Tag: Michael Dukakis

The Story: President-elect Biden has named Susan Rice to chair his Domestic Policy Council. The choice is both expected and unlikely. It is expected because...

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis announced on Tuesday morning that he would seek the Democratic nomination for President, declaring, “Everyone else is.” Explaining his rationale for running, the 1988 Democratic Presidential nominee told reporters, “As everyone else started jumping into the race, I started feeling a little left out.” Additionally, Dukakis explained, “People have been stopping me on the street and saying that they thought I was already running. So, whatever.” The former standard-bearer said that before he threw his hat in the ring he paid a courtesy call to the 1984 Democratic nominee, Walter Mondale, to see if he was planning to run. “I wouldn’t get into the race if Walter was going to do it,” Dukakis said. “This could be his year.” Mapping out his campaign strategy, Dukakis said that he hoped to offer himself as an alternative to the former senator Gary Hart, who also entered the race today.

If you are a Republican candidate in 2018, chances are pretty good that you’re running hard on the politics of fear. Elsewhere, Republican candidates are running “stop illegal immigration now” ads blaming Democrats for purported crime waves, drug dealing and the spread of gangs such as MS-13. So egregiously did they politicize the killing of Mollie Tibbetts that her own father was compelled to intervene and tell conservatives to stop using his daughter’s death for their gain. After the 9/11 attacks, fear was marshaled to rally support for the invasion of Iraq, to reshape American foreign policy and to sanction the use of previously banned torture techniques. Shout the big lie often enough and people will believe it; make people fearful enough and they will follow you down any dark road. Too many Americans are following the Trump administration and GOP down their dark roads, tolerating what should be intolerable. But, he continued, “even if it doesn’t work, they deserve it.” And his audiences, primed to be both fearful and wrathful by an increasingly shrill media and online culture, rewarded him time and again for these tirades. Make enough people fearful about enough things, GOP strategists seem to believe, and you can neutralize distaste for all the chaos and cruelty of Trump’s administration and its enablers. Bombarded with rhetoric about violent crime, 7 in 10 Americans believe crime is going up. In fact, the violent crime rate today is barely a quarter of what it was in the early 1990s.