Time for Trump to Go

As a liberal and progressive, I was a Bernie Sanders supporter, despite the fact that I could not see how some of his proposals could possibly be funded. I was disappointed to see Hillary Clinton receive the nomination. My disappointment stems from Bill Clinton's presidency:

1. The descriptions of the Clinton White House as being operated by a bunch of kids that couldn't keep to a meeting schedule or meeting agenda.
2. The failure of the Clinton Administration to bring about health care reform.
3. The degree of contempt exhibited by the Clintons for the military.

I saw the selection of Trump as the Republican nominee as a mixed affair. While I thought him to be the easiest candidate to defeat, I feared that the divisiveness of his primary campaign would continue into the general election.

Trump has continued to disappoint me.

But the events of the past week have highlighted so many terrible things about modern day American that I believe it is no longer time to accept what is happening. The sequence of the release of the 2005 tape of Trump and Bush bantering about abusing women, "locker room talk" as Trump puts it, followed by the denial of any sexual assault by Trump at the second presidential debate, followed by yesterday's (Oct. 12, 2016) accounts of assault by at least five women, now puts into sharp relief the status of the 2016 election.

We have a sexual predator running for President on the Republican ticket.

I do not see Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, as much better. At the end of the Vice-Presidential debate, both candidates showed real thought and emotion describing their struggles to reconcile their religious beliefs with the requirements of their offices. I believe that Kaine gave the more correct response required by our system of government: that as governor, he had to subjugate his personal beliefs and support the law of the land. Pence, on the other hand, described how his beliefs were more correct than the law of the land, which he sought to overturn.

Make no mistake, Trump has to go. While the U.S. can survive a bad president, electing a sexual predator would have serious consequences. Already, teachers are describing the Trump effect in schools around the country.

But I think it will be useful for the Republican party to retain Trump so that the people can have their say on his candidacy. I think it fitting that the Republican party reap what they have sown.

For years the Republican party has tried to fuel and use the anger of middle class whites, using mouthpieces such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, for the benefit of the 1%. Gaining office through the (cynical) manipulation of the many on social issues allows the enactment of economic policies that flow to the top. Trump is no different. He fires up his supporters through calls for a wall to keep out Mexican rapists, a ban on Muslim immigrants, defunding Planned Parenthood, implementing "stop-and-frisk" nationwide, reintroducing torture. Yet his economic plans are designed to help the wealthy: tax cuts that chiefly benefit the top 1% and 0.1%, corporate tax cuts, special treatment of carried interest for hedge funds and investors, elimination of the estate tax (which uniquely benefits his family as real estate developers).

In fact, Trump's economic proposals are a return to the 1980's, where the combination of tax cuts and increased defense spending drove up the deficit. Under Reagan, the public debt rose from 26% of GDP in 1980 to 41% in 1988 (from $712B to $2.052T, a 3x increase). Most of the benefits went to the wealthiest Americans (see chart below).

Perhaps in the 2016 election, like no other before it, we can finally have a referendum on the Republican plan that started with Newt Gingrich (another Trump supporter). Perhaps now, the people will see a plan that uses the middle class to fund the rich.

Or perhaps not. In one CNN video clip aired of a Mike Pence rally on Oct. 12, 2016, a woman in the crowd, when offered the microphone to ask Pence a question, stated that she was "...ready for a revolution on election day if Hillary Clinton was elected. I mean, come on, guys. Aren't you?".

Perhaps the Republican party, and Donald J. Trump, really has managed to capture the desires of the crowd. Or did they manufacture it?