Is there a grown-up left in the GOP?

As America staggers toward the finish line of 2016’s astonishingly undignified and embarrassing presidential election, our thoughts begin to turn to the day after November 8 – when, if the averages of reputable polling organizations prove out, Hillary Clinton will be our President-elect.

How, we have begun to wonder, will Clinton be able to govern? If House Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah – who has served as that body’s lead investigator in a slew of failed inquiries conducted only to bring her down – has his way, the new President will continue to face “years” of investigations. And if Republicans manage to upset current polling trends and retain control of the Senate, she will find herself dealing with a GOP majority that Arizona Sen. John McCain already promised “will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton…would put up.”

It seems Republicans are determined to extend the eight-year war against all things Obama – birthed the evening of President Obama’s January 20, 2009, inauguration by a cabal of 13 GOP Congressmen, in a dinner meeting with GOP consultant Frank Luntz and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But what does their unremitting, unrepentant opposition to America’s first African-American President have to do with their unremitting, unrepentant opposition to America’s first woman President?

I think it has less to do with either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton than it does with the Republican Party’s unwillingness to confront the reasons for its failure to win in 2008, 2012 or this year. The political “autopsy” conducted after Mitt Romney’s failed campaign in 2012 gave the party a crystal clear path to follow in order to regain public support – namely, make the GOP more appealing (heck, barely palatable would be a good start) to women, minorities and immigrants.

But instead of heeding that advice – and trading their rank obstructionism for productive partnership during President Obama’s second term – the GOP continued to just say no to anything and everything he proposed. And instead of taming the twin beasts of the Tea Party and birther movements, the party continued to allow their race-driven hate mongering to fester and infect its ranks. It wasn’t until late in this year’s presidential campaign season that the GOP’s presidential candidate – who fed birther conspiracies for years to boost his own standing among Republican voters – was finally forced to grudgingly admit that our President is indeed a U.S. citizen, born in the U.S.A., and legally entitled to hold office.

So I ask: Is there a grown-up left in the GOP? Is there anyone who can take charge of the party and guide it back to responsible behavior and a focus on effective governance?

Is there anyone who will tell Jason Chaffetz to cool it with the investigations that lead nowhere – wasting time and taxpayer money and trying the public’s patience – most notably the patience of those GOP voters whose votes they’ve won by pledging legislative action but never following through?

Is there anyone who will tell John McCain – as well as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who first pledged GOP Senate obstruction of any Clinton Supreme Court nominee – that it is the Senate’s duty to advise and consent, and that nothing in the U.S. Constitution permits them to shirk that duty until the president doing the nominating happens to share their party ID?

Is there anyone who will tell the Tea Party Republicans currently blockading legislative action in the House of Representatives that this is not how government works – that a minority faction does not have the right to tell the rest of the U.S. government what to do? That compromise is not a dirty word, but is, in fact, the path toward rational, middle ground amalgamation of opposing points of view?

Is there anyone who will tell GOP legislators who think their job is to oppose any legislation proposed by a colleague with a “D” after his or her name that Democrats are not the enemy? That our enemies are not found within the halls of Congress – they are found in the dictatorships and autocracies of Russia, China, North Korea, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere?

Is there anyone who will remind the GOP of that old-fashioned construct – that, while foreign policy issues can and should be debated energetically between members of Congress and the executive branch, when foreign policy direction is set by the President, partisan politics must go no farther than the water’s edge?

Is there anyone who will remind the GOP that facts matter? That it’s okay to form differing opinions, but that all opinions must be based on fact?

Is there anyone who will teach the GOP that science is real, and climate change is happening?

Is there anyone who will explain to the GOP that ours is a nation founded on religious freedom, and that there is no “Church of America” specifically because our founders chose to impose no religious viewpoint or orthodoxy on a free people?

Is there anyone who will reinforce for the GOP that diversity is our strength and a beacon of hope to refugees from around the globe?

And most important – is there anyone who will remind every Republican who takes the oath of office as a Senator or Representative that they have sworn to uphold the Constitution – not to do their party’s bidding or their pastor’s bidding or some lobbyist’s bidding – but to do the people’s business and do it responsibly and well?

If that person speaks up and takes charge of the Republican Party, he or she might be able to save the GOP from implosion, and our nation from years more of dissension and dysfunction. But if there is no adult remaining in the Grand Old Party, I don’t know how much longer it can sustain itself as a viable political entity.

As a Democrat, it’s not my personal concern. But as an American, I’m sick and tired of having to counter the efforts of a Republican Party whose only focus seems to be on ginning up pseudo scandals to prevent the success of its opposition and try to remain vaguely relevant to the political process. I’d like to see the Democratic Party’s  “loyal opposition” grow up and start behaving like adults again.

It would do everyone in the nation a world of good.

Conversations with my Ohio neighbors

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day placing get-out-the-vote calls to Ohio from the local Hillary Clinton campaign office here in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. I’ve never been to Ohio, so all I know about the state and its people is what I’ve heard on the news, read in newspapers or magazines, or learned from the few Ohioans I’ve known through the years.

When I completed my final call for the day, I started to think about the conversations I’d had. Some were brief and perfunctory, and a few – thankfully, very few – were hostile or rude. But most, it struck me, had been just like the campaign conversations I engage in with friends and neighbors right here in sunny, freewheeling (and generally more liberal) Southern California.

Some of the Ohioans I spoke with clearly had more conservative views than I do, but they were usually willing to talk about the election and their choice for President. A few – reflecting what might be a preference for privacy in the more traditional Midwest – chose not to disclose their vote. But, unlike similarly reticent voters I’ve come across in California, who can be downright rude in their refusal, almost all of the Ohioans politely explained their desire to keep their choice to themselves, allowing us to part company on a friendly note.

But the conversations that stuck with me through the night and into the morning were those in which the person first said, yes, they’re voting for Hillary, and then hastened to share a personal observation that told me how important their vote was to them.

I remember a woman reporting that she’d already filled out her ballot but was waiting for her daughter to drive her down to the Board of Elections to turn it in. “I don’t want to worry about it getting lost in the mail. I want to know my vote for Hillary gets counted. She’ll be our first woman president and I want to vote for her!”

I remember an eighty-something wife saying that her 81-year-old husband couldn’t take my call because he’s now living in a nursing home, before adding, “But he’s been asking me every day if his ballot came in the mail because he wants me to bring it to him. It came today so I’m taking it to him tomorrow. He is determined to vote for Hillary – he is appalled at the idea of someone as nasty as Trump being president. We’re both voting for Hillary.”

I remember a 93-year-old man who, after I’d said I was a volunteer for Hillary calling to ask if we could count on his vote, pulled my leg by intoning sadly, “Oh, dear, you’re too late. I just sent it in today.” “So you didn’t vote for Hillary?” He replied, “Now, I didn’t say THAT, dear…” before starting to laugh and adding, “Of course I did! We need her to follow President Obama and not let the Republicans tear down everything he has accomplished.”

I remember the mom who told me her young adult daughter, whose name was on my calling list, wasn’t home, and said we shouldn’t try to call her back. “I’ve tried everything I can think of to convince her she’s making a huge mistake voting for Trump, but she’s just not listening. You’ve got my vote, but I don’t think we’ll get hers.”

And I remember the octogenarian woman who said that both she and her husband are supporting Hillary because “we’re just terrified of Trump. He’s hateful – the things he says remind us of Hitler. We can’t imagine America being led by someone like that.”

Most important, I remember hearing “thank you” or “bless you for volunteering” over and over and over again. I’ll never forget those words – because, in a campaign season that has been as hate-filled, fear-mongering, anxiety-inducing and disconcerting as this year’s, those thank-yous and “have a blessed day” farewells did more than lift my spirits and motivate me to place the next call.  They convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Trump’s core campaign message isn’t just foolishly negative – it’s flat-out wrong.

America does not need to become great again. As Hillary Clinton and all of her surrogates have said at campaign rallies across the land, “America already IS great, because America is good.”

As are the vast majority of the American people I’ve had the privilege of talking to in my efforts to help elect Hillary Clinton.

Thank you?

Forgive me for saying this – and please give me the chance to explain – but maybe we women owe the GOP presidential candidate a word of thanks for putting the topics of sexual assault and workplace harassment front and center in our national conversation.

Astonishing numbers of women have come forward over the past week, whether to tweet about their experiences as sexual assault victims or to speak with the national press about being the target of unwanted advances by the GOP presidential nominee. And today, First Lady Michelle Obama delivered one of the most eloquent condemnations of male sexual aggression and that man’s despicable behavior that we will hear this year – if not ever.

While I’m fortunate not to have personally experienced the kind of degradation and humiliation so many women have described, I’ve heard similar stories throughout my 40-plus-year career in American business. Maybe I “missed out” on those experiences because early on, I proudly identified myself as a feminist -- participating in the effort by NOW, NWPC and other women’s organizations to ratify the ERA, and speaking out about equal opportunity in the workplace. Maybe it’s because I spoke enthusiastically and often about my feminist husband, his career and the equal partnership we were building in our lives.

At the same time, though, I remember those “moments.” One occurred early in my career during a lunch meeting at a private male-members-only business club in downtown Los Angeles with an executive who seemed interested in mentoring me. The lunch was pleasant enough and we spent much of the time talking business. But I also remember feeling a twinge of discomfort when the conversation turned to my husband and our marriage: it felt as if my mentor, who also was married, was “testing the water” on a more personal level.

A year later, that executive hired me to work at the Los Angeles office of the international public affairs agency of which he was an officer. A year later, he unexpectedly promoted me into a manager’s slot, leapfrogging me over another woman with whom I’d gone to grad school and who had worked at the agency for two years before I’d joined the staff.

It took years for the full picture to emerge. Several of the women I’d worked with there shared their stories – at different times and for different reasons – of their own lunches with that executive at that same business club. For each of them, that lunch had been prelude to a sexual proposition or unwanted physical encounter. In the case of my grad school friend, her refusal to “go along to get along” had, in her view, squelched her career trajectory at the agency. She thought, and I readily understood why she did, that it had been the reason I’d been tapped for the opportunity instead of her.

Whether or not that was true isn’t the point – my friend and I shouldn’t have found it necessary to have that conversation in the first place. Workplace opportunities should be offered on the basis of skill, experience, competence and on-the-job performance – not on one’s willingness to “perform” in private.

A gender neutral workplace doesn’t just benefit women. Early in my tenure at the last corporation for which I worked before retiring, I led a “virtual” team of writers and online course developers. Each of them worked from home in a different corner of the country, and all of them had proven through positive attitude, a high level of productivity, and consistent delivery of top-notch work product that they could be trusted to do right by our employer without showing up in an office every day.

One of them – a married man with a grade school-age daughter – called me one afternoon. He and his wife had decided it was time for her to return to work, but the job she’d been offered would require her to be on the road on an almost daily basis. The only way she could take the job was if he assumed responsibility for taking their daughter to her dance classes, art lessons and Brownie meetings. Could he tweak his work schedule by stopping work at 3 and then finishing the last two hours of his workday from 5 to 7?

Here was a reliable, responsible employee, someone who was often still online at 5 p.m. my time – 8 p.m. for him – putting in extra hours because he knew our internal clients needed a quick turnaround. I’d had to chide him on a regular basis to “step away from the computer and go help your daughter with her homework!” I knew I could count on him to do whatever was required to get the job done. My response was immediate: of course you can.

It was his response that taught me a lesson about the unique value of having women in leadership roles in business.  He was quiet for a few seconds, and then he said, “You know, I’m so glad I’m working for a woman. If I’d been working for a male boss, I wouldn’t have even asked for this.”

Looking at the strange, distressing turn this year’s presidential election has now taken, I consider Hillary Clinton’s candidacy an aspirational example of why women SHOULD be considered for career opportunities -- and view her GOP opponent as the ultimate object lesson for why we MUST be.

So, perhaps we should thank Hillary’s opponent for starting this conversation. But given the absolutely deplorable part he’s played in it, I will not.

I'm writing as fast as I can...

Last Friday afternoon, I started writing a post about why the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency frightens me.

My first draft focused on Donald’s right-wing and “alt right” connections, which were the focus of the prior day’s news, thanks to the presence of a white supremacist at a Trump rally last week who vocally denied that the Nazis had killed 6 million Jews while he brandished a “1488” sign. Its meaning? The number 14 is code for the 14 words of the white supremacists’ creed, and 88 represents the eighth letter of the alphabet – H – code for the chant, “Heil Hitler.” (Don’t believe me? Check out the Anti Defamation League website.)

I didn’t have time to complete my draft that afternoon, but figured I could wrap up the work over the weekend and post on the 10^th. And then, late Friday afternoon came news of the taped conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush.

As it has so often in this incredible – and incredulous – campaign, the focus of the national political conversation had shifted yet again.

I decided to wait until after the second presidential debate on Sunday night to rethink my post.

And here we are, on Monday afternoon. There is SO much to be said, on SO many fronts, that I’ve decided to just offer a list of the many reasons I now have for being utterly appalled by Donald’s candidacy – and flat-out petrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency (which thankfully seems less likely with every word that escapes his lips).

Where to begin?

Well, since it was my original focus, let’s start with the Trump clan’s history of race hate and white supremacy.

Donald’s grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, immigrated from Germany as a young man and made a relative fortune during America’s Gold Rush era by selling food, booze and prostitutes to prospectors – first in Seattle, then Canada, and finally in Alaska.

He waited until he turned 35, the maximum draft age in Germany, to attempt to return home with his newfound fortune, but he and his wife were deported back to the U.S. because he had shirked German taxes and military service. (It’s fascinating how the Donald “apple” seems to have fallen so close to the roots of the family tree.)

In 1927, at age 21, Donald’s father, Fred, was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York. No charges were filed against him, but that didn’t stop Donald from denying recently that the arrest ever occurred. (Microfiche copies of New York newspaper reports clearly indicate otherwise.)

In the 1960s, when Donald was managing Fred’s apartment holdings in New York City, he instructed property managers to mark rental applications submitted by blacks with the letter “c,” to ensure that none of the family’s apartments were rented to black applicants.

Today, Donald’s sons Don Jr. and Eric willingly participate in interviews with hosts of white nationalist radio programs, and tweet out white nationalist “Pepe the Frog” memes. (Barron is still too young for interviews, so we’re left wondering what he has already learned at his papa’s knee.)

And yes, while Donald’s daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism (but doesn’t dress the part) before her marriage and is raising her children as Jews, I need only remind you that many upper-class Jews in 1930s Germany told themselves that Hitler would certainly never go after them – only to find themselves just as dispossessed and just as dead as the bakers who sold them their Sabbath challah once Hitler’s pursuit of the Final Solution took hold.

Donald’s presidential campaign has the support of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (even though Donald claims not to know who he is). The campaign is chaired by the “alt right” (translation: white nationalist) executive chairman of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon. And Donald gets campaign advice from Roger Stone, the GOP political consultant and “dirty tricks” master whose racist and sexist tweets got him removed from the commentators ranks at both MSNBC and CNN earlier this year.

Finally, there’s Donald’s bedside reading. As first wife Ivana told her attorney (a revelation repeated in a 1990 Vanity Fair report on the couple’s divorce proceedings), it wasn’t the latest Stephen King novel or an issue of Time magazine. It was My New Order, a compilation of the speeches of one Adolf Hitler.

Fascinating indeed. Also appalling.

Moving on from race hate, let’s now review the ever-expanding list of reasons for my fear and loathing of Donald.

For starters: As last Friday’s release of the Access Hollywood tape demonstrated, Donald is rude, crude and offensive to women. In that tape, he called the subject of his ogling “It.” If that’s not objectification of women, I don’t know what is.

He trotted out four women before yesterday’s debate to rehash decades-old (and long-since debunked) accusations against Bill and Hillary Clinton – callously using them as human shields to divert attention from his conversation with Billy Bush – a stunt that thankfully seems to have backfired on his campaign.

He lied about the reason for that stunt to get the press to cover it.

During the debate, Donald repeated the assertion from his original “apology” that his Access Hollywood conversation was simply “locker room talk” – only to be condemned by fathers, brothers, sons and professional athletes across the land.

Then Donald had the gall to proclaim that “no one has more respect for women” than he. If his behavior is evidence of that “respect,” I’ll have none of it, thank you.

Throughout his campaign, Donald has verbally assaulted wide swaths of the human race – women, immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, the physically impaired, fat people …the latter of which makes me wonder if all of his homes are equipped with skinny-only fun house mirrors.

He has absolutely no experience in government or the military or international relations (other than the personal kind).

His level of understanding of world affairs is abysmally low – as evidenced by his incoherent statement on Syria last night.

He feigned ignorance about Russian hacks of U.S. government and Democratic campaign online communications, despite having been briefed by U.S. intelligence experts – and for the second time stated last night that he wished the U.S. could “get along” with Russia.

Today, a U.S. intelligence expert called Donald’s remarks in the debate a “willful mischaracterization” of Russian hacking efforts, and reported that our intelligence community has expressed a “high confidence level” over the past several months regarding Russian involvement.

And while Donald plays dumb about likely Russian interference in U.S. politics and governance, he refuses to release his tax returns – which would answer questions about the extent to which Russian oligarchs are invested in Trump businesses.

Thanks to reporting by David Fahrenthold in the Washington Post, we can be pretty sure -- even without seeing those tax returns – that Donald isn’t nearly as wealthy or as charitable as he claims to be, and he’s almost certainly not a successful businessman.  (Fahrenthold also broke the Access Hollywood tape story, FYI.)

And Donald’s surely not “transparent” – because if he were, we’d have answers to those questions about his wealth, charitable giving and business acumen (or as he pronounces it from a teleprompter: a CUE man).

While refusing to release his own returns, he claimed last night that Clinton supporters Warren Buffett and George Soros take the same massive deductions he does – a fact already refuted today by Mr. Buffett. I hope a response from Mr. Soros will follow.

Donald proudly acknowledged last night that he hasn’t paid federal taxes in years – obviously considering it a badge of honor, instead of a source of selfish shame.

He lies about his campaign’s tax proposals, which independent experts confirm would help wealthy people (like him) but boost the tax bills of ordinary Americans.

He lies about Hillary’s tax proposals, which wouldn’t increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year but would increase taxes on top income earners.

Donald lies about Obamacare. Yes, it may need some rework (as all major legislative initiatives do – just review the history of Social Security or Medicare). But contrary to his claim last night (which the L.A. Times debunked today), healthcare costs following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act are not “going up by numbers that are astronomical…” In fact, the cost curve has, as President Obama predicted, headed downward.

Donald lies about Benghazi. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that President Obama and Secretary Clinton asked the GOP-controlled Congress for additional security funds for U.S. embassies and outposts, but their requests were denied.

He denies the reality of climate change.

He thinks all blacks are poor, uneducated, and residents of gritty inner-city neighborhoods. It seems he has no clue about the success of many ethnic Americans or the growing diversity of so many prosperous American communities – like mine.

He declares himself pro-life, after years of calling himself pro-choice and pushing his lover and then second wife, Marla, to abort the fetus that is now daughter Tiffany. (It’s no great wonder they have only a superficial father-daughter relationship, or that she evaded his post-debate kiss attempt last night.)

Throughout last night’s debate, Donald hulked menacingly in the background whenever Hillary spoke.

He complained repeatedly about being given less time to speak – although the press reported afterward that he’d spoken for about a minute longer than she.

He whined about being outnumbered “three to one” onstage.

And, just as he did in the first debate, he interrupted Hillary repeatedly – after arguing on Twitter following the vice presidential debate that Democratic VP candidate Tim Kaine’s interruptions of Mike Pence should have been prevented.

Donald was a living, breathing (and sniffling) exemplar of sexist mansplaining and alpha-male dominant behavior.

He wasn’t presidential. He was infantile.

And finally, he was anti-democratic in the worst possible way. He loudly and proudly declared that, if he were to become President, he would direct his Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton and throw her in jail.

Cue memories of Watergate. Donald, the President cannot “order” the Attorney General to investigate someone. Doing so was one of Richard Nixon’s impeachable offenses. And it would likely be just the first of many for you.

Observing Donald’s campaign has been exhausting – as exhausting as it has been penning this long, but nevertheless incomplete, list of his offenses against logic, rationality, objectivity, facts and truth.

I’ll leave it to others to add their own reasons for opposing Donald. But, if this list doesn’t offer enough evidence to you of the utter lack of qualification of one Donald John Trump to hold any public office in America, I’m done trying. You, like Donald, are beyond reason.

Something tells me, though, that I’ll have many more reasons to rage against the GOP nominee in the 29 days now remaining before Election Day.

And that’s the saddest fact of all.