BERNIE GETS A SLAMEN SLAMMIN’
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JANUARY 17, 2019

A WOMAN WHOM I DIDN’T KNOW AT ALL IS MENTIONED THREE TIMES IN THIS NYT ARTICLE SIMPLY EXCORIATING THE SANDERS CAMPAIGN, IF NOT QUITE HIM AS AN INDIVIDUAL. HER NAME IS SARAH SLAMEN.

WATCH SARAH SLAMEN IN ACTION – HER MAIN INTEREST IS CLEARLY FEMINISM MORE THAN ANY THEORY OF POLITICS. I’M PUTTING THIS IN, NOT BECAUSE I REALLY DISAGREE WITH HER COMMENTS ON LIFE AS A WOMAN IN THE GOOD OLD USA, BUT BECAUSE SHE IS FIERCELY SMEARING SANDERS IN THE ARTICLE ABOVE, AND I DON’T BELIEVE HE IS A MISOGYNISTIC JERK. I CAN’T DENY THAT HE, ALMOST CERTAINLY NAIVELY, SEEMS TO HAVE BELIEVED THAT WOMEN ON HIS STAFF DIDN’T NEED SPECIAL PROTECTION.

I ALSO THINK THE NYT SHOULD NOT TAKE ONLY HER COMMENTS FROM THOSE AT THE SANDERS’ MEETING THIS WEEK, BECAUSE SHE IS A SLASHER. THAT IS NOT “BALANCED” JOURNALISM. WATCH THIS VIDEO TO UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE IS SAYING. I THINK SHE IS A GENUINELY “RADICAL” FEMINIST. I’M FEMINIST, BUT NOT THAT FAR ALONG.

I ALSO JUST DON’T THINK THAT MEN WHO FLIRT ARE NECESSARILY SEXIST. I THINK FLIRTING IS PART OF LIFE. GRABBING PEOPLE AND KISSING THEM IS NOT, THOUGH. THAT IS IMMORAL AND ARGUABLY SHOULD BE CRIMINAL. ON THE OTHER HAND, THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK MEN SHOULD NEVER MAKE A MOVE JUST AREN’T SHY WOMEN. IF YOU’RE A SHY WOMAN, THE MAN HAS TO DO IT. HE SHOULD, HOWEVER, DO IT GENTLY AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN TO KNOW HIM A LITTLE BIT AT LEAST. I DRAW THE LINE AT GROPING PRIVATE PARTS, BECAUSE THAT IS AN UNUSUALLY DISGUSTING ASSAULT AND NOT LOVE-MAKING.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/us/politics/bernie-sanders-discrimination-sexism.html
Sanders Meets With Former Staff Members, Seeking to Quell Anxiety Over Sexism
By Sydney Ember and Katie Benner
Jan. 16, 2019

Photograph -- Senator Bernie Sanders arriving for a committee hearing at the Capitol on Wednesday. He later met with former staff members from his 2016 presidential campaign who have complained of sexism and harassment.CreditCreditSarah Silbiger/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senator Bernie Sanders met on Wednesday with former staff members who conveyed their dismay over the mistreatment of women during his 2016 campaign, in an effort to calm the unrest over sexism that is overshadowing his possible 2020 bid.

Mr. Sanders met with roughly two dozen former workers for about an hour in a conference room at a hotel near the Capitol. The meeting was convened in response to a recent letter sent by more than two dozen people who worked on Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign, asking to meet with the senator and his leadership team to discuss issues of harassment.

The senator did not make himself available for comment afterward, and some attendees said they preferred to keep the discussions private. One woman said she found the meeting exhausting but declined to elaborate.

Jenny Yang, a human resources consultant hired by the Sanders team as a facilitator for the meeting, said in a phone interview that “people were there to hear and listen to each other.”

She added that they were looking at the meeting as a “first step in a longer process to understanding the kinds of systems that can be put in place to address some of the challenges that we heard about.”

Among those close to Mr. Sanders who attended were Jeff Weaver, his 2016 campaign manager, and Ari Rabin-Havt, Mr. Sanders’s deputy chief of staff. There were also some people from his campaign arm, including Arianna Jones, a communications aide. Mr. Sanders’s wife, Jane Sanders, made a brief appearance.

Mr. Sanders skipped an important Senate vote on Russia sanctions to attend the meeting around noontime. He was the only senator not to appear as Republicans blocked a Democratic resolution to prevent the Trump administration from easing sanctions on a Russian oligarch. The measure, which required 60 votes to proceed, was defeated, 57 to 42, and his vote would not have affected the outcome.

There were some signs of trouble even before the meeting began. Some attendees were upset that the draft of the agenda did not directly address specific allegations of mistreatment of women, or say which top Sanders aides would attend. Several women said the travel logistics were poorly handled, with some saying they were not invited until 48 hours before the daylong meeting was scheduled to begin.

Still, the meeting was the most concrete attempt yet by Mr. Sanders and his advisers to calm unease among former workers and supporters after allegations emerged about mistreatment of women during his 2016 campaign. Reports in the past two weeks by The New York Times and Politico described accounts of harassment and discrimination of former staffers.

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Mr. Sanders has twice apologized publicly for the incidents — but only in response to media questions following detailed articles — and has promised to do better if he runs again. He is still weighing a 2020 bid, after finishing second to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race in 2016.

People close to Mr. Sanders have said three of his top advisers from 2016, including his campaign manager, either will not return or will serve in different roles in a future campaign.

A draft agenda included a discussion with 2016 campaign management and facilitators from Working IDEAL, a company that advises on workplace inclusion and diversity. One of the facilitators is Ms. Yang, a former chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Some of the women who have spoken out to reporters about pay disparities, harassment and other instances of discrimination said they were not a part of the planning process for the meeting and were not aware it was happening. Last Friday, concerned that there would be no meeting, some of those women told the Sanders office that they felt it would be unfair to be excluded should a meeting occur, according to emails reviewed by The Times.

On Monday, Mr. Sanders’s office told them it would be arranging travel for them to arrive in Washington by Wednesday. But the women said the office did not send them formal invitations or any details about what would be discussed.

Some of them scrambled to rearrange their schedules, but several women said they did not hear back from Mr. Sanders’s office after being asked for travel details. One of the women was Sarah Slamen*, who was the state coordinator in Louisiana in 2016 and who told The Times that she quit Our Revolution, Mr. Sanders’s progressive organization, because of gender discrimination.

Ms. Slamen said she was eventually given a midnight flight back to Texas on Wednesday after the meeting. She declined, she said, because she is six and a half months pregnant. Though she said she would not attend and did not book a flight, she later received a confirmation email for a hotel in Washington.

A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

She said the logistical mix-ups were reminiscent of a 2016 campaign that she and some other women said was chaotic and disorganized.

“That they botched this process is emblematic of their inability to run a meeting,” Ms. Slamen said.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 17, 2019, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Sanders Meets Workers From Campaign to Ease Concerns About Sexism. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe


WATCH THIS VIDEO OF SLAMEN –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEvsZ_BZ1Po
Sarah Slamen Finishes Her Testimony 8:35 MINUTES
Xenophrenia
Published on Jul 13, 2013
Texas woman talks about her rant on the Senate floor during abortion hearing


I COULD FIND NO OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY ON SARAH SLAMEN, BUT THIS LESS THAN COMPLIMENTARY “BIO” TELLS HER PERSONALITY, ESPECIALLY ALONGSIDE THE VIDEO OF HER ON THE TEXAS SENATE FLOOR. I HATE TO SAY IT, BUT I THINK SHE MAY BE A FEMALE “NUTJOB.” THANK GOODNESS SHE HAD NO GUN WITH HER. HOW DID SANDERS GET HER IN HIS TEAM? SO, THE GIST IS, DON’T FOLLOW HER COMMENTS AS A FAIR APPRAISAL OF SANDERS. THE NYT HOMED IN ON HER FOR SEVERAL COMMENTS, NONE OF THEM KIND TO SANDERS.

THE FOLLOWING COMMENT IS FROM AN ACQUAINTANCE OF HERS FROM ONE OF HER SEVERAL POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS. “... THAT 15-MINUTE-FAMOUS INTERNET STAR SARAH SLAMEN -- WHO WENT BACK TO THE FORT BEND COUNTY DEMOCRATS IN 2014 AFTER LEADING THE CAMPAIGN FOR GREEN PARTY'S HOUSTON CITY COUNCIL PROSPECT AMY PRICE -- HELPED GOTV FOR EDWARDS. (DISCLOSURE: I KNEW HER WHEN WE WORKED ON PRICE'S CAMPAIGN, WHEN SHE WAS A GREEN PROGRESSIVE. HER HARD-RIGHT TURN, MOTIVATED BY HER PERSONAL ECONOMIC AND CAREER LIMITATIONS, RESULTED IN HER BLOCKING ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA LONG AGO)”

“AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE” IS VERY MUCH NEEDED IN ALL POLITICS, ESPECIALLY NOW. WHEN TRUMP COMES AFTER THEM PERSONALLY, THE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY WILL KNOW THEIR ERROR. WE HAVE BEEN EMOTIONALLY AND MENTALLY “COMFORTABLE,” SMUG AND CONCEITED FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, THOUGH I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT IT IN THAT WAY BACK THEN. I THOUGHT OF IT AS “SAFE.” THEN WITHIN A FEW YEARS EVERYTHING WENT WRONG.

FROM MICHAEL MOORE TODAY, TO DICK CAVETTE AND THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS IN THE 1970S, THEN BACK A FEW YEARS TO GROUCHO MARX, THEN FARTHER TO A FEW HUNDRED YEARS AGO WITH KING LEAR, AND FINALLY TO ONE OF THE WORLD GREATS WHO INTELLECTUALLY HELPED CREATE MODERN CIVILIZATION, ARISTOTLE. THIS ROLE IN SOCIETY AS THE ONE WHO “BEARDS THE KING,” IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO TRIM THE WING FEATHERS OF THE WANNABE DICTATORS. IT CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS WORK, OF COURSE. MANY HAVE DIED DOING IT.

THE SAME IS TRUE FOR SARAH SLAMEN AS WELL, BUT HER EXPLODING RAGE ONLY GOT HER THROWN OUT OF THE ROOM. WHY IS THE NYT QUOTING HER EXTENSIVELY? SHE ISN’T A FAIR-MINDED WITNESS.

ON SLAMEN AND OTHER MATTERS

http://brainsandeggs.blogspot.com/2015/11/lessons-for-democrats-in-louisiana.html
Brains and Eggs
Afflicting the Comfortable since 2002
Sunday, November 22, 2015

Lessons for Democrats in Louisiana

Or not. One parable from yesterday in the Sportsman's Paradise appears to be:"Run the Bluest Dog you can find against the shittiest Republican you can find". That should be a target-rich environment in Deep-In-The-Hearta. But as we know, even when you pretend to be pro-gun but are still pro-choice, you can't win here.

This post is about Lou-weezy-ana, though.

... Democrat John Bel Edwards defeated disgraced Louisiana Senator David Vitter in his bid for governor to replace failed presidential candidate Bobby Jindal. Vitter was famously the center of several scandals, especially including a prostitution debacle in which he reportedly engaged in not-so-vanilla interests.

Vitter had been trailing heavily in the polls for quite some time, and pulled out all the usual Republican dogwhistle tricks, from scaremongering over Syrian refugees to his own version of the racist Willie Horton strategy, claiming that his opponent would assist President Obama in releasing “thugs” from jail.

None of it worked. Jon Bel Edwards isn’t the sort of Democrat progressives will croon over anytime soon: he is anti-abortion, pro-gun and opposed President Obama on refugees. But he’s the first Democrat to win major elected office in the South since 2009, and his victory will mean that a quarter of a million people will get healthcare who would almost certainly have been denied it under a Vitter administration. That’s definitely a good thing.

Yes, Houston and Texas Democrats are already patting themselves on the back, looking for winning clues from across the Sabine. It's revealed in this FB post (you may not be able to see it because of his settings) that 15-minute-famous Internet star Sarah Slamen -- who went back to the Fort Bend County Democrats in 2014 after leading the campaign for Green Party's Houston city council prospect Amy Price -- helped GOTV for Edwards. (Disclosure: I knew her when we worked on Price's campaign, when she was a Green progressive. Her hard-right turn, motivated by her personal economic and career limitations, resulted in her blocking me on social media long ago).

Anything for a paid gig, I suppose, although there has to be a lot of abandonment of progressive principle involved in going from Green to Blue to Blue Dog. Do you suppose if they pay her enough, she'd pull a Chris Bell and work for the Republicans in 2016? Not referring to the Goldwater Girl.

But it would be extremely premature to declare that this result bodes well for a Democratic resurgence in the South. Democrats fared far more poorly downballot from the governor’s race, proving that the John Bel Edwards’ victory owed more to Louisiana voters’ disgust with David Vitter than to sympathy for his own agenda. The example of Matt Bevin’s recent election in Kentucky shows that at least the voters who turn out in off-year cycles in the South are more than willing to deny hundreds of thousands of people their right to healthcare and other benefits. It was David Vitter’s personal troubles that hurt him badly enough to hand a Democrat an overwhelming victory.

Even Steve Stockman, Louie Gohmert, and Greg Abbott aren't as lousy as David Vitter. Or to be clearer, David Vitter's morals.

And that itself is yet another indictment of Republican voters. David Vitter’s prostitution scandal is weird, creepy and untoward for a U.S. Senator. But a legislator’s fidelity and sexual proclivities have very little bearing on their job as a representative of the people, which is to protect the Constitution and do a responsible job providing the greatest good for the greatest number of constituents. Scapegoating refugees and denying medical care to hundreds of thousands are objectively both far greater moral crimes against common decency than a thousand trysts with sex workers. That the latter is illegal and the former is legal is a testament to the twisted moral value system perverted by puritan Calvinist ethics. Vitter should have been ousted for his overtly destructive public morality, not his far less consequential private failures.

But that’s not how Republicans roll. In their world, causing the needless deaths of thousands is fair game. Having sex with the wrong person, on the other hand, is unforgivable.

God, guns, and hatin' the gays trumps economic self-interest. More from Tennessee, and next up is Kentucky. First, this old toon everybody's seen.

But the actual truth -- and Dems know this as well, even if they don't want to understand why -- is that many of them are not voting at all.

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.... The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

Why do you suppose that is?

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

[...]

Where opposition to the social safety net has long been fed by the specter of undeserving inner-city African-Americans — think of Ronald Reagan’s notorious “welfare queen” — in places like Pike County [KY] it’s fueled, more and more, by people’s resentment over rising dependency they see among their own neighbors, even their own families.

“It’s Cousin Bobby — ‘he’s on Oxy and he’s on the draw and we’re paying for him,’” [Jim] Cauley [Democratic political consultant] said. “If you need help, no one begrudges you taking the program — they’re good-hearted people. It’s when you’re able-bodied and making choices not to be able-bodied.” The political upshot is plain, Mr. Cauley added. “It’s not the people on the draw* that’s voting against” the Democrats, he said. “It’s everyone else.”

'There's no greater hater of tobacco than a reformed smoker' syndrome. Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice (where I found the NYT link with the excerpts posted above).

One of my much-beloved aunts is a GOP voter of the exact type described in the article, a woman who bootstrapped her way into the middle-class via education — with help from the state! — and who has nothing but contempt for the “sorry” (her term) individuals who don’t follow a similar path and only scorn for any politician who wants to redirect a portion of her income to assist them.

How do we reach people like her? Well, it has been a multi-decade project of mine, and here’s my conclusion: We can’t.

You can point out a thousand times how minuscule a portion of government spending actually goes toward welfare assistance like food stamps. You can provide irrefutable evidence that the GOP uses wedge issues to keep the flow of cash and goodies channeled upward while doing fuck-all to address working-class concerns. You can emphasize that the country, indeed these folks themselves, prosper under Democrats and take a hit during Republican administrations.

It doesn’t matter. None of these facts has the visceral weight of the example of the never-married cousin with five children who lives down the road in a squalid trailer with her pill-head, disability check-collecting boyfriend.

Write them off; they're stupid. But don't write the ignorant ones off, because there's at least a chance they can be educated.

I agree with the folks who advocate writing these voters off. But it’s important to remember they are only a subset of the white working class.

The NYT column’s author visited an Appalachian health clinic, where he met another subset:

In the spring of 2012, I visited a free weekend medical and dental clinic run by the organization Remote Area Medical in the foothills of southern Tennessee. I wanted to ask the hundreds of uninsured people flocking to the clinic what they thought of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, whose fate was about to be decided by the Supreme Court.

I was expecting a “What’s the Matter With Kansas” reaction — anger at the president who had signed the law geared to help them. Instead, I found sympathy for Mr. Obama. But had they voted for him? Of course not — almost no one I spoke with voted, in local, state or national elections. Not only that, but they had barely heard of the health care law.

If there’s any hope of turning red states blue again, it lies in mobilizing those non-voters. And as red regions implement shitty policies and turn into Kansas-style failed states, there will be an increasing number of red state citizens with a lot less to be complacent about.

Maybe that’s what happened in Louisiana last night — I don’t know. But I do know this: (Democrats) need those votes. (Democrats) can’t wait for demographics to save (them).

Spot on. It's going to take a lot of hard-working young people like Sarah Slamen to separate the wheat from the chaff. Good luck to her with that, as I'm sure she'll soon be moving on to a Hillary Clinton gig, and for Dems down the ballot it's an imperative that Hillary's GOTV efforts pay off. Not just in the swing states but in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, throughout the South, and all across the country. Clue to them: the SCOTUS argument is useless. Too complicated for the uninformed. This article contains some real seeds of wisdom about the art of political persuasion.

Losing perhaps five or ten percent of potential Democratic voters -- whether to the Green Party or to the sofa -- because Bernie Sanders doesn't get nominated is a crumb compared to the tiered cake: the vast numbers of people that need to be re-engaged, registered, and turned out a year from now. That's where the focus should be, not assigning blame in advance by replacing the name "Ralph Nader" with Jill Stein and holding a bitter grudge for another fifteen years.

Learn from your mistakes, Democrats. The best place to begin would be nominating Bernie, but I don't believe you're capable of it. So you seem to be stuck with the Aegean* [sic] task of saving the heathens from themselves (and the rest of us).

[AEGEAN VERSUS AUGEAN -- https://www.yourdictionary.com/augean
Augean Play Au·ge·an
GR. LEGEND
of Augeas, king of Elis, or his stable, which holds 3,000 oxen and remains uncleaned for 30 years until Hercules, as one of his twelve labors, cleans it in one day by diverting a river (or two rivers) through it
very filthy or corrupt
Origin of Augean
from Classical Latin Augeas from Classical Greek Augeias]

Once again, best of luck. I've done all the helping I can do in this regard. It's on you now.
Posted by PDiddie at Sunday, November 22, 2015


4 comments:
meme said...
Good article, good luck with getting them to vote. It is hard to associate voting with making things better for one's self.

11:48 AM
Gadfly said...
Per your post, we talk regularly about the abysmal Latino turnout in Texas voting, but what about the poor whites here? I'll venture a guess it's a lot like Kentucky.

11:58 AM
Unknown said...
Hey Perry,

The last time you talked about me online, apparently you said, "it's a shame Sarah clings to an old grudge". That's why I was so surprised to find out about a bunch of weird stuff you said about me here today. I say it's weird considering I haven't spoken to you (or about you in public) for four years. Here are some corrections:

I didn't work for JBE's campaign in Louisiana. I turned out voters who typically vote Democrat with a union and API non-profit coalition. I tend to think that people can make up their own minds when we are just talking about Medicaid expansion in the South, where it's a life or death issue.(Not as fun as purity politics, I know, I know.).

I'll be meeting with at least two of Bernie's state directors after I return to Houston for the holidays. Keep fantasizing about my next job with Hillary, though. I've gone on MSNBC and disparaged her at least 3 times in the past year. I guess you missed that part of 2013's 15 minutes. I'll have a few more interviews coming out in the next week or so here in LA too, maybe you can catch up on more of my beliefs then?

I blocked you after I logged into Amy Price's campaign email once and read some really sexist emails you sent about me just being a dumb young girl who didn't know about politics and to not listen to me. That's why my partner blew you off on my behalf when you tried to mention me for blog hits in 2013.

But corrections are for blogs that people actually read. I only know about this because my poor Mom has a Google Alert on my name and had to read your sexist, weird, frothing about me today. Back to blocking you. Please try to drive traffic to your blog with stuff you know about, not attacks on people you have spoken to less than 10 times in this life and who don't bother you. It's really sad for someone your age.

Sincerely,

Sarah Slamen

4:20 PM



[“on the draw” –
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ten%20draw

ten drawdrugs
same as a ten bag, £10 worth of weed, or 'draw'
"he's just gone off to pick up a ten draw"
#ten bag#ten score#draw#weed#pick up
by rootsman May 18, 2008


https://www.internetslang.com/DRAW-meaning-definition.asp

What is DRAW?
DRAW is "Cannabis"]



LOVE DEM BRAINS AND EGGS? HERE’S SOME MORE. I’M GLAD I STUMBLED UPON THIS SITE.

http://robertreich.org/post/182020279635
The Trump Dictatorship
MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2019

The only redeeming aspect to Trump’s presidency is he brings us back to basics. And what could be more basic than the difference between democracy and dictatorship?

Democracy is about means, not ends. If we all agreed on the ends (such as whether to build a wall along the Mexican border) there’d be no need for democracy.

But of course we don’t agree, which is why the means by which we resolve our differences are so important. Those means include a Constitution, a system of government based on the rule of law, and an independent judiciary.

A dictatorship, by contrast, is only about ends. Those ends are the goals of the dictator – preserving and accumulating personal power. To achieve those ends, a dictator will use any means necessary.

Which brings us back to Trump.

The conventional criticism of Trump is that he’s unfit to be president because he continuously breaks the norms of how a president should behave.

Trump’s norm-breaking is unsettling, to be sure, but Trump’s more fundamental offense is he continuously sacrifices means in order to preserve and accumulate personal power.

He thereby violates a president’s core responsibility to protect American democracy.

A president who shuts down government in order to get his way on a controversial issue, such as building a wall along the border with Mexico, and offering to reopen it as a concession when his opponents give in, is not protecting democracy.

He is treating the government of the United States as a bargaining chip. He is asserting power by any means possible. This is the method of a dictator.

A president who claims he has an absolute right to declare a national emergency and spend government funds that Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate for the ends he seeks, is also assuming the role of a dictator.

A president who spouts lies during a prime-time national television address over what he terms an “undeniable crisis” at the southern U.S. border, which is in fact no crisis at all, is using whatever means available to him to preserve and build his base of power.

The real international threat to America is not coming from Latin America. It is coming from a foreign government intent on undermining our democracy by propagating lies, turning Americans against each other, and electing a puppet president.

We do not know yet whether Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. What we do know so far is that Trump’s aides and campaign manager worked with Putin’s emissaries during the 2016 election, and that Putin sought to swing the election in favor of Trump.

We also know that since he was elected, Trump has done little or nothing to stop Putin from continuing to try to undermine our democracy. To the contrary, Trump has obstructed inquiries into Russian meddling, and gone out of his way to keep his communications with Putin secret, even from his own White House.

The overall pattern is clear to anyone who cares to see it. Trump’s entire presidency to date has sacrificed the means of democracy to the end of his personal power.

He has lied about the results of votes, and established a commission to investigate bogus claims of fraudulent voting. He has attacked judges who have ruled against him, with the goal of stirring up the public against them.

He has encouraged followers to believe that his opponent in the 2016 election should be imprisoned; and condemned as “enemies of the people” journalists who report unfavorably about him, in an effort to fuel public resentment – perhaps even violence – against them.

To argue, as some Trump apologists do, that whatever Trump does is justified because voters put Trump in power, is to claim that voters can decide to elect a dictator.

They cannot. Even if a majority of Americans were to attempt such thing (and, remember, Trump received three million fewer votes than his opponent in 2016), the Constitution prohibits it.

The choice could not be clearer. Democracy is about means, while dictatorship is about ends. Trump uses any means available to achieve his own ends.

We can preserve our democracy and force Trump out of office. Or we can continue to struggle against someone who strives to thwart democracy for his own benefit.

In the months ahead, that choice will be made, one way or the other.