The Morning After

The mixed results from yesterday’s election resist instant analysis, but some things seem pretty clear. This post will probably strike many as being too positive—the election was certainly not the blue wave that we hoped for—but today I feel that the positive news is less known and understood than the many dangers, including Trump’s possible reelection, that we still face.

Trump is less powerful today than he was yesterday. This is the most important measurement of what happened yesterday.

He lost one branch of Congress, which means he will actually have to suffer some kind of oversight. Dennis Nunes and the other fawning, ring-kissing toadies in the GOP House will be replaced in January by smart, not-overly-civilized, partisan brawlers like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler. The Republicans in Congress will no longer be able to avoid voting on issues that most voters actually care about.

Some of the coalition that won for Trump in 2016 went back under Democratic control. The upper Midwest (big Democratic wins in Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa) and Pennsylvania, which were critical to his 2016 victory, broke away from him. Suburban women really did turn against him, as predicted, and the Democrats made real gains among independents who gambled on Trump two years ago. Two-thirds of those confounding “swing” districts (districts that voted for Obama and Trump) returned to the Democratic fold. The Democrats won the vast majority of the 37 “split” districts that voted for a different party for President than for Congress. Virginia and Nevada seem much more blue today.

Taking back the House was a big deal. Democrats had to overcome a built-in, 7% gerrymandered advantage for the GOP nationwide to pull this off. That is insanely difficult. It looks as if the Democrats will win with a comfortable margin, too, having won about 35 additional seats. The Democrats will assume leadership over all House committees and the subpoena power that comes with it.

It would have taken a miracle for the Democrats to take back the Senate. That is not a rationalization, it’s just a fact. The Democrats faced the worst Senate roadmap imaginable: they had to defend 26 seats in a single election, and ten of those were in states won by Trump in 2016. The Senate has an even worse built-in advantage for Republicans than the House because a lightly populated rural states (aka Republican strongholds) get just as many Senators as blue states like California, which includes 37 million people. (Who are, by the way, just as American as North Dakotans. The Trumpists I know talk about the people who inhabit the East and West Coast as if they were a plague of locusts instead of citizens. “Thank god the Californians don’t run this country,” they say, when what they are actually saying is “Thank god the majority of Americans don’t run this show.” The Senate continues to solidify its position as America’s single biggest roadblock to progress.) And despite some brutal, heart-breaking losses, Democrats won Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia, which went for Trump in 2016. (FYI, the Senate roadmap in 2020 will be almost equally as bad for the GOP, which is important.)

Yesterday was oh-so-close to being a legitimate blue wave. I agree that the only thing that really counts in politics is whether you win or not, so this is definitely a blatant rationalization, but there were a slew of excruciatingly close races in Republican-controlled states in which the Dems came up short by just a few thousand votes. Cruz beat O’Rourke in Texas by 1.7%. Scott is beating Nelson in Florida by .4%. McSally is leading Sinema in Arizona by .9%. Kemp leads Abrams in Georgia by 1.6%. Gillum lost to DeSantis in Florida by .6%. These were losses that have the potential to crush Democratic souls, if only for their impact on redistricting after the 2020 census, but you can’t deny that there is a Democratic Party in Texas (and two new Democratic House members) this morning thanks to Beto O’Rourke.

American government looks more like America today—thanks to women. Women were the primary drivers of the Democratic takeover of the House yesterday. If you think that there needs to be less testosterone in American politics, yesterday represented progress. They started working on this the day after Trump was elected, and they continue to lead the resistance, and to lead it effectively. Women ran for office at record levels yesterday—the vast majority of them Democratic—and many won. In January there will be 100 women in the House for the first time. Two Muslim Democratic women and two Native American Democratic women were elected. Kansas elected its first woman governor. Four Democratic women elected to the House in Pennsylvania. Texas elected its first two Latinas to the House. And Colorado elected its first gay governor yesterday.

The Democrats are Dems were impressively disciplined in this election cycle. Instead of taking Trump’s bait on immigration, they focused on health care, which is not only the most important issue to Americans but also the issue on which the Republicans have literally no story as well as a horrific track record.

The way forward for the Democrats is to embrace progressivism. It’s an undebatable fact that the blue wave didn’t materialize in large part because Republicans ran up HUGE majorities in rural districts that couldn’t be overcome. And it’s true that the brilliant races run by killer progressive candidates like O’Rourke and Adams failed. But their progressivism made those races close, built up progressive campaign infrastructures in red states that will pay off further up the road, improved the Democratic bench, and, most importantly, forced the Democratic Party to actually stand for something in red states instead of continuing the truly dismal strategy of trying to camouflage themselves as something they are obviously not.

A lot of the GOP bad guys on the “most-wanted list” are out of a job today. Kris Kobach, whose only talent is keeping people from voting and who would have finished the destruction of Kansas begun by Sam Brownback, is headed to Fox News. Dean Heller in Nevada wrapped himself up in Trump’s robes but gave the Dems a pickup in the Senate. Scott Walker, the biggest union buster in recent history, was finally toppled in Wisconsin. Bruce Rauner, who wrecked Illinois’ credit rating, went down in flames. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who Kevin McCarthy thinks is on the Russian payroll, lost in California. A real pleasant shocker was the defeat in Texas of Pete Sessions, the incredibly powerful chairman of the House Rules Committee. Virginia Congressman Dave Brat, who complained last year that women voters were getting up in his grille, lost—to a woman, of course. Jason Lewis in Minnesota, another one of those right-wing talk-radio hosts, and who once said that single women are “ignorant of the important things in life” and actually complained about not being able to call women “sluts” was ousted by a female Democrat. Claudia Tenney in New York, who claimed that most mass shooters were Democrats, went down. Kim Davis, that county clerk in Kentucky who refused to grant gays marriage licenses, is looking for new opportunities this morning.

The pollsters were pretty accurate. Most predicted the Democratic takeover of the House and the continued GOP control of the Senate and very close gubernatorial races across the country.

The “booming” economy is mythic. The exit polling showed that 74% of the voters felt good about the economy, so most analysts are interpreting the Democratic gains as showing that a robust economy may not be enough to get Trump re-elected. I think that there is truth in this, but I also think that the pundits and the press are ignoring the reality that most Americans don’t feel that they are anywhere near out of the woods economically and don’t appreciate the GOP tax cut for the ultra-rich folks.

The Democrats don’t have to attack Trump directly to beat him in 2020. No Democrat will do a better job of inspiring voters who still care about things like morality, human decency, and leadership to turn against Trump than Trump himself. He will do that job for us. Trump will go down in history as the greatest progressive organizer since FDR. Debating policy, facts, morality, the Constitution, and the law with Trump is a complete waste of time. Fact checking and counting his lies will never defeat Trump.

The Democrats can use the House to define their message for 2020. I hope that Nancy Pelosi will be handing over the reins to a younger, more progressive Democrat before 2020 (supposedly there is such a deal), but the Democrats are lucky that they will have someone with her experience and negotiating savviness at the helm over the next year. The Democrats won’t get any legislation actually passed and signed off on by Trump over the next two years. I’ve heard many people today fantasizing about the amazing deals that could be made between Pelosi and Trump. This is laughingly delusional. Trump has shown repeatedly that his complete and total ignorance of both the legislative process and what is actually in any of the bills that have been debated or voted on since he became President makes him the worst dealmaker ever in the history of politics. As soon as the Republicans define their legislative goals, he attacks them on Twitter. As soon as his GOP Congressional leaders work a deal with the Democrats, he sabotages them. This will continue for the next two years. But the Democrats now have the opportunity to spend their first 100 days introducing a small number of big bills that actually outline a domestic program—for instance, shoring up the Affordable Care Act until 2020, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, protecting voters rights and eliminating voter suppression, and re-committing to the environment. These bills won’t get passed, but they will force Republicans to actually vote on them and to establish a voting record that can be used against them. The first priorities should be bringing those bills to the House floor for a vote and preparing—thoroughly, in order to be successful—for the investigations into the mind-boggling corruption of Trump’s family, team and cabinet. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler are just the right kind of committee chairman to run those investigations. (As I write this Trump is clearly moving end the Mueller investigation, so the Democrats may have to fill the huge void that will be left.)

You can see a successful Democratic coalition taking shape. That coalition (which will have enough critical mass to win in 2020 but will assuredly not be anything like insurmountable) will be made up of women, minorities, gays, young people, seniors who worry about health care, and upscale suburban whites who like tax cuts but who also support gun control and the environment. (The environment could be a much bigger issue for the Democrats, given that the South is being particularly impact by it. I thought it would be a much bigger issue in Florida.) The Democrats could keep the House, take advantage of a much better map to win the Senate, and win the White House in 2020. Yesterday didn’t make that ultimate dream less of a reality.

Trump can be reelected in 2020. People forget that Trump won because of 35,000 votes cast in five states. Several of those states went Democratic yesterday, so his reelection prospects, which are still all too real, got a little harder. But he still has a slim path to victory, and he will stop short of nothing—and I mean nothing—to win in 2020. This is a man who sent troops to fight an imaginary foe in order to win the midterms. We haven’t seen anything yet.

Losing the Senate means that the GOP will continue to pack the courts with right-wing judges. This  is another real, existential threat to the country because it is how the Trumpists could continue to run the country even if they lost Congress and the Presidency, and now they will have two more years to create a judiciary that will undo any legislation passed by a Democratic Congress and Presiden.

Medicaid expansion seems irreversible and unstoppable now. This is a big win for Americans, folks. Voters in the ultra-red states of Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska approved the expansion, and the voters of Maine now have a Democratic governor who will not veto the expansion they voted for. Something like 1.6 million more Americans will get affordable health insurance. The ACA changed the dialogue around health care, and now the Democrats can fully embrace “Medicare for all” and set the stage for a single-payer program.

Racism still works, but not everywhere. Trump’s campaigning for the midterms, which was conducted only in red, predominantly rural states, was an endless sewer stream of nothing but racism, and no one can now deny that the Republican Party is an out-in-the-open white supremacist party. So the biggest shock (even though by now it is no surprise) from yesterday’s results is how many Americans still vote support openly racist politicians, starting with our President. Steve King, who is an American Nazi, won reelection in Iowa. A Republican running for Congress in California who claims that the Holocaust never happened got 43,000 votes. A former leader of the American Nazi Party got 44,000 votes for Congress in Illinois. DeSantis ran a blatantly racist campaign in Florida and won. How else do you explain that a brilliant black candidate like Andrew Gillum lost in Florida, but that an incredibly bland, white candidate like Bill Nelson won in the same state? And the polls predicting solid margins for Gillum show that voters are still not telling the truth to pollsters when it comes to minority candidates.  But racism seems to have backfired with non-rural voters and in more urban/suburban states. Bill Schuette in Michigan, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Scott Wagner in PA all ran anti-immigrant ads and lost. Racist ads didn’t work against Antonio Delgado and Sharice David. Anti-immigration hardliners Lou Baretta in Pennsylvania, Chris Kobach in Kansas, and Virginia’s Corey Stewart all lost and lost big.

It was one step forward and one step back for voting rights. Florida voters (almost unbelievably, given that Gillum lost) voted to restore voting rights to 1.5 million ex-felons. That’s nine percent of the voting-age population in that state. This was a huge win for Democrats yesterday. Voting rights were expanded by voters in Maryland, Nevada, and Michigan, but similar measures were defeated in Arkansas and North Carolina. And the loss of the governorships in Florida, Texas and probably Georgia will mean voter suppression will continue in those critical states. Importantly, however, anti-gerrymandering initiatives that took away redistricting decisions from the state legislatures in favor of independent redistricting commissions passed in Colorado, Michigan, and Utah. And the Democrats won control of the state houses in New York, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Colorado—big wins in terms of redistricting for 2020. But the loss of the governorships in Florida, Ohio, Iowa and probably Georgia mean that the Democrats will not be able to undo gerrymandering in those key states.

Millenials and minorities didn’t give Democrats the lift that the early voting indicated they would. The phenomenal spikes in young-voter participation in early voting in the end just meant that younger people were smarter about when to vote. In the end, the percentage of yesterday’s vote represented by millennials was 13%, a modest increase over the 11% in the last midterms. As far as minority turnout goes, African American voting was up 1% over 2014 and Hispanics were up 4%. All increases, but the Democrats still need to work harder to win these groups to make their theoretical winning coalition a reality.

The Green Party may cost the Democrats the Senate seat in Arizona. I can’t even discuss this rationally or comment on it without unleashing an avalanche of profanity. But if you think willfully stupid, woefully misinformed, or astonishingly naïve voters only exist in the Republican Party, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

But the other big takeaway and growing realization is that the ballot may not be enough to remove Trump. Trump is not just a politician, he’s the leader of a movement that represents all the worst aspects of America, and his tribe is fanatically loyal and getting only more so. If we think of Trump only as a politician, we will never be free of him.

As Trump noted the night before the election, when asked about the possibility of the Democrats winning the House: “I don’t care. They can do whatever they want and I can do whatever I want.”

And he proved this morning, with his takeover of the Justice Department, that he is committed to not only obstructing justice but obliterating it.

The Night Before

On election night 2016 I left my office on W. 26th Street in Manhattan early and headed to the Javits Center. America was about to elect its first woman President, and I wanted to call my Mom from the official Clinton victory party. After standing in line for nearly two hours I realized that I wasn’t going to get into the building, so I took the subway uptown back to my apartment. As I watched the stunned, tear-streaked faces in the Javits Center on television over the next few hours, I thanked god that I was not trapped in that vast funeral parlor.

My oldest son had decided that summer to try to become an FBI agent. He had done all the interviews, taken the exams, solicited letters of recommendation, and completed his physical. At about 1 a.m., just when I had decided that I couldn’t possibly watch the election horror show for another second, I got a text from him: “The FBI offered me a job today.”

I called him and asked him what he was going to do. “I can’t take that job,” he said. “That would be like joining Trump’s Gestapo.” I told him to sleep on it—that maybe the FBI would need men like him more than ever over the next few years. He turned them down a few days later, and I was never so proud of him. I often think of him when I consider what Trump has done to the FBI in the interim.

These past two years leading up to tomorrow’s voting have seemed like an eternity. But we haven’t sat idly by. We started demonstrating—the worldwide Women’s March, which took place on Trump’s first day in office, was the largest political protest in history. We began organizing and launched 1,500 resistance groups based on the Indivisible model all across the country. Thousands of us, mostly women, decided to run for office. We began registering people to vote. We put such constant pressure on Republicans in Congress that forty of them were convinced to retire without a fight. We won some key interim elections, including a Senate seat from Alabama (!), thanks primarily to the votes of women. We waited patiently for Robert Mueller to gather his evidence and issue his findings and his indictments while we chafed at his silence and feared for his professional life. We didn’t resort to violence.

The Trumpists, on the other hand, have moved even more quickly than we feared they would. Immigrants from specific countries—countries that had done us no harm—were banned from America. Trump called racist murderers in Charlottesville “good people.” The FBI and the Justice Department were politicized. Immigrant families were ripped apart and concentration camps were built—and quickly filled—on the southern border. Trump stood before the world and said that the word of the two-bit dictator of Russia was more credible than all the U.S. intelligence agencies. One trillion dollars was added to the deficit overnight to give the ultra-rich a massive tax reduction. Congressional districts were gerrymandered in favor of the GOP and hundreds of conservative judges were appointed to the bench—there is no mystery about how the Republicans plan on continuing their tyranny of the minority. Republican-led state governments began planning months ago to suppress voting by minorities and young people tomorrow. The GOP came within one vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. Foreign allies were abandoned and insulted while our government cozied up to murderers and tyrants. A man accused of sexual assault was given a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court after a phony investigation. Trump’s closing arguments this month have been the most odious, reprehensible statements ever made by a President—pure, full-throated, hysterical, and impossibly crude stream of fear, naked racism and blatant lies. If the Democrats win, he shrieks at his rallies, “lock your windows and lock your doors.” Troops have been sent to the border to defend our country from brown women and children. “Barbed wire used properly can be a beautiful sight,” says the President of the United States of America.

Tomorrow we may get more than a glimpse of our country’s future. Will Trump go down in as the greatest progressive organizer since FDR, or will the shadow of his Yankee Doodle brand of fascism be the introduction to a deeper darkness?

It is the struggle of our generation, and the ballots that will be counted tomorrow represent the first, and the most important, test of the resistance. Most likely we will suffer some heartbreaking losses and some truly inspirational triumphs. But I believe that, despite the trauma of 2016 and thanks to the efforts of millions of Americans, Trumpism—for Trump is just the mouthpiece of a vast national madness—will be less powerful on Wednesday than it is tonight.

That will be real progress and cause for celebration, but it won’t be the end of it. Far from it, because Trumpism does not respect voting, the electoral process, the will of the people, or the resolve of its opponents. When asked today how he felt about the prospect of losing the House of Representatives, Trump was blunt:

 “I don’t care. They can do whatever they want and I can do whatever I want.”

 That’s not going to work.



Thirty Days

Spent this afternoon canvassing for Carolyn Long, who is running for Congress in Washington State's 3rd District.

One month left before Election Day.

The ugliest, meanest campaign ever

Fasten your seat belts.

Andrew Gillum, the black mayor of Tallahassee, won the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida tonight.

Like Stacey Adams in adjacent Georgia, Gillum is an aggressive progressive who will run a general election campaign focused not on attracting Trump voters but on turning out the vote across the potential Democratic coalition: liberals, moderates, minorities, and millennials. Gillum supports legalizing marijuana, single-payer health care, abolishing ICE, and impeaching Trump. Gillum, who campaigned for Clinton in 2016, was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, George Soros, and Tom Steyer. His opponents spent $90 million (!!) on this primary. Gillum spent $4 million. Like Adams, Gillum's opponent will be a hardcore Trumpist.

Florida is always a brutal election battleground, but the stakes are incredibly high this year. Florida is one of the most populous states in the country and its Electoral College votes could determine the 2020 Presidential contest. The state's Congressional Districts will be redrawn during the next governor's term.

Trump told evangelical leaders at a dinner last night that if the Democrats win the House, they will unleash antifa to violently attack the general population. This is where the GOP is already at 70 days away from the November midterms. If signs of a blue wave continue to persist, this fall will see the most vicious, howling, bare-knuckled elections we have seen in this country in a century. The Republicans' only accomplishment has been a phenomenally unpopular tax cut. The Trump gang will soon focus full time on what they do best--scaring the shit out of their base by applying massive, relentless doses of outfront, shrieking racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism.

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Swing the midterms

It's imperative that Democrats retake Congress to begin reclaiming our country from the nightmare that is Trumpism. I urge all of my friends to find the Congressional swing district nearest to you and to donate and volunteer for the Democrat in that race. In my case, since I live in solidly blue Portland, the swing district nearest to me is the 3rd District across the Columbia River in Washington State, so I will be volunteering between now and November for Carolyn Long, the Democrat who is running for Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler's House seat. If you live in the Portland/Vancouver Washington area, please join me in contributing to, and working for, Carolyn Long's campaign. It's critical that we all get personally engaged and active in the most critical midterms of our lifetime. Only 70 days until the elections. Resist!

Trump's not on the ballot in November. So why vote?

If we turn out and vote, the Democrats have a good shot at winning the House and a very slim chance to win the Senate.

This won't result in the Democrats stopping the Republicans' legislative strategy, because they literally have none.

It won't result in Democrats passing legislation, because Trump will veto any bill that passes and the Democrats won't be able to get the two-thirds majorities to override.

It won't mean that Trump will be impeached, because the Democrats won't be able to get 67 votes in the Senate. Not a chance in hell that will happen, no matter WHAT Trump did or does.

So who cares? Why vote?

Because of what it will mean to Trump's reelection chances to have all the House committees and the power to serve subpoenas and hold public hearings. If the Democrats win the House, they will:

• Use their chairmanship of the tax committee to get access to Trump's tax returns, which they could reveal to the American public by reading them into the Congressional Record from the floor of the House.

• Launch investigations into the blatant corruption in Trump's Cabinet--Wilbur Ross' shady business deals and attempt to politicize the 2020 census, Ryan Zinke's ethics charges and politicization of offshore drilling decisions, Ben Carson's hiring of family members, and Betsy DeVos' connections to private prisons, Mnuchin's travel and ties to the banks and Wall Street--there is literally no end to this work.

• Investigate Devin Nunes' treasonous activities.

• Re-open the Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, hold public hearings with the Trump Gang under oath, subpoena Trump's Deutsche Bank records, and expand it to include Russian interference in the 2018 election.

• Protect Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller.

• Hold floor votes on common-sense gun control, immigration reform, tax reform that favors the 99%,, Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, universal college tuition, the environment, DACA and other votes that the Republicans have been purposefully avoiding for years. None of these bills will survive Trump's veto, but GOP members of Congress will finally be on record on these issues, which will be vital in the Democrats' to increase their margins in Congress and remove Trump (kicking and screaming, no doubt) from the White House.

Stop With The Freud And Start With The Fighting!

The frantic Trump resistance, the Democratic Party, and the inherently analytical legitimate media are literally killing themselves trying to figure out Donald Trump, especially since the Surrender Summit.

After a year and a half of Trumpworld, we who inhabit the Other Reality have overthought ourselves into exhaustion, disorientation and existential hospice care from trying to process a daily avalanche of lies, cruelty, doublespeak, jaw-dropping incompetence, upside-down-and-backwards nonsense, arrivals and departures on the hectic Trump train, open collusion with Russia and every manner of slimy despots via the worldwide media, and other treasonous and unnatural acts.

At this rate, we won’t survive to topple Trump. All the collective cognitive power and energy that we should be expending on bringing Trump down is being wasted on trying to define him so that we can have the right game plan for going toe to toe with him. Trump, who despite the typhoon of daily chaos he generates lives a remarkably stress-free existence thanks to being born without the part of the brain that gives most of us memory and a conscience, will at this rate clearly outlast us all. In fact, that may be—really and truly—his re-election strategy: to destroy the opposition by making our heads explode.

It’s fair to contend that you need to know your enemy in order to fight him effectively, but we can conclude this debate about Trump now and move on to the battle plan.

The various schools of thought around our Chief Executive can be boiled down to four core profiles:

• Trump #1: The successful business man beholden to no one who has sacrificed an impossibly sweet private life to come to Washington as the first President with the guts and deal-making ability to take on the more-than-two-hundred-years’ reign of the swamp-dwelling deep state. (This is the version of Trump that his core supporters pray to.)
• Trump #2: A deeply flawed but brilliant con artist who managed to hijack the Republican party, give it enough energy/momentum/support to retake not only the White House but Congress in the bargain, and, following that unbelievable trifecta win, completely remold it in his own pompadoured and painted image to the point where he downside any disloyalty to him on the Republican side means instant political death. (This is the perception of Trump held by professional, office-holding or office-aspiring Republicans.)
• Trump #3: A brilliant strategist for all that is bad, truly evil, or just plain stupid about America. The Monster of Mar-a-Lago, the cunning commandant of the screaming flying monkeys, the apocalyptic communicator who is swiftly making his hillbilly hordes proud flag wavers for racism and fascism and methodically destroying governmental institutions and the very rule of law. (This is the bogeyman Trump feared by many who despise him.)
• Trump #4: A lazy, unprincipled, moronic, and unbelievably weak narcissist who can’t even comprehend, much less realize, the standard human survival skills of hard work, preparation, knowledge and empathy and who is driven not by a brain but by some kind of awful, prehistoric lizard gland—a supremely crude mechanism that our species supposedly left behind eons ago and was thought to now only survive in lampreys, vampire bats, guano-eating beetles and those blind fish that live at great depths in underwater caves--that enables him to improvisationally careen, second by second, through a world inhabited only by himself, completely clueless about the wreckage he leaves in his wild wake. (This is the imbecilic Trump familiar to the Russians and those who have worked closely with him.)

We can quickly dispense with Trump #1. Trump parlayed a multimillion gift from his old man to finance four bankruptcies before being hired by NBC as the star of a television show. He IS a tenacious press agent (he actually used to call up reporters using a fake name and pretend to be his own spokesperson) and he knows how to make money licensing his name, but he’s a wizard at bankruptcy, not at business.

Trump #2 is part myth and part reality. Winning the Republican nomination against the likes of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz doesn’t require brilliant political instincts—more qualified candidates can be found in any high school student council slugfest. It’s absolutely true that no one—no one—thought he would win against Clinton. But he lost the popular vote by a considerable margin and won the Electoral College by getting 70,000 more votes in three pivotal states. The key point about the election is that no one was more stunned by his victory than Trump himself. A failed run at the Presidency was, in Trump’s version of career planning, designed to get him a Fox New contract after the cancellation of “The Apprentice.” But since his improbably victory Trump has completely hypnotized 35% of Americans, which means he completely owns the Republican Party, the NRA and Fox News.

Trump #3 is based on a complete myth but otherwise spot on. The true part is the demagoguery and Trump’s effort to make racism and fascism okay again. The mythic, bogus part is the brilliant strategist piece. Trump has no strategy. He rewarded the far-right Republicans who supported him during the campaign with Cabinet-level jobs and has allowed them to gut their departments and allow themselves and their cronies to loot the government till, but in no way is he managing these people or orchestrating an overarching plan to destroy government. He is actively using his demagogic skills to attack the rule of law, the intelligence agencies, and the Justice Department not because of any personal philosophy or credo but because those are the people who could put him in jail.

Trump #4 is completely and utterly accurate.

So the most accurate composite of Trump the politician political is a pathological, lazy moron completely driven by self interest and self promotion who has connected in a profound way with the sizeable portion of the electorate that is driven by racism and a taste for authoritarianism over the rule of law, and who has used that base of support to complete the transformation of the Republican Party and Fox News as white supremacist, fascist gangs. This connection is what makes this hopelessly random goofball the most dangerous internal threat in American history.

As we can see by reviewing the perceptions of Trump, it’s impossible to separate his politics from his personality. To cut to the chase and get to a final Trump diagnosis, then, it is appropriate to leverage the centuries of research compiled by behavioral scientists. Not surprisingly, they have formally codified a personality type that fits Trump like one of the Vaseline-filled gloves with which he covers his tiny hands: the narcissistic sociopath.

Behold the specific traits identified by the medical community that characterize the narcissistic sociopath, which scientists categorize as “a malignant personality.” According to the experts, the presence of any five of the following characteristics means that you’re dealing with a narcissistic sociopath:

• A grandiose opinion of themselves and a belief that they are superior to other people. Narcissistic sociopaths will state that their goal is to rule the world. They believe that they are all powerful and all knowing and that, when it comes to getting what they want, that the end justifies the means.
• A marked tendency to lie pathologically and make false promises to build up a complex belief about their own powers and abilities—to the point where they can pass lie detector tests.
• An excessive and persistent need for others' admiration and praise coupled with a strong, often violent, response to negative feedback.
• A hostile and domineering personality and a tendency to humiliate others.
• A noticeable lack of regard for the rights of others and a tendency to violate those rights.
• A lack of a conscience and empathy for others. An inability to show remorse, shame, or guilt or to apologize. A lack of religion and morality in their lives.
• A marked tendency to divide and conquer by smearing people and pitting people against each other.
• A marked tendency to employ other people with psychological problems.
• An inability to take responsibility. Whatever the problem, it is always someone else’s fault.
• The inability to display emotions like love, warmth, compassion and humor.
• Poor listening skills.
• A marked tendency to impulsive and reckless behavior.
• A marked tendency to be sexually promiscuous.
• A marked tendency toward extreme paranoia.
• A marked tendency toward drama and the association of that drama with “bad” people.

Trump, obviously, exhibits every single one of these traits to an extraordinary degree.

The diagnosis of narcissistic sociopath is not armchair psychobabble. This profile not only suits Trump to a T, it also explains his politics. Narcissistic sociopaths are NEVER going to defend the country if that doesn’t help them personally. They are going to be racists. They are going to think that they, and they alone, understand the problem enough to fix it. They are going to be secretive and authoritarian. They are going to admire other tyrants. They are going to make war on anyone who dares to question or counter them—anything but an ass-kissing festival is going to be “fake news.” They are going to despise the rule of law because they can’t control it and because it is a threat to them. They are going to hire sycophants and yes men, and then fire them willy nilly. They are going to divide people. Their policies are going to be cruel. Above all, they are not going to have a strategy about anything because their reaction to events and to others will be improvised depending on how they are affected by them personally.

Okay, Doc, you’ve nailed it. Trump to a T. In fact, we’ve seen all these traits in Trump for nearly three years now. We have our diagnosis and we can close his file. But you can’t stop there—you’ve got to tell us how to best deal with this lunatic. After all, he’s not just the biggest asshole at work or the shittiest neighbor in the apartment building—he’s THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Literally the entire world wants to know how to live with—or effectively take on—this malignant wild man.

The behavioral scientists have this advice for dealing with narcissistic sociopaths:

• Realize that you will never change them.
• Pay attention to your instincts.
• Cease contact. Take steps to protect yourself.
• Do not try to reform them or give them more chances.
• Realize that it’s not your fault.
• Don’t wait for them to agree or ask you permission.
• Don’t feed their ego.
• Don’t wait for them to overpower you—take control whether they like it or not.
• Give up fear—respond with reason and calmness.

There is a framework here for the next phase of the resistance—the actually-doing-stuff phase.

Stop thinking about Trump and start fighting him. Don’t ignore Trump’s hourly lies and crimes, and be ready to show up in the streets to protest particularly odious actions and policies, but don’t obsess about them or let him or the GOP sap your energy or destroy your morale. Swap cable news and Facebook time for hours spent volunteering on the front lines.
Don’t expend ANY of your finite energy engaging with Trumpists. The vast majority did not vote for him because of his economic platform (whatever that was) or because the Democrats didn’t care about them (which is true). They are white people who voted for him because they didn’t like the prospect of the end of white supremacy in this country. Uncle Joe didn’t pull the lever for Trump because you didn’t give him an effective counterargument—not your fault!—and we don’t need him, anyway. We can beat Trump without converting a single Trump voter, because they are still the minority in this country. Our task is to make our election results look like the electorate. Given the GOP gerrymandering, this will take an enormous get-out-the-vote effort by all of us. Focus on that.

Take action now, because soon it really will be too late. Vote for Democrats. Don’t nullify your vote and your opposition to Trump by voting for write-in or third-party candidates. Volunteer in your neighborhood and city to get anti-Trump people elected mayor, to your city council, and to your local school board, and donate to their campaigns. Work and donate within your state to get Democrats elected as governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state (a role that is vitally important, as it oversees elections), and state legislator. If you live in a Congressional swing state, you are especially important and influential—work for, and donate to, the Democratic candidate.

If you live in a completely safe Republican district, sign up with SwingLeft (https://swingleft.org/) to find the swing district nearest to you and learn how to volunteer for Democrats there.

Join or start an Indivisible group in your city (https://www.indivisible.org/), the group that has created a powerful template for local political organizing that really works.

Join and donate to the ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/). The courts have already shown that they and the rule of law can be major disruptors to the Trumpists’ agenda, and the ACLU has been the most aggressive and successful group to leverage the courts to throw sand in the GOP’s gears.

Subscribe to legitimate news outlets. There has been some incredible reporting on Trump that has helped to counter his lies and Fox News and to publish new details of his crimes.

Keep expressing your anger to your elected representatives (https://countableaction.com/ and https://democracy.io/#!/).
Don’t expend any energy on being afraid. The best antidote to fear and anxiety is to join like-minded people and take action. There are more of us than there are of them.