Selected Sunday Reading

As a possible antidote to the ravings on the Sunday "news" shows, here's some suggested non- Comey reading to get us back to the real issues in the election. As always, the entire pieces are worth the time.

First, Susan Faludi has a great, illuminating read on the origins of and motivation for the blind hatred of Hillary Clinton by the frothing knuckle- draggers in the Republican base.  Here's a taste:

Donald J. Trump and his supporters posit their antipathy as a reaction to Mrs. Clinton’s accumulated record over “30 years in power.” It’s important to recall that she was deranging Republicans on Day 1. Understanding her demonization requires admitting her full significance in our political history, for she is not simply a pioneering woman fighting an Ur-misogyny. Mrs. Clinton faces a two-headed Cerberus, an artificial conjoining that occurred in the early 1990s, of wounded Republican invincibility and wounded male prerogative. Our current political crisis won’t be resolved until those forces are separated and the Cerberus slain.

Few current observers seem to recall the wrath that greeted Bill Clinton’s ascension. To the left, “Clintonism” implies accommodation and calculation. But to the right in 1992, it meant usurpation. Reaganism held almost religious significance, and its reign was supposed to be transformative and permanent. For the One True Way to be restored, Clintonism had to be delegitimized. 

That delegitimization ushered in the politics of party restoration at whatever cost, governance and country be damned. This led first to an attempted legislative coup in 1998 and then to a judicial coup in 2000. And to all the more recent outrages of birtherism, government shutdowns, delayed Supreme Court confirmations and, ultimately, the rise of a would-be autocrat as a party nominee. 

Next, Leonard Pitts explains why it's essential that the Republican Party go down to a crashing defeat:

I don’t want the Republican Party defeated next week. 

This is written, just so you know, following an email exchange with a reader who suggested a recent column had been penned in consultation with the White House to soften the ground for a new presidential directive. It is written in the wake of a conservative talk show host telling his audience that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that damaged Donald Trump’s candidacy was a setup by CIA agent Billy Bush. It is written as the Internet is in a state of mass arousal over a rumor that candidate Obama “flaunted his erection” to women reporters on his campaign plane in 2008. 

It is written, in other words, on an average day in the pest-ridden, plague-infected swamp of rumor, rancor, conspiracy and flat-out bollocks that now counts as Republican political discourse. More to the point, it is written out of concern over what and how the country will be after next week’s election.

Finally, Harold Meyerson on what distinguishes us from Republicans (and the fact that it all preceded neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump by decades):

It’s during the homestretch of campaigns that political parties often reveal their deepest identities, and that’s never been truer than it is this year. What really distinguishes the Democrats from the Republicans this fall isn’t their ideologies, their platforms, or even their candidates, though there’s contrast aplenty in each of those. What really distinguishes the two parties is what they’re actually doing in the campaign’s final weeks. 

The Democrats are trying to get out the vote. 

The Republicans are trying to suppress it.

If you're young, Latino or African American, the Republicans really don't want you showing up, standing in line, and voting.  The response to that collection of "deplorables" known as the Republican Party must be, borrowing from Leonard Pitts, "Nuke it."