Who's Your Favorite Populist?

Captions: 1. Gov. Martin O’Malley talking at a round-table forum about how he cleaned up his beloved Chesapeake Bay at the Indian Creek Nature Center near Cedar Rapids. 2. Left, Phil Hemingway of Phil’s Repair and a Director of the Iowa City Community School District Board; right, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate.

Donald Trump, who usually leads in the Iowa polls, is closely followed by Sen. Ted Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas. Trump’s supporters tend to be undereducated white males. Politico has added an overriding characteristic: Trump supporters tend to be authoritarian. More Republicans, however, tend to be authoritarian than Democrats.

Trump is supposedly the Republicans’ version of a “populist.” Bernie Sanders is the Democrats’ “populist.” He’s in a tight race with Hillary Clinton in Iowa.

I can see Bernie, a socialist Democrat ready to take on Wall Street as a populist more than I can see Trump as a populist unless the Donald throws off his light-weight Republican mantle and becomes the liberal Democrat he used to be.

Hillary and Bill Clinton went to one of Trump’s weddings, the third one. They are or used to be friends. Maybe their money has mingled on Wall Street. They’ve certainly mingled socially.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is my candidate, as I’ve mentioned earlier. If he’s not viable in my precinct (unable to garner 15% of the votes of the voters present), I’m switching to Bernie Sanders. I caucused for Hillary in 2008, but since then I’ve read at least three books about the Wall Street bailout and how Pres. Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder, a Wall Street lawyer for white-collar criminals, both before and after his term as AG, bailed out Wall Street criminals at the expense of Main Street. I’ve also read Sharyl Attkisson’s chapter on Benghazi in ”Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

Why is Hillary still covering for Pres. Obama’s decision to tell special forces in the area of Benghazi to stand down from their rescue effort to save two former Navy Seals, Glen “Bob” Doherty and Tyrone “Rone” Woods, who were still alive and could have been saved at that point in the attack? Especially since the State Department is reclassifying emails that were not marked classified when she received them. The timing of the reclassification of those emails after the fact is mighty coincidental right before the Iowa caucuses. Why is she running on Obama’s record? Why is anyone?

I know that Hillary is unwilling to reinstate Glass-Steagall, which regulated the banks after the Great Depression. I know that it was Bill Clinton who signed the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act, which deregulated the banks prior to the Wall Street crash of 2008, late in George W. Bush’s term, which preceded the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Bill also signed the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), which was a disastrous trade agreement for American workers.

Economic issues of increasing wealth inequality in the U.S. make the 2016 election especially important.

Lately I’ve become surprisingly angry (surprising to me) at two politically active people, people living in impoverished circumstances, who don’t plan to caucus tonight. One of these individuals writes letters to the editor of her local newspaper and shows up at city council meetings to speak her mind. The other complains about corporate rule on her Facebook page, but can’t be bothered to show up at tonight’s caucus. One has repeatedly been offered rides to the caucus and refused each time.

The other makes her refusal to caucus a cause celebre. She wants to complain about corporate control in our oligarchy of a country and wants to persuade herself and her friends that she and they are hopeless and helpless to do anything about it. Her rant on her Facebook page sucks all the oxygen out of her chat room. Infuriated, I tried to defriend her and couldn’t figure out how. I don’t usually do that to people but she’s bored me with her apathy for a long time.

Not me. I’m excited about caucusing. I’m showing up at 6:30 p.m. at my precinct with my husband and we are going to do our sacred duty. We always caucus. My 91-year-old father plans to vote and his health is definitely compromised. If we want a better democracy or less of an oligarchy, let’s show up and do our part, shall we? It’s not like we don’t have clear choices this time around.