Dana Blankenhorn

The Math

The question most asked by liberals is this.
How did Trump win? “There can’t be more of them than us, there can’t be more.” 
Well, first, as news networks and good prosecutors have been learning for two years now, he cheated. He used the Russians to scare people who were willing to be scared. He used money to hide things he needed hidden. That got him a few percentage points in key states. It may be responsible for 3% of the 46% he got. Remember we’re talking about 75,000 votes in four states for the margin.
But what about the rest. What about the base? Could there possibly be 43% of America that identifies with this SOB?
Yes. But it’s a good story. You might even say it's based on Moore's Law of Politics. 

Peak Trump, Peak Carter II: The Health Care Rebellion

Only old reporters and historians now remember the Sagebrush Rebellion, which may have been more decisive in setting our current political course than any other event of the late 1970s.

The Sagebrush Rebellion was a rural revolt on behalf of private property, against the government that still controls most of the land. Before it got going the West was represented by people like Frank Church in Idaho, a liberal firebrand whose name lives today in a 1973 amendment against the Vietnam War.  Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, was the Senate Majority Leader in the 1970s, and even Alaska was represented by Democrat Mike Gravel.

Today, the only Democrats in the Intermountain West and High Plains are “yeah-but” Democrats, people like Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who generally agrees with the principles of the rebellion but argues that, sometimes, like in her election, the Republican is just a little too radical for local tastes.

The modern equivalent of the Sagebrush Rebellion is health care. Democrats use the shorthand Medicare for All.

Peak Carter, Peak Trump

One thing that has surprised me over the last two years is how almost no one understood my point right after the 2016 election, that Donald Trump is a sort of Bizarro Carter. 

By that I meant he is completely the opposite of Jimmy Carter. Carter was a Democrat. Trump is an Autocrat. Carter believed in human rights. Trump believes in the divine right of kings. Carter championed the environment. Trump trashes it. Carter said he’d never lie to us. Trump lies 6 times before breakfast.

What they have in common is they represent the end times for the Political Thesis that birthed them. Carter was elected 44 years after Franklin Roosevelt and was the last President to run on those principles. Trump came 48 years after Nixon and will be the last President elected under the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. 

Old Man on The Mountain

About once a year I write some fiction. This year I completed an entire novel, The Reluctant Detective Finds Her Family, now available for the Amazon Kindle and on Amazon Unlimited. It will also be available as a paperback.

But I also like to write short stories. Here is one. Enjoy.

___

When Spencer Tracy made The Old Man and the Sea, he was 58.

The child watching that film saw him as unimaginably old.

But time passes. Today the child is a man. Today the child is an old man. Today the child is 63.

I hear you say, 63 isn’t old. Sometimes, it’s not. When the old man is sitting behind his typewriter, when he’s imagining himself in his dreams, when he is enjoying a drink with friends, 63 is not that old at all.

When he stands up, however, it can be very old. When he looks in the mirror, after a shower, he sees Santa Claus, complete with the distending belly. It’s not a jolly sight. So, like Spencer Tracy in the movie, he does things to defy his age.

That 1999 Feeling

For most of the last two years I have felt much as I did in the late 1990s.

Soon after launching a-clue.com, my e-commerce newsletter, in 1997, I began warning of dark days ahead. True, the Internet was cool. Yes, e-commerce was great. But when companies barely have sales, let alone profit, and there are many companies trying to get through the same door, all acting like they’ve gotten through it, and people are still throwing money at all of them, I say nay.

Here’s a life confession. I’m early to any party. I became an avid bike rider in the 1970s. I was arguing with my teachers about what the Internet might mean to the journalism business in 1977. My dear wife was commuting to an office by bike, in sneakers, in 1980, and by train, in Atlanta, starting in 1983. I began telecommuting the same year and became a professional Internet reporter in 1985. I began covering Internet commerce full-time in 1994.

But in 1999 my “spidey sense” was tingling, big time. People were throwing too much at the space, too fast.

When AOL swallowed Time Warner on January 10, 2000, getting 60% of the deal, I knew the jig was up and said so. But I didn’t shift my money away from the space.

As a result, I was as burned as anyone else. In 2002 and 2003 my total income was zero dollars. But I was younger then. I stuck to my guns, found other beats, and today I’m richer than I ever imagined being.