- Looking for the American Dream
Looking for the American Dream
It must be around here somewhere. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that America’s leaders always seem to be looking for something that doesn’t exist, that they know doesn’t exist, but they keep looking for anyway, especially when election time rolls around.
Notable examples proliferate but one stands out. Its 2004 and the U.S. has just finished destroying Iraq, a country that posed absolutely no threat to the U.S. and once had the second largest economy in the Arab world. In 2003, claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (it didn’t), the US invaded Iraq, killing over 200,000 Iraqi civilians while displacing 9.2 million. 4,400 American soldiers came home in body bags and 32,000 were wounded many grievously, casualties of a lie that destroyed a country.
Not everyone was horrified by the slaughter and mayhem. In 2004 at a black-tie dinner for the national press corps, President Bush narrated a skit about the fruitless search for WMDs in Iraq (fruitless because there weren’t any). Bush looked behind furniture in the Oval Office — “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.” Looking somewhere else — “No, no weapons over there.” It mercifully ended after several more unfunny scenarios.
You know who thought it was hilarious? The journalists who populate the U.S. mainstream media. Imagine their dismay when they awoke the next morning to find that the entire world deplored and disdained their shocking lack of feeling for the carnage and death of innocents the US had caused. The best they could hope was that they like the WMDs had not been outed by the cameras.
It’s two decades later and the U.S. is on the hunt again — this time looking for the American Dream which a whole slew of politicians and rich folk tell the 99% that’s what they’re living in. In case you didn’t get the memo, the American Dream is an ironclad guarantee that all Americans have the opportunity to succeed and improve their lives.
That’s why we’re looking for it. Despite the fact that the American leadership hierarchy has always been rife with virtual gangsters living in the lap of luxury in their tidy sinecures of big economics (location of corporate looting which has gone since the founding) and big tech, big education, big healthcare (new entries in the gangster capitalism sweepstakes). The American Dream has been fighting for its survival for decades, if not centuries. Over one hundred years ago, President Woodrow Wilson (he was the one who campaigned on the promise to keep us out of war, then began the presidential tradition of embroiling U.S. soldiers in devastating wars after his election, this time WWI) was dragged, undoubtedly kicking and screaming, to that realization: “The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly.”
More recently in 2008 when Senator Charles Grassley (fancy that, a Republican) tried to increase taxes on private equity firms (which control $6 trillion in assets) from a measly 15% to a slightly less measly 35%, he was stymied when Blackstone (the world’s largest PE firm) poured $9 million into lobbying congress. No doubt about it, the American Dream is becoming harder to find as politicians get richer.
Let’s ask the 99%. Is the American Dream is working for them? Seems we don’t have a lot of happy campers out there. In a New York Times poll taken right before the election, 45% of Americans said the economy was not working for them. Considering that the average American blue-collar worker is the victim of wage stagnation making virtually the same as a worker made 50 years ago and in the same 50 years $50 trillion dollars changed hands — from the bottom 90% to the top 1% — it’s hardly shocking.
When all else fails, we can count on the future. Can’t we? A new administration headed by what passes for a member of a different party (although speculation abounds that there’s only one party in the U.S. with two wings) Hardly an encouraging sign that the president elect’s cabinet is stuffed with —you guessed it — billionaires. It turns out he, his vice-president, cabinet nominees and his transition team are worth $613 billion. More bad news. America’s 815 billionaires added $280 billion to their already bloated wallets in the week after the election? Whose American Dream is it really?
Wait a minute. I may have found it. Aren’t the politicians, usually on the campaign trail, always telling us that healthcare is a human right? How better to improve your life than to have good healthcare? The state of U.S. healthcare today makes it clear that as usual the U.S. does not practice what it preaches— “The US is failing one of its principal obligations as a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its people…The status quo—continually spending the most and getting the least for our health care dollars—is not sustainable...Too many Americans are living shorter, sicker lives because of this failure.” [Commonwealth Fund] Affordability and availability of medical care, two imperatives of the Dream have gone missing. Maybe that’s why Americans have the shortest life expectancy among wealthy nations. The entire U.S. healthcare system is awash with profiteers who get fabulously wealthy trading on the sickness and suffering of sick Americans. One example should suffice. Nine drug company executives became billionaires during the pandemic as a result of their monopolies on COVID vaccines. Despite a number of eminent virologists crusading for the use of cheaper, possibly more effective remedies, the fix was in and big pharma maintained its hold on pandemic remedies. How life-saving were big pharma’s remedies? Over one million Americans died during the pandemic.
It seems that the American Dream like so much else in America is reserved for the 815 U.S. billionaires and the rest of the 0.1%. For them, healthcare is their American Dream.
In our thus far fruitless search for the American dream, perhaps we should pay attention to U.S. leaders who claim they know where it’s located. The president elect knows or at least he knew in 2016: Trump — “We want the American Dream. We want to own our own home” Gotcha. At last, we found it. No doubt about it, home ownership must be the key to the American dream. But there’s a fly in this particular ointment. The top 1% of the US population owns around 2/3 of the country’s privately held land [US Department of Agriculture] That leaves a puny one-third for the 99%. Not American Dream territory unless you belong to the 1% club.
Looking high and low for the American Dream has yielded no results. Maybe in education? Oops. The US education system compares unfavorably with other wealthy countries, failing to make it it into the top ten highest ranked education systems. Doesn’t sound too dreamlike, does it? Could it be that America’s failure to have a first-class education system stems from a lack of equal access especially for students in the bottom 50% of the population. How do you create an education system which gives all students equal access to excellence in a country that is number in the world for its wealth and income inequality? The simple answer is you don’t.
We may have exhausted the possibilities. Economic access? Nope not there. Healthcare? Definitely not there. Home ownership. You gotta be kidding me. What about the president elect? Will he make a difference? Judging by his cabinet picks —billionaires as far as the eye can see the American Dream is DOA. “They’ve [the president and his cabinet picks] have already announced plans…to further enrich large corporations and wealthy elites…while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on.” [David Kass, Americans for Tax Fairness]
Maybe George knows where the American Dream is hiding. Although come to think of it he didn’t have much luck with WMDs.
- Trump Won, No Wait, Kamala Lost. Why Does It Matter?
For most of us, the result on November 5 was a real shocker. Despite what the polls predicted, American voters, 66% of those eligible to vote, trooped to the polls and pronounced the verdict: throw the bums out. And they did. Giving a thumbs down to the whole team which dashed the hopes of the sitting vice-president Kamala Harris. Let’s start with the bottom line. Donald Trump received the most votes (76.5 million vs 74 million for Harris), beating Kamala handily in 31 states including all 7 swing states. Adding to the catastrophic defeat at the top of the ticket, the Democrats saw Republicans make inroads not only in traditionally red states, but reliably blue ones as well. Take New York state, blue to its core, in 2020 Trump received 37% of the vote while Joe Biden captured 61%. No surprises there. But look what happened this year. Trump walked away with 44% of the vote, a 7% increase while Harris at 56% lost 5% of Biden’s stash.
So far we’ve been looking at the voters who actually went to the polls and voted. What about that tranche of eligible Americans who stayed home or went fishing in 2024 after voting in 2020. How did that work out for Harris? Judge for yourself. In 2020, Biden ended up with 81 million votes according to “certified” results. In 2024 Harris only pulled in 74 million votes. 7 million less than Biden. Did all those democratic votes go to Trump? In 2020 Trump received 74 million votes. While in 2024, he received 76 million votes, only 2 million more. That leaves 5 million democratic votes recorded in 2020 but MIA in 2024.
There are two alternate theories for what happened to 5 million democratic votes between 2020 and 2024. For conspiracy theorists, did Joe Biden really get the 81 million votes the bean counters in Washington reported? A more realistic view would probably point in another direction. There were 2 million democratic voters who “held their noses” and voted for Trump. The remaining 5 million who voted for Biden in 2020 and were sorely disappointed by Harris didn’t vote for either candidate.
How to explain such a reversal? President Reagan had the answer. One simple question that drove Jimmy Carter out of the White House in 1980. On campaign stops, Ronald Reagan would ask the crowd—”Are you better off than you were 4 years ago“? Then as now, the overwhelming response was: Hell no.
When it comes to simple but successful messaging, Bill Clinton’s rode “It’s the economy stupid” into two terms in the White House. Pollsters claim that Americans decide who to vote for in the grocery store when they’re standing in the check-out line. Why is that important?
In 2023 over 50% of the 120 million households in America, had an annual household income that was less than $75,000. For them going to the grocery store has become a hair-raising experience. The prices of staples like milk, eggs and butter have skyrocketed. Worse still “shrinkflation” has left hapless shoppers shaking their heads. Ever reach for a 5-pound bag of sugar and find that it’s only 4 pounds. What hasn’t changed is the price.
Since inflation has taken a big chunk out of take-home pay, millions of Americans reach for their high-interest credit card. But wait credit card interest rates have risen 40% since 2021. The Biden/Harris administration ushered in rate hikes on most of the services U.S. households have come to rely on. Interest rates on mortgages up 114%, student loan interest rates almost doubled from 4% to 7%, energy prices soared out of sight and state and local tax hikes have put a further strain on household budgets. U.S. consumers are in a sour mood as they watch their debt loads increase. Household debt currently is an eye-popping 17.94 trillion. [Federal Bank of New York] What they probably didn’t want to hear was a democratic convention and its presidential candidate proclaiming joyful times ahead absent the policies to make it happen.
American voters expect all candidates for elected offices, especially presidents, to make promises, the more extravagant the better. And Trump didn’t let them down. How about his promise to end the Ukrainian war in 24 hours or to deport millions of undocumented immigrants on day one. When Trump doesn’t end the war or deport millions on day one will that hurt his popularity? Aside from a few mainstream media pundits who will tut, tut over it, the vast majority of voters won’t remember and won’t care. That’s how it goes. The same voters who demand promises seldom if ever hold it against the victors when they fail to deliver. Even Joe Biden made promises from his basement in 2020. He promised to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour and he promised a public option in Obamacare. After he was elected, both promises disappeared down the black hole where presidential campaign promises go never to be seen again. Kamala’s made a few unconvincing promises —something she called the “opportunity economy.” Most Americans were unimpressed, preferring a few more dollars in their paychecks.
Two other promises — a $6,000 tax credit for newborns only and a $25,000 subsidy for first time home buyers only — never caught on with the electorate. If your kid is older than his birth or you’re on your second home buy, Kamala has nothing to offer you.
On two foreign policy issues that have dogged the Biden/Harris administration, Harris showed the same resistance to the demands of the electorate: she failed to convince even her base much less republicans that she had a solution to the Ukraine disaster. Instead, when she did mention it, she echoed the Biden administration’s failed policy — “[I] will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.” Trouble is 66% of all Americans want the U.S. to back down, force a peace treaty on Ukraine immediately and then in America’s time-honored tradition — vamoose. On the subject of Israel’s brutal war, the best she could do was to repeat the Biden fairy tale that Israel had a right to defend itself. Nor would she promise to stop sending weapons to Israel. Instead, voters heard statements that sounded like thin gruel — “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” As if daring three quarters of her own party who “express a negative view of Israel’s actions [pollster lingo for butt out America]” along with 60% of independents to challenge her. Which they did in droves by either not voting or voting for Trump.
One thing for sure: it was the economy that doomed the democrats. Look no further than Trump snagging a majority of working-class voters. They became outliers in a democrat party that pledges its allegiance to suburban women, LBGTQ voters, professionals and college graduates — the new “rock stars” in the democratic firmament.
Sound familiar? Here’s how the big poobahs in the democrat party thought they had the winning strategy for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”[Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority leader] Nice try, Chuck, how did that work in 2016, same way it worked out in 2024.
The mood of Americans as November 5 hove into view probably tells us all we need to know about the results — on that day 3/4 of voters were downright angry and dissatisfied about the direction of the country, one half strongly disapproved of Biden and 46% said they were worse off in the last four years than voters in all previous exit poll have reported. Who can blame them. Harris was joined at the hip to an administration blamed for a widespread cost of living crisis in housing, healthcare and child care, two intractable wars costing U.S. taxpayers billions, an increasing immigration crisis. The mystery is not why Harris lost but how in the world she managed to snag 74 million votes.
The best obituary on the democratic 2024 catastrophe came from Bernie Sanders albeit eight years too late: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Trump may have won and Harris lost but think about it, the real losers are the American people. Promises made, promises broken. It’s the tale of every election since 1945. Whoever makes the most convincing promises wins. As history teaches us — when the winner walks into the Oval Office, the promises fly out the window.
Voters wanted change. And something did change — the other arm of the war party took over. What didn’t change was the misery: a healthcare system that excels in only one thing —making money, a financial system controlled by billionaires, an energy sector whose middle name is price-gouging and who despite record profits still receives an annual $15 billion taxpayer-funded subsidy (in 2020 Biden handed over an additional $15 billion in federal relief; why not they’re owned by Wall Street, one of Biden’s major donor) let’s not forget to add to this list of federally-endorsed giveaways the growing intrusiveness of the government in alliance with private tech companies like Google and Facebook and a myriad of others intent on eliminating privacy along with free speech and other constitutional guarantees.
What we do know is that Trump won and Harris lost. What many Americans don’t know yet is that as the democratic clown car moves out and the republican clown car moves in, the commitment to business as usual remains steadfast regardless of which party wins. The billionaires who fund the candidates will decide. Count on it. For the people it’s just another day in a high-class banana republic.
- The Bobbsey Twins* Reincarnated —Hubert Humphrey & Kamala Harris
The Bobbsey Twins* Reincarnated —Hubert Humphrey & Kamala Harris
[*Bobbsey Twins, fictional character featured in a series of children’s books]
On November 5,1968 President Lyndon Johnson departed the White House leaving his vice-president Hubert Humphrey to run for president as the democratic candidate.On November 5, 2024, fifty-six years later, President Joe Biden departed the White House leaving his vice-president Kamala Harris to run for president as the democratic candidate.
Why is it important? Because history matters. In the case of Vice President Harris whose fate will be decided by voters next week, it may well be decisive. Both Humphrey and Harris have an eerie similarity when it comes to their ascension to the top spot on their respective tickets, the immediate cause being the downfall of their predecessors due to their catastrophic domestic and foreign policies. The vice-presidents in the best tradition of American politics were left to justify these wrong-headed policies. How they chose to do it is stunning in its similarity and tragic in the message it sends about America’s leaders.
Begin with the implosion of both Johnson and Biden. On March 31, 1968 in a televised speech to the American people, President Johnson announced his intention to vacate the Oval Office. “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president…” Not a huge surprise when you consider, as most did not at the time, the mess he was in. Half a million U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam, 20,000 already returning in body bags in a war the U.S. never had a chance of winning. Domestically, deadly riots were destroying major parts of inner cities and the economy was in free fall. His approval rating was 36%. Losing the presidency was not the issue, winning the nomination was.
Joe Biden faced a similar set of imponderables but unlike Johnson was dragged kicking and screaming to his announcement. He finally succumbed to the demands of party oligarchs, some of the same ones who had been supporting his wars in the first place. On July 21 (less than four months before the election) he announced “while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down…” Aside from doubts about his mental competency, the U.S. had become involved in two unpopular wars—the one in Ukraine which had already cost the American taxpayer $175 billion. The Israeli attack on Gaza which has led to the deaths of 42,000 civilians most of them women and children has horrified many Americans and made the US government complicit in what the International Court of Justice deems a “plausible” case of genocide by supplying Israel with armaments worth $20 billion. On the domestic front, although the Federal Reserve keeps up the happy talk on the economy, the American people aren’t buying it. To the question — In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time? It turned out that a resounding three-quarters of Americans were dissatisfied. [Gallup Poll, October 1-12] Is it any wonder that Biden’s approval rating when he was made to retire was 39%?
What a quandary for two hapless candidates. Of all the options available, the most promising of which was to campaign as clean slate candidates, they chose the least promising. Justifying and excusing the inexcusable. Here is Hubert Humphrey in 1968 excusing his failure to challenge his boss as the Vietnam quagmire soaked up more and more American blood and treasure. “The vice president of the United States is one of the president’s advisors. He is not president. And that’s the first thing he needs to learn.” Kamala went him one better and proved herself to be in need of a good therapist. When asked by the “ladies” of the View, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” She answered without hesitation “there is not a thing that comes to mind.“While both sets of advisors reached for their blood pressure pills, the race was on to clean up the damage both had done to their election hopes. Stunningly they adopted similar mea culpas. First Humphrey on 9/30/1968 — “The policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday. We must look to the future.” Then Kamala came to the plate with a real whooper — “My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration. I bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues and believe we have to actually take new approaches.“
Feel reassured yet?
Neither totally renounced the hash both Johnson and Biden had made of their presidencies. Realizing he needed to put a little (very little as it turned out) distance between himself and Johnson, Humphrey added this disclaimer — “I would not undertake a unilateral withdrawal. To withdraw would not only jeopardize the independence of South Vietnam and the safety of other Southeast Asian nations. (the ‘domino theory’ was hugely popular among many of Johnson’s foreign policy advisors) it would make meaningless the sacrifices we have already made.” Kamala, on the other hand, was marching to the beat of a drummer that only she could hear. Wait for it folks, it’s coming the theme song of the whole bought and paid for congress and White House purchased by the Israeli lobby—”I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself and in particular, as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
It gets worse, much worse. When Anderson Cooper asked: “What do you say to voters who are thinking about supporting a third-party candidate, or staying on the couch, not voting at all because of this issue [the genocide in Gaza]?” Her answer (word salad alert: died and been killed?): “I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives, who have died and been killed. And I, and I know people and I’ve talked with people, so I appreciate that. But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries.”
What? Admittedly she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but swap the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians for affordable groceries? As Faustian bargains go, it’s a dilly.
So here we are on the cusp of the election. Like her long-ago twin, she has ignored the lessons of history. Her party platform is long on identity politics, short on the dangers of the world inching closer to nuclear annihilation. Perhaps today Americans do not want a new boss the same as the old boss. Did they ever? Fifty-six years later and nothing has changed — the same old lies and justifications. It didn’t work for Humphrey. Will it work for Harris?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905]