How do you lose a Presidency?

Very slowly, then all at once.

Clinton lies about a blow job and he’s impeached. Trump obstructs justice and acts like a doofus, but he skates. HOW CAN THIS BE?

This is the way it is folks. The Republicans are an alliance between the rich and the poor, with a few religious nuts thrown in the mix. The Democrats are made up of the middle class. The educated, those who’ve paid their dues to make it in the new economy. But they’ve been labeled LOSERS! THE PROBLEM! God, the right wing propaganda machine is so strong, you’d think that the economy of Alabama is stronger than that of California.

Regulation bad. Hinders business people. But how would you like it if your apartment building collapsed, good luck getting the government to pay for your loss, even disasters aren’t disasters anymore.

And they say impeachment will slow down the wheels of government. HUH? They’re not getting anything done anyway. The House proposes and Trump and the Senate deny. Nothing happens.

Meanwhile, the Republicans play a long game. Not only with the Federalist Society and the demonization of taxes, but the demonization of the left. Believe me, if the Republicans hadn’t spent twenty plus years defining Hillary Clinton as a witch, she’d be President. You see you get ahead of the news, you play for the future, or you lose.

Just ask the music business, trying to put its finger in the dike of file-sharing. You know what killed recording revenue? The youth, with their high speed connections at college and their facility with technology. And the youth are key to the government, and there are a lot of young people, especially women, rallying the troops and delivering excitement. But they too are demonized, defined, why is the left so afraid?

Impeachment… Will offend the electorate. The Dems are so afraid of offending people that they’re paralyzed. Trump grabs women’s private parts and the left is so busy defining rape and making men cower that the big issues are left behind.

Yes, the big issues. Everybody wants everybody to stay in their lane, to have no opinion. But the dirty little secret is if you raise your hand up, have a profile, you’re annihilated, by the rank and file. That’s what the internet has wrought…it’s empowered everybody with a connection to reach up and grab someone by the pussy and make them doubt their views and their participation.

Used to be you were disconnected from the blowback, and the hoi polloi felt powerless. Hell, the reason those Senators won’t break rank is they’re afraid of being primaried. Everybody’s so afraid they won’t do what’s right.

Come on, how can we believe in the government, in the American Way, if Trump is not impeached. Will he be convicted? I’ll get to that.

But this wanker has done so many heinous things. Putin assures him the Russians didn’t interfere in 2016 and he believes it, at least parrots it. Meanwhile, Mueller definitively states the Russians did.

And the truth is as a result of gerrymandering and voter suppression the left’s voice has been stymied. Throw in the electoral college while you’re at it. But whenever you do this, the right cries FOUL! When there’s a foul in the NBA does the perpetrator GIVE UP? No, he doubles down, it incentivizes him.

So according to Fox and Lindsey Graham, Trump was exonerated today. It’s like bad science fiction, there’s no truth left. My inbox is filled up with idiots sending me right wing sites as if they’re the truth. They can Google and find out they’re biased with an agenda, but they won’t. You know why they won’t? THE RIGHT WING HAS WON!

That’s right. There should be no taxes, you’re entitled to all the money you make, and the reason you’re broke is because of immigrants.

That’s like those people complaining about the closure of GM’s Lordstown plant. Reminds me of what Sam Kinison said about Biafra…don’t send food, send SUITCASES! These people have got to move!

How come no one can lose out in America? Techies pivot, but the brain dead doing manual labor believe they’re entitled to lifetime employment. And then they bitch the safety net is not strong enough. THAT’S YOUR FAULT!

That’s the America we live in today, one of division, one of tribes. And if you think you can convince members of the opposite team to switch parties, YOU’RE DREAMING!

When someone tells you they’re an “independent,” that just means they’re a Republican who doesn’t want the blowback. Nobody’s an independent in today’s fractured world, that’s a myth. But the media and the parties pay fealty to it.

And speaking of the youth, you’ve got to tell me how young people will get excited about Joe Biden, who’s got his own trail of #MeToo moments. It’d be like giving the reins of your Lime or Bird to grandpa. Of course he’s gonna fall off, he’s old and frail and he doesn’t know how it works!

But then you have the baby boomers crying ageism.

That’s America, where everybody believes they can do everything. But they can’t. Hell, even professional athletes retire, they just can’t do it anymore, but the boomer needs to believe he can still win the U.S. Open… HOGWASH!

Maybe we were always a conniving, untrustworthy nation, maybe now we just know about it. But one thing’s for sure, morality wins in the end. Because people need something to believe in.

If you can believe in today’s music, you’re delusional. Has a good beat and you can dance to it, but that’s about it. As for rock… People who can’t sing performing songs without memorable choruses and bridges who are playing to an ever smaller audience circling the drain. God, why can’t we get back to the garden? The Englishmen listened to the Delta bluesmen a few decades after their heyday. Now it’s fifty years later and Greta Van Fleet is castigated for sounding like Led Zeppelin. But Greta is the most successful new act out there!

But the music business can’t learn any lessons.

Everybody just wants to get paid. That’s how we got into this fracas. Label heads wanted their bonuses, they didn’t care about the future.

If you second guess what people want, you lose in the end. In music, it’s the left field unheard item that breaks all the rules that triumphs. But we’re told that in politics this won’t work, we’ve got to adhere to the past.

Impeach the sucker. Who cares if he’s convicted. Stand up for something. Play the long game. And, for those who lived through Watergate, Nixon looked like he was winning until the final moment, when the Republican senators insisted he resign. If you don’t think the same thing is possible here, you’ve got no sense of history.

As for pissing people off… WHO? No registered Democrat is gonna vote for Trump and the indies are Republicans anyway. It’s a small sliver of people who make a difference, and most of ’em don’t even vote. Yup, if you get people excited they vote, they feel they can make a difference. That’s how Trump won in 2016 and the Dems took back the House in 2018.

IGNORE THE REPUBLICANS AND FOX NEWS! You just can’t win that battle. If you think Dems on Fox are gonna make a difference, you’ve never watched that channel. Oldsters watch it like kids in the eighties watched MTV, they were ADDICTED! But if you put on Perry Como or Rosemary Clooney would they have gone for it? NO!

Everybody knows better, everybody blinks. It’s all about the data.

But data can’t write a hit song. Data can only replicate what’s already been done. When it comes to innovation, creativity, you need people.

This is the story of our time. In Germany, they’re telling Jews not to wear skullcaps. In America, not only did right wing wingnuts say the Jews would not replace them, as if there were enough Jews to do this, but one ended up killing a young woman.

But all we’ve got on the left is outrage and sympathy, we don’t DO anything!

I always wondered about those people who fought for their country. Lose your life over politics? But now I understand.

Everybody’s got a computer in their hand, but climate science can’t be trusted. It’s as if you were convinced your calculator delivered the wrong result.

People have power. If they organize around a principle and lead.

The Democrats are afraid of offending anybody and as a result no one is excited about them. Come on, I see Chuck Schumer on TV and I want to puke. He’s parsing his words, he’s cooking up nothing, and the guy in the White House is tweeting outrageously all day long?

I don’t like AOC’s view on the Jews and Israel, but one thing I’ll tell you for sure, she got a lot of people excited, and she drew attention to herself and got tons of media. Forget that the right wing branded her. SHE BRANDED HERSELF FIRST!

So I want all you lefties to unite, behind people who are passionate who want change.

Biden returning to what once was? What, do you want me to go back to Windows 95?

Hate me all you want. E-mail me I’m an idiot. That’s just the point. I can take it, I’m not gonna blink.

But for those who are on my side, it’s time to rise up with your eyes open and say…WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!

She’s got a plan for that.

Pete Buttigieg waffled on abortion on Fox.

After Georgia and Alabama restricted abortion rights, Elizabeth Warren introduced a plan to defend abortion rights and reproductive health care. And, she won’t go on Fox.

The Republicans play offense.

And the Democrats play defense.

If you’re afraid to piss someone off, you’re a loser. You’ve got to own your position, forget naysayers, and plow ahead.

In Hollywood they apologize regularly. But Trump never does. And he won, he’s President.

Oh, don’t talk to me about the popular vote, or gerrymandering or voter suppression. That’s the Democrats, always fighting the last war.

Then again, on Fox Hillary Clinton is President. Then again, that just rallies and solidifies Trump’s base. Meanwhile, under the guise of “fairness,” the “New York Times” attacks Democratic candidates.

Forget the Pocahontas thing. You don’t engage your critics online, keeping a story alive, you just wait for it to blow over. And the truth is most people are not swayed by issues like this. They’re more worried about their pocketbook and the right to live freely, and that includes abortion. How the Republicans ended up the party of “freedom,” I’ll never know. They keep on restricting our behavior.

And the truth is the populace is ignorant and no one knows less than an insider. Isn’t that what we learned in 2016, with Hillary’s failed candidacy? No one has a hold on the public these days, that’s the story of the decade, the splintering of our nation, caused to a great degree by income inequality. Meanwhile, you can’t attack the rich, because they’ve won and they’re job creators. And if you believe that, you’re probably one of them.

People are afraid of Elizabeth Warren. And that’s how every rock star made it. From the Beatles to Alanis Morissette. John Lennon said his band was bigger than Jesus. Ah, the backlash. It only BOOSTED the Beatles’ career. Because everybody in the target demo knew it was true, and could parse the words. As for Alanis giving head in a theatre, now the #MeToo generation is blowing back about that, losing the plot. We’re here because of sex. Which is oftentimes raunchy and weird. But if it’s between two consenting adults, WHO CARES?

That’s the Democratic Party, so busy creating a big tent that a lot of the population doesn’t want to enter. We need a leader, speaking the truth, to draw people in, WITH PASSION!

No one’s passionate about Joe Biden, he’s the safe “electable” choice, like Jeb Bush, John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney before him. Ever notice that the safe choice never makes it?

So Trump turns the game on its head. Knowing that America loves a train-wreck and hope. That’s right, Trump gave people hope that something would be different. That it just wouldn’t be business as usual, which is what Hillary was offering. Don’t tell me Clinton was better prepared, that’s like saying the Ramones weren’t any good because their members couldn’t play as well as Yes.

This is the way it always happens. There’s a mainstream, and then an outsider comes along and blows the status quo apart, revealing we live in a new world.

And it never happens overnight. There’s always a long term of preparation off the radar. Warren paid her dues and she won!

She woodshedded at Harvard. And then made noise after being hired by Obama to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No wonder the Republicans freaked out. They want the corporations to be able to rape and pillage without restriction.

And then she defeated a Republican to become a member of the Senate. This is like playing clubs and graduating to arenas.

Now she wants to play in stadiums, can she sell out?

What do we know? If you start in arenas you usually stumble and fall. You’ve got to build it, over time, by word of mouth.

And it’s never the usual suspects who take chances. It’s always some promoter or manager who believes. And lo and behold, these are the ones who triumph!

Taylor Swift is stumbling trying to follow trends.

Adele is her own trend. She sits above the fray.

You can’t be wishy-washy, you’ve got to own your identity.

And the press keeps propping up Pete and Beto, who are nonstarters. Pete is a nice guy who is not seasoned and Beto is a guy who fought an unwinnable war and lost. That’s right, he did not beat Ted Cruz for Senate. In what world does that make him fit for the Presidency?

Anybody with money hates Elizabeth Warren. Just ask them. They’re afraid they’re going to lose something. SHOULDN’T THEY? Enough with the fiction that we can lift the bottom up with the top not sacrificing. They’re never gonna take all your money. Maybe you can cough some up!

But no, you’ve got to play to everybody! As if everybody loves Nine Inch Nails or Lil Yachty. But we’re distracted by sideshows, like Lil Nas X.

That’s the world we live in, where the sideshow rules. You go for eyeballs, substance is irrelevant. It’s all about feeding the machine, and nothing changes.

But this century has been all about change. And those in power hate it! Like the aforementioned “New York Times,” which can’t stop printing anti-technology screeds. As if a twenty year old, WHO CAN VOTE!, will cough up their smartphone. Hell, even the boomers don’t want to give up their smartphones, they just want YOU TO!

The twenty first century is not about cohesiveness, that was the monoculture back in the eighties and nineties.

Then again, those who ruled back then can’t get over the fact that someone moved their cheese.

The twenty first century is about communication, connection. And the only thing the Democrats can do is complain. It’s Facebook’s fault. It’s always somebody’s fault but their own

We need leadership. We need optimism. We need someone to rally around.

Hell, we’ve got the same situation in music. The major labels don’t sign anything new and edgy, they just keep giving the public what they think it wants…hip-hop and pop. Meanwhile, other genres sell tickets and have more traction than ever. You avoid the future and you lose out. You’ve always got to look where we’re going, not where we’ve been.

Let’s see… Warren runs against Trump and people are not going to vote for her because she may or may not have Native American blood, because she’s a woman, because she’s not afraid to fight?

YOU’RE DREAMING!

People overlooked Trump’s rudeness and peccadilloes because they believed in his message and/or did not like Hillary.

Bernie was the candidate of 2016. Talk about electable, he would have beaten Trump, because Bernie was speaking from the heart and it resonated.

It’s like we’re in a sailing race and Warren is tacking away from the field. And at first everybody said she was crazy, but now her numbers keep going up and…

The media can’t stop talking about her lack of cash.

The cash comes AFTER the message, not before! You cannot foist a new act upon the public, no matter how much you spend, you’ve got to build it to critical mass and THEN put the pedal to the metal.

Meanwhile, Warren knows it’s about keeping your name in the press. These biweekly proposals get her ink, when the competition is afraid to go on the record for fear they’ll piss someone off.

We don’t go backward, we always go forward. The labels couldn’t kill file-trading, we ended up with a new paradigm, streaming, even if it did take fifteen years. Furthermore, it was a good thing, it rained down more cash. But you can’t convince the oldsters, the losers, the same people tuned into Fox who want to go back to an era that wasn’t so good to begin with!

America is screwed up. There’s more economic mobility in Europe than there is in the U.S.A. You can’t make it on minimum wage, which the right refuses to raise because it’s gonna kill the job creators. Oh, come on.

You see the right has an answer for everything.

And the left is constantly flummoxed, trying to defend its position as it argues amongst itself. That’s right, some of the biggest haters of Elizabeth Warren are Democrats themselves, the Party, they think she’s unelectable, they want to anoint the candidate.

Just ask a record label. The public decides what hits, not the company.

We’re all looking for something new, fresh and different.

This is why the public is in charge, when they catch wind of something and they latch on it becomes a phenomenon, from One Direction to Billie Eilish to… And both of those acts were built first on the internet, there was a hard core who believed and talked about them. No one would have put faith in them at the outset, but they won.

Can Elizabeth Warren become President?

Damn straight she can.

Don’t stand in the way of progress, of winners, of change.

Tap into the future or get out of the way. You’re just cluttering the pathway to glory.

Tune in Tuesday May 28th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

We didn’t make beats, we played the guitar.

I’m reading this book “The Dog Stars” because I just finished “The River” and I wanted more.

They’re both by Peter Heller. Who I found accidentally with “Celine,” but didn’t realize this until I was researching later.

I don’t like to recommend books that are not a 10. And a lot of what I’ve read recently is not.

I read the Rachel Cusk trilogy, from “Outline” through “Transit” and “Kudos.” But each installment got worse, so I didn’t want to tell you about them. But the first book, “Outline,” blew my mind. Do you live your life internally or externally? You know the external people, always in action, always talking, filling up the space, with tons of friends, they feel like they fit in. The internal? They’re often inside their heads, contemplating, analyzing, oftentimes telling nobody their thoughts. That’s what “Outline” is all about. Ostensibly it’s a novel about a newly-separated woman, or maybe she’s already divorced, teaching in Greece for a spell. It opens with a flight from the U.K. Do you talk to your seatmates? I no longer do. Then again, I know a director who got all the investments for his films by flying first class. He really couldn’t afford it, but it paid dividends. Not much really happens in “Outline,” but if you live your life on feelings, you’ll resonate.

And then “The River.” What did I read before? Oh, Gary Shteyngart’s memoir, “Little Failure.” Got good at the end, but it reminded me of why I disliked “Super Sad True Love Story,” his writing style is not smooth, “Lake Success” is much better.

And I downloaded the sample chapter of “The River” based on the reviews. I’m combing them all the time, seeing what resonates.

And yes, I read on a Kindle. The book business, readers, are anti-technology. Makes me crazy, there’s even an anti-electronic screed in today’s “New York Times.” But what bugged me more was the fact-checking of Bernie Sanders, you know, like they fact-check our President. But this was a false equivalency, Sanders stretched the truth by 10%, literally. The “New York Times” is so busy trying to look fair that it bends over backwards and hurts the left wing’s cause, which is kind of funny, since the right wing doesn’t read it, except for hard news. Incensed me, I wanted to stand up to the paper, but I don’t like pissing in the wind, sending them e-mail, I’m not the guy who calls in for the radio contest or buys lottery tickets or…if the odds are infinitesimal I balk. Then again, the “Times” has less impact than ever before. But its reach certainly exceeds mine.

So, “The River” sets a mood!! You think you’re in Canada paddling a canoe north like Jack and Wynn. Only Heller rewrote it with a dictionary. No one would know every word in this book. He’s a graduate of the Iowa program, he’s trying to impress an inside, out of touch group, not knowing that readability is key.

And “The Dog Stars” follows the same paradigm. Unknowable words (which I look up on the Kindle, that’s a built-in feature), but an incredible sense of place. Colorado after a flu wipes out most of the population.

And “The River” has a bad ending, a bunt after all that action. But like “The Dog Stars,” it isn’t until halfway through that the action truly begins.

So I’m lying on the bed reading “The Dog Stars” and they’re deep in a canyon in Colorado and…

I start singing “Country Road.” In my head, silly, no one breaks into song alone like that, especially not after reading a book.

And it made me think of James Taylor and that time.

I actually got the initial album on Apple first. I love the original “Carolina In My Mind.” The production is dated, but those songs are so good on the first LP.

And then I got the second album, “Sweet Baby James” and “Fire and Rain” are the famous cuts, but this was before James Taylor got any airplay. We were on our own. And I played those LPs, because I went to see James at the Capitol Theatre, and I wanted to know all the songs. There were only a few hundred people there, he was solo, he sat on a stool.

And only a week or so later I was in Boston and my friend and I went to see James at Harvard.

This was April 1970.

Within a month, tickets started to fly.

But the first song that enraptured me on “Sweet Baby James” was “Country Road.”

Walk on down, walk on down, walk on down
Walk on down, walk on down a country road

The chorus hooked me first.

But this was also at the advent of the back to nature, return to the land era. We weren’t all connected, we could live in solace.

Now “Country Road” was the fifth song on the first side, so for a long time I owned it, people only knew the hits, they hadn’t gotten that far.

And the trick was to sit in front of your turntable, adjust the speed so the key was the same, and learn the song on your guitar.

And I worked at a camp and we sang it.

And when I went to college…I even went to the basement club that soon closed and got up on stage in front of maybe three people and played it. I’d never do anything like that again, but when you’re a freshman, you’re looking for like-minded people, you don’t know you have to be cool.

And there really weren’t any like-minded people at Middlebury. They were all at UCLA, and they all knew each other.

Now eventually there was an extended version of “Country Road,” where James kept talking about walking on down, but it didn’t resonate like the original, the same way the redo of “Carolina In My Mind” on the “Greatest Hits” album was secondary to the original. When no one is paying attention, you do your best work. You’re not self-conscious. The key is to be able to get to this place after you’ve made it, and that’s so hard to do.

The original “Country Road” doesn’t seem to be made for an audience, just the people in the studio, so when you listen to it you too are taken away, to the river in “The River” or to Colorado in “The Dog Stars.”

And if you know “Country Road” you don’t forget it.

And it’s easy to sing.

And easy to play.

Mama don’t understand it
She wants to know where I’ve been

Our parents weren’t hip, as a matter of fact they were kind of clueless, they were not our best friends. We went on adventures, unsupervised, we took chances, and the end results were not always good

I guess my feet know where they want me to go
Walking on a country road

We’re overwhelmed by the news. But oftentimes it’s the same damn thing, nothing happens. And really, it’s what we do in our own personal lives that matters. But with this focus on politics we’re drawn in, afraid our lives and the country hang in the balance.

But we yearn to be set free. To let our minds drift.

Used to be the music came first. It was all about personal expression. Straight from the writer’s heart. So it resonated with truth. And it was anathema to sell out, the artists were on our side, which made their word even more powerful, because corporations were the devil, as well as the sold out old men.

But I can hear a heavenly band full of angels
And they’re coming to set me free
I don’t know nothing ’bout the why or when
But I can tell that it’s bound to be
Because I could feel it, child, yeah
On a country road

Something was coming, and we could feel it.
Is something coming now? I’m not sure I can feel it.

Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same

But those times have passed. That’s what Woodstock was about. Turned out there was a mass of us, that the media missed, who were all like-minded, who were driven by the music.

But this was back when musicians were leaders. And were listened to.

We’re still listening to James Taylor.

Spotify – Country Road

YouTube – Country Road