All White Folks

I don't know if all those Democrats clad in white at President Trump's address to Congress were aware of it, but in Asia, white is the color donned for funerals.  It seemed entirely appropriate to the occasion since the evening's events had a definitely funereal cast for Democrats.  Looking back not merely on the presidential election but on all but a few moments in former president Barack Obama's administration, the party had fallen into a moribund state.  The mood was thoroughly maintained in



the traditional opportunity given the opposition party's right to a response which was delivered by a casually clad Midwesterner who seemed chosen for his resemblance to a middle of the road Republican.  More deathly calm.

The closing days of the Obama administration, traditionally referred to as the lame duck period, seemed to begin long before the usual last months, rather beginning almost at the inception of his second term, if not even the closing months of his first.  A script for an exciting Obama presidency was on hand.  All he needed to do was dust off Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address (which could have been written in 2008).  Instead, what the party provided was a caretaker president chosen to restore some semblance of dignity to an office--and a nation--that had, under George Bush, become an international disgrace given to illegal wars and the tearing up of constitutional safeguards going back to the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D.  The folks in what we now generally acknowledge as the "deep state," (earlier referred to as the "permanent government"), who handpicked the enterprising young black politician to at least temporarily distract the populace from conditions across the board that were steadily worsening in foreign affairs and the domestic economy (as well as--as a bonus--race relations) had reason to sit back and admire their handiwork.  Voters were not given much choice in any case, the party leaders having anointed Hillary Clinton as the preferred candidate in the 2008 election, an individual whose haters always outnumbered her admittedly solid base of supporters.  Hillary, in not just one but, amazingly, two presidential campaigns proved to be as effective as the Democratic Party's previous sure-loser, Al Gore, a guy who couldn't even carry his own state in 2000.  The party that had nothing to offer offered the people nothing and thus, for sixteen very long years, the United States had its dials tweaked by the likes of Halliburton and Goldman Sachs with almost no resistance at all.