassment
 
A common meme is that the culture of sexual harassment is neither Democrat nor Republican.  Women are subjected to harassment by both Democrats and Republicans because aspects of our culture encourage it.  Our culture tends to frame problems in individualistic morality rather than the rewards provided by societal institutions.  When the question of how men come to believe that they can harass women without consequences, many studies have found gender inequality to be a major contributor.  For example, men and women are encouraged to see women as less intelligent and ambitious than men.  And, this gender unequal view may lead some men to harass and hurt women contributes to their sexual harassment by men.  

The only way Democrats and Progressives can consistently win future Presidential and Congressional elections is by homesteading in the areas where Republicans have a geographical advantage.  Republicans have used sophisticated computer programs to gerrymander Congressional districts so that Democrats, for example, may have huge majorities in a few districts while Republicans have minimal majorities in many districts.  Gerrymandering, however, is only one of the reasons for the Democratic disadvantage.  Democrats also find themselves disadvantaged because of clustering and culture.
 
Gerrymandering occurs when the majority party in state legislatures or commissions redraw the boundaries of their Congressional districts every ten years so that the minority party is disadvantaged.  The translation of a gerrymandered advantage into legislative advantage occurs when one party can consistently win more seats with a smaller percentage of vote.  So far, court challenges to the practice of gerrymandering have been unsuccessful, perhaps because those who brought suits tried to prove that the defendants intended to disadvantage   their party.  Recently, litigants are trying a new approach: trying to prove that gerrymandered redistricting plans do not treat all parties equally.  If the courts accept this new argument, then the disadvantage Democrats face due to Republican gerrymandering may be erased.  
 
Besides gerrymandering, Republicans have an advantage because the U.S. electoral system is based on geography.   As an example, states have two Senators regardless of their population.  Thus, Wyoming’s 2 Senators represent fewer   than 200, 000 residents while California’s Senators represent 37 million residents. This disproportional design gives Wyoming more than 3.6 times the voting power of California.  And, for cultural, historic, and racial reasons, some states, like Utah and Alabama are more Republican than states on the coasts like California and New York.  Democrats, who are clustered in states along the east and west coasts of the country, are disadvantaged.  Within states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin Democrats, outside of metropolitan areas, Democrats are underrepresented.  As a result, unless Democrats win more votes outside of the metropolitan areas, then Presidential candidates will be unable to win elections.
 
While there is a legal fix for the disadvantage Democrats suffer from gerrymandering, there is no legal fix for the disadvantage Democrats have who are clustered in urban areas.  The social fix for clustering is for Democrats to homestead those states and districts in which Democrats are underrepresented.  Certainly not all Republican states and districts will be attractive to Democrats, but there are some factors that can entice Dems moving to some of these Republican strongholds.  First, some states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio have excellent colleges and universities.  Young Democrats who are preparing for college can certainly consider these and other states.  Second, some states such as Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arizona not only have good weather, but they also provide tax advantages that can be quite attractive to retirees.  Third, suburban areas can provide advantages such as more affordable housing and recreational settings.  At the same time many of the disadvantages previously associated with the suburbs are being improved.  Long commutes are being made more tolerable by more companies moving to the suburbs and work from home arrangements being used by more companies.  Limited shopping and dining venues previously associated with the suburbs are also being ameliorated as demand for these services increase.   
 
In the final analysis, each of us must answer how much each of us want to be a part of the solution to the political problem of clustering.  Without a solution, Democrats will continue to be plagued by clustering.

Mark Lilla’s argument in the Once and Future Liberal is that Democrats need to focus on their values and principals, rather than attempting to craft messages for different subsets through identify politics. While he makes important points, much of his message is prone to misinterpretation.
 
According to Lilla too many voters in our political process have been twisted around from “engagement with the wider world” to a focus on their inner self, grievances affecting their group, and thus, how our own grievances affects politics.  Lilla says that this focus on the individual and his identity--the essence of identity politics--rather than on society as a whole, is generally a consequence of changes in family structure and child rearing.  In addition, Lilla attributes this individualistic focus to Reaganism because it celebrated the picture of an “individualistic America where families and small communities and businesses would flourish one freed from the shackles of the state.”  Liberals responded by adopting an identity politics in which groups sought to redress the grievances affecting them, rather than looking outward to address the grievances affecting society.  

Since their ignominious defeat in 2016, the Democrats in Congress have somewhat mended their ways and shown some willingness to present a united front and fight.  Senate Democrats stood strong and voted against Trump’s most horrendous cabinet nominees and supported the resistance to the GOP’s efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.  While these are promising changes, it's hard to see how they will be enough to enable the Democratic Party to reverse the ill fortunes of what has been a catastrophic decade.  Instead of developing a plan to address the weaknesses demonstrated in previous campaign losses while maintaining Democratic principles, the party has concentrated on continually sending out messages asking for money.  It is, of course, true that money is needed to run a political party.  Nonetheless, in the absence of a new plan, it's difficult to see that money being raised now will be used for anything else other than what the Democrats have been spending large tranches of their money on -  consultants and advertising.  At the very least, Democrats should be using more of their funds to organize and ultimately convince voters to vote for Democrats.  

In the first 200 days of his administration, Trump has failed in his legislative agenda, but has succeeded in tearing apart many of the recent programs designed to protest Americans and the environment. (See Phillip Bump summary in Washington Post, What Trump has Undone.) He has also effectively torn the country apart and weakened our bonds with long-standing international partners.  Trump may be crazy or “crazy like a fox”, but whichever – his presidency with his strident base are natural consequences of the Republican Party’s evolution over decades.   We at Social Policy Research wrote about the Republican Party as the problem in February 2017.   We repost the article here with minor edits to remove references to Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and other anachronisms.  
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​Donald Trump is not the problem. Trump voters and the Republican Party are the problems that threaten American values and is on the verge of dismantling U.S. democracy.
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GOP leaders are so intent on the promise of enacting their legislative agenda, they are willing to support a President who is neither fit in terms of temperament nor ability.  Despite his ignorance of government, his narcistic needs for adoration, and his devotion to conspiracy theories, the Republican Party and its voters selected Trump as their candidate to run against Hillary Clinton.  If, as the GOP claimed, Hillary was too corrupt to be President of the United States, it makes little sense that they would nominate Trump whose own record was certainly as dodgy as hers – especially when they had other prospects who more closely represented the values that they told us were theirs.   

​Trump has told a mythical story about Muslims that highlights how their religion, Islam, hampers their ability to wage war.  According to Trump’s story “U.S. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing was having trouble with Muslim terrorists in the Philippines who were doing tremendous damage.  He caught 50 terrorists and took, lined them up, dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood, and shot 49 of them.  The 50th person he told to go back to your people and tell them what happened.  For 25 years, there were no more problems.  You can read about this in history books, not a lot of history books because they dot don’t like teaching this.” 
 
Historians have totally debunked Trump’s story and proven it wrong on a number of grounds.  It is only by a stretch of the imagination bordering on white supremacy that one could conjure the Moros fighting against the U.S. soldiers who had invaded their country as terrorists.  Studies by historians of the Rebellion in Moro Province, where Pershing was Governor from 1909 to 1913, do not show the execution of 49 or 50 Moros.  Moreover, Pershing’s autobiography, My Life before the World War, 1860-1917, makes no mention of such an event.  In fact, most of the historians who studied Pershing’s leadership found that he fought with as much restraint as possible.  If the story were true, it would have had to occur around 1911.  And, the conflict persisted for at least another two years, strongly suggesting that fear of defilement by pig’s blood was not a magic wand for defeating Muslim terrorists.  The rebellion certainly did not end immediately as Trump’s fable claims.  
 
If this story is a myth, then where did it come from?  All myths are not supernatural fantasies; some are based on real people and events.  Was this myth made up out of whole cloth or was it exaggerated from actual events?  Myths give people a way resolving conflicts or handling difficult situations posed by circumstances beyond their control.  They reshape the truth to present an idealized image of reality while ignoring those things that contradict that image.  What purpose does this fable serve?  One clue about this myth is that it was circulated widely on the Internet following 9/11, suggesting that it assuaged the trauma many Americans felt. 
 
A second clue is soldiers in India mutinied against their British officers beginning in January 1857.  The Sepoy mutiny occurred against a backdrop of increasing tense relations between Indian soldiers and the British officers whom they served caused, in part, by the racism of junior British officers.  But, the key precipitating event happened near Calcutta when a rumor arose that the cartridges used in their rifles were smeared with pig and beef fat.  The Indian soldiers objected to using the cartridges because touching the cartridges were a defilement to their religions, predominantly either Muslim (pork is forbidden) or Hindu (beef is forbidden).  Within days some Indian soldiers had killed their officers and women and children.  By June, the British faced a full-fledged mutiny with many far flung garrisons and towns under attack by mutinous soldiers.  The mutiny did not end until January of 1858 when the
British exiled Bahadur Shah, whom the mutineers had proclaimed as their leader.
 
Although the mutiny was overthrown, it did accomplish two things that shaped the remainder of Britain’s rule of India.  First, it ended any attempt to convert Indians to Christianity and allowed Islam and Hinduism to remain the primary religions of India.  Second, the mutiny ended attempts to render Indian society into a slightly darker version of British society in which its morals and attitudes mimicked those Britain.  Thus, in the broadest sense, the mutiny was successful.
 
Because Muslims (and Hindus) defeated the whites who would completely conquer India and Muslims brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11, the fable articulated by Trump turned Muslim winners into losers.  And, Trump’s fable also turned terrorists who escaped usual punishment because they died into desecrated souls because of their defilement before death.  

​Diagnosing Democratic Party Problems
 
Following Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump and Democrats’ losses in four special elections, a favorite parlor game has become identifying the deficiencies in the Democratic Party’s organizing values and messaging.  While the analysts making these diagnoses cite the 2016 election, 2017 special elections, and state and local elections since 2010, many of the conclusions they draw seem at odds with the experiences of ordinary voters.  For example, some analysts seem so fixated on the demographic trends that are supposed propel Democrats to victory, they refuse to look at the unique issues and populations within the specific states and districts being contested.  As a result, they are surprised when national demographic trends fail to predict the outcome of these state and local elections, like in Jon Ossoff’s losing bid to win a House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District.
 
In addition, some analysts fail to recognize that the impact of demography on voting is mediated by social conventions (see How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev).  Already, there is a concerted effort by some right wing members to shift the definition of Latinos and Asians from people of color to white.  Richard Spence, one of the leading voices in the fascist, alt-right, has equivocated on how he views the racial status of Latinos.

​Wrath filled protesters brandishing torches, assault rifles, Confederate flags, or signs with swastikas filled the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.  They were there ostensibly to stop the removal of a Robert E. Lee statute, but really to terrorize the town and the nation.  They shocked the country by how many white nationalists were there.
 
But, most disturbingly, after 6 months of demonstrating his own white supremacist tendencies and incompetence, the country was shocked that Donald Trump failed to provide presidential leadership or healing messaging.  By this time, however we should know what Trump is.  Let’s stop pretending that we have discovered some new insights about Trump in his refusal to condemn Nazis. 

​As we approach the 6 month mark of Donald Trump’s Presidency, many of us are incensed and frightened to see such a rapid assault on U.S. institutions, especially how fragile democracy itself now seems.  Donald Trump is an unstable, ignorant, and narcissistic sociopath who bashes through the civility and respectability of social and political decorum.  Trump is not only undermining our society and democracy, he is also enabling the GOP to accomplish what they and their billionaire donors have long set out to do – to replace U.S. democracy with an authoritarian government.  Despite his agitation with how the media are covering him, and his psychological limitations, he has been effective in undermining important government programs and agencies, considered essential for the  for the effective functioning of our country. 
 
  By and large, Washington pundits are still in agreement with political leaders as they speak about the safeguards that will withstand all Trump’s assaults.  But the primary mechanism of those safeguards is that the three separate branches of government have enough power to assure that no tyrant can easily overcome the entire structure of government.   Now that the Republicans hold the Supreme Court, Senate and House of Representatives, and the Presidency that mechanism is severely hampered, if not obliterated. Some political observers have reacted in astonishment and disappointment to the refusal of Republican leaders to defend and support institutions such as the courts and media.  Despite Trump’s Banana-Republic leadership behavior; abandonment of our democratic allies around the world; and what maybe permanent damage to the U.S., these Republican leaders refuse to act.   Some say that while many Republican leaders are offended by Trump’s boorish, un-presidential, and even un-American behavior, they need to stick with him as long as the base of Republican voters support him.  Although some Republican leaders have pushed back against Trump’s humiliatingly public attacks on his Attorney General, Jefferson Sessions, and his apparent intention to fire Sessions and Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, Republican resistance is neither widespread not geared toward specific measures to stop Trump. 
 
But, questions about why Republican leaders do not employ every measure they have to oppose Trump miss the point – there is no reason to question  whether Donald Trump is a fascist or an authoritarian  (It is probably more accurate to say fascist, rather than authoritarian, but the word fascist seems incendiary  to Americans.)   What is clear is that beginning with Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” the Republican Party has grown into a full-fledged an authoritarian party.   Authoritarians fear outsiders and seek systems with strong leaders, and express unquestioning loyalty to those leaders.  Authoritarians operate with little respect for “their people,” but still profess beliefs in nationalism, racism, and ethnic intolerance.  
 
They do not want one-man-one vote; they do not want all children to have the opportunity to get a good education.  They do not believe that healthcare is a right.   They do not believe that a free press is an important component of the American system.   They believe that the very wealthy are entitled to wealth and power because they are wealthy; they must be the deserving members of society.  Those who have not achieved wealth must be less deserving and their misfortunes are their own problems, and their votes are not ones that should be counted.   Measures of authoritarian preference (independent of political questions) are used to sample Americans over time.  The Washington Post reported such a study comparing authoritarian views between Republicans and Democrats over the last several decades.  While authoritarian preference was essentially equal among Republicans and Democrats in the early 1990s, Republicans have increased their authoritarianism and Democrats have decreased theirs.  (The definitive work on Republican authoritarianism is John Dean’s Conservatives without Conscience.)

It’s been just days since James Comey went before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  We learned many things from the well-considered and presented testimony on Thursday, June 8.  The news reports at the time summarized many of the individual points that Comey made, and several listed similar high points as the important “lessons learned.”  For example, most news reports seemed most taken with Comey accusing Trump of lying.  Of equal importance, although mentioned much less was Trump’s lack of interest in finding out more information about the Russian interference.  Few articles focused on Comey’s actual intention of using this highly visible opportunity to help Special Counsel Mueller construct the obstruction of justice argument.