First Think, THEN Ink.

Before I explain the above headline, let me explain my credentials.

I am a person who has worked as a fundraiser for such organizations as Planned Parenthood and EMILY's List. I have also fundraised for the Democratic National Committee and participated in both of Barack Obama's presidential runs, first as a volunteer phone banker and organizer in 2008, then as a fundraiser in 2012, who personally raised over four-hundred thousand dollars for the campaign. And finally, I briefly served as part of the fundraising team for Hillary Clinton, as she became the first woman of a major party atop a presidential ticket.

While others may have more expertise than me, I believe I have a unique and accurate perspective on the 2020 election, and I want state this as clearly as I can, with no sarcasm, no humor and no doubt: donald trump will win a second term and return to the White House.

As you might guess, based on my history, I am not pleased about making this statement. But I am stating it now because I don't want another scene that occurred at the Javits Center on the evening of Tuesday November 8, 2016. The shock and the grief of that moment nearly four years ago, with all of Hillary's supporters gathered together was among the most difficult to witness and that has only extended, based on what has occurred in the ensuing administration.

Here, I will make the case to explain why trump's return to DC isn't just likely, it's inevitable, and why you shouldn't be as shocked as Secretary Clinton's team was when it happened two hundred and six weeks ago.

Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Everything turns on whatever the circumstances are. Currently, the president has seemingly beat COVID-19 in just a few days, suggesting that the medical professionals that warned Americans to stay at home, wear masks and social distance were overzealous. It also makes the Democratic Governors who issued tough restrictions for their states appear to be strangling their own economies for no reason.

Additionally, many view COVID as something no one could have done anything about, so any blame that might have been placed on trump is tempered because this wasn't created by him.

Also, there is the small matter of a new Supreme Court justice. The Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, trump's latest SCOTUS pick, as he continues to pack the court with the most conservative judges he can.

Between laying the blame of the economy on state and city level Democrats, and the promise of a Supreme Court that will tighten restrictions on what some perceive as preposterous behavior by liberal thinking Americans, trump is getting a bit of a boost right now in certain circles.

Also, the fact that Stephen Breyer, Bill Clinton's second Supreme Court selection, turned 82 this past summer, means that trump, if returned to the White House, might actually get a fourth seat to fill on the Judicial side. That thought likely has conservatives on Cloud 9 justices.

But we also need to look back, both to weed through the history of what occurred and to digest the basics of how people think to completely understand why trump is about to win again.

The first thing to note is the Electoral College.

A lot of people don't quite get the intricacies of the Electoral College. And many want to dismantle it. I'm of a somewhat different mindset.

Here's how the process generally works. Every state acts as a separate entity. Every voting district in each state counts toward your total in that state. Win just one voting district more than your opponent and you win the state and all of that state's Electoral Votes. The object is to get to 270 Electoral Votes and win.

It used to be counties - or parishes in Louisiana - not "voting districts." But that's because gerrymandering, the process of redrawing the map so one side or other can win areas, has been done by Republican legislators since George W. Bush. With gerrymandering, Republicans get a major boost because they manipulate the lines so more and more areas are set to vote Red. It's an easy fix.

Prior to the 2016 election, I suggested a couple of problems with the Electoral system, putting aside the gerrymandering issue. The first was simply the numbers.

There are six states and the District of Columbia that have three Electoral Votes. Wyoming is the smallest in population - approximately 578,000 residents. Montana has nearly twice the population, at over one million residents, but the same number of electoral votes as Wyoming. That seems odd.

Then, when you compare the vote totals to the larger states, it seems even more wacky. Using Montana's three votes per million residents, not even Wyoming's population count, a state like California would receive 117 Electoral Votes, based on the more than 39 million residents in that state. Currently, California has fifty-five Electoral Votes. So the state counts aren't fair.

But there is an even bigger issue that no one wants to address.

Every state has their allotment of Electoral Votes. And those votes are cast, no matter how many (or few) people voted in the general election. If only fifty percent of the population voted, why are one hundred percent of the Electoral Votes being given? Think about it. Votes are being handed to candidates based on NOTHING. What should be happening is a percentage of the Electoral Votes are awarded, based on the total of ballots cast by the percentage of legal voting age population.

Now, suddenly, we are getting an accurate assessment of what each state thinks. And this has the added benefit of eliminating voter suppression, forever. In this case, you want everyone, including supporters of your political rival to vote, so the state's winner would get all of the Electoral Votes, not a fraction.

So, even with keeping the Electoral College, we can use some tweaks and make it accurate, based on how many people live in a particular area and more representative of what's actually happening with the so-called "popular vote."

Admittedly, though, none of that is the issue right now. The issue is sexism.

I'm the first person to admit it. We got President Barack Obama, at least in part, because of sexism. Obama had one major challenger in the 2008 Democratic primaries - Senator Hillary Clinton. And when he won the nomination, his opponent was John McCain, who was in questionable health at the time, and his running mate was former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

While the 2008 result was far closer than 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro ran with Walter Mondale to a landslide defeat, it wasn't close.

As I mentioned above, I have worked for the DNC, speaking to big money donors all over the country. And when I briefly was involved with Hillary's campaign, speaking exclusively to Democrats, mind you, I was taken aback by the number of people who said some variation of "I don't think we're ready for a 'woman president.'"

Reminder. 2016. Liberal minded voters. Not sure about a woman in charge. As tough as that was to hear, it clearly was worse on the conservative side. There are a number of Americans who firmly believe that women should be barred from the military. You can imagine what they think of a female Commander-in-Chief.

Flash ahead four years. Now it's not just sexism, it's racism. Senator Kamala Harris isn't just a woman a Joe Biden heartbeat from the Oval Office, she is a minority woman. And we have not gotten past either sexism or racism in this country - in fact, we haven't properly discussed those issues, even now. And if we haven't even talked about them, we are far from resolving them.

This combination of elements, a fearful population of a possible Madam President, those that are happy with (or are unaffected by) trump's statements and actions, and this almost insatiable need by Republicans not to just have their way, but to be practically punitive with Democrats, has created a nation on the brink of a new kind of civil war.

My points about changing things for future elections may be moot. That's because when trump gets his second term, suddenly, he doesn't have to answer to anybody, not even his base. He will be completely free to do anything he wants, including finding a way to stay in power beyond 2024. After all, things are so much more peaceful when the rabble rousers have nothing to promote.

But I stated that trump's re-election might be a good thing. A great thing, not a good thing. Let me briefly paint that picture.

Any doubt about the dysfunction of the United States is gone. But what to do about it is unclear. If Biden wins, we'll start to head back towards what we think of as "normalcy."

But we have outgrown that normal. The problem is many Americans still don't understand what the complaints are all about. They need trump to destroy government as it is before they finally get it.

So, when trump attempts to dismantle the Constitution, when he exerts his absolute power, when he aligns with foreign dictators and shuns our allies, promotes chaos and divisive thought and when he manipulates every advantage to circumnavigate our laws to stay beyond eight years, and when it will eventually end, and yes, despite all, it will eventually end, we, like the Original Founders, will have to create a new government from the wreckage and the carnage.

Hopefully, this time, we will consider ALL Americans as we build a new form of government, one that protects us from, not promotes, people like trump, and one that serves the people, not just those with wealth and power.

Melania Trump, the current First Lady of the United States, has a platform she claims to support: Anti-Bullying. It makes sense. As a immigrant to this country, arriving in New York in her mid-twenties, she could have been, and likely was, exposed to abuse of varying sorts by people who didn't like her for who she was. The US has a history of characterizing immigrants as "less than" throughout history, this, despite the fact that the white population of the country were all immigrants.

But another irony springs up when discussing the concept of Mrs. Trump's Anti-Bullying stance: she is married to the biggest bully in the history of the White House.

I'm not talking out of turn here. There is a list of what are called "Bullying Tactics." And, when we examine how Trump behaves, he basically uses ALL of these as his standard actions. Just look at this list!

http://www.workplacebullying.org/top-25/

He is not just a bully, he's the number one bully, certainly in the history of the White House, but maybe also in America.

But what do we do about a bully? A bully who holds the highest office in the land?

The problem seems to be that Trump wants to believe himself, being in that highest office, above reproach. That's also why the Mueller Investigation has him worried. He keeps wanting to claim it is over at every step, He has said, written or tweeted the phrase "No Collusion" more often than he has said the name of his Vice President.

Would standard techniques work in dealing with this bully? Presumably yes, but since he has all the power in this circumstance, isn't he more like the Billy Mumy character from that episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "It's A Good Life"?

How does one deal with a man/child that neither reads nor listens to reason? Who doesn't want to hear criticism, only praise? Who doesn't want to be wrong, who will never apologize, even when faced with the fact that he is wrong and whose main concern is himself?

This is the puzzle we have provided ourselves. Will anyone solve it? Melania?

I'm currently boycotting the new CBS reality series "Celebrity Big Brother." Maybe the word Celebrity should have had its own set of quotation marks, as the people who are populating the house for this two weeks as an alternative programming ploy by the Eyeball to counter the Winter Olympics on NBC may not qualify as actually being worth celebrating.

You can decide for yousrself; Here are their names:

Ariadna Gutierrez
Brandi Glanville
Chuck Liddell
James Maslow
Keshia Knight Pulliam
Marissa Jaret Winokur
Mark McGrath
Metta World Peace
Omarosa Manigault
Ross Mathews
Shannon Elizabeth

It's not *quite* fair to be too critical about the level of celebrity that is available for a program like this, even though it is only for two weeks, compared to the more typical three month commitment required for the "standard" version of the game. After all, what stars are willing to agree to the rules and regulations of this game, knowing how things typically go? Back biting and in-fighting are all part and parcel of the mechanics of this program, forcing people to live in a confined space with others and have to deal with their personality traits with no hope of escape, aside from walking out of the house and leaving the game behind.

But obviously, my main gripe with this cast is the now infamous Omarosa, who first reached national prominence as a loser on the first season of Donald Trump's reality series, "The Apprentice" and last year became part of Trump's White House Staff doing... er, um... something. No one seemed to have any idea what her duties were, what her responsibilities entailed, or what she actually accomplished in her office. And then she was given the boot and she claimed to have stories to tell.

While I know that getting a person like that to participate in this series is probably going to get some interested train wreck spectators tuning in, I really don't feel that the media should be giving her a platform, especially now, when it's clear that she is looking for something to "normalize" herself. The fact that she defended Trump as a person appropriate to be in the White House and took a job in his administration, no matter what that job was, is not what America needs now.

So, I'm sitting this entire series out. I have a feeling I'm still going to wind up hearing about it, somehow, but at least I can limit the amount. In the immortal words of Robin Roberts after Omarosa had her Exit Interview on GMA...

Yesterday, there was this video clip:



The father of three victims of that Olympic Doctor who molested all those athletes reacted to him.

A friend asked about why this kind of anger and response wasn't there at the very start, and it took all of these people coming forward to share their harrowing tales of abuse to finally bring about this reaction. After giving it a bit of thought, here's what I came up with...

Expectations.

I think, as a starting point, we have certain expectations about what our lives are all about, how things function, and who the people we encounter are. We also have an expectation that the people in our lives, most especially professionals, always behave in an ethical manner. After all, they have worked to get to the place where they are. They wouldn't jeopardize that position by doing something that might take everything they had done, away.

So, when we begin looking at a circumstance like the one where we have a doctor sexually molesting how many? Over one-hundred and fifty (and counting) young athletes, women and girls, the first thought is that this doctor isn't going to do that. That goes against logic and reason.

Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Roy Moore and this guy, among a bunch of men that were admired for so very long are the people of that sort in question. And, at first glance, our society just couldn't quite believe that these guys would do anything like that. Their personalities away from these accusations fell within the spectrum of normal, even friendly and affable. And they were at the top of their fields.

This way of thinking, this expectation of "how things work" comes into play in a lot of ways in our society. It allows us to believe that the police are always correct in whatever action they take during any routine traffic stop. It permits us to say that a political leader would never place his personal interests ahead of the nation he has sworn to protect. And it definitely affects our view of these people, like all of the Catholic Priests who were accused of molesting altar boys, who were then reassigned to other parishes in other states to avoid the scandal.

When you view these guys, when you consider their position, and assume they must have behaved ethically to get as far as they did, that's where the veil is pulled across our eyes. Surely THEY aren't going to behave that way. So, the issue must be with the accuser. The accusers are not powerful people with clout in the community. They aren't people who have lived as long and may not understand just what they are suggesting with their statements, or they might misread signals they received from their encounter with this person. So, either the accuser simply made a mistake, or it wasn't as bad as described, or it was a false accusation as a prank, or a false accusation to be malicious. Because, if it's none of those things?

We want our world to make sense.

We want our world to make sense.

But, if someone we know and like, a family friend, a trusted confidant, a professional that is noted for their exemplary work... does... this?

It doesn't make sense.

And that's how blaming the victim becomes a thing. We just want the world to make sense and we will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Eventually, however, the ostriches must lift their heads from the sand, and usually that means looking at a world that is far worse than if they had dealt with the situation when it was first noticed.

I hope we can continue to move forward, that there can be some true healing for everyone harmed because of these events, that the perpetrators can feel some empathy for their victims and can understand the affect they have had by their selfish and unwanted actions. I hope there can be forgiveness, because holding anger, pain and rage only harms the person who feels that even more. And I hope there can be a sense of closure for everyone affected.

But most of all, I'm hoping that we won't make the assumption that just because someone has reached a certain stature in life, doesn't mean they could not or would not be the perpetrator of a heinous act.

Our ostrich days are over.

ETA: Uma Thurman's story about Weinstein, which appears in the Feburary 4, 2018 issue of The New York Times also echoes the point I made here; Ms. Thurman states the following:

“The complicated feeling I have about Harvey is how bad I feel about all the women that were attacked after I was,” she told me one recent night, looking anguished in her elegant apartment in River House on Manhattan’s East Side, as she vaped tobacco, sipped white wine and fed empty pizza boxes into the fireplace.

“I am one of the reasons that a young girl would walk into his room alone, the way I did. Quentin used Harvey as the executive producer of ‘Kill Bill,’ a movie that symbolizes female empowerment. And all these lambs walked into slaughter because they were convinced nobody rises to such a position who would do something illegal to you, but they do.”

Thurman stresses that Creative Artists Agency, her former agency, was connected to Weinstein’s predatory behavior. It has since issued a public apology. “I stand as both a person who was subjected to it and a person who was then also part of the cloud cover, so that’s a super weird split to have,” she says.

Maureen Dowd's interview with Uma Thurman is up on The Times Website

Steve Scalise Among 4 Shot at Baseball Field; Suspect Is Dead - The New York Times Wednesday June 14, 2017

Partisan politics commentary where people of a differing political stance have chosen to call each other “selfish,” “stupid,” “insane” or worse. Much worse. It's difficult not to see the above event as possibly a result of such responses. And it's something we have to address.

If we are to understand where the United States is, politically, we have to go back in time and examine where we were. Let’s turn back the clock and go for a trip to a previous USA, all the way back to the mid twentieth century!

( The world of politics during the Eisenhower era... )

As we are on the verge of a new presidential administration in the United States, many people are concerned, even fearful about what the look, the feel, the tenet of this next chapter of the American story will resemble. To me, a television trivia expert, the answer is very clear. It’s…

( It's... it's... )

This is a challenge, since there's a lot going on, but is there a phrase or sentence that really sums up this photograph?