Toilet bowl effect

In 1914, two years before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, a collection of articles by the esteemed Louis D. Brandeis was published under the title, Other People’s Money — And How the Bankers Use It. It was a sensation.

In 1991, after a successful run on Broadway, “Other People’s Money,” a play by Jerry Sterner, became a movie featuring Danny DeVito as a ruthless liquidator of moribund businesses.

In a monologue that has since acquired almost a cult following, DeVito’s character
explains to the stockholders why it would be foolhardy to try to keep their company in business when new technology was going to make it obsolete.

This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here.

It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead, all right. We're just not broke. And do you know the surest way to go broke?

Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market.

Down the tubes. Slow but sure.

You know, at one time there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.

Now, how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?

You invested in a business, and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.

Last week I was complaining to a friend about a comment I’d heard on NPR to the effect that, in the recent Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton had won “the core constituency of the Democratic Party” by taking more of the white, non-college-educated, working class vote than had Obama. I just didn’t see it.

Because I don’t think you can define the “core constituency” of the Democratic Party that way any longer, any more than you can claim the Republican Party base is still mostly made up of rich people.

Whoever Hillary Clinton won in Pennsylvania, the total vote for her was less than half what the most conservative estimates had projected, suggesting that the “white, working class, non-college-educated” voter either is not a certain voter for Hillary or that the proportion of such voters has shrunk — or perhaps both.

“It’s called the toilet bowl effect,” said my friend, going on to illustrate: When a toilet is flushed, a huge volume of water descends into the bowl and then whirls in an ever-shrinking vortex until it’s gone.

Hillary Clinton appears to be capturing an increasing share of a declining constituency, and Democrats would be foolish to take seriously her effort to persuade us that because she can win the “Archie Bunker” vote she must be given the nomination.

Pish and tosh, I say.

A similarly deluded member of the punditocracy reminded us over the weekend that ever since the 1960s (and its civil rights legislation) the only Democrats to win the presidency were from Southern states and he suggested that may still be true.

I’ve got news for him: The South has gone north, so to speak.

I was born and raised to the age of 12 in the South; I have lived in New York, Ohio, and California since then, and now that I am back, I am here to tell you: This is not your father’s Old South.

My experience qualifies me to speak with some authority about Yankee directness and California subtlety; about brazenly liberal folks in San Francisco but not so in some of its suburbs; about racism in New York, in Ohio and in California while better relations now exist between black and white folks in Texas.

And I can state unequivocally that one of the best things about the South, what I think of as the “dear hearts and gentle people factor” hasn’t gone north; it’s still very much here, thank you.

So, just as the Democratic Party can take heart that the “white, less-college-educated, working class” voter has, in the last 50 years, become less white and more educated; that the “working class” of decades ago have risen in skills and expectations; they will be well advised not to focus a disproportionate share of their money and energies trying to capture an increasing share of what has become a shrinking market.

Alice in Wonderland

I have the urge to scream when I hear commentators and political experts, who should know better, assert that Clinton and Obama “need to stop bickering,” that “they” are hurting the party. Comments like these don’t square with the reality as I’ve come to know it.

The Clintons are the ones doing the damage here. They have been very successful at framing the race, which isn’t hard to do if you just keep on the attack. Last week they absurdly accused Obama of “playing the race card” after Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks about his race.

It’s Alice in Wonderland time.

The only thing Obama has done to Clinton is to aggravate the heck out of her by (a) not engaging at her street-fight level, and (b) winning more states, more delegates, and more votes.

But Hillary Clinton claims that she has proven she is the most likely winner against John McCain because she won “all the big states” in the Democratic primaries.

It’s faulty reasoning; to accept this you have to believe that California, New York, Ohio and the rest of the big blue states (Obama won Illinois) would automatically fall to the Republicans in an Obama-McCain match-up. Hard argument to make.

If Obama would only cede to Clinton the race he is winning — one in which she cannot now legitimately overtake him — all would be peaceful. Like a spoiled child, she seems determined to nag, browbeat, whine and stubbornly hold on until everyone else is exhausted and just gives in.

Some of those same misguided pundits and politicians suggest that the perfect solution is to put these two on the same ticket. I don’t think so.

Clinton has run a mean, dishonest, cynical campaign. The idea of both running together is idealistic to a fault, in my opinion. And not a good idea politically.

Nonetheless, the Clintons would have you believe they would offer Obama the vice-presidential spot, but if you trust a word they are saying you aren’t learning from history. The lying and cheating they’ve engaged in has completely alienated me, of all people.

But just for the sake of argument, imagine a Clinton/Obama ticket: That would present a near certainty that Mrs. Clinton’s high negatives throughout the country would (a) draw out more Republican voters and (b) cause not just a few Obama folks to just stay home — precisely because of the negative campaign she has run against him.

For that matter, can you imagine her choosing as VP someone who would outshine her? Or, for that matter, someone to whom she owes no favor?

Now imagine Obama/Clinton: If Hillary were the VP candidate, because of those high negatives, she would drag down the vote in the states Obama could win without her. The result would be losing many down-ballot races, so that even were Obama/Clinton to win it might well cost the Democrats important congressional seats.

Anyway, why would the guy who is in first place accept second place? Especially knowing that he would end up being part of a threesome, outnumbered by Clintons?

Finally, have you thought through what another four or eight years of Clintons in the White House would be like for the country?

I think she figures that she will by God be the nominee and devil take the hindmost; if that gives the election to McCain — who is better qualified anyway, according to her — then, so what? He likely would serve only one term and then she’ll be baa-ack!

People in the know have almost to a person acknowledged that in fact the candidates’ positions are so close on matters of substance, with differences primarily in how they would implement this or that idea, that it really has come down to which style of leader we want.

My own personal take on the choice is this:

Do we want someone who will tell us what to do, or someone who will persuade us to do it? Do we want secrecy, or transparency? Do we want calculation and triangulation, or is it time to play it straight?

And, finally, do we want another four or more years of drama with all the same old players, or do we want a fresh start?

What You See . . .

This may come as a shock to a reader or two, but the season is upon us and beginning in just two months voters will participate in what may be the most important decision Americans have had to make in a lifetime: Who can best lead our country out of this mess?

The next President of the United States will be presented with what I liken to a pile of pick-up-sticks, each with its own label:

Iraq. Iran. Israel. Pakistan. The economy. Mortgage crisis. Health care. Medicare. SCHIP. Foreign policy. Education. Taxes. Drugs. Crime. Trade. Energy. Immigration. Environment. Social Security.

And those are just the ones we can see from here.

Where to begin? Which one to try to extract first from the stack — ever so carefully, so as not to collapse the whole?

Democratic and Republican candidates for President have been on the road for what seems years (well, in one or two cases I guess that is true) in search of support among various constituencies north, south, east and west, and interest groups however miniscule, and the question “Did you watch the debate?” is most often answered, “Which one?”

We haven’t seen a lot of the candidates here in Texas, of course, because Texas doesn’t get to vote in a primary until next March, by which time it may be all over. Or so the pundits tell us. Personally, I dearly hope not.

What I’d give for the old days of “brokered” conventions! Where the party faithful noisily got together in some welcoming city and listened for several days as an array of Presidential hopefuls and their supporters sought their votes; back when they engaged in debate, argument, negotiations and sometimes even arm-twisting to arrive at a chosen candidate for President!

Well, we have what we have, and we have to deal with it.

And first of all we have to ignore the pundits, who do a public disservice in declaring the “inevitability” of one candidate or another. I can’t quarrel with publishing the results of legitimate polling — that’s just news (and may in fact serve as a call to work harder for some candidates!). But the folks who tell us the numbers need to stop there and let us decide what to make of them.

We have a responsibility, with so little time left (at least a good chunk of which will be pretty much consumed by the holidays), to pay as close attention from now on to what the candidates are saying and doing as if our lives depended on the outcome, which may be the case.

For starters, take the Democratic “front-runner” — please!

Now I suppose if I weren’t worried about this I’d love the idea of inevitability, but I do have some concerns and I am worried (though this may be surprising to some): I don’t see what I believe America needs, and I do see what I believe America most assuredly does not need.

America needs a leader who is strong, yes, but you could say that anyone who can endure the slings and arrows and the grueling trek of an almost two-year presidential campaign just about qualifies.

And a lot of candidates talk about the importance of having one kind of “experience” or another, but the truth is there is no experience that in itself can prepare you for the singular position of world leader. It’s the people around the President to whom we should pay attention, for there you see what you are likely to get. As we ought to know by now.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton’s so-called “strength and experience” is mostly a myth. The former consists of committee appointments she sought out when she came to the Senate, some legislative moves cynically calculated to make her look tough and war-like, and an occasional war-like statement on the stump.

Her “experience” includes voting in the Senate (following President Bush) to ban flag burning and in favor of bankruptcy legislation the credit companies loved, not to mention in favor of allowing Bush to take us to war in Iraq and for legislation that might allow him to take us to war in Iran, and oh yes, before that living in the White House when her husband was President.

And of course there was the disastrous health care plan, put together in secret meetings with unidentified advisers (remind you of anyone?), that she couldn’t get through Congress despite having the full force of the White House at her disposal. So we take all we learn from listening and watching and then try to envision the kind of presidency we’d have. And here’s my problem:

I don't see a single decision being made without calculation as to reelection, and I don't see the political climate getting any better. Most troubling, I see a continuation of the kind of outright secrecy and dissembling that we've lived with throughout the current administration's tenure.

Now I don’t offer this as a comprehensive evaluation of this candidate; I just wanted to show the reader why it may be useful to pay really, really close attention to what is being said and done by those who want us to trust them with our country and our world.

I know that a lot of women, regardless of party, are supporting Hillary because they understandably are thrilled at the prospect of a woman president (as I would be, were it the right one). The perfect irony is that if she weren’t the wife of Bill Clinton she would be practically unknown.