Optics: The tyranny of first impressions

A recurring theme of this UpClose blog is that most people are

 ***not paying close attention

***act on their gut reactions to impressions, not detailed facts

It isn't that I am a clever rationalist and most people are not.  Rather, it is that a great many people pay attention to politics about the way I pay attention to professional football or college basketball.   It means I pay little attention until the very end--Superbowl or March Madness--and then I make haphazard decisions of whom I like based on generalized impressions.   

(Duke basketball?   Don't they have a good team usually?  Payton Manning?  Is he the one with the deflated footballs or is that Tom Bradley?  Wait!  Tom Bradley was the LA Mayor.  It is Tom Brady, the football player.    

By the Final Four or the Superbowl I normally have things clear in my mind, so I make a decision who to cheer for, based on limited information, confusion, and glancing impressions of what I have seen.)

Some 40%-60% of American adults don't bother voting in Presidential and Off-Year elections and turnout among those people on the margins determine the direction of our country.   Informed people made gut decisions, too, but a large hunk on the margins decide how they vote about the way I pay attention to the Superbowl.

The past few days have created some powerful impressions, and I will share my take on them--just the quick first-impression glancing notice.

Event:  Obama dancing the tango in Cuba.   

Impression:  Bad.  Laughing at a funeral.

He looked like Nero, fiddling while Brussels burned.   Bad optics.   Bad impression to the glancing view.   Obama was nimble and good at it, which makes it worse.  He looked like a dandy.

People got killed.   That could have been here.   He should do theater of serious.  

Event:  Anti-Trump Ad in Utah showing Melania Trump nude.   

Impression:   Nasty last minute ad.  She is pretty hot, but I don't want hot in a political ad.  Nasty, last minute stuff.

Ad looked like a provocation, and low-ball, the sort of thing a nasty campaign does.  Cruz' buddies???

Event:  Cruz denials of responsibility for the ad.   

Impression:  Yeah, right.  

Wink. Wink. Handy to have that disclaimer put there, let others do the dirty work.  Hypocrite.

Event:  Trump tweet response to Cruz, then Cruz response to Trump

Impression:   More junior high crap. 

You started it!   No, it wasn't me!  Don't insult me!  No, don't insult me.   Your wife is ugly, and you started it!

For Criminy Sakes.  Is this how we elect a president?  Twitter insults???  What crap.  Is there anyone else?

Event:  Hillary at that AIPAC Thing

Impression:   Boy, she sounded hawkish.  Sort of calm about it, but hawkish.  Gung-ho Israel, whatever you want.  I thought Democrats were the slow-to-war party.  

I hadn't paid much attention but maybe I should.

Event:  Sanders' crowds.    

Impression:  Wow.   

He has latched onto something huge.  What are all those people doing there?   Could it be the Sanders movement actually means something?     Maybe I should pay attention.

Read it Here First

Dismiss Trump at your Peril

I add this brief post as an addition to what I wrote earlier this morning.   Sometimes the observations I share here precede what readers read elsewhere.  A week ago I observed that the rally at Boca Raton was in fact very different from the news reports.   

The news wanted it to be about Trump-generated violence when in fact the reality was Trump generated police suppression.  People inclined to dislike Trump could hate either version of the event, but there was in fact, to my direct observation, only one version that was correct:  Trump had the venue well policed--arguably over-policed-- and protesters were to be dealt with by officials, not vigilantes.   The point is important because Trump needs to decide if he is the candidate of civil disturbance and frontier justice or the law-and-order candidate.

Yesterday I watched the AIPAC speech by Trump and what I observed was major league first class over-the- top pandering to AIPAC.   Trump hit every single point of emotional identity.  No longer the independent think Trump.  Last night Trump loved Israel, he shared their views on its enemies, he was its friend, he eagerly and voluntarily adopted their positions, he even gave it his blood, his daughter having converted to Judaism, married a Jew, and is bearing a Jewish baby perhaps right as he spoke.  What more could he possibly do.   He is "all in."

What I observed, watching it live, were multiple standing ovations.   Cameras panned the room looking for protesters or walk-outs due to things Trump had said earlier that implied some reservations about adoption of full-throated AIPAC orthodoxy.   I did not see it.

But the news stories were stuck in the past.   News reports were looking for resistance and objection, so they missed what was taking place right in front of them.  Here is Joe Scarborough's take on it, in this morning's Washington Post, saying essentially what this blog is saying:  

"But just like journalists and pundits who were too contemptuous of Trump to see the strength of his insurgent campaign unfolding before their eyes, those mocking the candidate’s teleprompter-aided talk tonight missed the story again." 

The media's contempt for Trump blinds it and it ruins its credibility, just when credibility is most needed. 

Read the article  http://wpo.st/xp5O1

Meanwhile, the disconnect between authorized establishment opinion and that of the people inside the institution could not be clearer than in this article in The Hill reporting on AIPAC's condemnation of Trump.

They condemn anti-Obama statements in Trump's talk but make this extraordinary admission:

"We are disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with or condone.”    Another disconnect between established leadership and the people they are leading.  It is the basis of the Trump rebellion.

Read the article:  http://goo.gl/eq5mpd


Final Note by Peter Sage:  I suppose it is necessary to note here that I am not a fan of Donald Trump.  I write about his message and campaign skills and people who refuse to acknowledge that he can do anything successfully will fail to see what is happening in front of them.   I am trying to observe and by being objective perhaps see it more clearly.  People who cannot accept that Trump could possibly have appeal fail to see his appeal to others, so they underestimate him, to their peril.

Trump Gets Stronger

Terror in Brussels.   More good news for Trump

I don't say this to be cynical or mischievous.  Airport bombings by make people feel angry and fearful.  The status quo is inadequate.  Trump is the rule changer, and the strong fearless one.

CNN HEADLINE:  TERROR IN BRUSSELS

In the back of minds of many voters is the thought: "Well, maybe we really do need to shake things up.  Stop all this be-fair-to-Muslims political correctness nonsense, and get tougher.  Maybe we need someone just a little bit crazy, but crazy on OUR side."

Criticism of Trump has not weakened him.   It has strengthened him.   Why?   Because it has defined him as a strong, out-of-the-box truth-teller, who says things that many people actually think and feel because he presents himself to be on the side of regular Americans, not self-serving elites.

Accusation:   he says politically incorrect things.          Answer:   High time someone did.

Accusation:   he says mean things about Muslims.      Answer:   Good.  They're scary

Accusation:   he would torture our enemies.                 Answer:   They deserve it.

Accusation:   he would deport millions of Mexicans      Answer:   Good riddance.

Accusation:   he would bully American businesses       Answer:   Good. They export jobs.

Accusation:   he would be unpredictable and wild         Answer:   Good.  We need change

Accusation:   he makes vague promises                       Answer:    His goal is great: Win!

Accusation:   he insults important groups of people      Answer:   He praises people like us.

Accusation:   he is opposed by reliable people             Answer:    They are lying failures.

"Say No to Anti-Muslim Bigotry"

Trump has been helped by his critics.   The more they criticize the better defined he is as the un-bowed truth-telling politically-incorrect all American leader.   The less safe and secure and prosperous the status quo, the better for Trump.   These protesters at the AIPAC convention put Trump in the news and help his brand.  In the midst of news of terrorist bombings in Brussels the signs urge people to say NO to Anti-Muslim bigotry.   The timing and message of the protests could not be better for Trump, who warns that Muslims are, by definition, scary and unpredictable.  

Brussels airport scene

While establishment leaders of both parties condemn anti-Muslim talk the news shows right now, as I type, show the Brussels airport with citizens running away from noise and smoke, terror on their faces.

This comment is from Thad Guyer, a frequent Guest Post author.  Thad is an attorney specializing in assisting whistleblower employees.   He looks closely at what messages are persuasive to judges and juries.

Thad Guyer:

NYT and WP told me 100's of people were going to disrupt it by walking out and that he would be lucky to get a civil reception.  They headlined Hillary trashing him. And then CNN and NBC were saying nothing about Trump's appearance. Then I KNEW he must have wowed the crowd so watched on Youtube. 

Thad Guyer

I think liberal media fatigue is setting in with its unrelenting and tedious character assassination and inflated headlines. I doubt anybody is even reading these articles anymore. Over and over the same thing. Liberal media has now immunized Trump against political infection, as every criticism had been vetted again and again and again. There has never been a politician this immunized and battle saavy. 

Trump says Bernie let Hillary skate. A Trump advisor said on NPR that this will leave Hillary soft and exposed when Trump in every debate, interview and rally assails her on Benghazi dead ambassador,, lying about it, reckless email, too stupid or inept to even know what is classified unless marked, Wall Street sell out, pandering to Hispanics with pledge to not enforce statutory deportations, racist super predators, and enabler in chief. Trump will personally assault her on stage with these and she can't get "trained" for that..  Yet anything SHE can say about Trump has already been said by liberal media adnauseum-- every week after week.  

And he grows stronger.  Liberal media has cried wolf until no one listens to it. 

Sunny Day in Portland

Peter Sage:  This comment below is from a retired man in Portland.   J.F. has watched the establishment pile on to Trump and observed its un-intuitive result: a stronger Trump.   J.F. says the political establishment is realizing that Trump has redefined the GOP into a populist party and the political establishment sees which way the political trains are running and are climbing aboard.


J.F. in Portland:

It's clear to me that the GOP elite have already thrown in the towel and accepted Trump. Now the game is right out of Song of the South with Brer Bear, Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit -  the GOP elite is Brer Bear and conservative media is Brer Fox in the story where Brer Rabbit has been caught and he pleads "Please don't throw me in the brier patch" and of course they do their worst which turns out to be Brer Rabbit's natural habitat. So it is not what it seems. 

They GOP elite have done the math and conclude Trump will win the presidency and the GOP will hold all seats of the Executive Branch, Congress (Senate and House) and a shot at the Supreme Court too.   Trump can rail against the established power and in the end will take these very people into his administration. (Wink wink)

Neither Hillary or Bernie will beat him once the dust settles. Well that's my prediction anyway.    

Young Crowd in Vancouver, Washington

It was a young crowd at the Sanders rally in Vancouver, Washington.  

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Voters my age--Boomers--saw Hillary Clinton take a beating from Republicans and the Conservative media for being a woman, a feminist, a supporter of health care reform, a lawyer, and the wife of Bill Clinton.  She proved her Democratic bone' fides under Republican fire.

Millennials voters don't have that history, so they see her differently.

Bernie in Vancouver, Washington Sunday

Millennial voters overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.

The state of Washington has 3 major media markets: Seattle, Spokane, and Vancouver-Portland.   In preparation for the Washington caucuses Bernie came to Vancouver.

It rained in the Portland area yesterday.  Bernie Sanders spoke at a high school gym that held about 4,500 people and there were another 2,500 in the overflow area.   People stood in the rain for hours to get in.    People standing in the rain for something means a little less in the Pacific Northwest than it would mean elsewhere.   People in the drizzly Northwest realize that rain doesn't kill you.  (Depression kills you, but that is another story.)

Young Crowd

It was a young crowd.

My son, 24, is going to vote for Bernie Sanders.  My nephews in their 30s are going to vote for Bernie Sanders.   He projects hope and change.   Hillary projects same old, same old.  Political trench warfare.

I witnessed the 1990s.   I saw Hillary take hits for the team.  I read news accounts about billionaire banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife funding investigations of the Clintons.  I watched Newt Gingrich and Fox News and Kevin Starr in real time.  They were as mean as they knew how to be.  Indeed, they were even coached by Newt Gingrich and word-guru Frank Luntz on which words would cause the most disgust: "corrupt", "devour", "greed", "sick", and "traitors".

Millennials don't have that history.  They were kids in the 1990s.   They weren't imprinted by memories of Republican accusations and tabloid speculation that Hillary probably murdered Vince Foster, found dead of an apparent suicide.  Millennials were not imprinted by the Republican attacks on Bill as a draft dodger, a pot experimenter, a student with long hair.   Millennials don't remember the investigation of Hillary having make money with some options trades on cattle futures.   Millennials don't remember the attacks on Hillary for saying she didn't expect to stay home and bake cookies.  ("Bitch Hillary hates homemakers!") 

Millennials don't remember Hillary being attacked for referring to herself as Hillary Rodman Clinton.  (Bitch femi-nazi.)  Millennials don't remember a 7 year investigation attempting to learn whether Bill and Hillary made money in a real estate transaction known in the press as "Whitewater" (no wrongdoing found) but which morphed into an investigation of Bill's sexual transgressions forcing him to give testimony regarding his sexual past  (where they found lots to be embarrassed about, plus a perjury charge).   Millennials don't remember in real time the impeachment and trial, in which Clinton was acquitted but the Speaker of the House leading the impeachment, Gingrich, ended up resigning since his own 6 year affair with Callista Bisek was becoming an open secret.     

At the time Hillary and Bill were the leading target of Republicans and therefore they stood as the standard bearer of Democrats.  Hillary said the relentless attacks came from the "vast right wing conspiracy,"  and the evidence showed there was, in fact, a vast right wing conspiracy of donors and interest groups and media doing non-stop investigations and attacks.

 Republicans had great success in the 1990s beating up on Democrats.  But Bill and Hillary took the beating and survived.   They took one for the team.   More than one.  

Hillary does well among older Democrats.

Millennials:  A Future to Believe In

Younger ones don't have that history.  They see Hillary as shopworn and damaged, a veteran of old fights they have heard about but don't remember.   They didn't watch Hillary take the beating on their behalf.   Bernie Sanders has a history that is read as ideological purity, and GOP SuperPACS are delighted to give Bernie a pass and focus on Hillary because Bernie's purity of fundraising and ideology serves to make Hillary look complicated and compromised in comparison.   And they expect Hillary to be the nominee.

Bernie is the new guy, the exemplar of hope and change.   So young people like Bernie: a true Democrat.  They don't like Hillary: a old and compromised politician.   They don't see her as scarred in battle because she was a liberal, progressive hero.   They just see the scars.

Politicians are defined, in large part, by their enemies.   The campaign season is young still and the Republican campaigns and superPACs are hitting each other, not Hillary much, but that will change.  If she cannot make the case herself that she is the progressive hero worth standing in the rain to see possibly her detractors will help her make that case.  

They did so in the 1990s and may again.

Can Trump stay on message?

I believe the first rule of campaign messaging is that a candidate's greatest strength is the greatest weakness.

 It means that if what is attractive about a candidate is his youth and energy (new and improved!) then his vulnerability is the lack of experience, the opposite side of the same coin.   

Trump's strength is the constant media coverage.  His weakness is the media covers him in a way that justifies constant coverage.   So the media is shaping Trump's story in the way that suits them, not Trump.

The Boca Raton rally that I saw live, then the Utah rally that I watched in its totality on YouTube, showed Trump well within the new message of Trump as law and order candidate, with his good all-American freedom of speech loving rally-goers being disrupted by paid political ruffians sent by Hillary's campaign.  (He had been accusing Sanders, but has switched to Hillary, which of course she denies adamantly.)

This works perfectly for Trump.  Media attention because of the protests means free media, plus Trump positions himself as freedom-loving patriots vs. freedom-hating ruffians sent by opponents who create chaos.   Good versus evil.   Order versus chaos.    Nice.

Key is Trump staying on message, and not looking like the provocateur, which means that his campaign staff and his rally-goers need to validate the message.  And if they screw up and, for example, sucker-punch a guy on camera or punch a reporter then Trump needs immediately to disavow them and assert that his team uses the police to secure safety and order not home-made rough justice.

 Fox News choice of photos

The belligerent-Trump narrative promoted by the anti-Trump press, now including Fox, links Trump belligerence to protesters to his attacks on Megyn Kelly.  As you see from the photo to the right Fox can choose a photo of Trump to make their point, a photo even less flattering of the one they show of Hillary.  The Trump depicted by Fox is designed to look scary.   Live by Fox; die by Fox.

But it is not Trump's nature to disavow controversy.   Trump doubles down.   He asserts that he and his kind of people don't get pushed around, that they are right, and justified.  Besides, Trump is not fully on-board with disavowing rough do-it-yourself violence because part of Trump's "brand" is that he wins through strength and belligerence and he does not go running to mommy--or to international rule-makers like the UN or NAFTA or the Geneva Convention.  Weaklings and talkers (i.e. Hillary and Obama) look to the the rules; Trump negotiates out of strength.   

Trump's brand has an internal contradiction.   He wants to project lawless strength but also project law and order.
  
The protests inside and outside his venues expose the dilemma.   Trump generated violence at his rallies Trump asserts the strength  he will employ against Mexico, who will pay for the wall; China and Japan who will have trade deals re-negotiated, American corporations who will be bullied into repatriating factories, undocumented immigrants who will be deported immediately, etc.   

The alternative narrative was law-and-order Trump who could control the violence.  A video of very mild touching is all over the internet.  The headlines suggest it was a major assault and battery.  It is very unclear from the video whether it was his campaign manager or a Trump campaign security person who pulled at the protester, but either way Trump's fingerprints are on it.   In the video of the black man hitting and kicking a protester it shows a Trump rally-goer but not a campaign official, and the hitter was black not white, so it puts some distance between Trump and the source of the violence.   But still the aura of Trump-inspired violence hovers overhead, especially since the headlines say "Trump!"

CNN shows empty Trump podium rather than Sanders speech

The media confounds Trump's efforts to make the message switch.  The media covers Trump constantly, but they cover him in a way that justifies constant coverage.  They keep quoting Trump from a week ago, when it was solely strong-Trump and not yet law-and-order Trump.  Violence at Trump rallies is what justifies the news coverage.   (TV news showed an empty podium marked Trump rather than show Bernie Sanders live giving an election night speech.  Really. )   http://goo.gl/3DIwyx  

The media much prefers the un-alloyed strong-Trump, and he may be stuck with that narrative because that is the implications of the headlines if not of the actual event.   And that narrative will make him vulnerable to the brown-shirt, bull in a china shop meme which Trump had been steering away from, but that his enemies and friends in the press pull him back into.

Cleveland Elects Donald Trump

The Cleveland Convention could make Trump the President

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I am not up close to it yet, but I can imagine it:  Cleveland this summer, with angry protesters at a Trump convention and police in riot gear.   

I remember Chicago, 1968.  The images on the TV screens drove votes to George Wallace and Richard Nixon.   The lesson I drew from this is that regardless of who is actually to blame for violence, the very fact of violence tends to increase support for the perceived strong man who can restore order.

By last Monday, as I observed it at the Boca Raton rally, the actual event demonstrated that Trump was changing focus from being a wink-wink provocateur into that law and order strong man.  On Sunday, March 13, it was the old Trump, in an early morning Tweet:   "Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!"

But by Monday in Boca Raton it was a different story, no longer “protesters" vs. Trump's tough-guy supporters.   Monday he repeatedly told the crowd to stand down, to let the police handle problems: it was police law and order vs. “professional disrupters”, amid very visible uniformed police officers inside, SWAT trucks outside, ambulances and paramedics walking inside the event perimeter.   

All quiet in Boca Raton

The Trump rally in Utah on Friday put protesters across the street from the rally, just like Boca Raton.  News stories report that protesters attempted to storm the event, but were held back by riot police.   ABC News reported:  "Hundreds of people chanted "Dump Trump" and "Mr. Hate Out of Our State" as police in riot gear blocked the entrance to the Salt Lake City building, after protesters tried to rush the door and got into dozens of screaming matches with Trump supporters who didn't make into the venue."

Order in the venue--chaos involving protesters and the police outside it:  perfect frame for Trump.

Utah police separate protesters from Trump venue

At the Utah, as in Boca Raton, Trump made frequent references to the protesters and kept the threat of them hovering ominously just outside the cone of safety.  "Did any protesters sneak in tonight?   Did anybody?," he asked the crowd, which began chanting "Trump, Trump, Trump."   He smiled at the chant and flashed two thumbs up.

The protesters, he said, "They're stifling us, folks, they're stifling us.  We want nobody to get hurt, we want everything to be perfect.  This seems like a perfect evening."   With all the big rallies we are having around the country, "people aren't getting hurt, folks."   We had to cancel the Chicago event, which was necessary for public safety, he said.  "We ended it, nobody was hurt, we did a smart thing."

"You talk about freedom of speech, you talk about the First Amendment.   Very unfair, very unfair when they can stifle us.  Very unfair."

The ideal frame for Trump in Cleveland is “order versus chaos”, and it would be especially delicious for Trump if the symbols of “chaos" were to exemplify race and ethnicity without Trump needing to say it explicitly.   I can easily imagine that people from Black Lives Matter and Hispanic immigrant groups will eagerly play their role, giving the media the conflict—or at least the potential threat of conflict—that would justify the intense Breaking News coverage, and justify the Huffington Post headline “Terror on the Trail” they used after the peaceful Boca Raton event.   Trump protesters will want to tell their story.  

Trump had positioned himself as the strong man on money, trade, and immigration but is now being reincarnated as a champion of free speech and assembly.  In Utah Trump said, "Do we have love for the protesters?  Honestly, I love the protesters.  I love the protesters.   They are doing their thing, they're doing their thing, OK?   I don't quite get their thing, but whatever it is, they're doing their thing."   

But they are not us.   We are the American multitude they are protesting against.   "We used to be called the 'Silent Majority', but we aren't silent anymore."

Trump and Anti-Trump in Utah

So, surely, out of a metropolitan population of two million people in Cleveland there will be at least a dozen people on one side or the other to jostle themselves into a fight somewhere near a camera.   Surely, there will be anti-Trump partisans confident they are doing their duty by displaying a sign protesting a border wall or calling Trump and his supporters racist.  Surely, someone carrying a provocative sign of one sort or the other will dislike being flipped off.   It is easy to imagine protesters of several sides, conveniently color coded in black and brown, so that the racial and ethnic “chaos” can be exploited in the way most convenient to the modern “Southern Strategy” GOP, understood and dog whistled, not voiced.

Also it is easy to imagine the Democratic nominee looking “weak and feckless”, as Christie described Obama, as Bernie or Hillary attempts to talk down the conflict that he or she is accused of having encouraged. Trump has already mocked Bernie for looking weak in relation to Black Lives Matter.

 “Can’t we all get along,” Rodney King asked the people of LA as the rioting went on and on.  

Hillary's version  of "Can't we all get along?"

Hillary is already playing the role of pleader for peace:  "The divisive rhetoric we are seeing should be of grave concern to us all.  We all have our differences, and we know how many people across the country feel angry.  We need to address that anger together."

The protests continue.   Clinton talks; Trump employs the police.

Bernie and Hillary would be tied to the grievances of the protesters and therefore to the protest and “chaos” itself, because black and Hispanics are part of their political "identity team," a disadvantaged group, the person advocated for.   And protesters have a right to protest, and they will say what is on their mind: Trump is a dangerous xenophobe.

This will give Trump the contrast he wants.    Trump would stand with the police, with law and order, with public safety against the "chaos" of protest.  Helpless talk vs. strength; chaos vs. order. 

With any luck for Trump, some dark skinned teenager will be filmed looting an appliance store somewhere in America that week, which Trump will condemn and Hillary might be forced to comment.  She will condemn it, of course, but not the way Trump would.   She would put it into a context of poverty, unemployment, hopelessness; Trump would put it into a context of crime and disorder.  She would show nuance.  Trump would say it is simply wrong and dangerous. 

And this being America, no doubt someone in the upper midwest will be shot to death with a gun that week, as happens multiple times every week, convention or not.  It will not be hard to find chaos in the form of gun violence to report and add to the mix.

I attempt to see clearly what is right in front of me, which is why I try to get up close and to pay attention.  Today I am looking ahead, and have an image of the future that looks very good for Trump, if in fact his transition from provocateur to law and order candidate has been solidified, and the Utah rally certainly suggests it has.  Trump is George Wallace and Richard Nixon, 1968, and they got 347 electoral votes between them, a landslide.

That's how Trump gets elected president.   He needs those protesters, and he will get them.

From Good to Perfect

The 'Perfect' condemns the merely 'Very Good', and the audience roars its approval

Moderating the Democratic Forum

I moderated a Democratic Party candidates forum Wednesday evening in a public space in Medford, Oregon.   About 150 Democratic party activists attended.   I say they were "activists" because they had enough interest in the campaigns for a County Commissioner, State Representative, a Governor, a US Congressman, and US Senator to come to a two hour forum on a weekday evening.  That weeds out the uninterested.

I observed something that illuminates the Presidential race: activists condemn compromise. The choosing and sorting takes place by rooting out heresy, nuance, and balance.  Several people mentioned litmus tests.  They were a good thing.  Questioners wanted commitments and a show of hands from candidates. It was a liberal crowd.  Will you fight for universal health care Medicare for All, they asked the candidates, including a candidate for County Commissioner?   Do you oppose international trade agreements and will you fight to reverse them?  Yes or no.   Show your hands.

I found myself silently thinking of responses to the questions which peppered the candidates on stage, thinking of how I might suggest constraints and limits and the need for balance and accommodation to the opposition to what the questioners wanted:  much higher minimum wages, universal free health care, paying teachers more, more money for mass transit, fighting climate change, protectionist trade policies, end Citizens United, reduce the power of business interests, free college.   It is good I stayed silent.   This crowd did not want to hear about constraints.   They wanted better government, which meant those reforms, now.

Me, saying "Questions, not speeches!"

Oregon's legislature passed an aggressive new minimum wage bill, increasing the minimum wage to over $13/hour downstate and soon to be $15 in Portland. The law is very controversial since many businesses--and a united Oregon GOP--said it was a job killing, business-killing excess.    Questions and responses from the floor showed the new law was controversial in the audience but the controversy came from people who shouted out that $13 and $15 was not enough, that the Democrats sold them out by settling for too little.   Audience members demanded the panel raise their hand in pledge that they would immediately insist on a higher wage.

Same with health care.  The audience did not want to hear about the grinding politics opposing greater access to health care.   Medicare for all.   Anything less was a failure of principle and nerve.  It's value is so obvious it should have been easy and fast to accomplish.

Climate Change Activist at the Forum

Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden is a political liberal by nearly any definition, although he has what some Democrats consider the troubling habit of working with Republicans on some major legislation.   Some Scorecards show him to the be the most liberal member of the Senate Finance committee--http://goo.gl/Os61Oq ---   and according to the That's My Congress scorecard Wyden is the single most liberal member of the US Senate, with a score of 88.   By comparison Bernie Sanders and Al Franken are 75; Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer are 63.   Other scorecards would show him merely to be among the most liberal but probably not as liberal as Sanders.  

One might think this would inoculate Wyden from criticism from the left.  No.  Notwithstanding Wyden's politics, national standing, excellent retail political skills and attentiveness to the "red" parts of his purple state, Ron got criticism from people who wanted more.

Wyden in Medford defending Planned Parenthood

A young candidate has filed a long shot campaign against Wyden and he appeared at the forum.   He condemned Wyden for being a "corporatist", a moderate, too quick to compromise with Republicans, a free trader who sold out working people.   He received loud applause and cheers from the audience.   The same mechanism that was working with the minimum wage controversy was working here against Wyden.  Democratic activists didn't want "good"; they wanted perfection, defined as the most extreme position advocated by anyone, not the best position possible within the constraints of budget and political opposition.

How a senator spends a Saturday

Was this a "Bernie Sanders crowd"?   Yes, largely, judging from the signs and tee shirts.  And that is part of my point: that is who shows up for two hour evening events.  Sanders people.   Bernie people at Democratic events; Tea Party people at GOP events.  At Democratic events it is members of public employee unions, people against pipelines, people against fossil fuels, people against banks, people for "Medicare for All".  (This is Oregon.  I heard not one word against guns.) 

Which brings me to Ted Cruz.   Lindsey Graham is now publicly supporting Ted Cruz even though two weeks ago he said that choosing between Cruz and Trump was like choosing to be shot in the head or drinking poison, and that if Cruz were shot to death on the floor of the Senate with 99 witnesses they couldn't find a jury who would convict.  Cruz's tenure in the Senate has been one of condemning RINOs, Republicans in Name Only, people who had compromised, people who weren't good enough.  That made enemies.  

Ted Cruz distinguished himself from Rubio on that point.  Rubio had compromised on a path to citizenship for immigrants here illegally, briefly, in the past.   Not Ted.  He was consistent and uncompromising and pure.

Now Ted has a second element of his positioning: he is an active candidate who is not Donald Trump.   People outside of Town Hall meeting rooms and candidate forums don't experience the pull toward the extreme that happens in that environment.   Cruz appears to be an impossibly conservative Senator from the outside (tied for most conservative with a liberal score of zero) but within the subset of Republican primary voter activists Cruz represents exactly what people insist upon: the pure deal, perfection.

The Republican party is in the midst of making a choice--are they a conservative party which blends the economic agenda of big and small business (low taxes, low regulations, free trade, inexpensive labor) with traditional social conservatives (anti abortion and gay rights) in which Cruz is the heresy-free uncompromising champion?  Or, is it a populist party that represents the economic and cultural distress of many Americans over the changing American demographic and pressures of globalization which demands a government with more services for middle income people at the expense of the interests and influence of the donor elites--the new Trump-style GOP?

Cruz, giving a good, earnest handshake at a Tea Party event

Why would Republicans pick Cruz,  such an extreme case alternative to Trump?   Well, I witnessed why at the candidate forum, when people applauded the more liberal alternative to Wyden, the most liberal of US Senators, notwithstanding Wyden's 40 year career as a liberal champion:   "very good" is not enough when there is an imagined perfection to strive for.