Sens. McCain and Graham Question Trump's Alternate Reality

Trump’s continued denial of U.S. intelligence reports that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, and created propaganda and fake news to help Donald J. Trump secure the presidential election is raising eyebrows in the U.S. Senate and in the intelligence community.Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bob Corker (R-TN) have opened up a can of whup-ass on Trump’s continued denials that Russia was involved.

It’s a weird world when a Democratic feminist can feel proud of a man (McCain) who wasn’t present when the Senate voted against equal pay for equal work and, to add insult to injury, said that if he had been there, he would have voted against equal pay and then muttered something about “too many lawsuits.” That’s how demoralizing our oligarchy has become since Donald J. Trump became our president and the Republicans swept both houses of Congress and both houses of the Iowa legislature. I can barely lift my head I’m so discouraged at times.

One thing this election proved to me is that this country is more misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, and ignorant than even I had suspected. Trump committed acts of hateful folly that should have been game-changers, career-enders, but weren’t. In one way, I felt validated in that I knew I’d been besieged by left-wing and right-wing misogynists all of my life. This last election, with its attendant irrational and undying hatred for Hillary Clinton on the left and on the right, seemed to prove America’s misogynist inclinations.

Sure, it was a change election, and both Trump and Bernie were change candidates. I caucused for Bernie and voted for Hillary. Hillary, for all of her deft performances in the debates, was too ambitious and therefore too cautious, in my opinion. She didn’t give enough specifics about what she’d do for Americans. She kept referring to her website. Lame! I knew she’d support equal rights for women and equal pay for equal work. I knew she’d stand up to the Russians just as she’d stood up to the Pakistanis. I didn’t know what else she’d do other than nominate good people to the Supreme Court. But that was enough. It wasn’t enough for rural voters who’ve been hurting and feeling ignored by both parties.

Democrats, including both Bill Clinton (NAFTA) and Barack Obama (TPP) took the working class for granted and that was a huge mistake (read Tom Frank's "Listen, Liberal or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" for details; also Bill Press' "Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down" for details).

“You earn what you learn,” former Pres. Bill Clinton said (Frank, "Listen, Liberal"). Does that mean that uneducated workers don’t deserve a living wage? No. Bill Clinton earned what he learned. He climbed out of poverty and became a Rhodes Scholar. He, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton graduated from Ivy League universities. Graduating from an Ivy League school doesn’t automatically make you rich, but it sure helps to keep you comfortable. And when the elites look down on those who are poorly educated and do nothing to help them get jobs when they’re unemployed or earn a living wage when they are working, those people lash out.

I guess what voters wanted was to blow up the government. Neither party has been on their side, but Trump promised to be on their side.Voters were apparently ignorant of Trump's record of saying that the minimum wage is too high and his record of not paying his workers or contractors and were desperate enough to believe his promises rather than pay attention to what he actually does.

So with the Democrats packed away in salt, we’re reduced to looking to honorable or semi-honorable Republicans for resistance to the Donald’s alternate reality. Sen. McCain will probably continue to vote against equal pay for equal work. He’s still a misogynist. So are most in Congress or we’d have equal pay for equal work. Maybe Hillary couldn’t have gotten paid family leave or equal pay for equal work.

Thanks to the Russians and her own poorly run, fatally careful campaign, we’ll never know now.

What we do know is, as H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” It’s too bad that the rest of us will take it in the shorts just as hard.