The Grifters

Grifter family. https://t.co/n0KUaLfiEO

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) July 13, 2017

This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can't stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other. https://t.co/1f7JqxScMr

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) July 11, 2017

With school out and Trump and his grifter family sucking up all the media energy, it's been hard for this blogger to stay focused on education politics. Talking (on Hitting Left) and writing about even the hot ed issues, like charter schools, vouchers and testing madness, while the country is facing its worst constitutional crisis in half-a-century, sounds to many of my readers (rightfully so) like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It brings me little satisfaction or relief.

Like most of us, I've increasingly been turned into a spectator on RussiaGate, staring at times in disbelief, with eyes glazed over at CNN or MSNBC, spitting out invectives at the TV screen while the grifter family saga plays out with never-ending cast of talking heads. It's a parade of  Trump and anti-Trump lawyers, former and current CIA operatives, Republican pols abandoning ship, Democrats with little to offer except "we not Trump in 2018", and so forth -- dredged out to normalize political criminality and the greatest redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, in history.

Where is this going? How do we as a nation, extricate ourselves from the rule of the most corrupt, anti-democratic regime since the Nixon era. Trump won't resign like Nixon. If he did, no Pence presidential pardon could save him and his grifter family from prison and loss of their empire because Pence himself is culpable. They all go down together.

Maybe pack all the grifters into Air Force 1, land at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow and request political asylum ala Edward Snowden? Not likely.

Impeachment? Possible, especially after Mueller's committee releases its findings. But that could take years.

25th Amendment? A "liberal fantasy" writes Politico's Jeff Greenfield. He's right.

Electoral strategy? Most likely, but problematic. Mid-term elections are coming up with a chance for Dems to take back the House and Senate. If this happens, Trump and his grifter family are toast. If not, 2020 seems like a sure bet. The problem is a Democratic Party split in half between neo-liberals and progressives, with nothing to offer the poor and working class on the most important issues. The DNC leadership continues to direct it's main blow at the Sanders left instead of the Republicans.

Check out Howard Dean, now, according to The Intercept, working for a health care lobbying firm to attack Bernie Sanders on single-payer.

"We're not Trump" may do it without the left. Or not.

Third party politics continues to be a bad spoiler joke with Greens (whites), liberal libertarians, and others invisible between elections. No base.

National Tenant March

A DISTRACTION? Some of my readers argue that all this Russomania is just a distraction, keeping us from talking about the important things like health care, education and racism. They have a point. But flipping the script for a minute, it's also meant death for the Republican agenda, ie. killing Obamacare, tax-"reform", etc... It has also left Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos, isolated and cowering over at the DOE.

Not to say there isn't great damage being done, especially a roll-back of civil rights gains won in the '60s. This includes restricting voting rights, which can only help Repugs in 2018 and '20.

Sound depressing? Snap out of it, I tell myself. As I'm writing this, thousands of tenants and housing rights activists are converging on Washington, D.C., for a National Tenant March. The march is protesting Trump’s "war on the poor", particularly his proposed $7.4 billion cuts to HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees public housing in the United States. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is among the scheduled speakers.