Formula For 50

Hillary Clinton has the option to win all 50 states. She already has the White House and the Senate in the bag. She can also grab the House. Hillary has the option for a total sweep. And as president she gets to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court. That pretty much clears the deck to 2050. Appoint them young. Appoint them progressive. Don't apologize for being right.

But her victory is not a given. It still has to be earned.

She has to pick Elizabeth Warren. For one, Warren seems to be the only one in either party who seems to know how to go after The Donald, sucker punch for sucker punch. With Warren batting, you get a total demolition of The Donald. In the Republican primary The Donald's 18 opponents never were able to figure out what hit them. Warren seems to know how to put The Donald in the exact same predicament. When Warren hits The Donald, he knows he got hit, but he does not know how, he does not know where. And Warren does so without discussing policy, just like The Donald.

Warren is a democrat and a free marketeer who gets labeled a Democrat and a socialist by her opponents. In a free market economy there are no monopolies. Too big to fail is a monopoly situation. Warren has called out on the big technology giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple as potential monopolies that might get in the way of the next technology wave. That takes guts. But more likely it just takes a commitment to basic principles.

The 2000 Bush tax cut was money that should have gone into investing in human capital, namely education, health, child care. Bill Clinton has the option to recreate the magic. Give it to Al Gore to walk away from a president with a popularity in the 60s.

The Bernie crowd is actually the Warren crowd. Warren was the original want of that crowd. This is not a socialist crowd. This is a crowd that has needed to google the word socialism. This crowd can smell the Universal Basic Income right round the corner. UBI will not be socialist rabble rousing. It will be evidence based decision making. It does not need an ideological label.

Hillary has to go into the South with the intention of sweeping it. She has to move to own the abortion issue. You could not make poverty illegal and thus end it. Abortion is the same way.

The way to keep hubris in check is to raise the money and build the organization. Another way is arithmetic. Be the party of low deficits and perhaps balanced budgets. Create the surplus to then plough into human capital. Fight the good fight and usher competition into all sectors of the economy. Stop subsidizing dirty energy. Clean has market momentum.

Both Hillary and Warren have to blow the dog whistle to women across party lines. I think some time in October a ton of Republican women are simply going to break party ranks. It will be a flood. It could be a tsunami.

Women need to ask, why has there never been a woman president, or vice president?

America lags behind Germany and Britain. And South Asia for that matter.

The (G.O.P.) Party’s Over
I hope Hillary Clinton wins all 50 states and the Democrats take the presidency, the House, the Senate and, effectively, the Supreme Court.

Trump Is Running To Be Rush Limbaugh

Trump Is Running To Be Rush Limbaugh

This explains it. Trump is not running for president. He is running to build the audience around which to launch the Trump News Network. And he has it. The people who voted for him in the primary are big enough a number. TNN is a viable business proposition. Losing all 50 states would give him the purest, most loyal audience. 20 million people? That's a lot. It's a sufficient number.

Warren For VP

Warren For VP

Varanasi: Modi's Adopted City

Varanasi: Urban Chaos Or Urban Energy

I was just reading this article by a journalist friend. A few things struck me.

In the south east Nepal I grew up in the "progressive" farmers were those that were learning to use fertilizers. I come to America and "progressive"  farmers here are those moving towards organic farming.

Varanasi seems to have what a lot of cities in the west wished it had: large, excited crowds, urban energy.

Progressive cities in the west are building bike lanes and paths for dedicated foot traffic. Public transportation is the in thing.

If those attempting to transform Varanasi were to tune into some of the global conversations taking place, very easy to do online, they might realize they are starting out on a solid ground. There are positives to preserve. And what they call urban planning is too much unthinking imitations of models that are no longer thought great in the west.

The idea that the best way to build a city is by starting out on an empty plot of land is not true. The people are the city. And Varanasi seems to have that number one ingredient in plenty.

The number one thing to do would be citywide municipal WiFi. Then build a ring road around the city and make all roads inside toll roads, to relieve congestion. Turn into a city of 24/7 public buses, buses every 15 minutes. Turn it into a city of foot traffic and bike lanes. Build satellite cities outside the ring road. In a second phase build an elevated metro to criss cross the city.

Focus on WiFi, water and sanitation. Focus on safety. Focus on 24/7 electricity. Focus on public transportation.

Hillary Listens!

Hillary Clinton Listens!

No wonder Germany, Britain and America are all going female! Listening is a good thing.

Although I think she should attempt more poetry in stump speeches. She delivers the penultimate draft. The final draft should be poetry.

And the media is its own beast. Hire a team to deal with it. Use social media more. Videos of her listening can be released on YouTube so others may listen in and skip mainstream media altogether.

In this day and age, you become your own media.

BJP's UP Problem

ABP News Opinion Poll: BSP to win 185 seats if UP polls are held now

The BJP had the same problem in Bihar. Nobody was running for Chief Minister.

In 2014 Modi was the only one running to be Prime Minister.

If the BJP loses UP and Gujarat, it has to figure out a way to work without a majority in the upper house.

Anti-incumbency worked against Mayawati last time. This time it might work against Akhilesh.

But 2019 will be about Modi’s performance. If the growth rate has hit 10% he should see victories again in both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, not to say Gujarat.

Women To Lead Both Parties In The UK

Angela Eagle launches leader bid 'to heal Labour' 

One of the pleasant surprises of the Brexit vote was not the guy with Donald Trump hair and temper but a woman is going to be Prime Minister. Now looks like the opposition might also go to a woman. Men have created enough mess.

Solving Hillary's Trustworthiness "Problem"

A More Personal Hillary Clinton Tries to Erase a Trust Deficit

There is the truth to the person. Hillary the person as people who have known her a long time would know, like family and friends, people who might have known her even she had never become a public figure.

The Republican surgeon that Trump defeated a few months earlier, his colleagues at John Hopkins said, "We don't recognize the person portrayed by the media."

That gap between the real person and that person's public image does not seem to go away even if tens of books might have been written about them, and the Internet is full of articles about them, and there is saturation coverage, and now there is social media. You can cut through old media and go straight to the people via social media and that image deficit is still there.

So there is the public private gap.

Being Bill Clinton's wife doesn't help. Bill Clinton said not long after he launched his career: "People either love me or they hate me, there is nothing in between."

Both ways you get exaggerated, inaccurate pictures. With Hillary people not only get a Dem, you also get a woman, and the culture's sexism takes wings. Besides, before Bill Clinton even Democratic presidents were all born with silver spoons. Bill Clinton faced regional as well as class biases. The power structure did not take too kindly to him.

So there's all that partisan mythologizing.

How do you handle this?

The Clinton campaign should go all over the country and all over the world and talk to everyone who ever spent more than 10 minutes with Hillary Clinton and record it all and put it all out on YouTube in one grand release of 10,000 hours.

Let people who have met her in person talk about her. Americans might be utterly surprised what people around the world say about her. She starts looking like an angel.

Like some Canadians said about Barack Obama years ago: "Send him over here!"

Trump Is A Narcissist

Cancer is not one disease. It is many diseases. Poverty is not just lack of cash. If it were only lack of cash, it could be solved in a heartbeat.

Narcissism is a disease. It approaches the complexity of cancer and poverty.

I am going to argue Donald Trump is not a racist or a sexist or an anti semite or a xenophobe. He is all of the above by the textbook. But those are but symptoms.

The disease is narcissism. This guy needs help. Just like guns should be kept away from the mentally unstable, the mightiest political office on the planet needs to be kept away from a suffering person.

The comic part is a narcissist is completely unaware of his situation.

Narcissism is not a character problem. If Trump were just a liar, you could say he has a character problem. But narcissism is a condition, kind of like alcoholism. Psychiatrists will attest to it. Only this one patient is in full public view. He keeps giving evidence every step of the way.  

His racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti semitism all stem out of the affliction. Does an alcoholic love his family? Does he at least want to? What if he is not able to? Does it matter that he wants to?

When he talks hate speech, he attracts attention, and that feeds his narcissism. He feeds on that. It is a vicious loop. This guy needs help.

Is he a racist? Racist is that racist does. Racist is that racist speaks. So yes. He is. His hate speech is designed to defend structural racism and sexism.

But that is not his primary concern.

If you can not stay away from your smartphone for 24 hours straight without feeling withdrawal symptoms, you have a problem. If you have become dependent on your smartphone notifications so much that they feel like indispensable emotional nourishment to you, you are in the early stages of narcissism yourself, and you should be able to relate to Donald Trump.
 

Guns Kill People

And if guns don't kill people, why manufacture defective guns?

The strategy of those who would control guns has been in fundamental error. It has been about whipping up the outrage.

There's plenty of outrage. The outrage is in clear plurality.

Gun laws are in a political monopoly situation. The NRA needs to be sued out of existence.

This has been done before. Big Tobacco was successfully sued.

Families of gun victims need to come together and sue the NRA out of existence. After that the democratic process can decide on sensible gun laws.

Sensible means a constitutional amendment. No more right to bear arms. What are you? An animal?

A national 911 on a location aware smartphone with a camera with a response time of three minutes or less (keep helicopters at the ready in rural areas) will protect you better than a handgun.

Hunting can apply to be recognized as a sport. Who goes hunting with AK-47s? Cannibals. That's who.   

Donald Trump Would Have Been A Janitor

Donald Trump Defending The Defenseless

There are tens of millions of black men on the planet (and women) who have, objectively speaking, higher IQs than the Donald, but who are janitors. The only reason Donald Trump is not a janitor is because he is a white male. One is allowed to be lucky. One is allowed to be in the right place at the right time.

But this is not a guy appreciating his luck. This is a guy rubbing it in. If his hate speech were only free speech, I'd be glad for it. It would be puss coming out. But his hate speech is not just free speech. His hate speech is a diehard defense of structural racism. This is not a guy who got lucky. This is a guy who has benefitted from structural racism every step of the way and has hated the mere symbolism of a black guy in the White House. Where do black people go after that? To the polling booth, again and again.

At first I thought his star of David tweet was merely anti semitism. Now he is out to prove it was also gross political incompetence that would not even fly at the City Council level.

I have never seen a more racist, sexist, xenophobic person in any presidential race, ever.

To swat a mosquito and call it Hillary! Those are concentrated sulphuric acid levels of sexism. Women of this country regardless of political party should take note. Where do you go after this? You go to the voting booth.