The other half

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Sep 26, 20190

In the free bin at Main Street Books in Colfax, a few months ago, was a book with a picture of a building inside.

“A Day In the Life of America” was part of a series that sent photographers across one land mass on one day to capture its essence. This was the United States on May 2, 1986.

No people were in the full-page picture, just a building.

How could that make the cut?

The picture showed terraced glass floors and on each, a young tree.

Trees growing on the sides of a building.

The three-year old structure was in New York, at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Its name was Trump Tower.

This 33-year-old image may just illustrate a mistake Democrats make today as they continue the quest to unseat the building's owner as president in 2020.

How many people have built tall buildings in New York and elsewhere?

Donald Trump did it too –– in an interesting way. Enough that it made it into a book consisting of 98 percent pictures of people.

That's something.

A year later his own book spent 51 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list (it's co-author disowning it in 2016 notwithstanding). All the while Trump spent more of his dad's money on interesting projects like buying the Plaza Hotel. Fifteen years later, after how many bankruptcies, his reality show was not just a reality show, but a good one (for 2-3 seasons). Then he ran for president on a major long shot and pulled it off.

All of that is something. Some of which would have to be described as success.

But to too many Democrats, he's just a reality TV host, con man, xenophobe, mysogynist and racist.

They're leaving the other half out, and it may spell their doom next November.

How the Democrats are handling themselves in the current debates is another reminder of this. They're so sure Trump is a buffoon, but yet, in the 2016 primary debates, he was the only one that stood there and answered questions, never talked in canned speech excerpts, never talked over his own time or others', or butted in.

That is an especially likeable quality in politics, which any candidate would benefit from.

In the last debate, Joe Biden's “answer” to a question about his 1975 statement about slavery reparations was so avoidant it even got all the way around to sounding kind of racist by the end. At another point in the debate, Pete Buttigieg butted in to sound pretentious and later essentially laughed at a proposal by Andrew Yang.

Trump never did things like that. He tagged people with nicknames, but the way he delivered them was most often indirect, original and again, interesting, even subtle.

The Democrats need to find someone with more to them. Someone with something. Another half, if you will.

Whatever happened to Howard Schultz? Couldn't he run as a Democrat? What about someone like Jim Sinegal?

Costco co-founder Sinegal spoke at the 2012 Democratic convention. He's too old now, but is there someone in the same vein who might be willing?

The point is, if you don't have any politicians who are actually (still) good candidates, you have to go outside and find someone.

Time still remains to get this picture.

Garth Meyer

Gazette Reporter