Occam's Razor

Like many liberals, I am going through a painful disillusionment phase with Barack Obama. I am disheartened and saddened by his approach to governing since his reelection. I fear he is setting Democrats up for failure in 2014.

If there is one thing that unites Democrats it is a passion for the needs of the middle class and the poor. Since his reelection Barack Obama is showing signs that he is putting some nebulous legacy and quest to “get things done no matter what the odds” ahead of the best interests of the American people.

The most painful aspect has been Obama’s repeated declarations, most explicitly in his FY2014 budget, that he is prepared to scale back social security cost of living adjustments and increase Medicare payments in order to balance the budget. He says this will only happen if Republicans agree as part of a grand bargain to also raise taxes elsewhere.

Obama is way too smart a politician to not realize that social security is not contributing to the deficit. Indeed in most years it diminishes the deficit by putting its surpluses into the treasury. This proposed means of diminishing social security benefits is through a mechanism called “chained CPI” (consumer price index). Basically it would reduce inflation protections built into social security, on the assumption that people will reduce spending patterns when prices rise, for example going with ground beef instead of steaks. However, the elderly spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care expenses, which has proven resistant to the “ground beef for steak” approach. Regardless, this would still amount to a cut in income generally compared with inflation for people who can least afford to take the hit. This means they will endure a reduction of standard of living, which is already pretty poor for many social security beneficiaries without pensions or high valued 401Ks. Worse, it would do nothing to control the deficit. Obama appears to be willing to balance the budget on the backs of those least able to afford it, and who contributed to their social security over the years based on certain assumptions which may well go by the wayside. It’s unfair and it is back stabbing.

As for Medicare, the president is proposing means testing, essentially requiring those at somewhat higher income levels to contribute more in the way of deductibles and copays when we use Medicare. There is no question that Medicare is a growing entitlement and there is enormous waste in the system. I am all for removing the waste in the system, which can be done by moving it from a fee-for-service model to an outcome-based payment model. As a driver of medical inflation, Medicare is a laggard not a leader, with significantly lower costs and inflation per enrollee than private health insurance. As for means testing, it is unfair because those who earn more have contributed more of their income over the years toward Medicare, effectively subsidizing the care for those at lower income levels. The tax is 1.45% of your income. Someone making $20,000 pays $290 a year in Medicare taxes. Someone at my income level pays closer to $1900 a year in Medicare taxes. The result of this proposed change would be to charge people like me more for the same benefits when we claim them after having already paid more by contributing more to the system during our working lives. It’s sort of like paying an income tax twice. It is fundamentally unfair.

To add insult to injury, yesterday the president signed into law changes to the STOCK act that essentially undid the work of the last Congress to provide better visibility into stocks owned by members of Congress and the Administration. This was a no-brainer for a supposedly progressive president: veto it.

Meanwhile, the former organization Obama for American has morphed into Organizing for Action, and the organization has been petitioning people like me to contribute to it, supposedly to help promote progressive causes. What is progressive about cutting social security benefits for people in a solvent system? Why would I contribute to an organization that works for a president who wants to do the exact opposite of what Vice President Joe Biden promised in the last campaign: not to cut social security benefits, not even by one dime? How do I get excited about sending them money when they want people to contribute more toward Medicare instead of removing the waste in the system?

The worst part is this could easily set up a repeat of the disastrous 2010 election, which brought in Tea Party members that have largely obstructed work from getting done. What drives people to the polls is motivation. Seniors, already disinclined to vote for Democrats, will be even gladder to vote for Republicans who promise not to cut their social security benefits, as even Paul Ryan has pledged. How do you excite the Democratic base to turn out when they are being asked to enthusiastically endorse an agenda that further stiffs it to the working class and seems more a product of Republican thinking than Democratic thinking?

To say the least all of this is disappointing, which amounts to leaving us Democrats dispirited, which gives us little incentive to vote or to get further engaged in politics, which is supposedly the whole purpose of Organizing for Action. But OFA is really about promoting the president’s agenda, not the people’s agenda. They no longer align.

I will support and vote for true Democrats who will fight for the working class, who will fight to ensure that everyone pays their fair share, including corporations that pay increasing fewer taxes every year. Once these under taxed groups have paid their taxes, then I will consider tax increases on the working class. I will not vote for Republican-lite candidates.

I hope Obama wakes up because he is making a fatal mistake not just to his legacy, but to his agenda and to the needs of Americans. The compromise he is chasing simply will not happen with the current Congress, which is good, because Republicans in Congress will put lower spending ahead of deficit reduction, as they have shown time and again. However, there is no reason to move our goalpost first when they won’t move their post at all. The mere act of moving proves not statesmanship but cowardice because it will show conciliation without affect. It also drains energy from progressives and makes us feel all our energy was for naught.

Democrats would be wise to estrange themselves from Obama and OFA. I know I am until he asks for contrition and puts the American people ahead of the concerns of the rich.

Some habits are hard to break. Smoking. Drinking. Whoring. Eating dark chocolate. (Okay, I don’t know about the first three.) Another bad habit I have developed is going to snarky political web sites. While there are plenty of them out there, arguably DailyKos.com is the snarkiest of them. I wish I could break my addiction to DailyKos but there I am many times a day, obsessively reading the site.

Giving up DailyKos is much easier said than done. I go to it all the time, not so much to read comments (who has time for that, although plenty of people do) but to get the political news I care about. Only it’s always delivered in the most ultra-sarcastic of tones. For a site that supposedly celebrates the diversity of people and values skills like critical thinking, it sure paints all Republicans with the same whitewash. Granted that as a class Republicans seem to be all cut from the same cloth. And yet there is variety among Republicans and conservatives. What is almost universal about Republicans in office is they are almost all intensely weird. But arguably they are no weirder than the denizens on DailyKos. Like, um, me? Am I one of the damned?

You have your socially conservative Republicans. You have your fiscally conservative Republicans. You also have your libertarian-leaning Republicans. Of course, most lately you also have your Tea Party Republicans. They are quite a bit different. On DailyKos though they might as well all be wearing identical Ku Klux Klan robes and burning crosses. They are all portrayed as bizarre, which is obvious from the way they are characterized in posts and captions. They are objects for derision and for our entertainment, so weirdly and objectively wrong that they occupy a unique zone of utter wrongness, not even fit for scorn although of course the scorn is ladled out in extremely generous portions.

Birds of a feather, perhaps? DailyKos’s dirty secret is that its denizens are objectively just as weird and bizarrely opinionated, just in the other direction. I don’t hang out much on conservative websites like redstate.org. I doubt though that their arguments get as heated as they do on DailyKos. Few posters will be taking socially conservative positions on DailyKos, mainly because they are not suicidal, but boy they sure do a lot of arguing about nuances on stuff that just does not matter. The really egregious flamers eventually get banned. Arguments can be both enlightening and disagreeable at the same time. Overall they are a passionate bunch, but they can often take great offense over differences in opinion that really are quite minor. So mostly I read the articles and skip the comments. Who needs all that indigestion?

So why do I bother? I bother simply because the site has political news that is very topical. I bother because they raise a ton of money for progressive candidates, and were instrumental in getting candidates like new Senator Elizabeth Warren elected. I visit because they may be super snarky, but they are endlessly reading polls, assessing candidates and digging into dry facts about various politicians’ political war chests. These things matter in the long run. If you are trying to field better progressive candidates you have to know a ton about your candidate, the competition, and the state or district’s demographics. They have done the research, they have some top notch analysts and they endlessly comb the political news of the day for the nuggets that really matter.

Too bad there is so much chaff in the wheat. Today Marco Rubio’s “water” incident is all over DailyKos. In his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night, this rising star of the right drank from a bottle of Poland Springs while water on camera, without using glass and subsequently grimaced. There is today endless hilarity and comments about this on DailyKos, as if it mattered. I guess it gives them something to talk about, even though Obama’s speech was far more relevant and interesting than a minor imaging mistake by a rising Republican star. Yeah, I watched the clip, and then I tuned out the subsequent discussion. It doesn’t matter at all, except to the super politically charged progressives on DailyKos.

I also look and read most of the recommended diaries. Some of them turn out to be piffle, but about fifty percent of the time they are topical and contain relevant news I generally haven’t seen elsewhere first.

For the most part though, DailyKos is a 24 hour a day carnival show for hypercharged progressives that is chock full of snark and antipathy. Yet, I haven’t found a satisfactory alternative. What I want is a site without the snark but with similar content. I need a site like this where Republicans don’t need to be endlessly lampooned and skewered. Most Republicans simply have to open their mouth. It’s usually the same as putting their foot into it anyhow. However, Republicans are not stupid. They just have wildly different opinions and ways of seeing the world than I do. They may be declining as a political party at the moment, but they are generally astute at where they place their time and money. They know how to gerrymander with the best of them. Like it or not many of our most successful people are hard core Republicans. They may have flunked the course on empathy but they have figured out how to succeed financially and professionally. Their perspective is one that I largely don’t share, but it is one worthy of tolerance, especially from a community that calls itself progressive. (I make exceptions for the Todd Akins among them.) It’s not necessary to say they are wrong about something. Usually it’s simply a matter of documenting what they say and do and let the record speak for itself.

Clearly I haven’t found the site I am looking for, although I like sites like ThinkProgress.org somewhat better when it comes to the tone of their material, but not as much when it comes to variety and depth. At some point though I need to go cold turkey and quit DailyKos. Maybe I just need to read real news sites again, like CNN. Too much partisanship and analysis is probably not a good thing. Preaching to the choir can be fun, but like smoking, drinking, whoring and dark chocolate it’s probably not too healthy.

Wait a minute. Dark chocolate is healthy. Pass me another bag of dark chocolate M&Ms.

It’s clear that Republicans have learned a few things from the 2012 election after all. First, they cannot win at the ballot box, at least not unless they change their policies a whole lot so they can attract moderates, which they seem unable to do for ideological reasons. Second, they have finally looked at demographic trends and have realized that their party is likely in permanent decline. Having pondered these problems the Republican Party has decided to do more of what they excel at: stacking the cards so even if they lose the popular vote, they still win. It’s the Animal Farm strategy: that votes are equal, but some are more equal than others. Only this time, it will be the law.

Republicans want their votes to count more than Democratic votes.  In the 2012 election, their attempt to move the odds in their favor consisted mostly of intimidating voter ID laws. There were also the usual illegal robocalls designed to confuse minorities about voting and insufficient voting machines at minority precincts, leading to long lines. Those efforts proved largely counterproductive. Perhaps out of spite, minorities waited in lines to vote, sometimes for hours to cast their votes.

The latest effort is to create laws in swing states controlled by Republicans to apportion their electoral votes based on who wins the majority of votes in a congressional district. With the exception of two states (Nebraska and Maine), electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all system. However, if Republicans control a state legislature, they already have congressional districts that are gerrymandered so that Republicans are likely to win most of the House seats. It’s logical to assume that if a Republican represents a congressional district, a majority of its voters will also vote for a Republican for president.

President Obama won 51% of the votes in the swing state of Virginia (where I live) and received all of the state’s 13 electoral votes, 11 for its congressional districts and two for its senators. However based on this analysis, if the candidate who won the majority of the electoral votes for the congressional district got one electoral vote, 7 out of the 11 electoral votes in Virginia would have gone to Mitt Romney. It’s unclear how the two votes for its senators would go under this proposal endorsed by the Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, but with the Virginia legislature firmly in Republican control, it’s likely they would have gone for Romney, meaning that 9 out of 13 electoral votes (69%) would have gone for Romney even though he received just 47% of the vote statewide.

As you can guess, various groups have crunched the numbers. Had swing states had their electoral votes proportioned this way, Mitt Romney would now be president, even though he received just 47% of the popular vote, 4% less than Barack Obama. In short, some votes (Republican votes) would be “more equal” than Democratic votes.

Currently, each state decides how they will award electoral votes. Almost all states use the “winner take all” system. The advantage of this system is that it makes the Electoral College results decisive. With a few exceptions in very tight elections (such as the 2000 election) the winner of the popular vote wins the electoral vote. Of course, the electoral vote is the one that matters. In those exceptions the popular vote mismatch has been very close. In 2000, for example, Gore won the popular vote by .5% but lost the Electoral College vote by just five electoral votes. As we know, the Supreme Court decided this election in Bush v. Gore. The court chose to honor the state of Florida’s dubious certification of its election results.

Most normal people would look at this as a blatant attempt to stack the presidential race in favor of the Republican candidate. Doubtless this is also the intent of the Republican Party, since the proposal is to do this only in swing states where Republicans control the state legislature. The obvious conclusion is that the Republican Party is antidemocratic. In the past, their actions (insufficient voting machines in minority precincts and onerous voter ID laws) were masqueraded. This proposal simply cannot be mistaken for anything other than a blatant attempt when choosing the President of the United States to have Republican votes count more than Democratic votes.

It is a shameless new low for the Republican Party, which cannot win elections using a set of fair rules. It is a tacit admission that they know their party is in permanent decline and that they see the only way to prevent it is to give them disproportionate political power.

One would hope that a case before the Supreme Court would result in a decision to order a level national playing field for allocating electoral votes based on one man, one vote. But most likely the Supreme Court would defer to law and the constitution, which gives states discretion in rules for awarding electoral votes and drawing congressional districts.

Since there are no swing states controlled by Democratic legislatures, Democrats cannot try the same approach, as it will diminish the electoral votes for Democratic candidates. (I seriously doubt it would occur to Democrats, as the principle of one man, one vote is part of our DNA.) So unless the Republican Party can be shamed into abandoning this approach, it is in their short-term interest. If a president actually won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote by four percent my guess is the political cost would be very high indeed. Democracy works on the consent of the governed, and it’s hard to imagine that a majority would agree that the will of the majority should be permanently disenfranchised.

The solution to this mess is simply to elect a president based on the national popular vote. This would require a constitutional amendment that even if it got through Congress would be unlikely to be passed by the states.

This whole proposal is so unbelievably antidemocratic, fractious and audacious that you would think no party in their right mind would propose it. But then, I am not a Republican. I still feel shame.

I love to give advice, even though if I am inconsistent in following my own advice. Recently after their losses in the latest election I gave some advice to Republicans. Today, I figure turnabout is fair play. Here is some advice for Democrats.

Democrats, it’s easy to assume that due to changing demographics that Republicans are in permanent decline and that in a few election cycles Congress will resemble itself during the 1960s and 1970s, when it was overwhelmingly Democratic. That may happen but if you think this will happen solely because of demographic changes, you are wrong. It may not happen at all.

Republicans still control the House, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures. In short, the party remains a huge and powerful political force. Even at the national level, Democratic control is fragile. Democratic control of the House remains elusive and made less likely by redistricting and the resulting highly gerrymandered districts. In the Senate, Democrats survived a very tough election and actually added a couple of seats to their majority. Our 55 seats include two independent senators caucusing with the Democrats. In 2014, Democrats will again be fighting headwinds as more Democrats run for reelection than Republicans.

Of course to really get things done in the Senate a party needs a supermajority, which is 60 seats. However, even when we have 60 seats, it is very easy for Democrats to split into factions. Democrats rarely show the sort of unanimity that Republicans do. The Affordable Care Act was a prime example, passing late and watered down, with certain senators in conservative leaning states (like Max Baucus) leveraging oversized influence and some senators (Joe Lieberman comes to mind) acting obnoxious and petulant. In retrospect, it’s amazing it was passed into law in even its watered down state.

The news is better on the presidential front. It used to be that by default Republicans were more likely to win presidential contests, due to various demographic and electoral vote advantages. Those days appear over. It is unlikely that any true conservative Republican (at least “conservative” in its modern and antediluvian form) can win for the foreseeable future. Of course, it all depends on who gets nominated, and arguably Democrats have nominated some stinkers with little national appeal including John Kerry, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. In short, when choosing nominees Democrats can tend to be as highly-partisan as Republicans, choosing from their hearts instead of their heads. Choose someone without broad appeal and the party is likely to lose despite favorable demographics.

Looking at the 2012 election, two factors worked in the Democrats favor. First were the obvious demographic changes that are turning traditionally red states blue. I live in such a state (Virginia), but it is blue principally only in national elections. We have a Republican house and senate, and a Republican governor, and an attorney general on the right side of the Tea Party. Other states like Ohio, traditionally a swing state, have a similarly Republican disposition but are turning reliably blue in national elections. The most important reason that Democrats won this time is that they turned out the base. Democrats outnumber Republicans nationally, so they win when they turn out the base. They tend to lose, and lose badly, when they stay home. Independents tend to swing more toward voting Republican, so turning out the base is critical for maintaining and extending Democratic control. This means that selecting candidates on all levels that both excite the base but have mainstream appeal is critical for increasing Democratic power.

We may have a few cycles where Republicans will give Democrats a break. This is because Republicans have not really come to terms with their loss, which means finding a strategy appeals to moderates. At least at the moment, the critical mass of Republicans figure doing more of what lost them the last election, just with more sincerity, is how to get back into power. Perhaps after a couple more election drubbings they will figure it out.

Democrats have a tendency to settle into comfortable factions within the party. This is less of a concern than it used to be, as conservative Democrats are in decline and liberal Democrats are ascending. When this happens, Democrats can become as ideologically stubborn as Republicans. However, it tends to hurt them more than it does Republicans. One of these fault lines has traditionally been in the area of gun control. Thoughtful Democrats need to discern between issues that they can win on and those they cannot. The gun control debate cannot be won at the ballot box, at least not for a couple of generations. Consequently there is no point wasting energy advocating for such issues. It will only boomerang against Democrats, despite the fact that sensible gun control regulation probably makes complete logical sense.

Instead, Democrats need to concentrate on issues that appeal to both Democrats and Independents generally. Gay marriage is one of these issues where the national consensus has changed. Americans fundamentally agree with the notion of equality and fairness, at least under the law. Being the party of the workingman is never bad either. Democrats need to continue to advocate for people at the low and middle income levels, and target policies that help these groups. There is no downside to this. Democrats also need to avoid bad habits, like sucking up to Wall Street, which is almost always going to vote Republican, or at least for the party which panders to their selfish interests the most. That Wall Street almost invariably does better under Democratic administrations seems lost on them.

Democrats also need to advocate for policies that are in the best interest of people generally, not necessarily those that are in the best interest of their most vocal groups. A good example of this is public schools and support of teachers’ unions. Democrats should insist that every child deserves a high quality education, even if they cannot afford it. They should not assume that a dysfunctional public school system that puts the needs of teachers ahead of students is acceptable. The public school model is clearly under stress, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Democrats should be open to charter schools particularly in districts where public schools are clearly below par. They should also advocate for policies that nurture healthy students so they have the capacity to learn. This may mean, for example, that three healthy meals a day are served at schools. The school may need to morph to be more than a center of education, but be thought of as a second home for students, whose parents likely aren’t working 9 to 5. They should advocate for safe public housing for poorer students, with residency contingent upon good behavior and for the upkeep of rental property. It should be obvious to Democrats that the real problem with education in poor areas is not substandard teachers (although certainly there are many of them) but are mostly due to environmental factors. These include the lack of affordable healthy food, and stressful families and neighborhoods. Republicans, of course, will choose to remain clueless of this reality, since their brains cannot seem to absorb that a multiplicity of factors affect ability to learn, not evil union-loving teachers.

In short Democrats, having power is not about living drunk on the privilege of power when you get it. It’s about refusing to be headstrong when you are granted power and keeping a relentless focus on improving the common good. Democrats have to earn their keep. When they get sloppy for too long, they will lose power. More importantly, much of the good they have done can be lost too, and that would be the true tragedy.

It’s been a while since I have given advice to Republicans. There is lots of handwringing among Republicans after their trouncing in last week’s elections. There is a general consensus that losing the presidency, two senate seats and at least a half dozen house seats was really awful and that some rethinking is in order in order to change things. Republicans would be wise not to rush back to their political consultants who performed so miserably for them in this election season. But with few other places to go, they probably will, and this class of prognosticators will probably keep their cash registers busy in the years ahead.

They could at least hire Donald Trump, not that he did any better at this business, but simply to tell these consultants what they should hear: “Your fired!” In fact, Trump turned out to be a supreme embarrassment for the party. I often wonder if he is pulling a long-term joke on pretty much everyone. He is way too smart (I hope) to seriously think Barack Obama was born in Kenya, is a secret Muslim and faked his grades. I figure in maybe a year he will say, “Fooled ya!” and reveal he is a secret Democrat. Not that, speaking as a Democrat, I want him or his money in our party.

The losing party is required to go through angst and hand wringing after a drubbing. Democrats have certainly done this periodically. When Republicans took over Congress in 1994, my party went through a lot of the same soul searching. Back then the sacking by Republicans may have been useful, because Democrats were largely captive of special interest money. The thinking then was that Democrats had to tack back to the center. It resulted in Blue Dog Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of right leaning Democrats that made it hard to tell if they even were Democrats. They sure did not vote like Democrats.

Republicans may invent something similar, but I doubt it. The initial reaction seems to be to double down. The thinking seems to be that their message was not quite heard correctly, and if it had been heard correctly America would have voted the “correct” way. A significant number of Republicans feel despair. They know their message won’t resonate with voters generally, so they want to cash in their chips. After Bush won reelection in 2004 many Democrats (including my wife) wanted to emigrate to Canada. I can’t see Republicans doing this, as it is rife with socialized medicine and value added taxes. Others are talking about moving to Australia. Surely those leatherneck Aussies are stout Republicans at heart, overlooking the fact that they too have socialized medicine, and their female prime minister is an atheist. I am afraid there is no place to run to, unless a nice comfortable dictatorship appeals to Republicans. There are plenty of them. Serbia might work, if they don’t mind learning Serbian.

Secession was decided by the Civil War, but at least Texans still see it as a solution. They could secede and all the good Republicans could simply move there. That might work for a while, but if one man, one vote holds in Texas, at some point Democratic-leaning Hispanics will overwhelm white Republicans. Rush Limbaugh was threatening to move to Costa Rica if Obama won. That works for me. Se habla español?

In reality, the reason Republicans lost was not because of their ineffective advertising, but because long predicted demographic changes are starting to be felt in a blue direction. Whites as a percent of the voting population are down to 72% from 78% ten years ago. This trend is going to only increase. It’s unlikely Republicans will persuade whites to have more babies per capita than other minorities. Voter suppression was tried ruthlessly this election, but it seemed to only get the minorities only more riled up, often waiting in hours long lines to vote.

It turns out the most reliable predictor of whether you are likely to vote Republican or Democrat is the density of people in your community. The Washington Post published a map of how people voted in the Washington region today. It’s startling: the more people per square mile, the more they voted for Obama. Democrats are leaching into nearby Loudoun County, Virginia, which voted blue for the second presidential election in a row. It’s because their housing is denser, and it is being filled by better educated people with significant amounts of minorities. Since land is finite, Republicans can’t really count on more of their type moving to less dense neighborhoods.

What can the Republican Party do then? It won’t be easy, but they need to jettison some of their baggage and concentrate on what is achievable. It’s obvious what is not achievable. They should stop wasting time trying to defeat gay marriage and overturning Roe v. Wade. When voters in four states in one election give the okay to gay marriage, you know it’s a lost cause. More importantly, young voters simply don’t get all the hostility. Social tolerance is something they have grown up with. Even worse, this one-size-fits-all approach to social issues undermines their core principle of federalism. New philosophy: marriage and abortion laws should be something states decide. End of discussion.

Clearly a dying party must attract non-whites to survive. Good news: Hispanics tend to be very religious and have entrepreneurial hopes. They still believe in large families too. It’s time to embrace immigration reform instead of opposing it. Give these non-citizens a path to citizenship, rather than revile them. You need them anyhow, to do the work you won’t want to do. See them bussing tables, mowing your lawn and cleaning out toilets. Push for micro loans and fund small business education. Hispanics are not the only minorities anxious to get ahead. What about African Americans? They vote overwhelmingly for Democrats mainly because you hate them so much, but they too tend to be deeply religious. Instead of Crossroads GPS wasting money on political ads, why not invest the money in entrepreneurial initiatives for blacks and Hispanics, in particular? Admittedly, this will be a challenge for Republicans. Many of them still rush to the restrooms to wash their hands after shaking hands with minorities.

Also, wake up and smell the coffee on undeniable issues, like climate change. Opposing the obvious makes you look retarded. Push for market based solutions to these problems, like carbon exchanges, one of the better ideas of the Bush Administration. Welcome the eco-friendly into the party. You don’t need to be the party of mass-marketed and mass-produced food. You can be the party of Whole Foods instead.

It’s time to jettison Grover Norquist. He is causing you all sorts of problems and is boxing your party in. Instead of “no new taxes” what about “revenue should be limited to a percentage of gross national product”. Most Americans agree with the notion of limited government, just not austere government, which is what you want. Go halfway and you look sensible.

Okay, that’s all the free advice I have for you this cycle. I have pages more advice I could give, but I suspect you won’t take any of this to heart anyhow. I don’t want your party to win, but I do want genuine competition between political parties. I don’t want political dysfunction, but I do want clear, well thought ideas between political parties so voters have intelligent choices. Right now the trends are that Democrats will be the dominant party of the 21^st century. Without good competition, Democrats will become moribund like they were in the past when they had overwhelming political power. We need to be kept honest. If you are true patriots, you will do your part by giving us genuine competition, not slogans and hate. Right now you resemble the latter.

Ouch! It must hurt to be a Republican after the walloping they got from voters last night.

What hurt them the most of course was President Obama’s reelection, called by CNN (which I was watching) at 11:18 PM Eastern Time. I was not really worried that Obama would lose, despite the tightness in the popular vote, because of polling in swing states. Still, Republicans must have really felt the sting from losing the White House. As a result, the Supreme Court is saved from new conservative justices, at least for the next four years. The Affordable Care Act will not be overturned. We won’t get entangled in any wars of hubris. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will not be gutted, and it’s hard to see how tax increases can be avoided on the wealthiest Americans.

Obama’s reelection was especially improbable given the poor state of the economy. He joins a small list of presidents to win reelection under these circumstances, the last one being Franklin D. Roosevelt. What is even more remarkable is that Obama did this while being additionally handicapped by being black. Not a handicap you think? Disturbing new research shows just how prejudiced Americans remain. Had Obama been born white he likely could have added five points to his electoral win. Yet he still won with a clear majority of the votes cast.

Overall, voters assessed the Republicans’ candidates and rejected them. Most Republicans simply can’t figure out how their message failed to resonate. Even Mitt Romney revealed that didn’t get it with his much reviled remark that 47% of the public would not vote for him because they were dependent on the federal government. Republicans lost badly because they are seen as elitist, out of touch with the real world, obstructive, obnoxious racists and misogynists. This was obvious, if not from their rhetoric and their “Put the White back in the White House” signs, then from the candidates they nominated. The crazier they were, the greater they lost.

The Senate was supposed to turn Republican this year. Retiring Democratic senators outnumbered retiring Republicans two to one. Two ultra pro-life candidates went down in flames. Todd Akin lost by 15-points to incumbent Clair McCaskill in Missouri, a state that Romney ended up winning. A couple of hundred miles to the east in Indiana, Richard Mourdock lost an easy seat in a bright red state to moderate Democrat Joe Donnelly. The only bright spot for Republicans was narrowly winning a seat in Nevada, won only by a point, and only because of ethical problems with the Democratic nominee.

Otherwise, the horror! An open lesbian, Tammy Baldwin won against former governor Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. Democrat Heidi Heitcamp narrowly won against Rick Berg in dark red state of North Dakota. John Tester hung on to his Montana seat. In my state of Virginia, Democrat Tim Kaine won by nearly five points against former senator and governor George Allen. Scott Brown was tossed out of Massachusetts by progressive Elizabeth Warren. Many of these seats were salvageable had Republicans nominated someone relatively mainstream. But in most cases they went for candidates with “principle” (i.e. extreme positions) instead. They picked candidates they wanted to see in office, not candidates that could win in a pluralistic election. These losses were stupid and preventable, and fed the narrative that Republicans are deeply out of touch with the rest of America. Overall Democrats picked up two senate seats, an amazing accomplishment. In addition, there will be twenty female senators in the next congress, a new high.

Not that the elections went entirely bad for Republicans. They did manage to retain control of the House of Representatives. Not all house elections are called yet but it appears they lost only a handful of seats. Gerrymandering resulting from the 2010 census certainly helped there. Still, a few of the more egregious Republican representatives went down in flames, including Alan West in Florida. Progressive Alan Grayson won back a seat he lost two years ago in Central Florida, with 62% of the vote. Michele Bachmann came within a percentage point of losing her conservative seat in Minnesota.

There were many contributing factors to yesterday’s election results. Ironically, most of the television advertising unleashed by special interest groups and candidates may have proven unproductive. First, they stimulated interest in the election, since it was impossible to get on TV or radio and not hear political ads. Second, for the most part the ads canceled each other out, so they had no impact. They proved great for media companies bottom lines, but bought candidates of either party or special interests very little. What worked were messages directly from the candidates themselves, and early messages that set narratives.

The ground game was also phenomenal, at least for Democrats. I was receiving two or more phone calls (mostly robocalls) from candidates a day. There were dozens of emails as well, mostly soliciting donations. In my neighborhood the Obama campaign was relentless. They knocked on my door countless times (I don’t open my door for any campaign), left voice mails, left at least one brochure a week on my stoop and sent information through the mail. It was quite overwhelming and frankly more than a bit annoying. I simply could not turn it off, as much as I agreed with the candidates. Perhaps I would have received less attention had I not lived in a swing state.

I saw the effects at my local precinct Tuesday morning: long lines at the elementary school that nearly stretched outside. There were only three electronic machines at our precinct, which contributed to the slowness, so most elected for paper ballots, which were faster. Even subtracting out the crowds the energy level was high; the precinct buzzed. I cannot recall an election where I saw more voters at the polls. Even my daughter came up from her campus in Richmond to cast a vote. The result was clear during the evening, when Fairfax County was slow to report. A lot of precincts had large queues of people waiting in line to vote. For much of the evening, CNN was showing Virginia voting red, but it was clear to me that when Fairfax County’s vote finally came in, it would flip. And we did. Obama won Virginia sometime after midnight.

This was an election to remember, nearly as memorable as the 2008 election. If it demonstrates anything, it demonstrates an electorate whose demographics are changing. White America voted 58% for Mitt Romney, but it comprises a smaller proportion of the electorate. This problem will only grow worse for Republicans. They will have to moderate positions or risk obsolescence as a political party. The Tea Party and extreme social conservatives are doing them in.

Pollsters keep telling us that President Obama is statistically tied in the presidential race with his challenger Mitt Romney. “It’s within the margin of error,” they say, and if elections were won based on the popular vote, it would be. It is much harder to make the claim that the candidates are tied if you look at state polls, particularly at swing state polls. It’s beginning to look like check and mate for Mitt Romney.

Can things change? Of course they can. There is plenty of history sixty days out from Election Day showing that polls in early September don’t accurately predict the eventual winner. In this election though, the number of undecided voters is tiny. Moreover, the only undecided voters that matter are those in swing states. In most states, all the undecided voters could vote for one candidate over the other and it won’t change how the state’s electoral votes will go. With a few exceptions, states award all of their electoral votes to the candidate with the majority of votes in the state. Both campaigns know this, of course. There is no point wasting money trying to persuade voters in Texas to vote for Obama, or in Massachusetts trying to convince voters to vote for Romney. It’s only in swing states like, ironically, my state of Virginia where overbearing political ads seem to run nonstop.

State by state polls show that Obama has many realistic paths to the 270 electoral votes he needs for reelection, while few of Romney’s paths are viable. Most importantly, Romney looks like he is not going to win in Ohio, at least not without a lot of ballot stuffing or voter suppression. Polls show Obama with a consistent lead of about six points. Ohio’s Republican legislature has been working hard on the latter, but is getting some resistance from the courts. In recent times no candidate has won the presidency without winning Ohio. It is possible that Romney could win in a bunch of other states to make up the difference, but that path looks impossible.

Romney’s hope lies not in third parties that will spend enormous amounts of money to try to change the difference. His affiliated PACs have been doing that for months and it has been mostly wasted money. The recent Republican National Convention gave Romney no bounce at all in the polls. The more recent Democratic National Convention appears to have given Obama a bounce of at least a few points. History suggests any bounces will be short lived. So the race is likely to settle back to where it was before the conventions, showing the candidates close to tied with Obama generally shown marginally ahead.

Romney has only two real paths to victory. First, he can hope for some sort of cataclysmic financial event such as happened before the last election, or a sharply negative jobs report. This certainly is possible, but is unlikely. Second, he can hope that he so shines in the presidential debates that significant number of voters change their mind because they see a different and better candidate that they did not expect. Republican state legislators are hoping that Democrats can be restrained from voting through toughened voter identification laws, thus flipping the state into the red column. At best this strategy will work in only a couple of states.

Voter enthusiasm also makes a big difference in who wins, as Republicans demonstrated in 2010 when Democrats stayed home. There will be no problem turning out Republicans, unless polls make them feel disheartened. Democrats are also expected to turn out in large numbers, but perhaps not in as large numbers as in 2008.

So if Romney is checkmated, as it looks like he will be, how will it have happened? There are of course many factors, but I think the most important factor is that voters sense that Obama really cares about the middle class, and are not convinced that Romney does. Ohio actually makes a great case in point. It was ravaged by the recession, as it is nearly as dominated by the auto industry as Michigan. Obama and his brief Democratic congress rescued the auto industry when no one else would. The American auto industry came back as a direct result of our investment in it. This is the value of actions over beliefs. In this case, it is obvious that these were correct decisions, and probably explains why Obama leads in Ohio by a consistent six percent.

Moreover, voters remain distrustful of Republicans. While they may be unhappy that the recovery has not be broader, faster and more sustained, they do know who got us into this economic mess and they know it was not Obama. Having had their hand recently burned on the stove, they are reticent to put their hand back on the stove. Republicans need to demonstrate political competence. Instead, they are demonstrating obstruction, extremism and intransigence, which may thrill their political base but does not endear them to independents, no matter how desperate they may feel about their job prospects.

It’s not sexy but Democrats and President Obama have spent most of the last four years trying to keep the bottom from falling out of the economy. This Houdini trick became exponentially more difficult after the 2010 election when Tea Party Republicans took control of the House.

In addition, Obama framed Romney very effectively in June and July when voters were just beginning to pay attention to him. The frame, which was not hard to apply, was that Romney was someone with no empathy for the middle class and who understood only profits and losses, not the real issues that Americans face. Obama understands the needs of the middle class from experience, an experience that Romney never tasted. Romney’s own bungling and inconsistency since then helped cement the frame. He seems incapable of any empathy for other than the rich, and cannot even seem to speak in a language that middle America understands.

Smart Republicans have already largely written off a Romney win, and are concentrating money where it matters: on obtaining a Senate majority (which is looking increasingly problematic) and maintaining their House majority (which looks likely). Losses in this election might foment some earnest soul searching from Republicans. The sooner they realize that they need to moderate positions the more likely they are to achieve lasting political power. Republicans are going to eventually realize that they must govern from the center to maintain political power, and this means their extreme positions will need to be moderated or they risk obsolescence as a party.

It’s a subtle thing but for many of us Democrats, a jarring thing. Republicans no longer seem to be able to call my party the Democratic Party. It’s the “Democrat Party”.

From my Washington Post today I learned that Republicans first called us the “Democrat Party” in 1976. I don’t recall it but slowly over the years it has picked up momentum. Now it’s like you can get kicked out of the Republican Party for calling our party its true name. You will never hear the term on Fox News.

Why do Republicans do it? I have two principle theories. The first is that since they abhor Democrats, saying “Democrat Party” it is jarring, and thus preferred. So it’s sort of like swearing. As I noted some time back, the purpose of swearing is to draw undue attention and emphasis. Four letter words are not just four letters for no good reason. It keeps it short, sweet and memorable because it is just one syllable. Democratic is four syllables, and that doesn’t roll off the tongue well for simple minded folk like Republicans. It must offend them that there are still three syllables in Democrat. So far at least they haven’t figured out a way to shorten it some more. Sometimes Democrats are called “Dems”, but I don’t hear Republicans use this much and it doesn’t sound particularly mean. Perhaps it will come over time. If it does it will probably get bastardized. Democratic Party, Democrat Party, Dems, maybe the Damns will be last, as in “that Dem Party, nothin’ but a bunch of god damns.” (Just a warning to Republicans: damn is a verb, not a noun. Oh wait, they don’t care.)

My other theory is that Republicans don’t understand elementary grammar. “Party” of course is a noun (at least in this usage), so “democratic” when it is used with party is an adjective; it must modify a noun. We are a party of Democrats, so we are the Democratic Party. A republic is a form of government with representational government. A party that believes in representational government would obviously be the Republican Party, not the Republic Party. This suggests that Democrats at least stayed awake in English class, while Republicans slept through it. Actually, this would explain a lot.

If Republicans truly believe in representative government, they have a strange way of showing it. Lately voter suppression is all the rage in red states. It’s not general voter suppression they are interested in, just suppressing votes from those who might disagree with their philosophy. So they keep adding burdensome and nitpicky hurdles to keep people of color or young people from voting. Their general intent is so obvious that yesterday a federal appeals court rejected Texas’s redistricting plan. The gerrymandering was so extreme that Texans did not even try to hide it. Texas Governor Rick Perry was proud of his plan.

“Republican” is just a label, of course. Curiously it can be used as both a noun and an adjective. The same is not true of democrat. However, Republicans don’t believe in representative government unless voters vote Republican. With voter suppression laws under the guise of cracking down on nonexistent voter fraud, they at least have a pretext for these laws. Sometimes they are more explicit. Some Republicans want to repeal the 17^th Amendment, which requires the people of a state to directly elect their senators. Previously they were appointed by state governments, typically by the legislature. The 17^th Amendment did not occur through happenstance. One of the major reasons the 17^th Amendment was adopted was because some state legislatures were corrupt. Senators tended to represent the interests of those who funded the campaigns of people who sought state offices, thus ensuring that even state issues were not represented in Congress. Some Republicans today want to go back to that system, as it is what the founding fathers envisioned. In other words, they would rather have special interests control the Senate than the people. This is hardly in the spirit of a republican government.

Democrats, on the other hand, strongly believe in the democratic principle, which is that we are all equal and we each have an equal right to vote. This wasn’t always the case. Democrats today are spiritually the Republicans of 1862, when Abraham Lincoln was elected. In the 19^th century, Democrats represented the wealthy industrialists in the northeast and land owning southern whites. It took many decades for the switch to happen. It began with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and likely ended in 1972 when George McGovern was nominated for president. Traditional southern Democrats realized that they were not Democrats and bolted for the Republican Party. Senator Zell Miller, an alleged Georgia Democrat, was probably the last one to leave. Miller gave a speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention sounding very much like the Republican he was. Today’s Democrats care very much about making sure that everyone who can vote can do so easily. It’s not that Democrats are not above a little gerrymandering too. Democrats in Maryland took their opportunity last year to make their state a little bluer, making some in the panhandle unhappy by combining their area with liberal Montgomery County. Unlike Texas, Maryland has no history of voter discrimination through gerrymandering.

Since Republicans seem intent to remain uncivil and call our party the Democrat Party, turnabout is fair play. I have been thinking of shortened versions of the Republican Party. We could simply call it the Republic Party, but that would suggest they actually believe in republican government, which clearly they do not. Since Republicans seem open to using any tactic, legal or illegal, to get their way, they remind me a lot of gangsters.

So I suggest Democrats brand them with a more appropriate moniker. Let’s call them the Rethuglican Party. At least it is accurate.

Every time I think Republicans cannot get any crazier, I am proven wrong. The latest example is of course Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who last week said that women who are raped have this heretofore clinically unknown ability to ward off rapist’s sperm, thereby not getting pregnant. But this can only occur in the case of a “legitimate rape”.

Silly me, I had no idea that rapes could be classified between legitimate and illegitimate. I thought by definition rape had to be non-consensual sex, but not in the crazy world of Republican ideology. I’m not sure but I think their wacky thinking runs something like this: some women secretly want to be raped. Maybe they go down dark alleys in miniskirts hoping some rapists leap out from behind trashcans. Why would they do this? Because they are so desperate to conceive that the only way they know how is to get raped. Going into bars and winking at strange men doesn’t occur to them. This sort of rape, in the view of Akin I imagine, is an illegitimate rape. If the woman welcomes the chance for rape and gets pregnant, consciously or unconsciously, she must want the child and thus she should not be allowed to have an abortion.

Thinking about this preposterous logic for a bit, there must be all sorts of illegitimate rapes. If your perverted and abusive father decides to rape you, well, no matter how vile it was that he raped you, you still love your father, right? So of course this is not a legitimate rape. Carry the child to term. Live with not only the shame of being violated by your own father, but having to explain or hide this from your child for life, as well as support him with no help from the government. After all, this child deserves life, even though being the product of incest he or she may well suffer genetic deformities.

Akin’s amazing and wholly unscientific beliefs raised howls of concerns from fellow Republicans. The howls came not for his beliefs but because he had the audacity to express them. (Naturally, he had many supporters, including women in his own district.) After all, his views are now codified in the 2012 Republican Party platform, which, if Tropical Storm Isaac ever leaves the vicinity of Tampa, will be routinely adapted by Republican delegates at their convention this week. That’s right. The Republican Party platform calls for all abortions to be outlawed via a constitutional amendment, with no exceptions for rape, “legitimate” or otherwise. It’s all about respect for life or something.

It’s hardly news that their respect for life ends at the moment of birth. From that moment on, new mother, you are on your own. Do not expect one penny from the government for your child. In fact, don’t expect the government to provide any prenatal care for you to carry your pregnancy to term either. Anyhow, once your child is born, forget about food stamps, forget about WIC supplements, forget about welfare, and forget about any form of government assistance. Your new baby can die of starvation and disease for all the Republican Party cares, because any of that is socialism, which is much worse than having no respect for life before birth. Hope instead for charity from non-governmental organizations. When questioned on the topic during the Republican presidential debates, that was Ron Paul’s solution. Magically, churches and private charities will step up and help all these poor children, even though they proved incapable of doing it before we invented these child welfare programs, as evidenced by all the homeless kids in the streets back then. Presumably in the new Republican order child protective services are out as well, at least at the federal level. If, like in the nineteenth century, life impoverishes these children then it’s okay if your kid ends up on the street. Maybe he can scrape together a living shining shoes or something. He has to learn self-reliance and personal initiative anyhow. Eating dog shit for dinner builds character. Children should embrace devastating poverty: it is an opportunity to prove your mettle.

The whole Republican Party has embraced crazy and unworkable ideology over reality. Try to find just one position in their party platform that is congruent with actual science. Please let me know if you find one, but I can save you the research: you won’t. Tropical Storm Isaac right now looks like it is bearing down on New Orleans, which almost seven years ago to the day devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas. President Bush dealt with the situation eating a birthday cake with John McCain on the tarmac in front of Air Force One. He entrusted FEMA to a former director of an Arabian horse association. He showed his respect for life by allowing senior citizens to drown in New Orleans nursing homes.

So what among other things would the Republican Party do today if their policies were adopted? To read from one plan, newly minted vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s plan, NOAA’s budget would be severely curtailed. The National Weather Service is part of NOAA, as is the National Hurricane Center. Some Republicans, like Ron Paul, would be thrilled to get rid of the Commerce Department altogether. (NOAA is part of the Commerce Department.) Which would leave it to the private sector to make hurricane predictions. Doubtless The Weather Channel would step up, buy their own weather satellites and hurricane spotter airplanes. Of course, hurricane forecasts would only be available to those who could afford to pay for it.

Reason simply plays no part in the Republican Party. It’s all about crazy ideology. It’s all about staying true to principles, principles that repeatedly have been proven false. Mitt Romney’s plan for the federal budget is fundamentally and mathematically flawed, as documented by many nonpartisan organizations that have studied it. But that doesn’t matter, first because they won’t admit they can’t do math and second because they must be true to principle, no matter what. The orthodoxy says taxes must be cut, particularly for the richest and somehow draconian cuts in services (but not the military, naturally, which will get an increase) will balance the budget. As if taking all that money out of the economy will somehow have a positive rather than a negative effect on the economy. Ideology, like religion, does not require reason. It simply requires unyielding, unreasonable and crazy faith, the sort, sadly, rampant in churches principally in Republican strongholds. It’s the sort of faith that lets you blithely ignore the scientific consensus on global warming and evolution.

And so boldly the Republican Party sails off in search of ever righter and crazier ideological waters. It is ideology so weird and reckless that their hero Ronald Reagan would be beating on the doors of the Democratic National Committee asking for readmission to the party.

Can you believe the unbelievable? Can you vote for policies that have proven catastrophically incorrect not once but twice? Can you suspend all the evidence and believe your president was not born in the United States and is a secret Muslim? Can you ignore the fact that our president actually loosened gun control laws and yet believe he is trying to take away your guns? Can you believe that President Obama wants to turn the United States government over to the United Nations? Can you believe that two plus two equals five? Can you believe that women who have suffered a “legitimate” rape have some secret spiritual powers to kill bad rapist sperm but let the good sperm, like your father’s, go through?

You can? Then the Republican Party is for you. And they have a big tent, because there are plenty of crazy people under it already, and they need just a few more to gain control and ensure complete national dysfunction. They are doing it, of course, on principle.

Psst! You are personally responsible for everything you do! Actually, in modern political discourse, this is not whispered so much as it is shouted. You hear it from Republicans and conservatives all the time. I can’t shout on a blog, but I can do something worse: use caps. So just in case you don’t get the message from the daily drumbeat of news, Republicans want you to know that YOU ARE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO.

And because you are personally responsible for everything you do, you can change your behaviors any time you want because you have this magic stuff called free will. You can do it, just like that! It’s easy! By taking personal responsibility for your health, for example, you could eat little but nuts and berries, plus run twenty miles a day. And if you made the personally responsible choice to marry and have children you are personally responsible for raising your kids, their behavior (at least until they turn eighteen), and eating little but nuts and berries, plus running twenty miles a day after work. You can do all this plus sleep eight hours a day, have a satisfying (missionary only position) sex life!

It turns out that if you practice personal responsibility, you can do everything right, manage everything perfectly and intuitively solve every personal problem. The inconvenient fact that trying to maintain perfect health and doing everything right for your spouse, family, parents, siblings and the community will prove humanly impossible is irrelevant. It’s far more important to know that you are personally responsible, and any deviation from the ideal of personal responsibility deserves nothing but contempt and scorn.

Yes, you are personally responsible even if you don’t have the means. You could have been abandoned by your parents as a child, forced to live in the streets (since Republicans don’t believe in a welfare state), end up selling your body to have food to eat, and you are still personally responsible for somehow getting an education on your own nickel, excelling in school, never breaking a law, living a healthy lifestyle, maintaining a roof over your head (a cardboard box will do in a pinch) and maintaining optimal health as well. When you are personally responsible you never, ever ask for a handout. The very idea! You are personally responsible and you are required to be completely self-sufficient. Got it?

Of course you do! You could not possibly miss the message these days, particularly since it is brought to you free of charge by overbearing, generally very well moneyed and often hypocritical Republicans, the vast majority of whom had parents who provided for all their needs, taught them they belonged to a privileged caste and now beneficently use some portion of their fortune to drum in the message continuously via the media. You know, like the Koch Brothers. You are contemptible if you fail to be one hundred percent personally responsible at all times. Actually, you are something close to toilet scum. We must all be the very model of a modern Major General, all the time. Just do it now and do it perfectly, for crying out loud!

There are all these additional temptations out there, just to truly test your mettle. Let’s not, for example, do what New York Mayor Bloomberg is doing, and try to limit the size of these supersized sodas sold in the city. After all, New Yorkers might actually get healthier without overt action. Rather, you must be personally responsible enough to understand that these empty calories will make you fat at very little expense, or at least you will if you spend your days obsessively plugged into various health oriented web sites, and of course being personally responsible, it’s something you must do. Armed with this knowledge that you will acquire from psychic vibrations coming through the ether if necessary, you will magically find the willpower to pass these endless temptations by. So don’t try to regulate these liquid empty calorie behemoths just because some mortals are weak. It’s anti-American. It’s too Big Brotherish. Worst of all, it’s anti-corporate.

However, the good part about personal responsibility is you also have freedom. So if you want, go ahead and indulge in a supersized Slurpee. And should you choose to get fat and develop Type II Diabetes, that’s okay too, providing not one cent of the costs of your choices are borne by anyone else. That’s the bottom line when it comes to personal responsibility. (Qualification: the above does not apply to the environment. Feel free to be personally reckless toward the environment. After all, God wants us to be.)

You would think though that with the ever-present mantra of personal responsibility many more of us would, well, actually behave in a personally responsible way. But for some reason most of us do not. In fact, consuming all those supersized Slurpees is evidence that most Americans, while they doubtless get the message, simply refuse to take it to heart. Because every year Americans on average gain more weight. At the same time, fewer of us have or can afford health insurance.

Naturally your environment has nothing to do with your problem. Even if it did, you can easily surmount it. You just aren’t bothering to try. The fact that you can hardly travel anywhere without seeing billboards for pizzas and junk food, or turn on the TV without seeing ads that promote an unhealthy lifestyle, is wholly irrelevant. Nor is the fact that your friends are also eating too much of the wrong stuff and for the most part not exercising relevant. Because if you are personally responsible, then by extension you must also believe that you are completely autonomous. You must also believe that all those connections and relationships don’t affect your behavior. Marines may have to go to Parris Island in order to get fit and learn to properly kill people. However, you can achieve personal responsibility all by yourself. Simply grab yourself by your bootstraps and pull. It’s that easy!

But for some reason Americans aren’t taking the message to heart! Every year we get fatter. Every year we exercise less. Every year we spend more time diddling with our smartphones rather than huffing on running the trails behind our house. Strangely, even most Republicans seem to be having problems with the personal responsibility thing. Or perhaps they are independently wealthy enough where they don’t care. Morbidly obese but excessively preachy Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey comes to mind. That’s the good thing about having wealth: you are exempt from the rules because you (probably) won’t be foisting off the costs of your unhealthy lifestyle on anyone else.

As always there is the ideal and then there is reality. It is true that we are personally responsible for the choices that we make. But that doesn’t mean we magically have happened to learn how to be personally responsible, or that they are innate skills inside us. Even if we do possess the skills, there is little likelihood that most of us, given the billions of possible choices available for any action, will always choose to behave at all times in a personally responsible way. Nor have most of us acquired the education and mentoring to learn how to make wise decisions. The skill has to come from somewhere. If we don’t possess it then we have to glean it from someone. A friend. A teacher. A minister. Someone. Except to acknowledge this, we also have to acknowledge that we depend on other people. We have to acknowledge that our world is relational, instead of each of us being beacons of individuality and self-sufficiency. We have to acknowledge that we are all connected. No, it is better to live in a fantasy world instead.

That won’t do, of course, so get with the program. A song will get you into the spirit. Find a guitar. And start belting out that 60’s song by Simon and Garfunkel:

I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

I’m betting while you are attempting to do so, you are suppressing a tear because you are just another human being with foibles like the rest of us and are grabbing another handful of Cheetos.