The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Six-term Senator and Vietnam war hero John McCain exits stage left just at the moment when unlikely President Donald J. Trump is on the verge of committing his Saturday Night Massacre to get him in the history books alongside Richard M. Nixon as a corrupt politician who was forced to leave office in disgrace.

At least McCain’s tragic death from cancer in Arizona knocked Trump down a peg in the news cycle for a day. The New York Times and Washington Post both led with McCain’s feature obit, and all the Sunday morning political talk shows devoted most of their time to McCain, not Trump.

I only met McCain once, and shook his hand with honor after interviewing him back in 2004. I was not always a fan, for he often bucked too far to the political right, like in 2008, when he chose Sara Palin as his running mate and campaigned on the platform of “drill, baby, drill.”

That was one of his darkest moments. But since he lost that race and helped give us Barack Obama as the first African-American president, who saved us from a global depression and allowed us to sleep for eight years without worrying about a total U.S. government meltdown, we can forgive him for that, especially after the political courage he showed last summer when he flew back to Washington to vote against the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

I was there the day McCain cast that vote, and for that vote I will always be a fan of McCain, who proved that you can do the right thing sometimes even in the face of massive political pressure.

McCain almost disappeared into political obscurity in the late 1980s when he was one of the so-called Keating Five who were tainted by the Savings and Loan Scandal. But he came back from that by sponsoring campaign finance reform legislation and even came to oppose the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which he called “the worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 21st century.” He was right about that.

Other politicians could learn a thing or two from McCain, especially a few Democrats from my home state of Alabama, who seem to think you have to kowtow to certain political forces to get elected, like religious voters. Even devout Christians at the end of the day will respect someone who tells it like it is and is willing to publicly stand up with the courage of their convictions. Maybe not racist voters, but they are dying off every day. No Democrats will get their votes anyway. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity won’t let them.

As I read and watch all this tribute coverage of John McCain, I am not seeing any mention of one of his Vietnam prison mates, Jeremiah Denton of Alabama. Denton served one term in the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1987, but as far as I can recall, he never showed any political courage by working with Democrats. He was a conservative Republican hack who lost in his reelection bid in 1986 to then-Democrat Richard Shelby, who actually showed a bit of courage last year by publicly refusing to vote for Roy S. Moore in his Senate run against Democrat Doug Jones.

Now a U.S. Senator, Jones is showing incredible political acumen and courage by urging the Senate to ‘hit pause’ on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and by continuing to support the legal requirements of the Affordable Care Act to prevent insurance companies from denying people health care coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

While the hard right won’t like it, they are not a majority of voters, not even in Alabama. If enough black voters, women and progressive Democrats in urban areas could get it together, they could win more elections, although I suspect the New York Times may be right about what might happen in November.

A Rebirth for Alabama Democrats? Not So Fast

Democrats had a chance for a reboot last week, when Senator Jones, the rightful leader of the state party as the highest ranking statewide elected Democrat, was rebuffed in Montgomery by party chair Nancy Worley and executive director Joe Reed when trying to elect some new leadership to bring the party into the 21st Century.

Reed has been controlling that committee in Montgomery like it was Tammany Hall for so long now that, even at the age of 80, he can’t bring himself to retire and go away. Ms. Worley, an old friend and source of mine, won’t show any political courage either by telling Reed he needs to step down and stepping aside herself. Together they do not have the technological skills to carry the party forward, but they hang onto their little bureaucratic positions even though they are largely irrelevant to what happens in elections now.

How can the party counter the clearly corrupt Republicans when the party is riddled with corruption itself? A number of columnists in Alabama wrote about how Reed stacked the committee, but none of them mentioned that he stacked it with many members of his own family, even third cousins. That is nepotism and a spoils system, not a merit system. Reed learned his politics in the era of George C. Wallace, and apparently he thinks African American politicians should be as corrupt as the white politicians they replaced after earning the right to vote during the Civil Rights era. As long as that is the status quo, it is going to be hard to elect Democrats in Alabama.

There is a way, and John McCain’s life and career reveal it. If you stand up and tell it like it is and show courage — and use the press and the media effectively — you can win. Cowering in the shadows on Facebook will only get you “liked” by a few like-minded cowards. You will not make it into the history books by playing it safe.

Of course that does not mean you should commit political and legal suicide like Trump by tweeting the craziest thoughts that pop into your head, like talking about firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions because he did the right thing legally and ethically by recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Now I’m no fan of Sessions, who has rarely shown real political courage himself over the years, but at least he stood up to Trump this week.

There has to be a lesson in that. Even if Trump fires him now, it will just look like more obstruction of justice. How do you really feel about Trump now, Mr. Sessions? You could show real courage by turning on Trump and cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to get this guy booted from the White House. The sooner the better for the country.

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