President Trump: The Name Should Be Endorsed By All Americans

by Walter Brasch

      When Sen. Barack Obama was running for the presidency and for most of his two terms, the Tea Party right-wing claimed he was born in Kenya, that he was a radicalized Muslim, and was unfit to be president. The rise of the Tea Party led to a rise of racist ideology and an increase of violence during political rallies.

      After Sen. Obama’s election, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, said the Republicans’ primary direction was solely to block whatever the new President wanted to do. Other Republicans chimed in that President Obama was out to destroy the country. The country did not destruct under the Obama Administration.

      Among the many policies that were enacted during President Obama’s two terms were a significant improvement of the economy, an expansion of wilderness areas, increased nutrition programs for public schools, a bail-out of the auto industry, an elimination of the torture policies of the Bush–Cheney administration, and a reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq. Equally as important as dozens of programs to benefit Americans in the lower- and middle-classes, and improve health care and the environment, was that he avoided any scandal.

      During the primaries and general election, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton engaged in the most vicious and poisonous campaign in recent history, while dealing with scandals and dancing around facts. President-elect Trump now calls for unity. It has little to do with unifying a divided nation and more of a call to support Trump himself. During President Obama’s first campaign and his two terms, the conservative hard core declared, “Not our president.” Hopefully the liberals will not similarly respond and support the President.

      The Obama administration was staffed with civility and diversity. The Trump campaign was marked by a profanity-spewing fear-mongering leader and a staff of largely rich white males. Trump was usually seen as an angry demagogue, often with a smirk; in contrast, President Obama was serious when he needed to be, and playful , humorous, and joyful at other times. Trump’s mostly outrageous declarations played to the Tea Party extremists, most of whom had lost any sense of humor they may have once had. Trump’s public persona helped get him the nomination and the election. It is a sad and discouraging look at what America has slid into.

      However, Trump has reversed some of his more extreme declarations. During the campaign he proclaimed he would re-institute torture to suspected terrorists, would jail Hillary Clinton, stated that people don’t contribute to climate change, and that President Obama was probably a Muslim who co-founded Isis. With the emerging presidency, he denounced support from the alt-right extreme White Rights groups, has heaped praise upon both Clinton and Obama, and tacked slightly more to the center on other issues. He now says the U.S. cannot use torture and won’t be calling to deport all illegal immigrants. He even softened his pronouncements about the “lyin’ liberal media.”

      Trump has publically acknowledged that he was far more radical during his campaign in order to get the presidency but that was no longer necessary now that he will be taking the oath of office in less than three months.  His constant flip-flopping does raise the issue of integrity.

      Contrary to his opinion of himself, Trump will not be one of the greatest presidents, but he could be a good one if he listens to his advisors, and realizes that although he won the electoral college victory, Hillary Clinton had almost two million more voters than he did.

      If President Trump continues a slow move to the Republican center, the alt-Right hate movement will continue to disgorge filth and hatred. But there are still Trump’s social graces. Hopefully, Vice-President Mike Pence, a civil and intelligent conservative, and some of the Trump advisors might be able to shut down Trump’s Twitter account and scrub America’s Tasmanian Devil of the anger and hate he currently expounds.

      Whatever happens in the next four years will not result in the deterioration of the country. Just as all Americans needed to refer to Barack Obama as President Obama, so should liberals respect the office and refer to Donald Trump as President Trump.

      [Dr. Brasch has covered government and politics for more than four decades. His latest of 20 books is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit.]

Donald Trump’s March to the Presidency

by Walter Brasch

      The near-impossible has happened, and Donald Trump is three months from being President Trump. From local elections to the presidency, this general election may have been the most vicious since Thomas Jefferson challenged John Adams in 1800. Both major candidates turned to attack ads to enhance their own campaigns.

      Donald Trump flourished on the seeds of hate planted by the Tea Party, and then played out the dictum of Joseph Goebbels that if you keep telling lies long enough and blend them with propaganda, they will turn into truth. From the moment he entered the presidential race until his final triumph, he kept hammering on two themes. The first strategy was to push the premise that under President Obama the United States had lost its greatness and only Donald Trump could restore it. To this concoction he then brilliantly added fear to the mixture. Name a fear—any fear—and and it was probably in Trump’s campaign rhetoric. The first part of that fear was immigrants bringing drugs and guns from Mexico and central America; the second part was that Radical Islamic terrorists were coming to America from the Middle East. He also instilled the fear that Hillary Clinton would take away the Second Amendment right if she became president, something no president could do under the Constitution. Finally he coated his campaign against Hillary Clinton’s with constant Benghazi and e-mail scandals and kept repeating it at every rally, and he had a product he force fed to a gullible public.

      Hillary Clinton improved her communication with voters near the end of the campaign, but for much of the campaign she was protected by a phalanx of assistants who kept her unapproachable except for photo ops. She should have shut down the e-mail and Benghazi scandals much earlier than she did; several Congressional hearings had already proved she was not at fault. The flip-flop press conferences by FBI director James Comey also led the voters to believe she may or may not have been at fault in both scandals.

       The Libertarian party cut into Trump’s base, and the Green Party cut into Clinton’s base, but neither was strong enough to cost either candidate the election.

      The Establishment Media at first dismissed Trump’s politics as just another sideshow. But, Trump kept making outrageous comments, and the media kept acting as his personal mouthpiece without doing much fact checking any of his rhetoric. Trump boosted his candidacy by using the media to attack what he continually called the lyin’ liberal media. He gained momentum with each tweet and every rally, proving he didn’t need the establishment media to arouse a fan base.

      The Voters allowed themselves to be led by Trump who appealed to their frustration with establishment politics and their alienation from government. Trump emphasized he was an outsider, even though he and the SuperPACs were more inside the beltway politics than most candidates. Trump’s core was white alienated males who didn’t have college degrees; Clinton’s core was college-educated men and women.

      Each candidate relied on the power of outside organizations to further gain traction in the race to the presidency. For Clinton, it was primarily organized labor; for Trump, it was the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA.

      By Nov. 8, almost all polls had predicted Clinton would win the presidency. There was one problem—they were wrong. They underestimated the strength of rural America and overestimated the weakness of urban America.

      At the end of the day Clinton had had more individual voters, but Trump had more electoral voters and the presidency.

      The next campaign began Nov. 9.

Please Make It Stop

by Walter Brasch

      Pennsylvania, which had been a no-contest state in presidential primaries because of its late balloting, is a now a swing state with less than a week until the election. Just about every voter by now has received dozens of robocalls, e-mails, letters, postcards, and exposure to almost-uncountable TV, digital, satellite, and social media ads. Most are attack ads, with similar messages.

      The ads focus upon homeland security, taxes, immigration, pro-life/pro-choice, and bringing jobs back to America. The conservatives have thrown in the phrase “liberal extremists” in many of their ads in an effort to shock all America to believe that liberals are somehow tied to Muslim extremists. The liberals are pushing an agenda that defines the conservatives as greedy plutocrats who have little thought for the middle class. This election, from local offices to the presidency may be the dirtiest since 1800 when Thomas Jefferson challenged John Adams.

      Donald Trump, who has outsourced much of his clothing line and construction materials, now says if president he will bring jobs back to America, stop illegal immigration, defeat Isis, repeal Obamacare, lower taxes for families while miraculously raising the budget for defense, and perform myriad miracle acts that are not part of a president’s constitutional responsibility.

      On his march to the presidency, Trump has focused upon Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, a scandal that isn’t one. Congressional hearings and the FBI have cleared her; innumerable times, Trump has continued to attack her. Clinton has already apologized for using a personal e-mail server during her four years as secretary of state. What turned up among more than 30,000 e-mails is about 55 e-mails that received a “confidential” tag, the lowest of three classifications, with another 55 receiving “secret” or “top secret” classification. As a cabinet officer, and fourth in line of succession, she had the right to classify any message. A few of the messages came from other agencies. About 2,100 messages were classified retroactively.

      Clinton, still ahead in numerous polls, has attacked Trump for his crude behavior. One of her TV ads, which penetrates

 almost every TV show, is a fast-paced collage of his many comments; among them, Trump mocks a disabled reporter, uses obscene language, and treats women as chattel.

      Both candidates call each other unfit to be president, with Clinton asking voters if they really want Trump to be the person in charge of unleashing the nuclear arsenal, and Trump asking voters if they want a corrupt liar in the White House. Trump has also played upon Clinton’s 30 years of public service, linking her as an insider and him as an outsider to Washington, D.C. politics. The “outsider” label has been resonating with voters at all levels of the election campaigns as voters believe they are outsiders, alienated to government, and are willing to be led by insiders who claim to be outsiders.

      The cost of airing ads by both candidates for the presidency and members of Congress is more than $4 billion, and that doesn’t include the cost of producing them. More than $600 million, spread among all major Democratic and Republican candidates for the presidency, has been spent on broadcast TV ads, according to Borrell Associates.  During the past 21 weeks, Clinton has spent about $211 million on broadcast TV ads; Trump has spent about $74 million, according to data compiled by BloombergPolitics. However, Trump has used both Twitter and free TV time, due to outrageous statements, to equal Clinton’s campaign. During the final week prior to the election, Trump will spend $25 million in broadcast TV ads. Clinton and Trump have each secured $5 million in ad time for Pennsylvania TV stations during the final week. The Trump totals don’t include a $3 million TV ad buy from the NRA, which stokes the fire of fear that Clinton, if elected president, will violate the Second Amendment and take guns away from civilians.

      By Tuesday’s election, it will be doubtful that either Clinton or Trump will know how many ads were placed by their campaigns or by SuperPACs on their behalf that aired on broadcast television.

      In the race for senate from Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey and Katie McGinty have each attacked the other for being millionaires.

      With McGinty it’s a case of benefitting from going from business to government, where she was the Department of Environment Protection administrator, back to the energy business, back to government where she was Gov. Tom Wolf’s chief of staff, and then to membership on the boards of energy firms she had previously regulated. Toomey also attacked her for tossing about $2.8 million of state funds to two non-profit organizations that her husband is an advisor.

      With Toomey, the attacks are because he was a stock broker who went into politics, favors Wall Street, and owned a bank that foreclosed on numerous customers. McGinty’s ads stress her blue-collar family of 12, emphasizing that her mother was a restaurant hostess and her father was a police officer.

      The two candidates’ campaign committees and their SuperPACs have spent more than $55 million to be elected to the Senate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; it’s a job that pays $174,000 a year.

      There is one reality in all the advertising— negative ads generally don’t work, and exist only to reinforce a candidate’s base of support.

      [Dr. Brasch, who has covered politics and government for four decades, is author of Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit.]