The 2020 Democratic primary season is officially open and already candidates are under attack both from within and outside the party.  Saturday night, Donald Trump one-upped his already racist labeling of Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” suggesting she would be more effective by posting Instagram videos from sites such as Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen.  (Did he get that idea from the portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office?).  And Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard is under fire from Democrats for past comments opposing marriage equality and her association with her father’s organization which promoted conversion therapy (positions which she says she now regrets).

No one should be surprised that the first volleys of the 2020 campaign center around identity politics.  Which brings me to the title of today’s post.  By “T or F?” my goal is not to determine whether the Democratic Party is consumed by an attempt to build a majority coalition based on gender, race, religion and sexual preference.  It is much bigger than that.  Does the healing process so badly needed after two decades of contentious partisanship depend on a single letter in the alphabet?

My hypothesis.  The successful candidate in 2020, regardless of party or ideology, will be the man or woman who focuses not on identiTy politics, but identiFy politics.  Which wannabe chief executive will draw on the aspirations and experiences which cross identity barriers and will respond to events rather than constituencies.  I know what you’re thinking.  There goes Dr. ESP again.  The idealist who suspends reality when it does not fit his world view.

Maybe, but there is enough evidence to suggest this is not as far fetched as some might believe.  Identify politics is what happens when the Muslim community in Pittsburgh reaches out to members of the Tree of Life Synagogue following the mass shooting last October.  Gun violence knows no identity.  Just ask the African American, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Amish, LGBT, urban, rural communities or the parents of school children in both red and blue states.

It is the empathy of a farmer in Iowa or Nebraska who does not get a scheduled farm subsidy for a clerk in the Social Security Administration in Baltimore who did not get paid on Friday. Families of all kind shared a common experience this weekend, gathering around a kitchen table and wondering how they can afford life’s necessities without the revenue on which they depend.

It is a recognition by every American whose parents and grandparents came to the United States in search of a better life despite the risks that the contribution immigrants make to our country depends not on their condition when they first cross our border, but the extent to which they believe in the American tradition of a better life for their children than they had.

The cost of opioid addiction also spans age, gender, race and religious differences.  Examine the data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services for 2016 and 2017.  More than 130 individuals die every day of opioid-related overdoses.  At this rate, there can hardly be a single American who is not themselves or a family member or close friend untouched by this epidemic.  Every one of us can identify with the pain and grief that is all too common.

And most recently we witnessed the power of identify politics with the passage of The First Step Act.  Even Trump, who ran on a “tough on crime” platform signed a bill addressing the need for justice reform.  When the Koch Brothers and the ACLU are on the same side of any issue, it is a clear indication some policies transcend matters of poor versus rich or white versus black.

On the final exam for any candidate for president in 2020, there is only question.  “My agenda for the next four years depends on conditions which affect every American’s life, not who you are?  T or F?”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Every time I think about a 30 foot concrete wall, my memory takes me back to a personal experience in early 1984.  At the time, I was director of community development and housing for the State of Texas.  On December 18, 1983 Texas experienced a historic deep-freeze with below freezing temperatures for 12 consecutive days.  It wiped out the entire citrus crop including that in Starr County along the Rio Grande border with Mexico.  As a result, the unemployment rate in Starr County jumped to nearly 70 percent.  At the request of then Governor Mark White, I was part of a team deployed to the border to identify public works projects (e.g., replacing dead palm trees along U.S. 83 which parallels the Rio Grande) through which we could pay residents and inject funds into the local economy.

As is the custom in South Texas, you never conduct business without fellowship first.  In this case, the team was invited to dinner at the home of County Judge Blas Chapa the night before our scheduled meeting in Rio Grande City.  (In Texas, the county judge is the chief administrative officer as well as a judicial officer.)  That evening we were feted with barbecue and beer on Judge Chapa’s patio which provided a scenic view of the river and the natural habitat on the Mexican side.  Judge Chapa died in May 2010, but I can just imagine how he would have reacted to the thought of a 30 foot concrete wall obscuring the panoramic view of his estate, the river and the land beyond.  He owned the property down to the river’s edge, and I know he would have vigorously fought any taking by eminent domain for a public right-of-way for any unsightly intrusion on his estate.

Imagine the situation was reversed.  Suppose Blas Chapa was president, and made the case more illegal drugs were entering the U.S. along the Eastern seaboard than from Mexico.  The answer?  A thirty foot hardened concrete wall on the Florida coast including Palm Beach County.  Whom do you think might be the first to object.  My money is on the guy who lives in this house.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Yesterday, Donald Trump’s other “rat,” the one he pays NOT to blow the whistle on him did what no one expected he could do.  Rudy Guliani one-upped Michael Cohen who had previously testified his attempts on behalf of the Trump Organization to close a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow continued through June 2016.  On yesterday’s edition of  ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulis, Guliani announced the efforts had continued right up to election day.  This is a saga of which great moments in literature emerge.  The muse calls.

Chapter 1. Loomings

Call me Ish-michael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me in the pursuit of law, I thought I would stray a little and see the underside parts of the world. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the path with me.

There now is your insular city of  Washington, DC, belted round by twelve-lane thoroughfares—power and fame surrounds it. Right and left, the streets take you downward. Its extreme downtown is the federal enclave and K Street, where that noble cause of public service is washed away by money, and cooled by Starbucks’ iced coffee, which a few hours previous were out of sight. Look at the crowds of power seekers there.

Thus begins the tale of Moscow Dick, the story of a young, restless and ambitious lawyer who, in pursuit of wealth and celebrity hitches his star to a captain of real estate, not knowing his benefactor was obsessed, driven by a whale of a real estate deal he would pursue for 30 years.  To truly understand the tale I would need to take you through each day and every event which leads to the climax.  But, I am supposed to be on holiday break.  So I will skip the detail and share with you the culmination of Ish-michael and his master’s fascination of putting his name on an edifice in the shadow of the Kremlin.

Chapter 135.  The Chase.–Third Decade

The morning of the third decade dawned fair and fresh, and once more I was called to Mr. Trump’s chamber. .

“D’ye ink it, Ish-michael?” cried Mr. Trump; but the deal was not yet in sight.

Suddenly a low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with promises of lifted sanctions and a penthouse, a vast form shot lengthwise, but obliquely from the Kremlin. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, Putin hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, leaving only the image of marble stairways, gold-fixtured rooms.

“Give way!” cried Mr. Trump to me, Ivanka and Junior, as we darted forward to the attack.

An offer was proffered; but the negotiations ran foul.  Mr. Trump stooped to save it; but he could not and was eventually dragged from the ship of state, and the House and Senate knew he was gone. Next instant, the dreams of Moscow Dick and his captain disappeared into the depths.

Epilogue.  “And I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee.” JOB

The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck. I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Mr. Trump’s bowsman, Mr. Pence, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day was also tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising SS Pelosi, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP