Author Archives: Mark M. Meinero

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IT’S A TRIP

Communication technology has radically changed in my lifetime – think cellphones, 84-inch TV screens, the whole freakin’ Internet.

But we’re pretty much using the same transportation technology that existed since before I was born.

I don’t imagine a President Kamala Harris is going to be as bold as to push for magnetic levitation, vacuum or anything else short of the impossible (see: “Star Trek,” transporter). So I’ll settle for improving and rebuilding our systems of getting places – and that’s a commitment that will be more of a continuation than a change.

President Biden should go down in history for what’s he captained in terms of infrastructure. It might be frustrating to get stuck in traffic caused by the umpteen highway improvement projects around the country. 

But making these roads safer and more efficient is a job that’s long overdue – and Biden did all this while boosting employment and, yes, keeping the inflation inherent in such an expansion in check. (Yes, we had inflation problems, but those were more about supply chain shortfalls caused by the pandemic.)

Improving highways isn’t the best way to meet our nation’s transportation needs. The idea is to get more people out of cars rather than into them in order to combat climate change and move people more efficiently. But that will take time.

Fortunately, the Biden-Harris administration has been clear-minded about pushing for alternative fuel – particularly, electric – vehicles. And it’s making a difference – there are lots more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road. People are starting to realize how much better life can be when you don’t need to unburden yourself of $40 or $50 to fill a gas tank each week.

Harris wants to expand the network of charging stations so that you’re never more than a few miles away from one. Her administration would also need to push automakers to improve battery life and length – long-distance trips are still a problem because of limited vehicle range.

Biden’s being a train freak has been a boon for public transportation. Improvements in intercity rail and commuter lines were prioritized – New York and New Jersey are finally building a new tunnel to replace century-old infrastructure under the Hudson River.

Now it’s time to expand. Europe and East Asia thrive on high-speed rail. There’s no reason the United States can’t. If it took less than five hours to from midtown New York to downtown Chicago by train, wouldn’t you rather take that than schlep to LaGuardia, wait for a 2-hour flight, then schlep from O’Hare to the Loop.

Secretary Pete Buttigieg – whose high profile has been a reassuring sign that Biden and Harris took transportation seriously – has pushed for an expansion of high-speed rail projects across the country. It’s going to take a while to build them – probably beyond the lifetime of many of us.

But let’s at least start.

One other transportation thought.

This summer, New York was on the verge of a bold experiment, the kind that doesn’t happen often in this country. Like several other cities around the world – London, in particular – New York was going to initiate congestion pricing – making drivers pay a toll to enter midtown and lower Manhattan.

The idea would be to unclog the narrow streets of the nation’s largest city, making it easier for vehicles that absolutely need to get around. Nothing terrifies me quite like seeing an ambulance stuck in gridlock on an impassable side street – imagine the poor person fighting for his or her life inside.

People who live in the suburbs squawked. How dare New York charge us extra to bring our pickups and SUVs into town? (Forgetting how they bar non-residents from using their parks and pools.) So the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, caved and put off the plan’s implementation.

Should Harris win the White House, she should push to get the experiment started. And she should also, after making sure officials keep their promise to fund mass transit with the revenue from the program, pump federal money into the city to help improve the subways and buses.

Getting people from here to there – safely, quickly and cleanly – appears to be a goal of the Harris-Walz campaign. And let’s face it, it’s the only campaign thinking about something that serious.

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OLDEN DAYS

Whenever one of my contemporaries complains about the problems of getting older, my kneejerk response is “It’s better than the alternative.”

But sometimes I wonder.

Families go through hell when a parent or grandparent requires more than just routine care. In particular, dementia takes an incredible toll on a family’s psychology and finances.

There’s nothing federal or state governments can do to make the emotional pain of watching a loved one diminish. But anything that can be done to lessen the financial burden will help families deal with the heartbreak.

Earlier this month, Kamala Harris proposed allowing Medicare to help pay the costs of elderly home care. She says her administration would pay for this through some of the savings achieved through negotiating drug prices.

It’s an idea and seems worth trying. 

The details would be interesting. Would Medicare establish floors and ceilings for what care providers could receive as part of the reimbursement? Would there be minimum standards for quality?

Right now, finding people to attend to an elder in your care is crazy – at least here in New York. There are agencies and contractors, and they try to place people who might not be especially qualified for the task.

And there are all kinds of other issues. Are families in compliance with IRS regulations concerning taxes? Are the care providers in the country legally, or are they undocumented? How much of a family’s fortune needs to be spent before it qualifies for other forms of assistance, such as Medicaid?

As part of her plans for families caring for elderly members, Harris wants to end the practice of allowing the seizure of deceased recipients’ homes to help allay the costs of care. That is certainly a good thing.

Harris says she’s made these proposals after thinking about the difficulties she had when her mother was dying of breast cancer. That’s something Americans can relate to – when we talk about “economic anxiety,” that – and not some blatantly racist trope – is what we should mean.

The other key issue affecting those who are is the protection of Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans hate those two programs. They are what endear so many Americans to the Democratic Party – gifts from Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson to this generation and beyond.

Because the population is aging, the costs of these programs are taxing the systems that support them. This has given opponents an opening. For instance, they believe letting Social Security become a voucher program that allows funds to be invested as recipients see fit would help.

Which it wouldn’t. Especially now, at the point of our lives when Social Security is a crucial part of our income. It would be like gambling. And one mistake could be life-changing – and threatening.

Harris is looking at a longstanding Democratic idea – raising the ceiling at which income is taxed for Social Security and Medicare purposes. It’s ridiculous that Elon Musk pays a lower percentage of his income toward these programs – which he doesn’t need – than a teacher, a policeman or a miner.

But, as befits the point of these pieces, it’s not something you hear a lot about in the campaign coverage. Because the idea is to not let this message get heard – for fear it’s really popular among the demographic that could ensure her election.

It matters to my generation. It matters to my kids. I’ll bet it matters to you. 

In more ways than one, that beats the alternative.

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OUR HOUSE

The distraction strategy aimed at stopping Kamala Harris is most effective at drowning out her solid, commonsense ideas for solving a real crisis in America: housing.

This problem especially hurts young adults starting out in the workplace. It’s hard to take a job that would advance your career but doesn’t pay enough to cover the rent or the mortgage payment for a home.

But this issue spans generations. Many of my fellow retirees are looking to downsize or move to a place that’s more accessible to folks our age. That’s not an easy thing to find.

Just before the Democratic convention in August, Harris and newly picked running mate Tim Walz announced their housing plan. It is multi-faceted and seems pretty damn smart.

Among her proposals is an initiative to build 3 million new housing units. It would rely on providing incentives to homebuilders, including breaks when those new homes go to first-time buyers.

Harris and Walz also want to provide a $25,000 credit to first-time homebuyers. They want to crack down on housing industry manipulation – both in the purchasing of groups of homes as an investment rather than a life experience, and in the manipulation of rental markets aimed at driving up lease costs.

Many of their proposals have bipartisan support – if you remember that idea. Kids of Republicans who aren’t super wealthy need homes, too.

One thing I think a Harris-Walz administration should consider is a reallocation of real estate space.

You see it almost everywhere you go: Big office buildings emptied by COVID and teleworking. Storefronts, strip shopping centers and malls deserted thanks to the convenience of online shopping.

There is so much empty built-up space in this country. It’s not limited to cities  – like what I’ve seen first-hand in San Francisco and Minneapolis. In suburban New York, where I live, nothing looks as awful as a space that was once occupied by workers or shoppers.

Converting these spaces is going to take a lot of money. Think about it: Most offices don’t have water flowing through them – and people aren’t going to want apartments for which you share a bathroom and kitchen with your neighbors. Pipes ain’t cheap.

But sometimes we forget that we’re a country that’s especially good at solving problems. 

The technology Americans created is what makes it possible for everyone in the world to see what I’m writing right now. We can see a co-worker in Istanbul, buy a hat from a store in Seoul or order jambalaya from New Orleans.

The scene from “Apollo 13” when the NASA scientists create a way to reduce CO2 emissions using the available parts on the spacecraft should be our guide in endeavors like this – including and especially in something so precious as housing.

Because one of the reasons we’re seeing the declines in family creation that conservatives seem so worked up about is that young people have such a hard time figuring out how to make a go of it.

Solving a housing crisis won’t cause any massive shift. But it sure will help.

One final point: Homelessness remains a scourge in this country. It’s an embarrassment and a tragedy in the world’s No. 1 economy.

And while all of it is awful, the fact that people who have served the United States as members of the military find themselves on the streets or in the woods is shameful.

We’ve got the space. We need the know-how and the will.

That – not phony stories about people eating dogs and cats – is what American politics should be about.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the Harris-Walz campaign and elder care.

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I’VE GOT ISSUES

This is, as you have heard more times that you ever wanted, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetime.

The consequences surpass those of the last presidential election in 2020. And, of course, that one had consequences exceeding the 2016 vote. Obviously, 2016 was more consequential than 2012 – which, now that I think about it, probably was the least consequential of the 21st century.

You get the idea.

The problem is that this, seriously, is a real test for our country. It’s about what kind of a nation we are – not what we imagine we are or wish we were. If we’re about governance and community, or grievance and dissolution.

Are we going able to look at ourselves on November 6 and shout hosannas about the beauty of democracy? Or are we going to decide that, yeah, this country is closed until further notice while we clean the place out?

Too much is written about this election already – and I’m somewhat sorry to add to the noise. The fact is I wanted to be more involved in this – I even signed up for a local congressional campaign.

But I admit I don’t have the patience to hear the other side on this. I’ve heard it already. 

I heard it in Citi Field one gray May afternoon when this couple – that was clearly, as my Dad used to say, in their cups – groused loudly about how all these people were getting free stuff thanks to “Clueless Joe” in the White House.

I see in signs on lawns around my neighborhood. “Democrats Support Iran,” “Democrats are Socialists,” “Trump Saved America.”

There are the shirts and signs that read something like “We like country music, the Lord’s Prayer, guns, the American flag and making liberals mad.” As if they like those things only because they hope it gets some people pissed.

I did text messages in 2020 and got the same sort of crap. 

Then there was whatever that was at Madison Square Garden yesterday. I don’t have to catalog the bigotry, the racism and the hatred spewed – you can read about if you haven’t already.

In fact, it took me to this point to tell you what I want to write about instead of that – and what I hope to write about in the run-up to Election Day.

Because, after thinking about it, I’ve got a theory about why this election is even close.

It has to do with a strategy that includes the venomfest that polluted midtown Manhattan. That display was not designed to convince anybody to vote for Donald Trump. 

It was designed to keep people talking about Donald Trump. Because when “Morning Joe” and “The View” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” are talking about Trump and the asininity around him, they are not talking about what Kamala Harris would do if she was elected.

That is the point.

Michelle Obama raised a great point in her speech in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday: Harris is held to a much higher standard that Trump. It’s unfair. Or as Van Jones said, she needs to be flawless, while he can be lawless.

And the fact is that she meets that higher standard. Consistently. Constantly. With passion, with intelligence, with empathy and with joy.

You won’t know that. That won’t be the zeitgeist. Because the cacophony of Trumpania is designed to make sure you don’t.

It explains why people think she’s not specific about what she would do as President. Because no one can hear what she has to say when the national conversation is about who maligned Puerto Rico or Hannibal Lecter or eating dogs in Ohio.

Before Trump came along, seeking the presidency was about a vision. Even if you disagreed with it – I’m a lifelong Democrat and have never contemplated voting for a Republican, but I know John McCain and Mitt Romney had some sort of idea about moving America toward the future.

Trump doesn’t give a damn. As long as he panders to his base, he’ll say anything. Do you think he really cares one way or another about abortion? Or even how to build a national economy?

As long as people support him for giving them tax breaks and eroding women’s rights, he’s fine.

So what I want to talk about the next few days is the future. The place we’re all going for at least some of the way.

Because Kamala Harris has tried to campaign on what she’d do as the 47th President of the United States. And Donald Trump doesn’t want her to do that.

So we’ll talk about a few things that require our attention: housing, elder care, transportation, immigration, America’s role in the world, education and our politics.

Now that’s the kind of discussion I can look forward to.

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PARIS 2024 OR BERLIN 1936?

Wow, did you enjoy the Summer Olympics that ended Sunday night in Paris?

I sure did. I didn’t nearly as much as a lot of you, but I got caught up in a bunch of the sports – particularly 3-on-3 basketball, swimming and sport climbing. My son has climbed at gyms in South Korea and Brooklyn, and his interest sparked mine in an event that I found riveting.

What also made it fun was the setting. Paris, like London in 2012 and Barcelona in 1992, is a great setting for the Games. The events are intertwined with the culture and history. (It’s one of the reasons why the IOC should give Tokyo another shot after the last games were screwed by the pandemic.)

The French people seemed to relish being hosts. It was a chance to show off what’s best about their country. Admit it, you and whoever you hang with have talked about visiting France at least one in the past two and-a-half weeks.

Here’s one reason for that: For all the political and social problems facing the French, the country’s face at the Games was Emmanuel Macron.

The French president had official responsibilities, uttering the mandated short sentence that welcomes athletes. 

But he also had symbolic responsibility as France’s head cheerleader. He was there when swimmer Leon Marchand won his fourth gold medal. He whipped off his jacket amid the tension as the French women just missed topping the Americans for the basketball good.

The athletes felt comfortable in France – and that inspired some iconic performances. The French seemed happy to have them. Macron had a little to do with that.

You know there has to be a counterpoint. But I’ll bet it has crossed your mind.

Four paragraphs up, I mention the official responsibilities of a country’s head of state – opening the Games with just a prescribed sentence. No big speech. Just “I declare open the Games of Paris celebrating the 33rd Olympiad of the modern era.”

Well, the next Games – as that folderol with Tom Cruise demonstrated – are in Los Angeles in 2028. And the President of the United States is expected to be there, kicking off the kind of celebration that Californians hinted at in the Snoop Dogg, Billie Eilish and Red Hot Chili Peppers performances.

So, on November 5, as if there wasn’t enough to think about, there’s this: Who will open the Games of the 34th Olympiad? And how will he or she set the tone for athletes from around the world?

If it’s she, I don’t think we have a problem. Kamela Harris is a Californian. She’s cheered on many of these athletes before. It’s likely that many of the stars of these Games, like Steph Curry, will support her campaign.

And that would set a positive tone for athletes around the world, including those from countries at loggerheads in one way or another with the United States. It’ll make it easier for Los Angeles to be the kind of welcoming host it has been twice before. 

Then, of course, there’s Donald Trump.

Think about all the things you’ve watched in Paris. Then, instead of inserting Macron or Harris, you replace them with Trump.

A little dissonant, eh? 

Can you imagine Trump playing second fiddle to the athletes? Would his ego allow that? 

Would he tell the world that he’s a golf champion, even if it’s on his course and under his rules? Would he complain loudly if Russian athletes were barred from carrying their nation’s flag for its aggression against Ukraine – or would he even try to force the IOC to lift a ban and invite Putin to the opening ceremonies?

Would he block athletes from Iran and China from attending? Would he badger a judge in a subjective sport who scored a white American athlete lower than an Asian or Black athlete from the rest of the world?

Would many of the American athletes want nothing to do with him? Would he embarrass them in front of the world by complaining that they’re disrespectful to him?

Would the Opening Ceremony celebrate the diversity of the United States? Would it be forced to go through a screening process by the Project 2025 yahoos that eliminates anything varying from the right-wing narrative? Could conservative athletes feel free to carry Confederate flags into the L.A. Coliseum?

Would Trump, if he’s not given the deference he believes he’s entitled to, even suggest canceling the Games or blocking federal funds to help defray some of the costs for Los Angeles, a place that isn’t likely to vote for him in 2024?

All of that stuff sounds crazy. But again, we’re talking about a guy who claims his opponent used AI to conjure images of people showing up at a rally that was broadcast live.

Right now, the United States, France and the rest of the world are basking in the afterglow of a successful Olympics. It obviously won’t last forever, but it’s nice while it’s here.

What should scare us is feeling the way the world felt on August 17, 1936, the day after Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Olympics to celebrate his Nazi regime. When Jewish athletes were blocked from participating by countries besides Germany for fear on not offending the host.

How we feel on July 31, 2028 will depend a lot on what we do on November 5, 2024. It’s far from the most important reason to consider our choices carefully.

But today does feel good – and that’s a powerful thing.

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THE PLAYBOOK

We know what’s coming.

It’s happened so many times before. To George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton and Al Gore. John Kerry and Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

The crap machine is cranking up.

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She’s shrill. She laughs weirdly. She’s bossy. She wears sneakers.

She’s not that smart. She didn’t go to an Ivy League school. She went to an HBCU. She was an affirmative action admission to law school. Can you say “DEI” or “woke”?

She’s from California, a failed state. She’s from San Francisco, a radical city with lots of homeless people. She lives in Los Angeles with her entertainment industry lawyer husband. She’s beholden to Hollywood – the George Clooneys and Susan Sarandons.

She’s not really American. Where’s her birth certificate? Isn’t she really Indian? Isn’t she really Jamaican? Isn’t she really Canadian – she lived there for awhile? 

She’s not a real Christian. She’s Hindu, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Zoroastrian, or atheist, or practices voodoo. The Bible catches fire when she’s near it.

She’s not really Black. She just uses that identity for political gain. She’s mostly Indian. There are white people in her family history – maybe even some who owned slaves. She married a white guy – a white girl wannabe.

She’s not really Asian. She might claim that, but is India really part of Asia? Is her loyalty really to the curry eaters? Is she cozy with the Chinese – they’re Asian too?

She’s a Black elitist. She belongs to those secretive Black sororities with their cult rituals. She only hires Black people for jobs. She has a chip on her shoulder.

She’s soft on crime. She opposes the death penalty. She lets drug offenders off. Her prosecution record stinks. She talks tough but is really a bleeding heart liberal. 

She’s showy tough on Black criminals. She’s part of the over-incarceration of Black men. Didn’t that noted humanitarian, Tulsi Gabbard, say so? She’s not in tune with hip-hoppers and rappers.

She’s both soft on crime and tough on criminals at the same time.

She lives in the same area code as noted Socialists. She’s beholden to Beyonce. She lives in the same state that Charles Manson did.

There’s a caravan of 90,000 migrants waiting in Guatemala for her to win. They might not wait – maybe they’re on their way, monitoring the latest news with their highly sophisticated migrant communications system. She’s building air-conditioned villas with swimming pools and free iPhones for migrants in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Pontiac, Pewaukee and Peachtree City. 

There will be taco trucks on every corner.

She’s no match for Putin. She’s no match for Xi. Kim Jong-Il doesn’t write her love letters. The Europeans and the Japanese and the South Koreans are going to roll over her. 

She’s not a friend of Israel. She’s not a friend of the Palestinians. She is a friend of Iran.

She never served. She’s got no military history. She wants to weaken our armed forces. Our servicemen will quit en masse. She’s never undergone the kind of rigorous military physical that reveals bone spurs in her feet.

She hates America. She said so – see this grainy clip of which there’s not the least bit suspicion of alteration or manipulation. She’d rather be in India. In Africa. In Jamaica. In the south of France.

She manipulated the process to get the nomination. She cruelly backstabbed poor Brandon…, er, Joe Biden, out of the race. What a terrible thing to do to this wonderful mentor! Joe Biden was the salt of the earth compared to her.

She’s not qualified to be President. She’s too smart for her own good. She’s not that pretty. She’s a shrew. She’s a slut. She’s a puppet. We need a special prosecutor or a House hearing to look into every aspect of her life.

What kind of name is Kamala? Shouldn’t it be pronounced Kah-mah’-lah? That’s how we’re going to say it for the next 100 or so days.

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I’ve just scratched the surface of what’s coming for Kamala Harris and whoever her running mate is (there will be a whole other set of canards and exaggerations for her or him!)

Here’s the three things to know:

One, she is eminently qualified to succeed Joe Biden. She is fully prepared to unify the country and move us forward to the middle of this already crazy century.

Two, she’s not Donald Trump. She’s probably ticked off when her name is in the same sentence with Donald Trump. She’s not a sexual abuser, a grifter, a compulsive liar, a selfish jerk, a convicted felon, an insurrectionist or a traitor.

Three, she’s a tough person. She knows what’s coming. She’s ready. 

We need to be, too.

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THE LAST QUESTION

Here is the final question (from the New York Times transcript) in George Stephanopolous’ interview of President Biden that aired on ABC last night:

“And if you stay in, and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?”

And here’s is the first sentence of Biden’s answer:

“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not the right answer.

Biden should have stolen the words attributed to NASA flight director Gene Kranz in the movie “Apollo 13”: “Failure is not an option.”

That would have assured shaky Democrats, including me, that the president understands the stakes of the 2024 election – and why we are concerned about his debate performance last week.

Let’s be clear about what all Democrats and many patriotic Republicans believe: Donald Trump is the end of American democracy if he wins the election in 122 days. It’s not a question of whether he should be defeated – this isn’t Mitt Romney in 2012. It’s a question of he MUST be defeated. 

And what the president and his loyalists need to understand is that little else matters.

But one of those things is what’s driving this conversation. The fact that those who aren’t as steadfast in their commitment to defeating Trump – young people who don’t completely grasp the stakes and older voters more concerned about issues like the economy – have a tough time believing the best alternative is someone who reminds them of their aging parent or grandparent.

Biden does that every time he listens to a question with that slackjaw expression. 

I understand why this is hard for the president.

He is a man who believes in merit. It’s how he was raised. It’s why people think of him as decent and honest.

Biden believes his record warrants reelection. In my mind – and that of virtually all Democrats –  he’s right. 

He has turned the economy around – employment has hovered at 4% or below for a long time, and the jump to 4.1% reported yesterday is partly due to the fact that more people feel confident to look for a job. An advanced recovery is still creating 200,000 jobs a month – that’s a phenomenal number this far along.

If you try to drive anywhere this summer, you’re probably frustrated by some highway construction project. But that tells you two things: one, people are confident enough about their finances that they feel comfortable taking trips and, two, Biden delivered on the promise to rebuild our infrastructure.

Biden has also reestablished American leadership in the world. He’s been a key factor in Ukraine holding off Russia and in forging new alliances with Japan, South Korea and other Pacific nations. Europe and east Asia are shaking about the possibility that Trump will come back and continue cozying up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Il. 

It’s just that merit won’t work in 2024.

The Republican Party is all-in on a would-be dictator. A compulsive liar and a self-centered brat. And unlike Great Britain, whose voters don’t have propaganda networks like Fox and Newsmax to tell them not to believe their lying eyes, Americans on the right have no sense of the truth about Trump. 

It must feel like betrayal to Biden and those still loyal to him. 

They canceled subscriptions to The New York Times when it called for Biden to drop out, wondering why a doddering Trump isn’t held to the same standard. They’ve lashed out at the Democratic elected officials who have suggested Biden reconsider. They wonder – as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did is his always excellent blog – why you pander to the least committed voters, who jump ship at the sign of danger.

The thing is that people worry that the ship they’re on is the Titanic – and they want to stop it from hitting the iceberg. That iceberg is the end of the American experiment in democracy. 

And if you think that’s overly dramatic, consider the presidential immunity decision of the Supreme Court. As well the Republican Project 2025 blueprint that even Trump is trying to back away from because of actress Taraji P. Henson’s brilliant recommendation that people actually read its totalitarian designs.

President Biden might have been able to allay the concerns of those terrified after the June 27 debate. He could have said he understood why supporters were upset and that he had given some thought to their worry. He could have said he was open to hearing an argument that he shouldn’t run from Democratic leaders. He could have said he would take whatever medical and cognitive tests were needed to make people feel better.

He didn’t.

He believes he merely had a bad night. He had a cold. Trump was distracting him (that was kind of a lie, the camera showed Trump being quiet when Biden answered questions). He was exhausted from traveling overseas.

Again, I understand how hard this is for Joe Biden and his loyalists. He’s a good man and a great President. He believes he deserves a second term. If he was the Joe Biden of 2020, he’d be right.

But he’s 81 – he’ll be 82 just 15 days after the election – and would be 86 if he makes it to the end of a second term. (And yes, Trump isn’t that much younger.) Americans who worry if he’s up to it are not Nervous Nellies – they’re rightly concerned.

Joe Biden didn’t do anything to change that last night.

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WARNING FLAGS

Of course you didn’t watch coverage of yesterday’s British parliamentary election.

Why would you? You were celebrating the day 248 years ago when, as Archie Bunker said, “we threw those people out of here.”

And, given the bleak U.S. election picture since last week’s debate, a break from democracy on the brink is understandable. (Note: I can’t tell you how happy I am using bleak, break and brink in the same sentence.)

But I watched the BBC’s coverage of the returns for three reasons – one of which is not that I’m scouting places to live in the event the unthinkable happens in November.

One is that BBC election coverage is really entertaining. Great graphics, interesting commentary. The vote count has the drama of the constituency announcement – once ALL the votes are counted, the candidates go on stage and an official reads the results. The candidates include everybody, including people such as the guy from the Monster Raving Loony party.

And we in America have an advantage – we can watch at reasonable hours while the British have to stay up all night.

Second is the fact that I just came back from a wonderful trip to London (Let’s Go Mets!) with my family. Not only did we hang in the central city, we went out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge and to outskirt places west and south of Piccadilly Circus. So I wanted to see how the good people I met last month voted.

The third reason is more pragmatic.

Months before the 2016 presidential election, the British people voted on a binding referendum to determine if the country would stay a part of the European Union. It was a dumb move by the then-and-not-about-to-last-much-longer Conservative prime minister David Cameron, compounded by the fact the vote only needed a simple majority for approval.

The vote was 52% out, 48% stay. The results crossed party lines and reflected a well orchestrated scare and isolationism campaign. 

It was a precursor of what would happen in the United States on November 8. It should have been a warning to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

So should last night.

Yes, Labour – a party more aligned with U.S. Democrats – emerged with a massive majority, meaning that leader Keir Starmer has become prime minister. 

But Labour, thrashed in the 2019 election, had a strong tailwind. The Conservatives had been in power since 2010 and through their bungling gone through five prime ministers. One of them was Boris Johnson, who it would be understandable to think was part of the Monster Raving Loony party.

The now-former PM, Rishi Sunak, is ostentatiously wealthy and not particularly adept at campaigning – in particular, leaving a D-Day 80th anniversary commemoration for a political event.

Labour, still a major party in the country, won. It has a 174-seat majority – that’s like the Democrats or Republicans having more than 63% of the seats in the House or Senate.

Why should the U.S. Democrats be concerned?

There are two issues in the U.K. that have the same footprint on this side of the Atlantic.

One is immigration. A thing I noticed on this, my third trip to London, is how diverse the population has become over the past 40 years. I saw more hijabs than I see in New York. I heard more different languages on the Underground.

The benefit is a more vibrant city. The food is not nearly as terrible as it was in the 1980s. There are young people out well into the night – in the ’80s, the streets were deserted after 10 p.m.

But as in this country, not everybody in Britain is enamored with this. A lot of muttering about “not having a country anymore.”

That’s why there was Brexit. And among the leaders of that movement was Nigel Farage, a Donald Trump wannabe who doesn’t have Trump’s advantage of a right-wing sycophant mediascape; there’s no Fox News in the U.K.

Farage decided to get behind something called the Reform Party, whose idea of reform is actually retreating to the Britain of the past. MBGA doesn’t really work.

The Conservatives were gutted by Reform. Their seats went to Labour, but about 4 million of their votes – perhaps enough to swing the election – went to Reform. Farage won his seat, as did only three other Reform candidates. 

It’s the raw numbers that are scary. You could probably still say Britain moved to the left if you add Labor, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

But Farage is just getting started. He’ll be in a good position to help his buddy Trump this summer and fall by trying to foul up the works in Parliament. And he’s got a soapbox for his bigotry and xenophobia.

The other concern for American democrats (and Democrats) is Gaza.

Independent candidates opposed to Labour’s somewhat equivocal stance on Israeli action in Gaza stole some votes. One party leader expected to be part of the Sturmer government lost his constituency because of defections from Muslim voters in the district.

Gaza is a thorny situation for the U.S. and its allies. This country has always supported – correctly – Israel’s right to exist. It took Harry Truman just 11 minutes to recognize the nation when it came into being in 1948. But Israel’s reaction to the October 7 terrorism of Hamas has provoked a humanitarian crisis that doesn’t just trouble Muslims.

The idea that Palestinians deserve some sort of entity of their own is not unreasonable. Most people in this country – including many if not most American Jews – believe the solution to this long-standing problem is the two-nation one that gives Palestinians a country of some kind and Israel iron-clad security from terrorists.

The people who don’t want that are Hamas and the supporters of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and neither side seems to care what price is paid to affirm their stance. 

There’s a certain irony in the fact that there’s almost a tacit alliance between two sides that are shooting each other. If I was wearing the tin foil hat right-wing America seems to embrace, I could imagine a coalition between Netanyahu, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Vladimir Putin and Trump to make life miserable for Joe Biden all the way to November 5.

The results showing weakness in Labour’s Muslim vote is a warning to Biden or whatever Democrat replaces him if he drops out. The Gaza crisis needs to be solved. Quickly. Both because it’s the moral thing to do and, if Trump wins, there will be no reason for it to stop.

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GOING THERE

 A lot of the support for Donald Trump comes from so-called Christian Nationalists, people who believe the United States of America was meant to be a nation rooted solely in Christianity.

These are people who clearly haven’t read an American history book or seen “Hamilton.” But let’s not go there for now.

I’m not a religious person. I’m not sure I believe in God. Like most other Italian-Americans, I was baptized in the Roman Catholic church. Like many other Italian-Americans, I stopped thinking of myself as Catholic a long time ago.

Again, let’s not go there for now.

From my perspective, there are two basic things wrong with the idea of the U.S. as Christian. 

One is that so many Americans aren’t. There are Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, people who believe in multiple gods and people who don’t believe in a god at all. They belong here too. But let’s not go there now, either.

Second is that, despite what these Christian nationalists believe, the United States is already imbued with Christian values.

It was Jesus who told the story of the Good Samaritan. How a Jewish man beaten by highwaymen was ignored by two fellow Jews. But a Samaritan, from a splinter group at odds with mainstream Judaism, took the man to an inn and paid for his care.

“Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?,” Jesus asked. “He who showed mercy on him. Go and do likewise.”

Until now, the United States has prided itself on being a good Samaritan. We helped fight Nazism and Japanese fascism in World War II. We see starving people in other nations and send food and clothing. After this week’s horrific hurricane in the southern Caribbean, you can bet there will be notable American efforts to provide aid to those in need in Jamaica, Grenada, Mexico and wherever else it’s needed.

What’s warped about the so-called Christian Nationalism is that it seems antipathetic to being a good neighbor. That’s best displayed in the nonsense about immigration.

Yes, it is a problem that so many people feel compelled to cross our border illegally. But almost all of them are doing so out of fear and desperation. The Christian thing to do would be to solve this – find a way to look at mothers and their hungry children as humans and not terrorists.

The so-called Christian Nationalist solution is internment camps, family separation and mass deportation. In what way does that show the mercy Jesus sought for those in need?

But let’s not go there now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Jewish values.

According to the Torah, Moses never made it to Canaan, the Promised Land. But he kept striving to get there. He led the Jews out of Egypt, distributed God’s rules of civil conduct and put down any effort to deviate from following God’s leadership.

The U.S. Constitution speaks of establishing a “more perfect union.” That is what our goal should always be. It’s not clear that we will ever achieve it. It doesn’t matter. Just trying to get to that version of the promised land is noble in itself.

And like Moses, this country is a leader. We set the bar for the ideas of freedom and democracy. George Washington could have decided he wanted to be a king – he chose otherwise. He wanted to be a citizen, like the rest of us.

After Monday’s Supreme Court decision, Donald Trump is no longer like the rest of us. But let’s not go there for now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Muslim values.

Muslims don’t believe there is some old guy with a white beard named God sitting on a throne in heaven. They believe God is one with everyone and everything, that the woman walking the dog that just peed on my mailbox is a representation of God – as is the dog, the mailbox and the pee.

That sentiment is echoed in our national and state parks. The beauty of Joshua Tree and the majesty of Niagara Falls. It’s echoed in our great cities, like my hometown of New York. 

It’s echoed in the guy selling shark jerky on a Kauai roadside or the woman tending to a nursing mother on Navajo land.

We embody Islam when we appreciate the world we have and try to make it better.

These spirits of so many different beliefs make the United States of America the greatest nation on earth.

Or they did. All that is at risk now. If we succumb to Trumpism, we lose what makes us special, what makes us wonderful. We lose the pride we should have when we’ve corrected our mistakes – working to end slavery, Jim Crow, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and more – while at the same time realizing that the promised land of being better is still further away. 

And we quash the fringe benefit of all this: becoming the innovative nation that invented the telegraph, microchips, jazz and baseball.

We are Christian – and Jewish and Muslim and other religions and none at all. Christian Nationalism – in the incongruous form of a bloated adulterer, thief, sexual predator and false god –  is not what America ever was or ever should be.

Let’s not go there. Ever.

Happy Independence Day!

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IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS

For the past three nights, I’ve watched my TV set with jitters.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I worried that my resurgent Mets would run afoul of the Yankees. I hate watching the Mets lose to the Yankees as much as I hate any scenario in sports – or anything else for that matter.

I needn’t have worried. The Mets bludgeoned the Yankees both nights. Mr. Met’s legions triumphed over the guys with the 27-rings shirts and the bandwagoners in pinstripe shirts with the name on the back.

So I hoped to go 3-for-3 last night watching the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump. Sure, I had the same sense of dread as the other two nights. But they turned out OK, so maybe the debate would too.

Uh, no. 

You could tell when he walked onto the stage that it was going to be bad. He looked like a befuddled old man trying to find a seat on a park bench. His gait was halting. His mouth formed a circle like the one in Munch’s “The Scream.”

He painfully reminded me of my father’s final years, when a vigorous, strong man was diminished.

I would trade both those Met wins for Biden holding his own. Alas, I can’t.

Since then, I’ve had three thoughts that, even though you didn’t ask, I’m going to share.

ONE: Within five minutes of the debate’s end, I sent a campaign contribution to the Biden-Harris campaign.

I wasn’t completely sure how I felt in the moment. But like many other Democrats, I think of Joe Biden as a hero. He took on Trump at a perilous moment in 2020 and, despite the mewling of Trump and his sycophants, beat him like a drum.

And Biden has delivered a remarkable presidency. Which leads to…

TWO: History has its eyes on you, as they sing in “Hamilton.” 

Much was made of the fact that Biden kept referring to the presidential historians who rate Trump the worst president ever. And, OK, maybe he shouldn’t have dwelled on that.

But in 2074, when late-century historians evaluate Biden’s presidency, they’ll see his legislative accomplishments, his focus on economic fairness, the quality of his staff, and the humanity and decency that comes naturally to him. And they’ll put him in the pantheon of greats – in the same line as Washington, Lincoln and FDR.

Unless…

THREE: History is written by the winners. If historians in 2074 have to be certified by the Stephen K. Bannon School of Historical Revision and Correction, Biden won’t come out so well. 

The 388 million Americans of that time will hear how Biden allowed 6 billion people to illegally cross the border. Because all 7 billion of them got put on Social Security and Medicare, those programs had to be canceled. And the 8 billion terrorists who came into the country were only foiled from their nefarious plans by the wisdom of Tsar Donald I.

Even among those remaining who remember democracy in the United States, they will blame Biden for allowing Trump to get back into the White House.

How Biden looked and sounded last night are one thing. It’s what he failed to do and mention that have me shaken. The effort to ban IVF and birth control. The threat to LGBTQ rights, including the same-sex marriages of people such as my daughter and her wife. The 2025 Project, a playbook for totalitarianism.

It might have been OK if Biden just had one bad night – as many Democratic leaders are calling it – against Nikki Haley or Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney. It’s another to have it against Donald Trump.

We’d be screwed if the soldiers invading Guadalcanal in 1942 and Normandy in 1944 had a bad day. That’s how you have to look at what happened with the president last night.

I don’t know how this is all going to play out. How would the Democrats nominate another candidate?Who would they nominate? Would they pick the next in line, an apparently very unpopular Kamala Harris, or come up with a fusion ticket of Democrats and Never Trump Republicans.

I’m as scared as you are. I think I’d feel better if Joe Biden came to the realization that people who are fond of him feel the same way.

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