In 3 Weeks We Have The Chance To Get Even With Politicians Who Have Screwed Us Over-- Let's Use It

 

"Don't Let It Dominate Your Life" by Nancy Ohanian

Trump, possibly dying from COVID, cancelled his Ambridge, Pennsylvania (Beaver County, 16 miles northwest of Pittsburgh) rally early yesterday morning but promised he would be doing a rally in Florida today or tomorrow. He spent his time yesterday chit-chatting on the phone with Rush Limbaugh-- threatening his (internal) enemies-- and on Fox Business where he said he's "back because I’m a perfect physical specimen, and I’m extremely young. And so I am lucky that way." He then cancelled his Sunday rally in a Florida secret location that only ever existed in his fevered mind. Earlier, Ted Cruz, on CNBC's Squawk Box was bitterly facing up to the fact that the GOP is about to experience what he called "a bloodbath of Watergate proportions." (Pathetically, he blamed Schumer and Pelosi for the Republicans' problems.)

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote yesterday that he's dreaming of a Biden landslide. Notice that Trump-hating Republicans like Sullivan seem far more excited about Biden than thoughtful Democrats do. I've had no doubt since 2018 that there would be a giant anti-Trump/anti-Republican tsunami. Poll after poll, though, has shown not a trace of a "Biden landslide." A Biden landslide is preposterous. He is clearly the lesser of two evils and my fear is that he'll interpret a landslide (against Trump) into some kind of validation for himself and proceed to be the worst Democratic president since James Buchanan. My biggest fear, of course, is that he'll fulfill his career-long dream of making a grand bargain with the GOP that will kill off Social Security and/or Medicare.

Sullivan, a #NeverTrumper, wrote he knows "it’s tempting fate to mention the idea, foolish to entertain it, mad to expect it, but the possibility of a landslide is now real." He should get out more. It's been baked into the cake for quite some time. "A Biden win," he wrote, "would be a reprieve for the country; a Biden landslide would be an American miracle. Unlike anything else, it would cauterize the wound of Trump, preventing further infection. It would say to posterity: we made this hideous mistake, for understandable reasons, but after four years, we saw what we did and decisively changed course. It would turn the Trump era of nihilism, tribalism and cruelty into a cautionary tale of extremism, illiberalism and, above all, failure. It would suggest, especially if older whites come round some more, that the future need not be one of spiraling racial polarization, but of multiracial support for liberal democracy, its norms, and practices. What you learn from studying the decline and collapse of republics is that illiberal precedents become the new baseline if they are not instantly repudiated and punished. A landslide loss for Trump would mitigate, if not remove, the deep damage he has done."

He's smoking dope or something. But Republicans want that big Biden win, probably because he knows Biden is the best route back to the status quo ante where conservatives have thrived and will thrive again. Biden sure ain't Bernie and, in his own words, nothing will fundamentally change.

A landslide would also do something important for an incoming Biden administration: it would present a real opportunity to pursue a policy of national reconciliation around Covid19 recovery and economic stimulus. It would buttress Biden’s hopes for bipartisan support, even if of a limited kind, in a genuine emergency. His Gettysburg speech last week reiterated his opposition to left-tribalism, as did Harris’ surprising brag about support from Republicans and Independents in the debate. As David Brooks noticed this morning, this has been a very centrist campaign from Biden-Harris. Biden is offering himself, in Noah Millman’s rough analogy, as a kind of Adenauer figure, a bridge from past to future rooted in a stable center. Here’s the money quote from Gettysburg:

Instead of treating each other’s party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end. We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country. A spirit of being able to work with one another. When I say that, and I’ve been saying it for two years now, I’m accused of being naive. I’m told, “Maybe that’s the way things used to work, Joe, but they can’t work that way anymore.” Well, I’m here to tell you they can, and they must if we’re going to get anything done.

And such an atmosphere could help usher in an immediate stimulus package which, as Matt Yglesias explains here, is close to oven-ready. Using Reconciliation to pass a series of redistributive measures alongside Covid19 relief-- a new child allowance, green infrastructure investment, Obamacare expansion, phased-in tax hikes on the wealthy-- side-steps the filibuster question (you don’t need 60 Senate votes to pass a Reconciliation bill) and sets Biden up for a big initial win, with the momentum that provides.

A landslide matters because it gives Biden a much bigger mandate to govern from the center; it matters because it would add more non-leftist Democrats to the House, weakening the extreme left; it matters because if former Republicans and Independents give Biden a hefty margin of victory, Congressional Republicans might feel some small pressure, in the wake of their party’s collapse, to acquiesce for a while at least. That didn’t happen in 2009, of course. But the gyre has widened since then, and the full, terrifying consequences of a house so deeply divided are much clearer now.

And a landslide is the only thing that can possibly, finally break the far right fever that has destroyed the GOP as a legitimate right-of-center political party, and turned it into a paranoid, media-driven, fact-free festival of fear and animus. It does not and cannot mean a return to the Bush era. The Republican move toward defending the unskilled, protecting working families, guarding entitlements, resisting urban wokeness, checking free trade absolutism, restraining overseas intervention, and curtailing mass immigration is one that need not be abandoned. Its time has come. But what the GOP has to grasp is that although Trump rose to power on these currents, and brilliantly exploited them, he also proved to be far too narcissistic and confrontational to harness them.

In fact, Trump severely hurt the cause for stronger immigration controls, because of his racial crassness, jaw-dropping cruelty, and terrible skills at deal-making. He has given the critical race theorists a living breathing caricature of right-racism, discrediting and demoralizing a liberal defense of color-blindness and equality. He has tainted a sane, necessary entrenchment of America’s global reach with support for dictatorships and contempt for our allies. He has worsened social and economic inequality, when a reformist conservatism would seek to “level up” a society wracked by hyper-global capitalism. A thumping defeat of the president, a serious shellacking, could help remove the tarnished toxicity of Trump from an agenda that, under younger leadership, could spawn a new, multicultural right-of-center majority.

You can see the kindling for it: in the growing success of Latinos in America and their desire to join the mainstream as generations of immigrants have done before them; in the dogged defense of meritocracy and hard work among Asian-Americans, as they fight left-racism in the school and college system; in the concern about crime that separates many sane black voters from white, wealthy liberals; in the staggeringly successful integration of gays and lesbians, a community as diverse as any in America, who are open, if they are not shunned, to a dialogue that focuses on more than the “systemic oppression” of the past.

I didn’t expect this sudden hopeful twist of fate. Who could? And I don’t mean to deny the depth of tribalism in our culture, the remaining acute dangers of the election season, the huge gambles an unhinged president could make to save his skin, or yet another melodrama in this exhausting story. But the psychotic unraveling of Trump for all to see, the overwhelming fact of his failure on the core issue of the election, Covid19, and the appalling chaos and madness of a campaign in free-fall have given us something quite rare these past few years. There is an inkling of possibility on the horizon. After the worst of all possible worlds, we have a taste of a better one.

There is one aspect of an anti-Trump landslide I like. Depending on how big it is, we will see "safe" red congressional seats flip blue, including-- unlike Biden-- for real reformers, like Mike Siegel, Julie Oliver, Kara Eastman, Audrey Denney, Liam O'Mara, Adam Christensen, Nate McMurray, J.D. Scholten and other candidates the DCCC refused to take seriously but who could help balance the over-abundance of conservative recruits from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, worthless New Dems and Blue Dogs. None of them are worse than Republicans but none of them are worth supporting. But please do support the progressives running for House seats by clicking on the ActBlue 2020 congressional thermometer on the right. All of these candidates are working their asses off to finish strong with Get Out The Vote efforts in their districts, efforts that will pay off not just for themselves, but for Biden and in state legislative races to boot. Voters who Adam Christensen turns out could help flip the Florida state Senate. Voters who Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver turn out could help flip the Texas state House. Let's all do what we can to get this done.

Figuring Out Trump (But Not Really) Plus-- All The President's Taxes

 

While I was working on this post, the NY Times dropped the bombshell opus on Trump's taxes. Who better than Dorothy Reik, President of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, to deal with the fact that Donald pays less in taxes than the millions of people who are unemployed due to his criminal mishandling of the pandemic? So... ladies first:

All The President's Taxes
-by Dorothy Reik

Just as I was trying to wrap my head around the two latest books exposing the criminal in the White House, White House, Inc. by Dan Alexander and Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis, an alert popped up on my phone from the NY Times. They had the goods-- the tax records Donald Trump has been hiding for the last two decades.

He is right about one thing-- he is under audit and has been for years-- over a tax deduction he took-- $72.9 million-- for abandoning his losing casinos but the deduction is illegal of he received anything in return and he did. The payback to the American taxpayers is over $100M. But the big headline is that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in the year he was elected and the year after. Everyone understands that! And for ten years he paid NO taxes due to a $900 million loss which he was able to "carry forward" for ten years.

Digging further we learn-- as I posited years ago-- that he is cozying up to tyrannical murderers because he has investments in their countries to protect-- the Philippines, Turkey and India are cited in this first installment. I wrote then that he also covets beach front properties in North Korea-- which he admitted. This is the most chilling yet least surprising revelation. The NY Times promises to dribble out more during the weeks to come a la the Hillary emails project.

Another fun fact is that he deducted "consulting fees" for projects that required no such services. The exact amounts of the deductions showed up in Ivanka's financial statements even though she was employed by the entity taking the deduction. My friend just called to suggest Ivanka and Jared head to temple early to start atoning but I think their sins call for a walk to the sea.

They should start now. It's a long walk from their mansion. Whether the Atlantic is big enough to wash away their sins is a question for Jewish scholars. How they allowed Ivanka to convert is another one.

More fun-- entities looking to do business with the government are renting space in Donald's office buildings in Manhattan and San Francisco. They are getting contracts worth many multiples of the rent they are paying.

Donald also has about $400 million in personally guaranteed loans coming due in the next four years and the gravy train of payouts from The Apprentice has stopped.  When asked about the report at his press conference the Donald labeled it "fake news" and walked off.

Maybe Chris Wallace needs to reconsider his questions for Tuesday.

Cousins? Distant

Louisiana is number 1. Louisiana has the most cases per million residents (35,262) in the U.S.-- which is also more than any country in the world, other than make-believe countries like Qatar and Arbua. In 2016 Trump won big in Louisiana-- 1,178,638 (58.1%) to 780,154 (38.4%). Of Louisiana's 64 parishes, Trump won 54. And in those 54 parishes, the folks heard Trump call the pandemic a hoax and they heard him belting people who wear masks or who practice social distancing. The worst hit county in the parish in the state is Jefferson-- Trump territory. It's mostly white and Trump beat Hillary there 55.3% to 40.5%. Jefferson Parish has 17,459 cases... but every single parish in the state has cases. Some are spiking very badly now. On Friday Caddo, Lincoln, Lafayette and West Feliciana led the way in new cases. Hillary won 50% of the votes in Caddo but those are parishes... Trump country.

Though the state elected a Democratic governor-- his election and reelection were outliers. The state Senate consists of 27 Republicans and 12 Democrats. The state House consists of 68 Republicans, 35 Democrats and 2 independents. The Louisiana Democratic Party is a hot mess. Yesterday PBS broadcast a focus on how the party is struggling to stay relevant.

Natasha Williams from Louisiana Public Broadcasting explains that rural voters are Trump's base in the state. "The Democrats," she said, "basically have lost a lot of the rural voters because in their estimation, rural voters feel like the Democratic Party has gone too big. They've gone to big city politics and they basically deal with issues that don't pertain to rural voters."

The Trumpist Secretary of State attempted to promulgate rules that would make it harder-- and in some cases impossible-- for voters to vote by mail. He was shot down by a federal judge who, said Williams, "stopped just short of saying that this was a political move and we are going to not put people in danger while politics kind of rears its ugly head in mail-in voting as well."

Louisiana is very concerned about healthcare and jobs. Education is also a big deal here. A lot of folks are really kind of struggling with the pandemic. You know, how do I pay my bills? How do my kids get a good education? How will I maintain and get what I need for my family?

...[I]n New Orleans in fact, even though we're in phase three, a lot of New Orleans is still closed down. The governor has been very sensitive to the fact that people want to go back to work. We need to open our economy. But also gauging those numbers, watching those numbers. And anywhere you go, you see evidence that the state is trying to indicate to you, we're not out of the woods yet. We need to do what we can to kind of, you know, keep that curve going in the right direction.

The only current polling I've seen in Louisiana was about oil ad gas drilling but they did ask some election questions. Trump's approval has fallen by 10 points, although it's still 51% approve/45 disapprove. And when they asked who people will vote for-- 48% Trump, 42% Biden, a serious erosion for Trump since 2016.

How could that be happening? Andrew Sullivan had an idea about how, generally speaking, on his blog last night. He compared Trump-- a would-be tyrant-- to Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. "Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise," wrote Sullivan. "And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises-- not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things-- but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE... WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

...All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

Think Of All The Reasons You Detest Trump-- Many Of Them Are The Reasons His Base WIll Never Abandon Him

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of 3 presidents-- Reagan and each Bushs. Now he's a #NeverTrumper and yesterday he did a piece for The Atlantic, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is, concluding that many Republicans believe-- despite "the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now"-- that if Biden wins the presidency "America dies," although I think what Wehner meant to say is they fear that if Biden is elected the America of white privilege dies. He wrote that the "chthonic portrait... allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And 'anything' turns out to be quite a lot," beyond just "a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance." He painted a stark picture of severe mental illness in the Oval Office as well. "Trump," he concluded, "because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." [That pretty much describes the entire 2020 presidential race-- on both sides, I'm afraid to say.]

In an interview by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick yesterday, John Bolton warned that Trump's inability to think strategically, is the blame for the severity of the pandemic in America and he warned that if Trump is reelected it could-- he really meant would but was unable to say it-- get worse.

Bolton said that during his tenure, “In many cases, the president came to decisions in the national security space that I agreed with.” “But he did it not because of the merits of the argument in favor of a particular policy, but because of the fear of the political blowback he would get domestically if he went in a different direction,” said Bolton.

He said that if Trump is re-elected, “that political guardrail is, if it’s not eliminated entirely, it’s certainly minimized.”

“And so I think the possibility for erratic decisions centered on what Trump perceives as his own personal good fortune increases and the political pressure to move in other directions decreases,” Bolton said.

Andrew Sullivan may not have been watching, but he noted yesterday that Trump is a metastasizing cancer and urged his readers to vote for Biden as quickly as possible. He wrote that "the complete loss of any moral authority the United States might have once had, along with the collapse of a system of alliances that rallied liberal democracies against foul tyrants for decades, are the consequence" of having elected a man sympathetic to authoritarians to the presidency... Gone is "the kind of basic moral clarity that the West once tried to advance, even if we often failed, and has now been sacrificed tout court for one wannabe tyrant’s depraved, delusional psyche... He has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being."

The only way out of this spiral is an unlikely figure, Joe Biden. An old-school moderate representing a party fast moving leftward, he is, quite simply, the least worst we’ve got. I’m worried the far left will eat his lunch in office, but that is a less pressing worry than the potential destabilization of the entire system if Trump wins in November. The potential for spiraling unrest in a Trump second term could prompt the dictatorial nightmare many of us have been worried about for years.

Biden is not perfect. He’s too old. But he understands our democratic system; he loves this country and has a grasp of the Constitution. He’s trusted by African-American voters who gave him the nomination, and has not alienated white voters in the middle who loathed Hillary Clinton. He is not deranged; he is not lacking in basic human empathy; and he does not treat all his opponents as enemies.

Some Democrats mock his vow to restore a semblance of dialogue with some Republicans. And I understand their position. It is not without reason. But I reject it. If Trump is defeated, and a modicum of reason and decorum returns, and the embers of liberal democracy are not completely extinguished, we have a chance to rebuild the republic. But it may be our last one.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson is seeing a Trump "close to full derailment." So this isn't full derailment, just close to it? This is going to be a scary couple of months! "Trump," he predicted, "will ignite a new uproar soon enough. It's clearer than ever that his platform for this election is his own wild behavior that animates his hyperbolic claim that a Democratic presidency would see the suburbs torched by rioters-- not the statesmanlike script choreographed at the RNC. No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis."

[W]hile Trump's constantly disruptive behavior and refusal to play the role of a traditional president horrifies Beltway elites, it's exactly what makes him attractive to supporters who long ago soured on conventional politicians. The more he trolls the media, the more his base and his conservative media cheerleaders love it. The question is whether a President who looked every day for four years like he's waging an endless GOP primary campaign can secure a path to victory without broadening his base.

Would Trump Stoke A Civil War To Hold Onto Power? Of Course He Would

Trump-- with help from the Koch network and rich cronies like Betsy DeVos-- has been fomenting resistance to shutdowns in states with Democratic governors. Teams of Washington Post and New York Times reporters wrote that the grotesque orange blob "amplified his call to reopen the country, suggesting citizens should 'liberate' themselves even as governors and local officials in areas he said were ready to return to normal expressed concern about moving too soon." That was Team Post. Team Times began by explaining how the blob "openly encouraged right-wing protests of social distancing restrictions in states with stay-at-home orders, a day after announcing guidelines for how the nation’s governors should carry out an orderly reopening of their communities on their own timetables... His stark departure from the more bipartisan tone of his announcement on Thursday night suggested Mr. Trump was ceding any semblance of national leadership on the pandemic, and choosing instead to divide the country by playing to his political base. Echoed across the internet and on cable television by conservative pundits and ultraright conspiracy theorists, his tweets were a remarkable example of a president egging on demonstrators and helping to stoke an angry fervor that in its anti-government rhetoric was eerily reminiscent of the birth of the Tea Party movement a decade ago."

Speaking Friday evening at the White House, the president expressed sympathy for the protesters for having to endure what he called “too tough” social distancing orders in their states, and he dismissed concerns that they could spread the virus by holding demonstrations.

“They seem to be very responsible people to me,” he said.

By embracing the backlash to the coronavirus restrictions, Mr. Trump is tapping into a powerful well of political energy as he seeks re-election this year. The president is also trying to deflect anger about his response to the virus away from him and toward Democratic governors, who he hopes will shoulder the blame for keeping the restrictions in place and for any deaths that occur after states reopen.

The pressure to reopen the economy comes amid skyrocketing joblessness claims and an unemployment rate that is approaching 17 percent, higher than any mark since the Great Depression. On Friday, several governors began responding to that pressure by taking their first, tentative steps toward loosening the rules about work, school and socializing.

Back to Team Post: "Trump on Friday took aim at Democratic-led states, tweeting about a need to 'LIBERATE' places such as Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia while seeming to side with protesters there who are rebelling against restrictions that match the Trump administration’s own social-distancing recommendations. Conservative groups have bolstered the protests, lending support and guidance in an effort to create a nationwide movement in favor of restarting economic activity on a broad basis despite the health concerns. The effort by Trump and some of his allies to portray a country split between a few hard-hit hot spots and a much larger expanse of America ready to quickly get back to work is at odds with hesitancy among state and local leaders about lifting the restrictions before the coronavirus crisis is more firmly under control."

Jason Wilson, writing for The Guardian noted the synchronized nature of Trump's far right rebellion, writing that "a wave of planned anti-lockdown demonstrations that have broken out around the country to protest against the efforts of state governments to combat the coronavirus pandemic with business closures and stay-at-home orders have included far-right groups as well as more mainstream Republicans. While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting rightwing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Michigan, a protest put together by two Republican-connected not-for-profits was explicitly devised to cause gridlock in the city, and for a time blocked the entrance to a local hospital.

It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which Michigan state corporate filings show has also operated under the name of Michigan Trump Republicans. It was also heavily promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos.

But the protest also attracted far-right protest groups who have been present at pro-Trump and gun rights rallies in Michigan throughout the Trump presidency.

Placards identified the Michigan Proud Boys as participants in the vehicle convoy. Near the state house, local radio interviewed a man who identified himself as “Phil Odinson.”

In fact the man is Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.

The pattern of rightwing not-for-profits promoting public protests while still more radical groups use lockdown resistance as a platform for extreme rightwing causes looks set to continue in events advertised in other states over coming days.

In Idaho on Friday, protesters plan to gather at the capitol building in Boise to protest anti-virus restrictions put in place by the Republican governor, Brad Little.

The protest has been heavily promoted by the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), which counts among its donors “dark money” funds linked to the Koch brothers such as Donors Capital Fund, and Castle Rock, a foundation seeded with part of the fortune of Adolph Coors, the rightwing beer magnate.

IFF have added their slogan for the event, “Disobey Idaho,” to stickers which they plan to distribute among the crowd. The event is also being promoted on a website dedicated to attacking Little for his response to Covid-19. That website was set up by the Idaho businessman, pastor and one-time Republican state senate candidate, Diego Rodriguez.

Rodriguez launched the website at an Easter service held in defiance of the governor’s orders on Easter Sunday, which was also addressed by Ammon Bundy, the leader of the militia occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016 that become a rallying point for the anti-government right in the US.

Bundy has been holding similar gatherings for weeks in Emmett, Idaho, where he now lives. On Sunday, he repeated his opposition to the Idaho orders, writing on Facebook: “We all have a duty to defend what is right and to make sure, that what God has given, man does not take away. Especially that great gift of agency, YES freedom!”

Ada county, Idaho, where the capital, Boise, is located, has so far suffered 541 cases of Covid-19 and nine deaths, in a state which has a far worse outbreak than neighboring Oregon, which is 2.4 times more populous.

Nevertheless, the ad for the rally on Rodriguez’s website advises, “We feel that wearing face masks and gloves is counterproductive to the movement, and should be avoided.”

This is the ugly face of American fascism; looks a lot like the face of today's Republican Party. Have you been watching HBO's new series, The Plot Against America, based on Philip Roth alternative history novel? It's really good-- especially with an authoritarian like Trump in the White House.





In New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan, claims that Trump is too lazy to be a tyrant. He's a good writing and a smart guy and, I'm afraid, wrong about this. During the campaign, Sullivan wrote that he "worried that the temptation to seize total power in [a crisis] would overwhelm [Trump] and that, in such a situation, the masses might rally behind a new Caesar. And I was almost right. In the midst of an emergency, Trump did indeed claim powers that belong more to kings and emperors than to presidents. He went even further than his previous assertions that his Article II powers give him the power 'to do anything I want'; or that he has personal control of the entire system of justice and can intervene in any case at any time, or that he has every right to blackmail other countries into helping him win a domestic election, or that he is exempt from any congressional scrutiny and can defy any and all subpoenas. He described his presidential powers for the first time as 'total.'"

He quotes Trump saying "When somebody’s the president of the U.S., the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s gotta be," and Sullivan warns that that "is a literal claim of totalitarianism. It is, in letter and spirit, the polar opposite of American constitutionalism. It is what we fought a revolution and two world wars to defeat... Trump claims the powers of a tyrant, behaves like one, talks like one, struts like one, has broken every norm a liberal democracy requires, and set dangerous precedents that could enable a serious collapse in constitutional norms in the future."

Sullivan's dubious point, though, is that Trump "doesn’t actually want to be a tyrant. It’s way too much work. It requires real management skills-- and Trump has none. He wants to be treated like a king, regarded as a king, and fawned on like a king, but that’s about it. He seems only attached to power insofar as power is attached to fame, and fame without criticism helps assuage his acute and disordered psychic needs.

This, in Bill Kristol’s rather brilliant phrase, is “performative authoritarianism.” It has a real cost-- it delegitimizes liberal democracy by mocking it and corrodes democratic institutions by undermining them. But it is not the cost of finding ourselves run by an American Viktor Orbán. Orbán saw the coronavirus emergency the way most wannabe strongmen would and the way I feared Trump might: as an opportunity to further neuter any constitutional checks on him and rule by decree. Trump saw it purely as an obstacle to his reelection message about a booming economy, a blot on his self-image, an unfair spoiling of his term. Instead of exploiting it, he whined about it. He is incapable of empathy and so simply cannot channel the nation’s grief into a plan of action. So he rambles and digresses and divides and inflames. He has managed in this crisis to tell us both that he is all-powerful and that he takes no responsibility for anything.

And I suspect that this creepy vaudeville act, in a worried and tense country, is beginning to wear real thin. A man who claims total power but only exercises it to protect his personal interests, a man who vaunts his own authority but tolerates no accountability for it, is impressing no one. While governors are acting, Trump is chattering. While people are dying, Trump is bragging about his own ratings, signing his name on stimulus checks, pushing quack remedies, and abetting conspiracy theories about Chinese laboratories. And although there is a rump group of supporters who will follow Trump anywhere and may launch tea party–style protests against social distancing on his behalf, I suspect this fundamental unseriousness after responding to the virus so late is finally taking its toll.

The emergency I feared Trump could leverage to untrammeled power may, in fact, be the single clearest demonstration of his incompetence and irrelevance. Combine this with a calamitous depression and I’m beginning to wonder if it matters that Biden is the Abraham Simpson of American politics. Maybe Biden doesn’t need to win this thing. Maybe Trump could lose it all by himself.

I agree that Trump will in all likelihood lose in November, even against the worst Democratic nominee if my lifetime. Biden, a worthless husk of a corporate shill running on nothing but TrumpBad, can't possibly win but Trump can certainly lose it all on his own. Most polls indicate he already has. But I disagree with Sullivan's premise that Trump is anything less than a two-bit authoritarian and would-be fascist, whether he's a good manager, lazy, crazy or anything else. Trump is an extreme narcissist and utterly incapable of seeing anything outside his own perceived self-interest. If he thinks he's going to lose, he'll unleash the dogs of war. And, in case you forgot, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman is a Republican, in fact a Republican who served in George W. Bush's cabinet.

A Spy Named McTurtle? Do We Need-- God Forbid-- Another HUAC Now?

Undoubtably one of the worst chapters in American history revolved around a House committee established in 1938-- HUAC: the House Un-American Activities Committee. Late in its existence it worked in tandem with Wisconsin's deranged fascist Senator Joseph McCarthy. But when HUAC was established Congress was firmly controlled by the Democrats, who were eager to investigate "disloyalty and subversive activities" by private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having ties to the Russians. It wasn't formally abolished until 1975. The roots of HUAC were actually honorable-- Democrats John McCormack and Samuel Dickstein investigating fascist plots against America, including the plans for a Wall Street/DuPont coup (Smedley Butler) against FDR. When it morphed into HUAC, the first chairman was a Texas Democrat and with deep Nazi sympathies and rabid hatred for communists, Martin Dies. At first, HUAC was commonly known as the Dies Committee and was more a laughing stock than a genuine threat. Joe Starnes of Alabama ranted and raved about Greek playwright, "Mr. Euripedes" preaching class warfare and asked the head of the head of the Federal Theater Project (a part of the New Deal) if Christopher Marlowe had been a commie.

HUAC stopped being a joke when it put together plans to round up Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps. When it was later suggested that the HUAC would be of more service to the country if it investigated the KKK, that was voted down and one white supremicist who was clearly ahead of his time and would probably be in Trump's cabinet today, Mississippi Democrat John Rankin noted admiringly that "The KKK is an old American tradition." Two decades later, in 1965, HUAC, finally took a few moments out of railing against commies to focus on the KKK. When HUAC became a permanent committee, the first chair was Edward Hart (D-NJ) and it was full steam ahead as an anti-Russian/anti-Communist vehicle.

It has been suggested that in light of the Republican Party pandering to Putin and the Russians, perhaps House Dems need to bring back HUAC and give it the mandate to look into the connects between McConnell's-- Moscow Mitch as Joe Scarborough has dubbed him-- and Trump's refusal to protect American elections from the Russians. One DWT corespondent suggested that he is "wondering if we are witnessing a latter-day Cambridge Five with Mitch McConnell declining to protect our electoral system from foreign hacking." Further, he thinks it significant that McConnell like Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and Donald MacLean is a closeted gay man vulnerable to exposure. "McConnell is hiding a damaging [for him] sexual history. Is this a sell-out because of kompromat, or is this simply GOP politics? In either case, why are the Democrats not taking a page from the standard GOP playbook" to show how the Republicans are working with the Russians to undermine America? He wondered if the House should consider an actual resurrection of the House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate Republican connections to past and current election tampering in advance of the 2020 elections?




When I told my correspondent that just the thought of HUAC makes me shudder with horror, he later wrote that "Of course you are right. My impulse was irony that is expressing a frustration with what Teresa Tomlinson diagnosed so convincingly this morning on your site: the Dems don’t have balls. They need to learn some lessons from the GOP and do some forceful grandstanding that captures the nation’s attention. Unfortunately, as you point out consistently well, many don’t have any convictions to rally around. Alas. Willing to share the name of the hotel in Yangon that you referred to on Feldman’s show?" [The hotel is The Strand for anyone else wondering.]

Chip Proser, HUAC artist

In his New York Magazine column today, Andrew Sullivan wrote about why Mueller's testimony didn't shake the country up the way it certainly should have. (Keep in mind that when Sullivan uses the words "we" and "us" he always means elites and insiders.) "The Mueller hearings," he wrote, "told us almost nothing that we didn’t know already. We knew that the president welcomed assistance from a foreign power in order to win an election, and has fawned over his political patron in this endeavor, Vladimir Putin, since he became president. We knew that though he was not competent enough to construct a conspiracy, he was eager to collude with a foreign foe to defeat his domestic one. And we knew that he then lied about it as baldly as he lies about almost everything, and tried repeatedly to obstruct the investigation into the affair. His attorney general then blatantly lied about the key conclusions of the Mueller report, distorting the public debate for weeks as he kept the contents under wraps, and then bet that Americans, with our gnat-like attention spans, would simply move on. We also knew that in contemporary America, none of these facts matter in the slightest. The notion that the average citizen should care deeply about the rule of law and constitutional norms-- and even actively defend them-- has become terribly passé. Now, all that truly matters is whether we are entertained by someone who can command televisual excitement the way Trump does on a daily, hourly basis. If he can’t, whatever the underlying facts, no one gives a damn. American political elites are no better. The president’s assault on the Constitution has merely revealed the Democratic Party as the lame farce we knew it was. Its ancient, pusillanimous congressional leadership was never going to do what duty, rather than politics, requires."

Neo-Liberals, Neo-Conservatives, Neo-Fascists, Neo-Nazis... There's A Difference?

My friend Frank-- whose dad was one of the 3 founders of the Moral Majority movement-- left evangelical Christianity many years ago... loudly. Yesterday, je sent me this video from Italy, where he's on vacation. He sure doesn't like fascists! "Be warned, America," he said, "when you elect a Nazi German to represent your country, who then calls other people "foreigners," when he is a foreigner-- because it is not an American idea to put children in cages... When you tell people of color to go back where they came from... when we forget that history, we will end up with places like this or their metaphorical equivalent." He was speaking from the ruins of a German bunker.

Commentary was founded by left-of-center Jewish intellectuals in the aftermath of the Holocaust and became a leading component of the new post-war Jewish identity until 1960 when a radical right freak, Norman Podhoretz, took over and turned it into a neo-conservative/neo-fascist magazine, destroying all credibility the magazine had developed in it's first decade and a half. His son, John Podhoretz, is the current editor and even nearly as toxic as the father. A #NeverTrumper, he broke with the fascist right on immigration policy: "[A]s a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in." But, more recently, he gravitated back to his neo-fascist roots and supports both Trump and putting immigrant children in cages. I don't know much about Noah Rothman other than his position as online editor of Commentary. His new book, Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America, was published by neo-fascist publishing firm, Regnery. And his new post for Commentary, pathetic: "both sides" trash, that would have had the pre-Podhoretz editors of the magazine puking. His first couple of paragraphs sucked me into reading the article: "The 2016 election cycle was a forsaken orgy of racial anxiety, political violence, spineless complacency, and depravity of a scale that was abnormal even for American politics. The 2020 election cycle will be worse. America got a taste of what Donald Trump’s reelection bid is going to look like on Wednesday night, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The president had only hours earlier intervened in a destructive civil conflict among Democrats by insisting that the conflict’s more progressive belligerents, all of whom are of minority descent with only one born abroad, should 'go back' to the countries 'from which they came.' Aware of the damage these remarks could do both to the GOP’s political prospects and the social fabric, some responsible Republicans dissented. Most did not. Those members of Trump’s phalanx who did not stifle their criticisms flattered the president and applauded his instincts. It was inevitable that his most committed supporters would do the same. So, when the topic turned to 'squad' member Ilhan Omar at Wednesday night’s rally, the crowd followed Trump’s lead." Eventually, so did Rothman.

First he noted that "There’s an ugly condescension inherent in the unspoken assumption that repudiating bigotry might fracture the president’s winning coalition of voters who are otherwise underserved by elite opinion-makers on the coasts, but there is no better explanation for Trump’s politically foolish compromises. Trump’s approach to constituency maintenance routinely manifests in the stoking of racial and class tensions, and there’s no reason to expect that to abate when the presidency is on the line." But then came the both sides bullshit conservatives can never resist:

Equally tragic is the fact that the Republican Party Trump represents is losing, or has already lost, the moral high ground in its efforts to call out Rep. Omar’s unveiled expressions of anti-Semitism for what they are. Democrats certainly aren’t doing so. Absent any check on her instincts, Omar and the 'squad' can be expected to renew their commitment to a special brand of ethnic and sectarian antagonism. For her part, Omar has transitioned from making anti-Semitic comments to crafting anti-Semitic policy. This week, she introduced a House resolution in support of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement-- an amalgam of anti-Israel interests whose actions inevitably manifest in naked Jew-hatred-- equating Israel to Nazi Germany in the process." In other words, equating anti-Semitism with supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national identity. The brakes are off, and the temperature is rising. As the campaign season intensifies, so, too, will the emotions around the consequences of the next presidential cycle. The acts of political violence that we’ve witnessed over the last three years-- some of which are attributed to overheated political rhetoric by their perpetrators-- are unlikely to abate. As the legislative process grinds to a halt ahead of the upcoming election year, the crises that exacerbate these tensions, like the unanticipated explosion of migrants crossing the Southern border, will go unaddressed. Those crises will be demagogued; they always are. But there are no cooler heads left to prevail.

A responsible political culture can withstand the actions of a few reckless provocateurs, even if one of those provocateurs is the president. But ours is not a responsible political culture, and things are going to get worse before they get better.

Oh, well, at least I learned to never read anything by Noah Rothman again, nor to bother reading anything in Commentary. From now on, when I want to hear from delusional Republicans, I'll just stick to Andrew Sullivan, whose a lot smarter than Rothman and Podhoretz combined. His contribution to yesterday's dialogue: Trump Is Betting That Indecency Can Win in America. "In the deeply disturbing moments after Donald Trump invoked a three-minutes-of-hate session toward Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Wednesday night, and the crowd erupted with chants of 'Send Her Back! Send Her Back!', a protester yelled something inaudible, and caused a commotion. As security was called, the crowd chanted 'USA! USA!' and eventually the young man was handcuffed and led out of the stadium, to the mob’s vocal derision and pleasure. In those moments, you can see Trump pause to allow the mob to vent against the dissenter. Frenzied participants gleefully whipped out their phones to take photos of the man, who was holding up pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and Trump together and wearing a Native Trash T-shirt-- a defunct Charlotte band but also presumably," ventured Sullivan, a reference to all those who surrounded him."

This country has had volatile civil conflicts before. What’s different now is we have a president whose instinct in such turbulent times is actually to intensify the turbulence with rhetoric and mass rallies that foment greater and greater mutual hostility. Most presidents regard it as their responsibility to tamp down racial and cultural conflict. Trump, having no concept of any broader interest than his own, is incapable of it. His malignant narcissism prevents him from any other way of behaving, and each outrage becomes a new baseline for the next one.

So yes, we are in an abyss. And as Trump becomes increasingly emboldened by his survival, and one of the two major parties has become a cult, the bottom seems even more elusive than before. Think of what might happen if Trump loses the popular vote in 2020 by an even bigger margin but still ekes out an Electoral College victory. Think of how a close election could lead to Trump’s refusal to concede, and how the wheels could come off the entire system. What we know for certain is that, for the first time, we have a president who doesn’t care if that happens, who’d rather destroy the legitimacy of liberal democracy than compete legitimately within it.

Who Would Have Ever Imagined That Nancy Pelosi Would Go Down In History As One Of The Worst Speakers Ever-- If She Resigned Tomorrow It Would Not Be Soon Enough

According to strange #NeverTrump Republican Andrew Sullivan, in his New York Magazine column Friday, many voters who are not Democrats may have "voted for the Democrats last fall because we wanted a serious check on President Trump’s intensifying authoritarianism. That includes many of us who don’t support the far left’s takeover of the Democrats, but who saw the urgency of an opposition with teeth, confronted as we are by a deranged, tyrannical bully in the White House. What would happen if the Mueller Report emerged with a Republican House still intact, we worried? How could we begin to investigate Trump’s tax returns, or his cronies’ corruption, or his foul pedophile friends, or his murky real estate money-laundering, if Paul Ryan, the Randian eunuch from Wisconsin, were still in charge?"

And speaking of eunuchs... who even needed Paul Ryan! With Trump sniping at Pelosi's progressive "enemies"-- especially AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib-- there almost seems to be an unspoken alliance between the fake president and lame-duck, increasinbgly detested speaker. And #NeverTrump Republicans like Sullivan are noticing: "It turns out, six months later, that on all these topics, the Democratic House majority didn’t matter much at all. Whenever a serious administration abuse of power seems to demand investigation, Speaker Pelosi springs almost instantly into inaction. There is nothing she won’t not do."

Pelosi?

When, for example, a highly dubious decision years ago by Labor Secretary Alex Acosta-- to give Jeffrey Epstein an incredibly lenient plea deal for the sexual abuse of 40 underage girls-- blew back into the headlines, Pelosi instantly ruled out any notion of impeaching Acosta: “It’s up to the president, it’s his Cabinet. We have a great deal of work to do here for the good of the American people and we have to focus on that.”

Really, Madam Speaker, oversight of shady dealings by Cabinet officials is the work of the president now? And holding a corrupt administration to account is not “work … for the good of the American people”? This “distraction” from real “work” meme is, in fact, a Republican talking point. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise described the oversight process this week as “presidential harassment rather than focusing on the priorities of the American people.” Trump himself tweeted a demand that Democrats “go back to work!” How practically different is that spin from Pelosi’s? (Even though the question is largely moot now that Acosta has resigned, it came as a relief to see Elijah Cummings was pledging to investigate him.)

The most epic moment of Pelosi’s oversight abdication was, of course, her response to the Mueller Report. She was completely out-foxed by Bill Barr’s shameless misdirection at first, and once his sleight of hand became obvious, she seemed to have no strategy to hold Trump to account in any way. She was presented with striking evidence that President Trump repeatedly abused the power of his office to obstruct justice-- the charge that brought down Nixon, and one charge that forced even Bill Clinton into a Senate trial-- and was all but invited by Mueller to move the ball forward through impeachment: “If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Pelosi immediately, reflexively, punted.

Later this month, we will finally get testimony from Mueller. This week, the House Judiciary Committee has issued 12 new subpoenas for Trump officials, including Jared Kushner. This time, they tell us, they’re serious. These subpoenas come after almost all previous ones were rebuffed entirely by an unprecedented blanket assertion by the president that all oversight inquiries are of a partisan nature and should therefore be ignored. But last month the Democrats passed a resolution seeking court enforcement of their subpoena power. How long will this process take? Who knows? Many seem to think the process could go on for years-- probably likely to take longer than the rest of Trump’s term-- thereby nullifying any practical oversight at all, and giving all future presidents a precedent of immunity by stonewalling. What we do know is that six months into this Congress, we know nothing more from their efforts than we did in January. Could you speed this up if these subpoenas were part of an impeachment inquiry? Almost certainly yes. But Pelosi appears to be in no hurry at all.

Or take the issue of Trump’s tax returns. Judd Legum is aghast that it took the Democrats four months even to ask for them! When Trump (surprise!) refused to hand them over, Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal filed a lawsuit arguing that the reason he was doing so was not because he wanted to see if Trump had committed fraud or other financial crimes, but that he needed “to decide if legislative action is needed” on “the mandatory presidential audit program.” He believed the claim should be as modest as possible to help guarantee an eventual court victory. But “eventual” is the operative word here.

The goods are there though. So when Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing Trump’s state tax returns to be examined directly by Neal, Neal refused, even though the data would be largely the same as the federal returns. He preferred to wait for the result of his own federal legal case-- which could be months or years in coming! And so the clock ticks on. It will likely tick past the next presidential election. This is the fierce urgency of whenever. It is an effective abandonment of a critical tool for exposing presidential corruption.

Maybe Pelosi could hold hearings and then merely vote on a measure of censure of the president? But no: that’s not on the table either. “I think censure is just a way out,” Pelosi said last month. “In other words, if the goods are there, you must impeach.” But the goods are there. We waited months on a thorough investigation, and it found multiple cases of obstruction of justice, a supremely impeachable offense for Congress to pursue. Isn’t she, rather than censure, Trump’s “way out”?

What would she use her oversight powers for? She has argued, for example, that the attorney general openly “lied under oath” to the Congress, her branch of government, a criminal offense. So what will she do? Impeach? Censure? Wait for it: She won’t be “speaking to anything more that he has to say.” Bill Barr must be trembling in fear. What did she do when Trump crossed a clear Constitutional red line and, via a fake national emergency, funneled money to his wall against Congress’s express wish? Yes, you guessed it: nothing. Not even censure. She’s a Speaker who will jettison even the power of the purse rather than take on a tyrannical president.

For good measure, she told Maureen Dowd that Trump “every day practically self-impeaches by obstructing justice and ignoring the subpoenas.” A word to Madam Speaker: People cannot actually impeach themselves. And if you read the Constitution, it’s your job. Why are you persistently refusing to do it?

I know that aggressive oversight, especially impeachment hearings, is a politically fraught decision, full of risk. I know the polls suggest it splits the country and, by her own expert counting, divides the House Democrats as well. I know her party won the House in 2018 by focusing on health care, rather than Trump. I think that should be their focus next year as well. But fortune favors the brave. If she doesn’t act against a serious threat to the Constitution, voters will infer that the Democrats don’t actually believe there’s a threat. If she lets this president own the narrative, as he keeps doing, Democrats will end up following his story rather than their own.

And there is no essential conflict between holding impeachment hearings and making the case for your policies. It should be possible for a competent and gifted Speaker to do both. But Pelosi, alas, is not exactly gifted in persuasively making a case for anything outside her hyperliberal constituency. And she’s deeply unpopular across the country. She has a worse favorable/unfavorable rating than Trump-- and during the partial shutdown in January, she had the lowest ratings of any politician in the country. But if she can’t deploy rhetoric or popularity, at least she could use her Constitutional prerogative.

Her strengths lie in her considerable skills for legislative cat-herding and winning news cycles in the mainstream liberal media. Because she is the first female Speaker, she is largely untouchable in the nonconservative press. I love Maureen Dowd, but her most recent column was beyond fawning. The only substantive achievement Dowd could point to in her glowing account of Pelosi’s political talents was that Pelosi had “gotten into Trump’s head” and that she “has offered a master class, with flair and fire, on how a woman can spar with Trump.” Seriously? Yes, she can provide some cutting retorts. But, substantively, a master class in capitulation strikes me as more accurate.

And isn’t it more plausible to say that Trump has gotten into Pelosi’s head? Here’s an example of what Dowd calls her “flair and fire”: “Oh, [Trump would] rather not be impeached… But he sees a silver lining. And he wants to then say, ‘The Democrats impeached me but the Senate’-- he won’t say Republicans-- ‘exonerated me.’” So fucking what? Of course he’d say that. Why are you allowing his future spin to affect your present Constitutional duty? You’re in a defensive crouch, Madam Speaker. Against a bully, that never works.

The best gloss I can think of to explain Pelosi’s abdication is that she believes that it’s only a matter of time before Trump loses in 2020, so why risk alienating moderates who get nervous with the I-word now? Why impeach when the Senate will acquit? Why go to war now, when it might imperil electoral victory next year?

Here’s why. There is a strong possibility that Trump is going to win the next election. I know it’s early but the head-to-head polling against most of the Democratic candidates is very close-- and that’s before the GOP has gotten to work on oppo research on those Democrats who aren’t well known. Incumbency in a strong economy is usually dispositive. The Dems have almost all decided to run further to the left than even Hillary’s woke-a-thon in 2016: free health care for illegal aliens, abolishing private health insurance, publicly funding abortions, declaring America in 2019 a product of white supremacy, etc. Their strategy seems designed to alienate every white person in the Midwest and give Trump another victory in the Electoral College. Only Biden has a serious polling advantage, and he’s looking frail and weak.

If Pelosi keeps playing it safe and Trump is reelected, it will set a precedent that a president can obstruct justice and be rewarded for it. He can avoid all serious congressional oversight and get away with it. The Congress will continue its journey as a withered limb in a Constitution that actually gives it pride of place, Article 1. And every time Trump gets away with another crime, or abuse of power, he is emboldened. Vindicated by re-election? God help us.

And what Trump now knows after six months of Democratic control of the House is that he is as free from congressional checks whether it is run by Democrats or Republicans. Pelosi has shown every future president that they can obstruct justice with impunity, refuse every subpoena with impunity, lie with impunity, and violate the separation of powers with impunity.

At some point, Madam Speaker, history may show you had one critical chance to stop this slide toward populist authoritarianism. And you decided you had better things to do.

Meanwhile, Pelosi has accomplished nothing-- not even raising the minimum wage increase she promised to do immediately after the Democrats won the House back. Oh, wait-- she hasn't accomplished nothing; I was wrong. She got Trump's concentration camps funded. And she passed PayGo, to make sure no big progressive ideas would pass. She is utterly worthless and destroying the Democratic Party, having launched an anti-progressive jihad, threatening members of her conference who were about to endorse Bernie with retribution, directing the DCCC to prevent progressive candidates from an even playing field and going war against 4 progressive women of color, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Omar Ilhan and Ayanna Pressley. What's the thermometer for? So you can contribute to the campaign of the progressive Democrat running to replace Pelosi in her San Francisco congressional district, Shahid Buttar.

This morning, Buttar noted that "As disturbing as it might be for Democratic Party activists to recognize, Speaker Pelosi is either entirely ineffective in mounting resistance to our criminal president and his corrupt administration, or instead unfortunately co-opted. Both of those possibilities are unacceptable. There is too much at stake-- especially with the twin cataclysms of fascism and climate catastrophe already unfolding-- to defer to the continuing failures of a careerist inclined towards accommodation. With a would-be tyrant in the White House, now is a time for full-throated resistance for real. The American people deserve leaders willing to oppose kleptocracy instead of enabling it. And we deserve representatives who will meet the needs of the future by expanding human rights, instead of doubling down on the predictable failures of corporate rule and eroding them even further."