Guest Post: Red diaper baby

"Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by"

     Graham Nash, "Teach Your Children," 1968

While I am at my college's 55th reunion of the class of 1971, I am presenting guest posts by classmates. I wanted time to revisit old places where I formed permanent memories. I want go back to Emerson Hall, where presidential scholar Richard Neustadt told us in 1967 that JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly brought a nuclear war in 1962, and that LBJ was that very week deciding to escalate the war in Vietnam. 

Classmate Rod Kessler's guest post is a reflection on the politics and values he learned from his father. I don't have a photo of the dinner-table conversations my family had about school budget elections. I do have this photo of my father, teaching my brother and me how to grow melons.

Rod Kessler told me he enjoyed his 31-year career in the English Department of Salem State University, where he taught writing classes and workshops, as well as courses on the history of the English language and on grammar and style. While his book Off in Zimbabwe won the Associated Writing Program's annual award for a short story collection back in 1984, his 600-plus page novel, Edelman, Unsung, was deemed lacking in commercial appeal, and remains unpublished. His most recent work is Self-Portrait with Trees, a book of poems. 

Irving Kessler, 86. Rod Kessler, 60

Irving Kessler, 92. Rod Kessler, 66

Guest Post by Rod Kessler

Thinking about my thinking -- and yours.

Imagine posing this question to a ten-year-old: Suppose a hard-working cab driver has eight children and a hard-working doctor has only two children. Shouldn't the cab driver earn more than the doctor?

My father, a dedicated Communist, didn't hesitate to ask me that. One is never too young, he probably assumed, to hear, "To each according to his need; from each according to his ability" [Note: The cabbie and the doc were both hard-working.] As it happens, it was my big brother who received the brunt of my father's political teaching; unlike him, I didn't read The Communist Manifesto as a sixth grader. I escaped the heavy indoctrination. Lucky me.

Today I'm a liberal—a typical well-educated, white-haired, septuagenarian Massachusetts Trump-hating progressive, but I'm no Communist, no true believer. I vote for Democrats. That said, I haven't escaped parental influence. My parents regarded religion as the opiate of the masses and raised us accordingly. I'm an atheist to this day.

What's on my mind is how we Americans come to the stands we take that define us— but also that divide us. Most obviously, we bear the stamp of our parentage, not that this stamp is necessarily determinative. But if I had been the child of Republican evangelicals, might I be cheering Donald on and hoping to keep mifepristone out of the mail? What proportion of the electorate votes for the same party as Dad? What percentage of Americans prays in the church of Mom (or shares her disdain for praying at all)?

What's maybe more pernicious and pervasive than how our parents voted and prayed are the often-unarticulated cultural messages we absorbed as kids—the taken-for-granted truths that are never put into words. One such message in my back pages is that it's the government's role to provide for all its citizens. The government is like an extended family, and we're all in this together. Just as a good parent will sacrifice and provide for children, so must every good citizen contribute to everyone's welfare.

You know the saying, Fish are the last to discover the existence of water? That conception of government was the water I was swimming in.

Other people grew up in a very different ocean, I've learned. At Salem State University, I occasionally had students so gifted and so qualified that they could easily have been accepted at campuses far more elite and selective. But they came to our campus because it was the least costly, explaining that their families insisted that they pay their own way once they turned 18. The world didn't owe them a living, they believed and they'd be better people if they didn't rely on handouts (including government handouts).

There are plenty of people out there whose tacit understanding of government is of a mistrustful "they," not of a communal "us." We'd be better off, they take for granted, if Uncle Sam stayed off everyone's back so that industrious, enterprising souls could succeed in life. According to their world view, that cabbie, if he couldn't pay his bills, shouldn't have produced so many children in the first place and maybe he should have gone to medical school himself!

The point I'm hoping to make is that the political viewpoints that we consciously espouse and the values we uphold might derive from perspectives or schema so taken for granted, so internalized, that we're unaware of their power. Consider: What truths do you unconsciously assume are self-evident? I'm sure racial attitudes fall into this category, and so, too, probably the gender roles some consider "natural."

If we could somehow stand apart from ourselves and, like that fish that finally discovers the existence of water, start to perceive our preconceptions, maybe our confrontations with one another would be more civic, more productive. Maybe we could even start some rethinking.

My father died at the age of 98, still regarding Fidel as a hero (likewise Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie, Harry Belafonte, and—to give him his due—just about every composer of classical chamber music.) He never lost faith that the arc of history would ultimately bend toward social justice. I'm not sure these days if I'm optimistic enough to go along with that, but I hope we can grow wise enough in our divided nation to better understand where each of us, consciously or not, is coming from.

  

 

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Guest Post: Boomers need to let go.

By comparison with the Biblical patriarchs, we are led by young people.

-- Adam was 930

-- Seth was 912

-- Methuselah was 969

I am 76, and my college classmate Chuck Schumer will turn 76 in November.

Chuck Schumer

Erich Almasy looks at it in the other direction. In comparison with the population of the United States, we are led by very old people, who need to let go.

While at my college's 55th reunion of the class of 1971 I am presenting guest posts by classmates that they prepared the week ahead. I wanted to have them ready to publish during a busy week when I looked around and tried to notice what had changed. Back in the late-1960s the barber shops all closed. We didn't need haircuts. I will be curious to see if barber shops are back, and if so, what a haircut costs nowadays. [I just learned: $30, with an expected tip of $10.] Almasy rowed at college, went to Harvard Business School, then had a long career on the consultancy/business management track. He and his classmate wife, Cynthia Blanton, live in Mexico.

Erich Almasy ID photo for European hostels.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Changing of the Guard

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance” – a quote attributed to the playwright David Mamet, but probably much older. During the 1984 debate with Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan pounced with his prepared zinger, “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.” Proving at least that the Gipper could still remember his lines. At the time, Mondale was 56 and not exactly a spring chicken. Reagan was 71, and at the end of his two terms, came close to matching Biden and the current age frontrunner, Donald Trump. Reagan was not formally diagnosed with cognitive decline (nice word for dementia) until 1994, five years after leaving the White House. But as early as 1984 and by the end of his second term, Reagan was clearly showing the signs, like someone else we know. Back then, a Nancy Reagan/Ken Duberstein “bubble” wrapped the president, and his own ebullient personality and his polished delivery of completed policies let him avoid critical review of his health. Biden was unable to employ any of these subterfuges and was seen to be in decline. Neither president faced a real threat from the 25th Amendment, which empowers the Cabinet and Congress to force a president to resign.

At the start of the 119th Congress in January 2025, there were nearly 120 members of Congress aged 70 or older. More are Democrats than Republicans. The present number, which represents over a fifth of all members, includes:

· 86 members in the House of Representatives

· 33 members in the Senate.

· 24 members of Congress who are over the age of 80.

To my aging mind, we (and by that I mean Democrats) clearly need to reduce the average age of our leaders and quickly. The Vietnam Boomers must give way to the Iraq/Afghanistan Millennials. White men must give way to Hispanic, Black, and Asian men and women. It’s not because the oldsters have become irrelevant; it’s just not our future at stake. I still find value in the African proverb, "The youth walk faster, but the elderly know the road." Will it be possible to find a way for the party elders to step aside while the newcomers listen to sage advice and consult a road map? At 64, Obama is almost ready for Medicare, yet younger people still seem to value what he says. Not sure who else among senior Democrats has both a Yiddisher Kop (the “Jewish head” for street smarts and common sense) and acceptability. Can Maxwell Fish (28), James Talarico (36), Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (36), Graham Platner (40), and Bobby Pulido (55) find common ground with Peter and my classmate Chuck Schumer?

It won’t be easy, but the models for vigorous youth creating positive change are there, from Teddy Roosevelt at 42 and JFK at 43. They worked with senior advisers such as Elihu Root (56) and Henry Cabot Lodge (51) for Roosevelt, and W. Averell Harriman (69) and Maxwell Taylor (59) for Kennedy. Both Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit and Kennedy’s Camelot were imperfect, but the former brought forth the Progressive Age, and the latter moved us beyond ourselves with the Peace Corps, the New Frontier, and the space program. Over 50 years passed between Roosevelt and Kennedy. Over 60 years have passed since JFK. We need a new, younger vision if we are to progress. It can be done, and it should be done.






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Guest Post: We destroyed USAID just in time for Ebola

Guest Post: How do you protect yourself when the government shuts down your department?

--  Get orders in writing.

--  Don't acquiesce to illegality.

--  Try to inform the people cutting you about the consequences of their actions.

While I am at my 55th college reunion I am posting a week-long series of guest posts by classmates. Sandford Borins moved with me and about 50 other men from Winthrop House, one of the classic dorms for men, to the less-fancy and less centrally-located women's dorms, as part of the co-education blending of all-male Harvard and all-female Radcliffe. It was a good semester. As Jan and Dean sang about Surf City, in the Radcliffe dorms it was two girls for every boy. It was nice to be around female students. In the late 1960s, Ivy League college presidents thought coeducation of men and women was risky. What about their endowments? What if the female students never had careers, never made big money, and never became multimillion dollar donors?

Sandy was a very able student. He followed an academic path and had a long career teaching public management at the University of Toronto. He is Canadian and has been writing guest posts about Canada's relationship to the U.S. He views the U.S. with dismay. This post was published last week at Sandy's own blog: sandfordborins.com.

Here, with a backdrop of his various diplomas, Sandy wears an old reunion T-shirt with a reference to the college president's opinion of our class:

Guest Post by Sandford Borins 

While the Trump Administration was destroying the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in February 2025, there was an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. One consequence was that USAID’s supply of 27,000 sets of personal protective equipment languished in a warehouse in Kenya and were never shipped to Uganda. We are now facing a much more severe outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, and a more severe result of the erasure of USAID is that the US Government will play a much smaller role in any international response to an Ebola pandemic. As President Barack Obama once said, “Elections have consequences.”

Reasons for Rage

I became aware of the Ebola situation in 2025 by reading Nicholas Enrich’s rage-inducing memoir Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. To be clear, I feel sympathy for Enrich and his former colleagues at USAID, and fury about the Trump Administration’s destruction of the agency. Though this is not my government, Enrich’s book evokes my rage for two reasons. First, I believe that development assistance should be an important priority for the government of every wealthy country; erasing USAID greatly reduces the global level of development assistance and makes the Third World worse off. Second, while I accept that it is legitimate for governments to sunset programs and agencies that they feel are inconsistent with their priorities, I believe that such decisions should be made by the legislature after public debate. They should not be made by executive order and implemented by skullduggery.

Nicholas Enrich was a career public servant at USAID, a middle manager in the global public health area. His book is a detailed memoir of the 42 days after Trump’s inauguration when USAID was destroyed and his career as a public servant was terminated. The book reads like a perverse thriller, and I devoured it rapidly. Enrich paints acid portraits of the Trump Administration’s political appointees, who combined ignorance of global development and of USAID’s programs with malevolence towards its staff. The public servants oscillated between the belief that it was possible to persuade the political appointees of the value of USAID’s mission and programs and the belief that such a task was impossible, and the best course of action would be to join an amorphous resistance movement. Enrich forms a plan to resist the Administration, and suspense builds as we wonder whether he will be able to carry it off.

Lessons for Democracy

The book makes a significant contribution to the study of democratic backsliding by laying out in its epilogue the tactics the Trump Administration used to destroy an agency and a set of tactics career civil servants can use to resist in the bureaucracy, in the courts of law, and in the court of public opinion.

The Trump Administration’s tactics include telling lies about the agency and its staff to build public support, infiltrating and immobilizing the agency’s IT and financial systems (the work of DOGE), terminating external contracts (a powerful tactic against an agency like USAID that does its work through contracts), and vilifying and then firing staff. Though USAID was the first to fall, I’m sure this playbook was used for other agencies.

Enrich has a long list of tactics for career public servants who want to fight back. Here are a few that I think are most promising: making sure that all orders from political appointees are in writing; insisting on educating political appointees about the department and its programs; understanding in advance which orders would be within the law and which would not, and refusing to obey unlawful orders; and documenting and saving records of interactions with political appointees. I think Enrich’s advice will be essential to career public servants in the US as well as to those in other countries whose governments are emulating the Trump Administration.

It Can’t Happen Here

In Canada we are not faced with an assault on democratic values comparable to that of the Trump Administration. But there are many Canadians who are MAGA wannabes. Is this how they would like to see Canada or a province or city governed if they take office? Pierre Poilievre has made it clear that he thinks Canada spends too much on foreign aid. If he were elected, would he borrow from the Trump Administration playbook to achieve his desired outcome?

In a previous post, I asked whether Ontario, under the Ford Government, is still a democracy. My answer is that through tactics like use of the notwithstanding clause in the constitution, creation of special zones in which certain laws (especially those concerning the environment) do not apply, and limiting the powers of municipal governments, the Ford Government is making Ontario less democratic. Reading Enrich’s book has stimulated my thinking about how civil society can fight back.

Enrich’s book is a well-crafted memoir about public servants fighting back against an anti-democratic if not dictatorial political regime and a major contribution to the literature on democratic backsliding. It certainly should be of interest to Americans, where the Trump Administration is undertaking a full-fledged assault on democracy, and to citizens of other countries, where such an assault is a reasonable fear.

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Guest Post: "Thank God Dad's not here to see Trump."

Ask what you can do for your country.

College classmate Tony Farrell reflects on the difference between his father and Donald Trump.

While I am busy at my college's 55th reunion of the class of 1971, I am presenting guest posts by classmates. Tony Farrell entered the Navy after college, then attended Harvard Business School, and had a long career in marketing. His most famous client was a short-lived one: Trump Steaks. 

Like most of my college classmates, Tony was born about 1949. His father, like most of ours in those first years of the baby boom, had served in World War II, survived somehow, came home, found work, and started a family. Tony reflects on his father's approach to life. His father would be appalled by Trump.

Farrell in 1967, high school graduation

Farrell in 1975: getting his Lieutenant boards

Farrell, 2026

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

Reflections on Dad and Trump
Between Memorial Day & Father’s Day

After every Trump travesty, I always say to myself, “Thank God Dad’s not here to see this.” He’d be appalled, starting with the foul language. I’m perversely grateful he’s been spared Trump’s incompetence, corruption and murderous cruelty. Dad passed away in 2006 and rests peacefully in the hallowed Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. (Lucky him.)

Joe Farrell

My father’s parents were Mary and Joseph. (Yeah.) Joseph studied for the priesthood at Catholic University for an order that required seminarians to take a year off before taking final vows. That’s when Joseph met Mary (because her two sisters happened to be in the same convent as his sister!) and they married. Close call. (Lucky him.)

Dad was born in Yonkers, NY, in 1922—a Depression-era kid with no college or career prospects. He was trapped in a dead-end clerkship after high school, and hammer toes kept him from military service. But in mid-1943, the new federal Merchant Marine Academy opened in nearby Kings Point, and at last he was able to serve. He wore socks during his physical. (Lucky him.)

I found an old letter he wrote to “the best mom a guy ever had,” explaining he always skipped breakfast to attend daily Mass “because I need prayers more than food right now.” At the end of eight weeks of basic training, all midshipmen were assigned an active merchant ship for six to eight months of at-sea training.

Dad’s mom and classmate Joe Tynan’s mom were close friends; and each mother delivered her son to his ship. Dad sailed out of Baltimore on a Liberty ship. (Lucky him.)

Tynan sailed from New York and was torpedoed off the coast of New Jersey that first night, with all hands lost.

Mom and I went to a Kings Point reunion a few years after Dad passed. All around campus, banners proclaimed “Remember the 142”—the number of midshipmen killed during at-sea training in the war.

Dad’s ship was separated from its convoy after attacks by German subs, finding safety in Brazil before crossing the Atlantic, rounding the Horn and heading north to Egypt. An aerial bomb forced its grounding. Stranded for weeks for repairs with little to do, Dad paid a teenage Egyptian hustler with a car for occasional rides up to Cairo for R&R. This was a great adventure. He even encountered Noel Coward in the bar at Cairo’s legendary Shepheard’s Hotel. (Years later, working for a U.S. cargo-shipping line in Europe, Dad hired that little Egyptian hustler as his head of sales for the eastern Mediterranean.)

Dad finally made it back to Kings Point, earned his Navy commission and reported for deck-officer duty on a supply ship in the Pacific Theater. During the invasion of Guam (July 1944) he boarded a landing craft to go ashore after the first few waves but someone more important also needed to go, so they pulled Dad out. That boat was destroyed on its way in, and all aboard killed. (Lucky him.)

In October 1944, his was among hundreds of ships in the Battle of Leyte Gulf—the largest naval engagement in history. There, the Japanese first used kamikazes and Dad’s ship took three hits—which he slept through (he’d been awake for days). After the surrender, Dad recalled carrying emaciated POWs “like babies” onto his ship.

So, at a very young age, this young man (“the nicest guy” Mom always said), who’d never been more than a few miles from home, saw a lot of the world, from South America to Africa to Asia. Saw combat, too; a lot of terrible things. Dad was the kindest man; one who treated everyone with grace and dignity, no matter their station in life—waiters, valets, caddies. He was a gentleman to all. (He would never buy a Japanese car, but that’s okay.)

My father continued his Navy career until 1960, when he joined States Marine Lines, later Waterman Steamship Company—both American-flag cargo carriers. One of his most important customers was USAID, shipping food and medicines, mainly to Africa. For helping Catholic Charities get aid shipped to embargoed Cuba via Canada, he was honored as a Knight of Malta. Wherever he went in his travels around the world, he always sought a Catholic church to attend Mass. (Lucky him.)

For USAID to be destroyed by Trump; for his Navy to be made Trump’s instrument of extrajudicial murder; for Cuba to be threatened with invasion—my father has not seen that. His rest will not be disturbed by that…but it disturbs me. (Lucky him.)

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Guest post: Intergenerational wealth

There may be less for the next generation than they expect.

And it won't fix the U.S. deficit problem.

Some Boomer parents invested in Nvidia. Others invested in Worldcom, Enron, or Lehman Brothers. Some Boomer parents live in memory care too long, and it eats up everything they ever saved. Some Boomer parents never earned all that much. President Trump could plunge the world into a world war, a depression, hyperinflation, civil war, or something else, so even people who have provided for their retirements could run out of money. Lots could go wrong.

While at my college's 55th reunion of the class of 1971, I am presenting guest posts by classmates so that I would have my mind and time free to remember those days and places of my youth.

Here I am in 1967, age 18

Erich Almasy rowed at college, went to Harvard Business School, then had a long career on the consultancy/business management track. He and his classmate wife, Cynthia Blanton, live in Mexico.

Almasy at graduation

Almasy, recent

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

The Myth of Intergenerational Wealth 

For generations, the idea of “leaving something behind” has become deeply embedded in the American psyche. Financial advisors promote it, politicians praise it, and family dynasties flaunt it. The financial investment industry touts the massive inflow of intergenerational wealth, mostly from Boomers, over the next 25 years as The Great Wealth Transfer. Estimates range from $110 to $124 trillion (with a “t”), comprised of real estate, insurance, investments (including capital gains), retirement accounts, and charitable bequests. 

 

Is the “Bubble” Real?

Many factors are presently reducing this transfer, among them:  

Boomers are living longer and spending their money on healthcare and longevity.

The median cost of long-term assisted living is over $6,000 per month. Healthcare, even with Medicare, costs people over 75 about $25,000 annually. Boomers also need to plan for inflation, and they might want to travel.

Family farms and businesses are often illiquid and harder to move directly into transferable wealth.

Much of this wealth was accumulated during the 70s and 80s, a period of high inflation that significantly increased asset values. If, as some analysts believe, we are heading into a deflationary cycle, it may be reduced.

Most of the wealth is already tied up in family estates. Over 75 percent of the projected transfer can be found with families in the top 10 percent of income, tied up in generation-skipping and living trusts.

 

Where’s It Hiding?

Well, with rich people mostly who protect it from taxes. On top of their trusts and shelters, the top 1% added a benevolent Republican Congress that slashed their capital gains taxes. Capital gains are now capped at 20% with exemptions, the lowest level since the 1920s (and we know what happened then). Inheritance/estate taxes have been largely eliminated. Initially, federal taxes on inheritance/estates were used temporarily during times of war -- 1797, 1862, and 1898 -- funding through a stamp paid for registering wills. In 1916, the federal estate tax became permanent, with rates that rose to 77 percent by 1975. Under George W. Bush, the tax was eliminated. It was restored under President Barack Obama, but later exemptions (~$14 million per individual and ~$27 million per couple) meant that very few estates paid any tax, and the top rate is now capped at 40%. But the most significant tax-saving wealth-creator for the rich has been the “carried interest loophole,” which allows anyone involved with investment funds to treat their performance-based compensation as long-term capital gains, reducing their top federal tax rate from 37% to 23.8%.

 

Cui Bono

In the immortal words of Cicero - “who benefits?” Well, not you and I. The federal deficit averaged under 4 percent of GDP for the past 50 years. Today, it is 5.8 percent, expected to rise to 6.7 percent by 2036. The government will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit this fiscal year, bringing the total to $39 trillion. The deficit is growing faster than tax revenues. And this omits future unfunded liabilities, separate from the annual deficit. Social Security has an estimated $25 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, and Medicare another $53 trillion. Put more personally, the annual interest payment on the national debt amounts to $7,300 per family. I don’t expect another Ted Turner to come along and pay $1 billion to reduce the federal deficit, as he did for the United Nations.

 

Net Net

The deficit plus unfunded liabilities total $117 trillion, remarkably close to the amount of future intergenerational wealth transfer. Most of that $110-$124 trillion is controlled by high-income families and, as we have seen, it does not “trickle down." Charitable giving has not increased under the “Tech Bros.” Adding trillions to inherited estates will not cause greater investment in American infrastructure or pay off our national debt unless federal tax law changes. The modern obsession with creating “generational wealth” may also overlook a deeper truth: Is this wealth raising capable, decent human beings who have a viable future? 

 

 

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I really don't want to hear from Jill Biden

Please don't give interviews. Don't promote your book.

Don't try to make yourself, or Joe, or Hunter Biden look good by explaining further. 

Just go away.

Jill Biden wrote a book, View from the East Wing: A Memoir. She is giving interviews promoting the book. She gave an interview to CBS News and said that while watching the disastrous debate she knew that something seriously wrong was happening in front of her eyes.

I was frightened. . . . I don’t know what happened. I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.

The Atlantic has an excerpt from her memoir, where she give another account of her thinking in the moment:

Is he short-circuiting? Is this a stroke? I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?

In light of this version of events, then, incredibly enough, I agree with something President Trump wrote yesterday in a typical-for-Trump petty and insulting Truth Social post. Trump wrote: 

She said that she thought he was having a “stroke,” and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do.

I agree. Trump is always low character -- selfish, dishonest, mean-spirited -- but he is not always incorrect. Aside from her recognition of her husband's duty to the country, and hers as likely the one person in the world who was in a position to pull Joe Biden "out of the game" acting as his trusted intimate partner, she had a personal duty to her husband, to get him off stage and get him to a hospital. She needed to intervene to save his life, and if nothing else, to save him from the embarrassment and damage to his reputation to be on camera, the world watching, as he was having a stroke or mental breakdown. She could have strode onto stage, said that Joe had the flu and was taking strong medication, and gotten him out of there. 

Her behavior after the debate was no better. She told supporters and the media:

Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question, you knew all the facts.

How ridiculous. We saw what we saw. 

Thus began critical weeks of lying, dithering, and delay that sabotaged the Biden family reputation and the democratic process as she insisted that Joe was just fine, really he is, he's ready for four more years. She led a crowd of supporters chanting "Four more years."

Trump is spectacularly dishonest. Democrats are right to point it out and right to call Trump's assertions, still today as adamant as ever, that he won the 2020 election the "Big Lie." My wish is that America have at least two strong, respected parties that act as institutions that provide ladders for leadership of our democracy. I have concluded that the GOP has been corrupted by Trump, and it will stay corrupted until he either dies or is brought down by the results of bad policies. The fact that Republican officeholders ignore his spectacular grift, lawlessness, and glory-seeking shows me that they have lost all self-respect. They are toadies. Enablers. They are in a cult, or too afraid of it to act in defiance of it.

But Democrats have a big lie of their own to own up for: Democrats hid Biden. Until the institutional party admits the lie, a critical mass of people of low engagement and partisanship will conclude that "they are all corrupt" and that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. Close observers will notice a distinction in scale. Democrats think small; Hunter Biden peddled influence to collect grift in increments of tens of thousands. The Trump family collects billions, maybe tens of billions. Democrats are hypocrites about it; Trump does it openly and proudly. But it is a distinction in size, not kind. Both Democrats and Republicans trade stocks on inside information. The swamp is bigger than ever.

I was astonished by seeing a teleprompter at campaign stump speeches for Biden in 2019, and wrote about it at this blog. It is like training wheels on a speech that is supposed to be a expression from the heart by an experienced pro. What is going on, I wondered? I attended a high-dollar fundraising event for Biden in Portland, Oregon, in 2023, and the attendees were directed that no cameras or recordings were allowed. Say, what? Incredible! We were paying to see our candidate. I wondered why. Now I know. It was part of the coverup. Biden might lose focus and say something stupid. They had to manipulate me to hide Biden.

The people around Biden -- Democrats -- covered up a matter of monumental significance to the country, that our president was failing mentally and he was campaigning for another four year term. 

I write this as a person who typically votes for Democrats, donates money to Democrats, and who wants that party to be worthy of the vote that entrusts Democrats with public office. Democrats have work to do, and they have an opportunity to do it. Republicans cannot "push reset" on Trump. He is still there. But Democrats can push reset. It begins by not continuing the Democratic lie. Call out dishonesty. Condemn wrongdoing. Federal and state candidates should say it flat out and clearly: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and the people who cosseted him made a colossal mistake. It was not just a mistake of strategy and tactics. It was one of morality: They lied to the American people and that is wrong.

A Democrat can emerge with a strong reform vibe by discarding people and policies that are indefensible and unpopular. I do not want Jill Biden to fill the public square with talk of minimization and justification. I want a different message to be bouncing around the public conversation, a message of disapproval from Democrats willing to be straight with the American people. Say it clearly enough that the public gets it. Say that hiding the truth about Joe Biden was shameful.

Out with the old.

That sets the stage for new people and new policies that re-establish trust and win elections.

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Answer the damned question!

I cringed when I listened to Texas U.S. Senate candidate Democrat James Talarico.

I am familiar with that cringe feeling.  

I felt it repeatedly in 2024 when I listened to Kamala Harris in her short campaign for president.

I want to shout, "Quit evading. Just answer the damned question."

There are questions Democrats don't want to answer. They know the answer is unpopular with voters, but they are constrained by voices within the Democratic constituency groups. The popular answer is the "wrong" answer in the eyes of well-organized policy groups within the Democratic coalition. Answer "wrong," and the candidate is a sell-out, racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, corporate, Trump-loving, Republican-in-hiding. Answer according to progressive orthodoxy and about 70 percent of voters realize that the criticisms Republican make of you are essentially true -- and voters don't like it.  

So candidates protest the question. They complain that it is a "Republican talking point." They minimize and say it is an exception or rare. They say they want to talk about the price of gasoline or something else. 

The Talarico instance was a podcast where the host was setting up softball pitches for Talarico to swat. The host shared a bit of negative advertising against Talarico by the GOP nominee Ken Paxton. Paxton sneered that Talarico supported trans women playing in women's sports. They asked Talarico to respond.

Talario avoided the trans-women-in-women's-sports question, saying that trans athletes were irrelevant to the issue of the economy. The host asked again. Again Talarico dodged.

Heads up to Democrats: Gotcha questions are asked precisely because they expose the candidate doing something unpopular and people do want to know the answer. They address a question: Is the candidate a kook? Democrats have their own gotcha question: "Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?" 

Democrats tap-dance around these questions:

--  Do you support biological boys and men competing in women's sports?

--  Do you support teens having permanent surgery to change their gender and should Medicaid pay for it?

--  Do you support the right of a woman to exercise her choice to have a late-term abortion?

--  Do you support striking union workers -- including workers in public employee unions -- being eligible for unemployment benefits?

--  Do you support deporting people who are here in this country illegally? 

--  Do you support giving qualified Black applicants for college admission and employment an affirmative edge to achieve the goal of diversity?

--  Do you support bans on new oil and gas pipelines in the U.S. to protect our climate?

These are uncomfortable questions because each question has a "right" answer from the point of view of a significant part of the Democratic coalition.

My own suggestion is for Democrats to risk disappointing the interest group. It is counterproductive for a Talarico or Kamala Harris to elect a Paxton or a Trump as the price of insisting that trans women are women in every context, or that women have an unconditional right to abort a fetus. Most of the supposed beneficiaries of progressive policies have a more moderate and muddled view of the issue than do the educated, ivory-tower policy advocates. My own view -- from which I expect disagreement from people deeply committed to the various causes -- is that positions that conform to the public's sensibilities are, in fact, the ones that best advance progressive policy goals. The Roe v. Wade formulation did not allow for very late term abortions at the discretion of the woman; it said that in the third trimester the state had an interest in the life of the fetus. Trans women competing in women's sports pits the liberal value of fair play against the liberal value of tolerance, and it hurts the goal of trans acceptance and inclusion. People inclined to support unions don't want to feel like saps for subsidizing people striking against the public. 

Each candidate will make their own choices. They should voice their position and then sell it as the best thing for all concerned. But hedging, avoiding, and blaming the question leaves an impression of dishonesty and weakness. 

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