We “rethink the week” with Stephen Pimpare, Professor at the University of New Hampshire and a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. social policy; Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; and Mark Fernald, attorney and former gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire.
We talk about the outstanding turnout in the New Hampshire presidential primary – Republican voters as well as Democratic. NH also showed that the old reliable technology (pencils and paper ballots, rather than new touch-screen computers) is capable of yielding efficient and timely vote-counting. Moreover, the retail politics – where regular people have the opportunity to have serious conversations with the candidates in order to assess their character and their straightforwardness – are something that adds value to any election.
We discuss the imminent Nevada caucus and other primaries. The polls say Bernie may be breaking out, but the polls have been wrong before! On the other hand, even the so-called progressive media have been ignoring Bernie or dissing him with warnings that he’ll bring down the entire Democratic party and the country. The same media ignore Bloomberg’s flaws and his ugly history of racial and class discrimination. They don’t even tell us that Bloomberg is 78, the same age as Bernie.
The media have also failed to highlight just how undemocratic (and anti-American) it is to allow any candidate to literally *buy* an election with his incredible personal wealth, without regard to his policies, character or ideas — past or present (who knows what he really believes?). Likewise, the media view the struggle within the Democratic Party as a battle between the stable good guys vs the lunatic bad guys.
The media rarely mention how the Party sold its soul to corporate power-brokers and wealthy individuals who want the US government to work only to enhance their personal interests. The media views the progressive wing of the Democratic Party as a reincarnation of Stalin and the USSR (as Chris Matthews ranted hysterically on MSNBC), rather than as heirs to FDR’s New Deal, seeking to carry forward his using the authority of the government to help regular everyday people who have gotten the short end of the stick for decades.
Finally, we are appalled at AG Barr’s subordinating his moral and legal obligation to act in the best interests of the United States and instead acting to advance the personal interests of Donald Trump. This administration’s perversion of the executive branch’s loyalties is scary to anyone who believes in a rule-of-law constitutional government.
With all these governmental horrors, with Trump’s hatred and name-calling and retaliatory actions against anyone who disagrees with him, why aren’t more people “taking to the streets,” protesting loudly and visibly for a restoration of American (and basic human) values?
