Trumpist Contemplates Trump's Rejection By The Voters: "Sometimes You Own The Libs; Sometimes The Libs Own You"

 

Lame Duck by Nancy Ohanian

Today everyone is writing about how depressed Trump is and how bleak his mood is. Awwwww.... The NY Times reported that Señor Trumpanzee "has spent his days toggling between his White House residence and the Oval Office, watching television coverage about the final weeks of his presidency. His mood is often bleak, advisers say, though he is not raising his voice in anger, despite the impression left by his tweets, which are often in capital letters. But the work of government has been reduced to something of a sideshow for the president." Whew.

The Washington Post's David Nakamura noted that Trump Is In Hiding. He wrote that yesterday, "six American service members were killed in a helicopter crash during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt. Tropical Storm Eta made landfall in North Florida, contributing to severe flooding. The number of Americans infected with the novel coronavirus continued at a record-setting pace, sending the stock market tumbling. At the White House, President Trump spent the day as he has most others this week-- sequestered from public view, tweeting grievances, falsehoods and misinformation about the election results and about Fox News’s coverage of him. Neither he nor his aides briefed reporters on the news of the day or reacted to Democratic leaders who accused Republicans of imperiling the pandemic response by 'refusing to accept reality' over the election results."

In her Times column, The Post-Presidency of a Con Man, Michelle Goldberg took comfort "in signs that the president is preparing for life outside the White House in exactly the way one would expect-- by initiating new grifts. Trump has been sending out frantic fund-raising requests to 'defend the election,' but as the New York Times reports, most of the money is actually going to a PAC, Save America, that 'will be used to underwrite Mr. Trump’s post-presidential activities.' Axios reports that Trump is considering starting a digital media company to undermine Fox News, which he now regards as disloyal. These moves suggest that while Trump may be willing to torch American democracy to salve his wounded ego, at least part of him is getting ready to leave office... But there are reasons to think that when he is finally ejected from the White House, he will become a significantly diminished figure."

Once Trump is no longer president, he is likely to be consumed by lawsuits and criminal investigations. Hundreds of millions of dollars in debt will come due. Lobbyists and foreign dignitaries won’t have much of a reason to patronize Mar-a-Lago or his Washington hotel. Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch could complete the transition from Trump’s enabler to his enemy. And, after four years of cartoonish self-abasement, Republicans with presidential aspirations will have an incentive to help take him down.

“His whole life he’s been involved in a bunch of litigation,” said the superstar liberal attorney Roberta Kaplan. But post-presidency, “I have to assume that, given the amount of civil litigation and potential criminal exposure, it’s going to be at a completely new dimension.”

...It’s too much to expect any sudden exposure of Trump. There will be no cathartic moment when everyone realizes that the emperor was always naked. But the question isn’t whether Trump’s support will evaporate. It’s whether it will erode, especially once he loses the ability to make Republican dreams come true.

Besides, the threats to Trump are not only to his reputation, such as it is. In Bob Woodward’s book Fear, he wrote that Trump’s former lawyer John Dowd implored the president not to testify in Robert Mueller’s probe because he believed him to be an inveterate liar. (Dowd has denied this.) Should Trump face depositions in these civil cases, however, he’ll have no choice about submitting to interviews.

Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s former deputy, told me he expects Trump to pardon himself for any federal crimes he might have committed. That would mean that even if a Biden Department of Justice wanted to take the extraordinary step of prosecuting a former president, it would also have to litigate the constitutionality of self-pardons, a complicated, time-consuming process.

But he might face state charges that he can’t pardon his way out of. New York State Attorney General Letitia James has a civil investigation into possible financial chicanery by the Trump Organization. Trump is under criminal investigation by Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance. While the scope of the probe is unknown, his office’s filings suggest Vance could be looking at tax fraud, insurance fraud and falsification of business records.

The “Manhattan DA’s office is a really good office, and they’ve done a lot of white-collar cases,” said Weissmann. “If they were to prove-- this is now hypothetical-- but if they were to prove tens of millions of dollars in tax fraud or bank fraud, people go to jail for that.”

Let’s say Trump, ever the escape artist, avoids prison, setting himself up as the warlord of MAGA-world at Mar-a-Lago. His post-presidency still won’t be easy. As The Times has reported, he’s personally on the hook for $421 million in debt, most of it coming due in the next four years. If a long fight with the I.R.S. goes against him, he could owe at least $100 million more.

“Mr. Trump still has assets to sell,” The Times reported. “But doing so could take its own toll, both financial and to Mr. Trump’s desire to always be seen as a winner.”

Trump is already trying to profit off his avid base, and he will surely continue. But it’s an open question whether, without the intoxicating aura of presidential power, he can sustain their devotion. There are several examples of once-formidable right-wing leaders reduced to footnotes after leaving office.

As Republican House majority leader, Tom DeLay was frequently described as the most powerful man in Congress. Then, in 2005, he was indicted on a charge of campaign money laundering. Though his 2010 conviction was eventually overturned on appeal, the last time he had any significant public profile was when he appeared on Dancing With the Stars in 2009.

Sarah Palin, too, was once a Republican icon; in many ways she presaged Trump. “Win or Lose, Many See Palin as Future of Party,” said a New York Times headline just before the 2008 election. It quoted right-wing activist Brent Bozell: “Conservatives have been looking for leadership, and she has proved that she can electrify the grass roots like few people have in the last 20 years.”

But since resigning as Alaska’s governor in 2009, Palin has lost her luster. Once a likely presidential prospect, she recently made headlines for wearing a pink and purple bear costume on the Fox reality show The Masked Singer.

Trump is in for years of scandals and humiliations. We will doubtlessly find out more about official misdeeds he tried to keep secret as president. Republicans who hope to succeed him will have reason to start painting him as a loser instead of a savior. He’ll have to devote much of his energy to trying to stay out of prison.

After all that, could he be back in 2024? Of course. Trump is, if nothing else, relentless. But this election was just the latest reminder that he is far from invincible. When he is no longer in office, there will be many more.

One of my favorite of today's Trump woe-is-me tails was a "re-release" of Jane Mayer's Nov. 1 column: Why Trump Can't Afford To Lose. Can you imagine this scene of Trumpanzee despondency the day before the election?

Sensing that time was running out, he had asked his aides to draw up a list of his political options. He wasn’t especially religious, but, as daylight faded outside the rapidly emptying White House, he fell to his knees and prayed out loud, sobbing as he smashed his fist into the carpet. “What have I done?” he said. “What has happened?” When the President noted that the military could make it easy for him by leaving a pistol in a desk drawer, the chief of staff called the President’s doctors and ordered that all sleeping pills and tranquillizers be taken away from him, to insure that he wouldn’t have the means to kill himself.

No? Me either... besides, it was Nixon, not Trump. Still, Mayer notes that "No American President has ever been charged with a criminal offense. But, as Donald Trump fights to hold on to the White House, he and those around him surely know that if he loses... the presumption of immunity that attends the Presidency will vanish. Given that more than a dozen investigations and civil suits involving Trump are currently under way, he could be looking at an endgame even more perilous than the one confronted by Nixon. The Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said of Trump, 'If he loses, you have a situation that’s not dissimilar to that of Nixon when he resigned. Nixon spoke of the cell door clanging shut.' Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden."

She notes that the Financial Times estimates that, "in all, about nine hundred million dollars’ worth of Trump’s real-estate debt will come due within the next four years. At the same time, he is locked in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over a deduction that he has claimed on his income-tax forms; an adverse ruling could cost him an additional hundred million dollars. To pay off such debts, the President, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be two and a half billion dollars, could sell some of his most valuable real-estate assets-- or, as he has in the past, find ways to stiff his creditors. But, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Trump’s properties-- especially his hotels and resorts-- have been hit hard by the pandemic and the fallout from his divisive political career. 'It’s the office of the Presidency that’s keeping him from prison and the poorhouse,' Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale who studies authoritarianism, told me."

Last winter, a Cabinet secretary told me Trump had confided that he couldn’t imagine returning to his former life as a real-estate developer. As the Cabinet secretary recalled, the two men were gliding along in a motorcade, surrounded by throngs of adoring supporters, when Trump remarked, “Isn’t this incredible? After this, I could never return to ordering windows. It would be so boring.”

Throughout the 2020 campaign, Trump’s national poll numbers have lagged behind Biden’s, and two sources who have spoken to the President in the past month described him as being in a foul mood. He has testily insisted that he won both Presidential debates, contrary to even his own family’s assessment of the first one. And he has raged not just at the polls and the media but also at some people in charge of his reëlection campaign, blaming them for squandering money and allowing Biden’s team to have a significant financial advantage. Trump’s bad temper was visible on October 20th, when he cut short a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl. A longtime observer who spent time with him recently told me that he’d never seen Trump so angry.

The President’s niece Mary Trump-- a psychologist and the author of the tell-all memoir Too Much and Never Enough-- told me that his fury “speaks to his desperation,” adding, “He knows that if he doesn’t manage to stay in office he’s in serious trouble. I believe he’ll be prosecuted, because it seems almost undeniable how extensive and long his criminality is. If it doesn’t happen at the federal level, it has to happen at the state level.” She described the “narcissistic injury” that Trump will suffer if he is rejected at the polls. Within the Trump family, she said, “losing was a death sentence-- literally and figuratively.” Her father, Fred Trump, Jr., the President’s older brother, “was essentially destroyed” by her grandfather’s judgment that Fred was not “a winner.” (Fred died in 1981, of complications from alcoholism.) As the President ponders potential political defeat, she believes, he is “a terrified little boy.”

Barbara Res, whose new book, Tower of Lies, draws on the eighteen years that she spent, off and on, developing and managing construction projects for Trump, also thinks that the President is not just running for a second term-- he is running from the law. “One of the reasons he’s so crazily intent on winning is all the speculation that prosecutors will go after him,” she said. “It would be a very scary spectre.” She calculated that, if Trump loses, “he’ll never, ever acknowledge it-- he’ll leave the country.” Res noted that, at a recent rally, Trump mused to the crowd about fleeing, ad-libbing, “Could you imagine if I lose? I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country-- I don’t know.” It’s questionable how realistic such talk is, but Res pointed out that Trump could go “live in one of his buildings in another country,” adding, “He can do business from anywhere.”

It turns out that, in 2016, Trump in fact made plans to leave the United States right after the vote. Anthony Scaramucci, the former Trump supporter who served briefly as the White House communications director, was with him in the hours before the polls closed. Scaramucci told me that Trump and virtually everyone in his circle had expected Hillary Clinton to win. According to Scaramucci, as he and Trump milled around Trump Tower, Trump asked him, “What are you doing tomorrow?” When Scaramucci said that he had no plans, Trump confided that he had ordered his private plane to be readied for takeoff at John F. Kennedy International Airport, so that the next morning he could fly to Scotland, to play golf at his Turnberry resort. Trump’s posture, Scaramucci told me, was to shrug off the expected defeat. “It was, like, O.K., he did it for the publicity. And it was over. He was fine. It was a waste of time and money, but move on.” Scaramucci said that, if 2016 is any guide, Trump would treat a loss to Biden more matter-of-factly than many people expect: “He’ll go down easier than most people think. Nothing crushes this guy.”

Mary Trump, like Res, suspects that her uncle is considering leaving the U.S. if he loses the election (a result that she regards as far from assured). If Biden wins, she suggested, Trump will “describe himself as the best thing that ever happened to this country and say, ‘It doesn’t deserve me-- I’m going to do something really important, like build the Trump Tower in Moscow.’”

The notion that a former American President would go into exile-- like a disgraced king or a deposed despot-- sounds almost absurd, even in this heightened moment, and many close observers of the President, including Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Trump’s first best-seller, The Art of the Deal, dismiss the idea. “I’m sure he’s terrified,” Schwartz told me. “But I don’t think he’ll leave the country. Where the hell would he go?” However, Snyder, the Yale professor, whose specialty is antidemocratic regimes in Eastern Europe, believes that Trump might well abscond to a foreign country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S. “Unless you’re an idiot, you have that flight plan ready,” Snyder said. “Everyone’s telling me he’ll have a show on Fox News. I think he’ll have a show on RT”-- the Russian state television network.

...Schwartz agreed that Trump “will do anything to make the case he didn’t lose,” and noted that one of Trump’s strengths has been his refusal to admit failure, which means that “when he wins he wins, and when he loses he also wins.” But if Trump loses by a landslide, Schwartz said, “he’ll have many fewer cards to play. He won’t be able to play the election-was-stolen-from-me card-- and that’s a big one.”

But my favorite of all was Olivia Nuzzi's The Final Gasp of Donald Trump’s Presidency for New York. She wrote that by Election Day, Señor T understood that losing was inevitable. "He accepted, even if he had no plans to concede, that his presidency was over. Nevertheless, in the residence, surrounded by senior advisers and family, he was furious. About everything. He was angry things weren’t going his way. He was angry Fox had called Arizona for Biden. He was angry that Biden had gone out on TV first. Everyone was offering him different ideas about what to say to the nation, to fight or to be measured or to say this or that, contradicting each other as the president grew angrier and angrier, throwing up one hand to silence people as he reviewed notes in the other. He was unhappy with the notes. He was unhappy with everything. And then he went out and ignored everybody who had tried to help.

[T]he campaign mounted half-assed legal fights in states they thought he still had a chance to win-- not because they thought it would bring them the election but because there wasn’t much else to do but fight. The New York Times reported that the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, said he was looking for a James Baker–type figure. Instead, they got Rudy Giuliani, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski, and Dave Bossie. “That’s not a legal team,” one of the president’s friends told me. “It’s all so bizarre.”

This person, who speaks to the president often-- or, more accurately, who listens and says uh-huh as the president speaks-- said that Trump is not just done for, but done. “He wants to lose. He’s out of money. He worries about being arrested. He worried about being assassinated,” they said. “It hasn’t been a great experience for him. He likes showing people around the White House, but the actual day-to-day business of being president? It’s been pretty unpleasant for him.”

“A lot of what Trump says is the opposite of what he means. That’s true of all of us, to some extent,” the president’s friend said. But when Trump said he didn’t mind losing to Biden, even though he famously hates losers of any ilk, his friend believed him. “He doesn’t believe losing is shameful-- quitting is bad. Losing isn’t,” this person said. “He’s afraid. He’s the most insecure, afraid person ever. He’s too afraid to be president. He’s afraid to exercise power. He’s afraid to do the job. It’s why he’s overbearing and crazy-- he sabotages himself constantly because he hates himself and wants out. He’s always trying to hurt himself. That guy commits more self-harm than anyone I’ve ever encountered.”





...In the weeks leading up to the election, certain White House officials and people close to the president were busy laying the groundwork for a post-Trump reputational and relationship recovery tour. Trump may be holding rallies and refusing to admit Biden is a legitimately elected president on prime-time Trump TV, but the anti-professional class of operators who assumed power on his coattails know that they’ll have to shape-shift if they want to survive. I received messages from multiple staffers who said they were counting down the days until freedom from the environment they entered, and stayed in, willingly. That they had so much to tell me now that it was too late to matter very much. That they were not the same as the others around them, the people who didn’t see the place, the presidency, for what it really was.

Others didn’t feel they had anything to explain or defend. “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened,” a former White House official told me. “Live. Laugh. Love.” This person added, “Sometimes you own the libs; sometimes the libs own you.”

Folie à Millions-- Nearly Half The Voters Looked At The Last 4 Years And Decided They Want More Of The Same

 

The Sound Of Music Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

As Charlies Pierce noted in his Esquire column on Wednesday, "He Got More Votes Than Last Time. Almost half of the country looked at the way Donald Trump has functioned as president since 2017 and said, definitively, that they wanted four more years of it. Yesterday, while writing about Kushner and other predatory landlords working towards evicting hundreds of families in the middle of a pandemic, I stumbled across a horrifying pattern of statistics: Trump's support had grown over the last 4 years, at least in the 13 states with the worst COVID caseloads per capita.

This morning I decided to see if that was holding up in other states as well. Obviously, as the vote counting continues, there will be changes, especially since many of the votes coming in are absentee ballots that are overwhelmingly Democratic. Maybe we'll have to look at this again in a couple of weeks when the dust has settled. But here's what we have so far just as Biden is about to be named president-elect. (I'm only including states where at least three-quarters of the vote-- 75%-- is already counted, so no Alaska, Maryland or New Jersey).

• Alabama- 62.3%, down from 62.8%
• Arizona- 48.5%, down 48.7%
• Arkansas- 62.7%, up from 60.6%
• California- 33.0%, up from 31.6%
• Colorado- 42.2%, down from 43.2%
• Delaware- 39.8%, down from 41.7%
• Florida- 51.2%, up from 49.0%
• Georgia- 49.4%, down from 50.8%
• Hawaii- 34.3%, up from 30.0%
• Idaho- 63.7%, up from 59.3%
• Illinois- 43.0%, up from 38.8%
• Indiana- 57.0%, up from 56.8%
• Iowa- 53.1%, up from 51.1%
• Kansas- 56.7%, up from 56.6%
• Kentucky- 62.7%, up from 62.5%
• Louisiana- 58.5%, up from 58.1%
• Maine- 43.3%, down from 44.9%
• Massachusetts- 32.4%, down from 32.8%
• Michigan- 47.9%, up from 47.5%
• Minnesota- 45.4%, down from 44.9%
• Mississippi- 59.7%, up from 57.9%
• Missouri- 56.9%, up from 56.8%
• Montana- 56.7%, up from 56.2%
• Nebraska- 58.7%, same as 2016
• Nevada- 48.5%, up from 45.5%
• New Hampshire- 45.4%, down from 46.6%
• New Mexico- 43.6%, up from 40.0%
• New York- 40.4%, up from 36.5%
• North Carolina- 50.0%, up from 49.8%
• North Dakota- 65.0% up from 63.0%)
• Ohio- 53.3%, up from 51.7%
• Oklahoma- 65.4%, up from 65.3%
• Oregon- 40.3%, up from 39.1%
• Pennsylvania- 49.3%, up from 48.2%
• Rhode Island- 39.2%, up from 38.9%
• South Carolina- 55.1%, up from 54.9%
• South Dakota- 61.8%, up from 61.5%
• Tennessee- 60.7%, same as 2016
• Texas- 52.2%, same as 2016
• Utah- 58.5%, up from 45.5%
• Vermont- 31.7%, up from 30.3%
• Virginia- 44.5%, up from 44.4%
• Washington- 38.0%, up from 36.8%
• West Virginia- 68.6%, up from 68.5%
• Wisconsin- 48.8%, up from 47.2%
• Wyoming- 70.0%, up from 67.4%

Only 9 states saw Trump's proportion of the vote go down: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Hampshire. This is generally a function of less interest this year in third party candidates. But, look at Texas (where 97% of the votes are counted). Trump got 5,876,777 votes do far. His total in 2016 was 4,685,047. Or take Vermont, where 95% of the vote is counted. In 2016 Trump got 95,369 votes. This year he got 111,131 votes. Read 'em and weep.

Yesterday, John Pavlovitz spoke for many people when he wrote, "The fact that it was even close, the fact that more people voted for him a second time, the fact that a higher number of white women inexplicably affirmed him-- it is all confirmation that whether we remove the very visible, unsightly symptom or not, the pervasive disease is still horribly afflicting us... I was certain we were better than him, but we are not."

Numbed by a cocktail of optimism and ignorance, many of us imagined this was a sick, momentary aberration; a temporary glitch in the system that would surely be remedied: after so much ugliness, such open disregard for people of color, such inhumanity toward migrant children, such a sickening failure in the face of this pandemic-- sanity would surely come to the rescue.

We were certain that we would collectively course-correct; that the pendulum that had so wildly swung toward inhumanity would come roaring back to decency in these days; that we would presently be basking in the glory of a radiant dawn referendum on all this bloated bigotry.

We thought we would be dancing on the grave of fascism.

We thought, of course the good people of this nation would come to their collective senses, leaving behind political affiliations and superficial preferences and ceremonial ties, to rescue us from a malevolence that had proven itself unworthy of its position and toxic to its people.

We were certain there would be a mass repudiation of the racism that this man has revealed and the violence he’s nurtured, because for all its flaws we really believed America was better than this.

We were wrong.

...We believed the best about this nation and we were mistaken.

To many oppressed and vulnerable communities, to people who have long known the depth of America’s sickness because they have experienced it in traffic stops and workplace mistreatment and opportunity inequity and the bitter words of strangers-- this may be less shocking news than it is to those of us with greater privilege and more buffers to adversity and the luxury of naiveté.

But this is the sober spot in which we stand now: realizing that our optimism about the whole of this nation was misplaced,
our prayers for the better angels of so many white Christians were unanswered, our childish illusions that people were indeed basically good and decent, seared away in their reaffirmation of something that the rest of the watching world finds reprehensible.

Brandy X Lee is an author and psychiatrist working at Yale, a specialist in violence prevention. Yesterday, writing for Raw Story, she predicted that "The coming weeks and months will be the most dangerous period of this presidency" and noted that there's a sickness in America that goes beyond just Trump. "'What is wrong with 68 million Americans?' is a question many are asking the day after the election. Why should the race even be close? Why did 48% of voting adults choose to remain with a president who leaves a trail of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the nation bankrupt, children in cages, and our natural habitat under existential threat? It makes no rational sense-- unless we correctly identify the problem. For almost four years, mental health professionals have been urging the nation to bring a mental health perspective to a mental health problem, instead of assuming that everything is political. All substitute approachess have failed, just as the best pandemic control comes from infectious disease specialists, not from a radiologist or economists. We have also anticipated the current situation as a product of having mental pathology in power for a prolonged period.

In mental pathology, where higher functions are impaired, an individual taps more easily into “the primitive brain,” which is irrational but very powerful, as it is survival-driven. Illegitimate power is like oxygen to the narcissistically- or sociopathically-disordered mind, and such a person would be driven to do anything-- including annihilate himself and the world-- for his psychic survival. Losing an election would, therefore, not at all be like a healthy person’s experience of defeat. In fact, we know how much Donald Trump fears it through his readiness to call others “losers” and “suckers”, in order to separate himself and to disavow qualities he cannot tolerate.

Many of his followers will equally experience his downfall as a life-or-death matter, since he has conditioned this into them. Their bond is pathological to start, based on developmental wounds or regression to an earlier stage of development under stress, which led them to seeking a parental figure. They are thus vulnerable to someone manipulative and exploitative enough to say he will take care of them and protect them in unrealistic ways that defy reality. And once they do,  they often give up their agency and rationality. Recent footage of his followers chanting, “Fire Fauci!” is disturbing in its depiction of their conformity, loss of personality, and alignment with Donald Trump’s thinking-- to suggest proactively that he remove the reminder of his unwanted reality: the pandemic. Delusions, paranoia, and violence-proneness are among the most contagious symptoms, and we see all these tendencies in his followers.

Under these emotional bonds, his followers will likely experience any threat to his position as an existential threat to themselves, which is why negative facts about him only activate defensive denial and disavowal, rather than abandonment. Abused children rather blame themselves than the parent as a survival impulse, for the parent is their lifeline, and it is easier to believe that he or she could never do wrong-- and the more untrue this belief, the more insistently they cling to it.

“Shared psychosis” or “folie à millions” (madness by the millions) has been well-documented by renowned mental health experts such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm. This contagion of symptoms dissipates when exposure to the primary person is reduced, which is why Donald Trump holds rallies as if his life depended on them-- psychically, it does. It is also the reason why he cannot leave the presidency-- in addition to the possibility of prosecution.

Trump Wants To Make A Deal With President-Elect Biden

 

The Sound Of Music by Nancy Ohanian

I always just mention it in random posts but for the last couple of months I've been saying that Trump, who fancies himself the master deal maker, knew he wasn't going to win a second term and that all his threats and bluster and carrying on are just part of a pre-negotiation strategy. No one knows better than Trump what crimes he's committed. And he doesn't want to end up in prison-- and probably doesn't want his family to either, though I doubt he cares that much about most of them.

It must have chilled him to the bone during the campaign when Biden vowed to not pardon him. That's the context for all the bullshit about not peacefully leaving the White House the way Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford and George H.W. Bush did when they lost their reelection bids. Or most of it-- there's also the megalomania, authoritarian and narcissistic personality disorders, but that's a separate story. Trump would think nothing about the historical consequences of starting a Civil War to keep himself out of prison. Biden is taking over a profoundly sick country-- the worst COVID situation in the world-- by far-- a deeply divided country, each side irreconcilably antagonistic to the other, and an economy on the brink of Depression. He will be pulled in opposite directions no matter what he wants to do and has a divided Congress that won't let him do anything anyway. Trump can make it much worse. Yesterday, stocks went up a lot at the prospect of a gridlocked and incapable government. Good for people who gamble in the market, but not for the working class or even for the economy.

Late yesterday, Heather Long did a piece for the Washington Post, What a contested race means for the economy-- and your wallet. She noted that today, the FED "will hold a news conference [and] is widely expected to keep interest rates near zero for years, which should continue to make it attractive for relatively well off Americans to keep buying stocks and homes. The uncertainty could even push the Fed to attempt more of its own stimulus for the economy. But it’s a much more pessimistic outlook for jobs, which are barely half-recovered. Hiring has been slowing, and the latest Labor Department jobs report that comes out Friday is expected to show more loss in momentum for job growth. More than 22 million people remain on unemployment, a figure that has fallen little since the summer. Jobless benefits have been scaled back sharply for the unemployed. Measures aimed to help those facing student loan debt and evictions are set to expire at the end of the year. The struggles are growing for millions unable to get back to work."

McConnell will have every incentive in the world to do everything in his power to sabotage anything Biden tries to do to address the country's problems. Here's where Trump comes in:

The future of the economy-- and to some extent markets-- depends heavily on three key questions, many analysts say: What happens with the virus and stimulus; How quickly Americans start spending again on services like travel, restaurants and entertainment; And whether the hotly contested election sparks social unrest.

If the political situation triggers more social unrest, that could have long-lasting consequences for the nation and economy, weighing on consumer spending and potentially hurting businesses, especially restaurants and stores in downturn areas. In preparation for this election, stores across the country boarded up in anticipation of marches and protests that could turn ugly, and companies like United Airlines moved their flight crews out of hotels in urban areas.

The United States is “even more divided than it was in 2016,” said Peter Atwater, founder of Financial Insyghts and a professor at the College of William & Mary. “The conditions are ripe for outrage.”

The U.S. economy still depends heavily on consumer spending. That’s already heavily depressed because of the coronavirus, but protests and, especially, rioting would probably dampen it even further.

The biggest problem for the economy for months now has been the deadly coronavirus. It remains far from under control, and Americans are staying home and spending only a fraction of what they used to in the pre-covid era. Until that changes, the service sector will remain anemic and the recovery is likely to stall, said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG.

“Until we get a handle on the virus, the economy will remain in a world of hurt,” Hunter said.

Hunter points out that spending on services typically makes up more than 45 percent of economic growth. But in the third quarter — when the United States saw a big rebound-- spending on services like restaurants, travel and entertainment remained sluggish, at below 43 percent of economic growth. That might not sound like a big difference, but it amounted to over $500 billion less flowing through the economy in the third quarter of 2020 versus the same period last year.]

There’s hope that if the virus gets under control, there will be a flood of spending again, but businesses have to survive until that point. Small businesses, in particular, are on edge. It’s unclear if that rebound will happen summer 2021 or much later than that.

What’s shaping up for the economy and markets was perhaps best summarized by JPMorgan in a note Wednesday morning: It’s “unclear on the next President but fairly clear that he’ll face Congressional resistance on anything transformational, whether on the budgetary or regulatory front.”

The gridlock might be good for markets and investors. But a lot of pain remains for small business owners and the unemployed. For them, much is still highly uncertain.

Trump can't do anything to help matters, except by not making them drastically worse, which he can do. And which he wouldn't hesitate to do if he thinks it will protect him from Justice.

Will The Movie About The Trump Campaign Be A Spy Thriller? A Tale Of A Crime Family? A Tragedy? A Comedy? All Of The Above?

 

2 bullshit artists the public is done with

Ultimately, Trump will lose in less than two weeks because most Americans are sick of him (some literally with COVID and some just of his rotten persona) and because we're in serious times and serious times call for... well, not a self-serving clown. His non-response to a pandemic that has sickened over eight-and-a-half million Americans and killed over 227,000 of us has made most voters sit up and take notice. But there are other factors that have played into what is shaping up to be the biggest repudiation of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover.

Some of those reasons are big-- like the unemployment number and Trump's inability to force McConnell and the Republican Senate to agree to a pandemic relief bill. Or how Trump's own campaign attorneys have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Biden campaign-- and just $50 to the Trump campaign. Others are, by themselves, barekly a blip on the radar-- like Trump's latest bankruptcy: his campaign.

Mike Murphy is a well-known GOP political operative who worked for John McCain, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lamar Alexander to name a few, In an interview with NBC News about how Trump wasted a billion dollars of his contributors' money yesterday, Murphy noted that the Trump campaign "spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early. You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”

Then there's the whole "strategy" behind Trump's desperate super-spreader rallies. side from the fact that he should eventually be charged with negligent homicide, the whole endeavor is a tragic joke. Nancy Cook gave away the punchline at Politico yesterday. With the Orange Blob yearning for "the magic of his 2016 upstart campaign: the multi-rally days, crisscrossing the country in a Trump-branded plane, the screaming crowds... he’s designed a 2016 redux in 2020 to recapture that spirit, casting off the constraints of a pandemic, his own presidency and even the advice of some of his own advisers."

Trump views rallies in battleground states as the linchpin of his closing argument, a means to excite his supporters and ensure they vote on Nov. 3. But many Republicans close to the White House, former senior administration officials and political advisers say the rallies are largely a way to keep the unscripted and undisciplined president occupied, since they do little to persuade new Trump voters. Rallies, they note, do not woo senior citizens, independents or suburban women, many of whom have moved away from the Trump ticket this election cycle. Most of Trump’s rallies are no longer televised nationally as they once were.

And with coronavirus infection rates climbing, the Trump rallies often draw negative headlines in local news markets because the packed events defy public health guidelines, featuring few masks and almost no social distancing. After Trump’s recent rallies in Bemidji and Duluth, Minnesota-- both in counties the Trump campaign hopes to win-- local health authorities connected roughly 24 new Covid-19 cases to the rallies and protests outside of them.

...[T]he rallies offer the president his own form of soothing, along with a major ego boost in the middle of a tough campaign, said aides, advisers and allies. Trump feeds off the energy of a crowd regardless of whether the appearance makes the most political sense or can help him make gains against Biden in states like Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

“Trump thinks, ‘I have the rallies to prove that I am the greatest. No one can attract crowds like me,’” said Tony Schwartz, the author and Trump critic who ghost wrote The Art of the Deal and just published a memoir titled Dealing with the Devil: My Mother, Trump and Me. “It is like taking a shot of testosterone to pump himself up, particularly now.”

One of the funniest, though, is how the planned October surprise-- a Trump-Putin-Giuliani con-job of a Ukraine scandal that is the defining moment in American politics on the right-wing fringe, but not taken seriously by any normal people-- went awry. The cooked-up evidence is likely to wind up on a rap sheet when Giuliani is eventually prosecuted.





And it has already spun off an hilarious sub-plot: Giuliani the Trump-like pervert. Catherine Shoard exposed the latest Giuliani caper for Guardian readers. Borat is in the house-- and Rudy missed the chance to sneak out the back door! Giuliani's reputation of is already in tatters, to put it mildly, but Shoard contends that it "could be set for a further blow with the release of highly embarrassing footage in Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat." The film is being released Friday and in it, Rudy "is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist."

Following an obsequious interview for a fake conservative news programme, the pair retreat at her suggestion for a drink to the bedroom of a hotel suite, which is rigged with concealed cameras.

After she removes his microphone, Giuliani, 76, can be seen lying back on the bed, fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers. They are then interrupted by Borat who runs in and says: “She’s 15. She’s too old for you.”

...Word of the incident first emerged on 7 July, when Giuliani called New York police to report the intrusion of an unusually-dressed man.

“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit,” Giuliani told the New York Post. “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.

“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shakedown, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away,” Giuliani said. The police found no crime had been committed.

Giuliani continued: “I only later realised it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”

Viewers may be less convinced that Baron Cohen, reprising his role as the bumbling reporter Borat Sagdiyev, and Maria Bakalova, who plays his daughter, Tutar, had no success.

In the film Borat is dispatched by the Kazakh government back to the US to present a bribe to an ally of Donald Trump in order to ingratiate his country with the administration. After the monkey earmarked for the gift is indisposed, Borat’s supposedly underage offspring becomes the replacement present.

Even before he reaches into his trousers, Giuliani does not appear to acquit himself especially impressively during the encounter. Flattered and flirtatious, he drinks scotch, coughs, fails to socially distance and claims Trump’s speedy actions in the spring saved a million Americans from dying of Covid. He also agrees-- in theory at least-- to eat a bat with his interviewer.

Giuliani has become a key figure in the late stages of the US presidential election after obtaining a laptop hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden and left at a repair shop in Delaware.

His efforts to unearth political dirt on Trump’s rival for the White House mean that the film’s mortifying footage can be seen as an attempt to undermine Giuliani’s credibility. The film, released on Amazon Prime less than a fortnight before the election, ends with an instruction for viewers to vote.

Today Has Been A Bad Day For Trump-- And It Looks Like He's Trying To Worm Out Of Thursday's Debate

 

The Environmentalist by Nancy Ohanian

The NY Times reported late yesterday that Señor T's "withdrawal from the second presidential debate led to the event’s cancellation. Now, three days ahead of the final debate, Mr. Trump’s campaign is demanding changes to the format and accusing the organizers of bias toward Joe Biden." Always so much drama with these people! Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien posted the letter he sent to the debate commission on Twitter to refocus Thursday’s debate on the subject of foreign policy, rather than the six subjects announced last week by the moderator, Kristen Welker of NBC. They are "fighting Covid-19," "American families," "race in America," climate change, national security and leadership. He's accusing the debate commission that it had "promised" the debate would be about foreign policy and accused the members of "pro-Biden antics" that "have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco."

On top of that, the debate commission adopted new rules to mute "anyone" who speaks during the other candidate's turn, something that Trump has said he will not accept.

AP reported that "The commission has faced pressure from the Trump campaign to avoid changing the rules, while Biden’s team was hoping for a more ordered debate. In a statement, the commission said it 'had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules."

The Commission, under attack from Trump, who depends on making a circus out of everything as part of his brand, announced that "Both campaigns this week again reaffirmed their agreement to the two-minute, uninterrupted rule. The Commission is announcing today that in order to enforce this agreed upon rule, the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules."





This morning former RNC chairman Michael Steele dropped a bombshell on Trump's head:

Rather than binding up the nation’s wounds, Trump exacerbates division. Rather than standing up to the world’s dictators, Trump cravenly seeks the favor of thugs. Rather than fostering free enterprise, Trump embraces economic principles not only outdated in Lincoln’s time, but made even worse today by a leader who lost close to a billion dollars in a single year running a casino. Rather than seeking to build on the legacy of the Republican Party’s founders, of which Trump is surely ignorant, Trump has posited a single purpose for the GOP-- the celebration of him.

As I’ve reflected on matters of leadership, decency, and constitutional norms I am reminded of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “a man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” Character matters. Our vote matters. The leader we choose matters. I cannot be silent, and I hope neither can you because we know a vote for Joe Biden is what is best for our country-- because America matters.

Also this morning, USA Today made it's first-ever presidential endorsement. The editors wrote that "Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos. Having surmounted heartbreaking personal loss-- his first wife and year-old daughter died in a car crash, and his son Beau died of brain cancer-- Biden exudes decency and empathy. Ask yourself: Can you imagine Joe Biden denigrating servicemembers as losers? Cozying up to autocrats abroad? Shaking down a foreign leader for dirt on a political opponent?... Biden is well positioned to repair the wreckage Trump has made of the federal government, from the foreign service to the science agencies Trump has tried to politicize. As vice president in the Obama administration, Biden played a central role in the last economic recovery and is equipped to handle another one.

If this were a choice between two capable major party nominees who happened to have opposing ideas, we wouldn’t choose sides. Different voters have different concerns. But this is not a normal election, and these are not normal times. This year, character, competence and credibility are on the ballot. Given Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, so, too, is the future of America's democracy.

For nearly four decades, the Editorial Board has stood for certain core values: truth, accountability, civility in public discourse, opposition to racism, common-ground solutions to the nation’s problems, and steadfast support for First Amendment rights. These aren’t partisan issues, or at least they shouldn’t be.

Donald Trump has trampled each of these principles, making more than 20,000 false or misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fearmongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press.

Everything about Biden’s nearly half-century political career suggests he would do a far better job of respecting these values. “We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country, the spirit of being able to work with one another,” the Democratic nominee said in a recent speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

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.

Trump, Mentally Impaired From COVID-19 Treatments, Orders McConnell And McCarthy To Stop Negotiating With Democrats About A Pandemic Relief Bill

 

Active Shooter by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee put out a statement reminding people that "In the early months of the coronavirus crisis, prominent former officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations released a public letter stating that 'saving lives and saving the economy are not in conflict right now; we will hasten the return to robust economic activity by taking steps to stem the spread of the virus and save lives.' A new JEC issue brief explains how America has failed and why full economic recovery remains far off."

Let's face it-- and more and more Americans now "get it," Trump "has done more to spread the coronavirus than to stem it-- telling Americans it isn’t dangerous, refusing to lead efforts to contain it, defying public health experts, discouraging the use of masks, pressuring governors to prematurely lift social distancing guidelines, holding super-spreading political rallies, attempting to restrict testing, and recently telling the public not to fear the virus. Now more than 210,000 Americans are dead and it is projected that the number will reach 400,000 in early January."

The weak economy is a direct result of this failure to contain the coronavirus. There are almost 11 million fewer jobs than there were in February, over 26.5 million workers are receiving unemployment benefits and temporary layoffs are becoming permanent as businesses close for good. Economists predict that the failure to fight the coronavirus will have a serious economic impact well into the future. As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said recently, “until the public is confident that the disease is contained, a full recovery is unlikely.”

An unheeded message to Congressional Republicans

Yesterday, in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics, Powell urged Congress to move rapidly to inject more stimulus into the economy. "Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste. The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods." NPR reported that "He also warned the group that without additional support, the economy could slip into a downward spiral 'as weakness feeds on weakness. A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy,' Powell said. 'That would be tragic, especially in light of our country's progress on these issues in the years leading up to the pandemic.'"

Over the weekend, Trump seemed eager for additional relief, tweeting, "OUR GREAT USA WANTS & NEEDS STIMULUS."

But by Tuesday afternoon, the president had changed course, rejecting Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call for an additional $2.4 trillion in aid.

"I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business," Trump tweeted.

The president's move sent the stock market tumbling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index, which had been up before Trump's tweet, both closed in the red, with the Dow losing 375 points or 1.3% and the S&P down 1.4%.

Powell credited the "extraordinary" relief measures passed early in the pandemic with helping to avoid a deeper recession and setting the stage for a partial rebound.

But recent indicators have shown the economic recovery is starting to slow as infections continue to spread. The labor market also remains under stress: Almost half the 22 million jobs lost in the spring have not been replaced.

Powell said Tuesday it may be some time before people whose jobs require a lot of in-person contact can safely return to work.

"While the combined effects of fiscal and monetary policy have aided the solid recovery of the labor market so far, there is still a long way to go," the Fed chairman said.

"The right thing to do and the smart thing to do is to continue to support those people as they return to their old jobs or find new jobs in different sectors of the economy," Powell added.

..."The longer it goes on, the more likely there is some lasting damage," Powell said. "For many people, and it's a lot of women, it's winding up being in the home with young children who really should be in school and you would much prefer to be working. So it's a real issue."

Several of the progressive congressional candidates were actually shocked that Republicans are letting this happen. Michigan state Rep. Jon Hoadley is taking on multimillionaire Trump-enabler Fred Upton. He told me this morning that "Upton and his Republican Party have failed to deliver, again, for people across America. At a time when southwest Michigan families need just a little help, Mr. Upton's 34 years in DC can't produce results. Problem not solved."

In a message to her supporters yesterday, Marie Newman wrote that she has "come to expect carelessness and cruelty from the Trump Administration, but this level of disregard for Americans’ pain is truly astounding. Millions are out of work and many more will lose their jobs, and even lose their lives, without the economic relief our country desperately needs and deserves. I’ve spent the past five months meeting with community members, small business owners, and first responders across Illinois’ Third District. They desperately need relief. Now. Working families need additional federal support as they struggle to find work and keep food on the table, small businesses need continued relief to stay afloat and pay their employees, and states and municipalities need immediate assistance to continue providing essential public services. Trump and his allies in Congress see these negotiations as a political game, but in reality, American lives are on the line. I’ve had enough with politicians who ignore the needs of their constituents. Vote them out."





"The decision to postpone a pandemic relief package until after the election is a disaster for thousands of West Virginia families struggling in this economic depression," WV-02 congressional candidate Cathy Kunkel told us this morning. "Congressman Mooney has never been an advocate for relief for working families, voting against the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and expressing more concern about the federal deficit (except when it comes to military spending) than his constituents who have lost jobs or whose small businesses are struggling to survive. The reality is that our economy will not recover as long as this virus continues to impact our daily lives, and working people need monthly economic relief checks to avoid evictions, foreclosures, and utility shutoffs."

Final Wish

 

Justice Served by Nancy Ohanian

-by Dorothy Reik
California state Democratic Executive Committee

RBG had a simple final wish-- let the newly INSTALLED president nominate her successor. But while her body was still warm Trump announced that HE would name her successor and have that nomination confirmed even before the election could take place. As her earthly body lay in repose at the Court and in state at the Capital, her heavenly spirit had other ideas.

As the COVID-spreading Trump gathered his worshipers in the Rose Garden to announce his nomination of the anti-RBG to the court, upstairs other plans were being made. RBG was angry. The gods were angry. A dying wish was not to be defied-- let alone defiled! The heavenly court was in session and justice would be served.

And so it came to be that they fell, one after another. Trump's closest friends and advisors, who had gathered to celebrate the appointment of a justice who would strike down health care, were themselves struck down by the very virus Trump had labeled a hoax. Poetic justice! The first to fall was third daughter, Hope Hicks, best known for steaming the wrinkles out of Trump's pants while he was wearing them! Trump himself was next along with Melania as they returned from spreading the virus to the most important people in their lives-- their donors!

But by Thursday no members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had been infected. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tom Tillis (R-NC), both members and attendees at the would-be coronation, had to fall next. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) fell victim too-- collateral damage.

Just for good measure Trump's debate coaches, Chris Christie and Kelly Anne Conway were hit along with Bill Stepien, the latest campaign manager and Ronna MacDaniel Romney, head of the Republican National Committee. There goes the campaign mused RBG. Brad Parscale was gone already having succumbed to madness after Tulsa and locked away.

Amy Coney Barrett, the source of all the suffering, had already been infected so her Notre Dame mentor, Reverend John Jenkins took her place among the sickened.

Yesterday, Press Secretary Kaleigh McInerney tested positive after attempting to infect the press corps by not wearing a mask-- but the press corps fooled her-- they did wear masks. It was if Trumpsters were all under the same evil spell as always-- not caring whom they infect or kill. But now they were infecting each other! RBG smiled. McConnell, under the same spell, called for Senate hearing although many of the Senators needed to be in quarantine, so desperate was he to see this already damned appointment confirmed. As RBG looked down from her heavenly perch to survey the damage she noted that more work needed to be done. Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were still standing as was Mitch McConnell, who would carry out the wishes of a president laid low-- or was he already infected? He refused to say. RBG reached for the lightening.

Last Night Was Hard To Watch For Normal Americans-- But A Great Night For The Neo-Nazi Proud Boys

 

Trump/Biden Debate by Nancy Ohanian

Trump was a national embarrassment. That's what you get when you practice debating with Rudy Giuliani. And Biden was, at best... a weak foil. Instant polls and focus groups, though, showed Trump decisively losing the first-- and hopefully-- last debate of 2020. Republican focus group-meister asked his panel of 15 swing state undecided voters, "You just saw 90 minutes; how can you still be undecided?" 11 are still undecided; 4 are voting for Biden and two made up their lizard-minds to vote for Trump. One of the Biden converts described the debate as "trying to win an argument with a crackhead." Trump didn't grow his support. Politico:

Despite their indecisiveness, most described Trump in a negative light, including one of the participants who was leaning toward voting for the president. The voters characterized Trump as “unhinged,” “arrogant,” “forceful," a “bully,” “chaotic” and “un-American.”

When asked to describe Biden they offered: “better than expected,” “politician,” “compassion,” “coherent,” and a “nice guy lacking vision.”

John Harris termed the whole mess as an epic moment of national shame, "a new low in presidential politics," and "an embarrassment for the ages" that caused many viewers "at frequent intervals... [to] lower the sound, wince and look away." Maybe that's what Trump wanted, although I doubt it. He thinks he won. No one else does though. "Trump," wrote Harris, "plainly arrived to shred the official debate rules, and shed any pretense of decorum. At numerous points, his honking interruptions blared without interruption. So did his putdowns, including mocking Biden’s performance in college 56 years ago-- “You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class,” before adding, “There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.” He also brought up Hunter Biden’s drug problems and inaccurately said he received a dishonorable discharge from the Navy." Biden's best moments were when he called Trump a "clown."

Writing for the New Republic, Walter Shapiro noted that Donald's unhinged performance is a sign he knows he's losing. He concluded his column by writing that watching caused him to grieve for American democracy. "And I am frightened by the specter of two more presidential debates as moderators insist on playing by rules of civil discourse in the face of Trump the Termagant." NBC's Jonathan Allen agreed with Shapiro that Trump's performance was a sign that he fears Biden and knows he's losing. "In the end," he wrote, "what voters saw was a president who was deeply fearful of the result of a fair election determined on the actual positions and records of the two candidates. And yet, his desire to dominate the debate stage-- to talk over both his opponent and the moderator, Chris Wallace-- made it more likely that the race will be a referendum on him than a choice between him and Biden." BINGO! A referendum on Trump is exactly what's brewing... which is why as unsatisfactory a candidate as Joe Biden is going to win in a landslide and why Republicans are going to lose control of the Senate and lose dozens of House seats.





In her Washington Post OpEd, Karen Tumulty noted that "the nightmare that played out Tuesday evening on a debate stage in Cleveland served at least one useful purpose. It encapsulated, in a single 98-minute span, the entire presidency of Donald... All of the impulses that drive Trump were unleashed: The lying. The rage. The bluster. The incoherence. It is hard to imagine that anyone but the most obdurate of partisans could have watched the spectacle and thought, Gee, wouldn’t it be great to have four more years of this?"

Joe Biden spoke for the rest of us when he at one point blurted out: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”

Granted, this was not Biden’s finest hour either. He failed to achieve the most fundamental mission for a challenger, which is to present a vision of the alternate direction in which he would take the country.

Then again, it is hard to blame the former vice president, who had assumed that he was showing up for a debate, not a shipwreck. For the most part, Biden retained his composure. He in no way resembled the doddering and feeble old man that Trump and his compatriots have sought to portray him as.

Biden also resisted Trump’s efforts to align him with the more liberal members of his party and positions that fall to the left of where most Americans are on issues such as health care. “I am the Democratic Party right now," Biden said. "The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of.”

Trump lied his way through the debate but did anyone expect he even knew how to do otherwise? Lying is what he does-- always; it comes as naturally as it does to Lindsey Graham when someone asks him if he's gay. I love the response Mike Reese, sheriff of Multnomah County (Portland, Oregon) gave after Trump lied about being endorsed by him:

Even after his catastrophic performance last night, Donald is going through with his super-spreader events in Green Bay and La Crosse, Wisconsin on Saturday, two cities where coronavirus cases are surging... Trump’s rallies, which are known for their size and lack of social distancing, will be held in two cities with some of the highest rates of coronavirus infections in the country. La Crosse has the second-highest rate of infection...and Green Bay has the sixth-highest number of cases per capita. Coronavirus cases around the state are skyrocketing and hospitalizations are at a record high. As of Monday, every county in the state has high virus activity, according to the state Department of Health Services. The Green Bay area, especially, is seeing high numbers of coronavirus patients in their health care centers. At Bellin Hospital in Green Bay, coronavirus patients occupy three-quarters of the hospital's intensive care unit beds and two-thirds of medical unit beds-- roughly double the number from two weeks ago. Last week, the Bellin Hospital emergency room was so overwhelmed that hospital workers had to tend to patients on gurneys in the hallway. Meanwhile, 150 Bellin Hospital employees are quarantining at home."

Reporting for the Washington Post on Trump's plans to kill more Cheeseheads, Lena Sun noted that during the debate, "Trump defended his events as opportunities for his supporters to gather to hear him and claimed that there has been 'no negative effect' from his rallies, even though health officials in Tulsa said a spike in covid-19 cases was 'likely' sparked by an indoor Trump gathering in June." [Herman Cain started trending on Twitter.] Señor T, lying again, said "he was 'okay with masks' but falsely claimed that scientists are divided over their value. Health experts have said mask-wearing, hand-washing, social distancing and being careful about crowds currently make up the best defense against the virus. Biden, by contrast, said Trump has been 'totally irresponsible' in the way he has handled social distancing and masks, and in holding large rallies. 'Basically he has been a fool on this,' Biden said of Trump."

“If you could get the crowds, you would have done the same thing,” the president responded. “But you can’t. Nobody can.”

In addition to the White House task force’s guidance, local concern has been growing in Wisconsin about Trump’s planned events, which are scheduled for outdoor airplane hangars without universal mask mandates. Gov. Tony Evers (D) said Tuesday in a news briefing that Trump should either cancel the events or require mask-wearing by everyone who attends.

“This virus is real, and it is devastating our communities, and it will continue to do so until we all get on the same team,” Evers said in a press call about the recent spike in the state’s cases.

He told Wisconsin residents that wearing a mask is not a substitute for social distancing or staying at home, and he asked them to cancel family barbecues, play dates or dinner parties, and make all large gatherings virtual.

Ryan Westergaard, the state’s chief medical officer, said Tuesday that Wisconsin is “in a crisis right now,” given the rate of community spread.

While Biden has made a point of keeping his events small and attendees distant from one another, Trump has largely dismissed the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against holding mass gatherings during the pandemic.

The president has crisscrossed the country to hold rallies, mostly in outdoor spaces but sometimes indoors, where mask-wearing is optional. At the events, he regularly mocks virus mitigation efforts, like social distancing, as little more than political ploys by Democratic state leaders bent on punishing him.

“We don’t call these ‘rallies’ anymore, because in Dem states like where you have a governor who’s a Democrat, you’re not allowed to go to church and not allowed to go to a restaurant. You’re not allowed to go to your friend’s house. You can’t move from your house unless you’re related to the governor,” he said at a rally in Newport News, Virginia, on Friday.

“You can’t do anything, unless of course it’s a peaceful protest. Okay?” he continued. “So what we do is we call these peaceful protests, and we’re getting big crowds.”

For Biden, the only good outcome is that watching Trump act like last night that certainly got Democrats-- and perhaps others-- reaching for their wallets. His campaign and that of other Democrats-- had huge fundraising booms during and after the debate. ActBlue brought in around $8 million between 9 and 11, almost half of which went to Biden. I asked Twitter followers to consider contributing $5 to their favorite Democratic congressional candidates here every time Trump lied. Please consider doing that today by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.

David Frum asserted in his Atlantic column that Donald was a dead duck before he set foot on the stage. He explained that Trumpanzee "arrived at the first debate with a theory and a plan. The theory was that American voters crave dominance, no matter how belligerent or offensive. The plan was to hector, interrupt, and insult in hope of establishing that dominance. His theory was wrong and his plan was counter-productive."

Trump walked onto that stage in Cleveland seven or eight points behind, because the traditional Republican advantage among upper-income and educated voters has dwindled; because non-college-educated white women have turned against him; because he is losing older voters to his mishandling of COVID-19; because the groups he needs to be demobilized—African Americans, the young—are up-mobilized. On the present trajectory, nearly 150 million votes are likely to be cast in 2020. If Trump wins 43 percent of them and Joe Biden 50 percent, not even the Electoral College can convert that negative margin into a second Trump term.

He needed to do something to change that reality.

Instead, he talked to Facebook conspiracists, to the angriest of ultra-Republican partisans, and to violent white supremacists. He urged the Proud Boys to 'stand by' because 'somebody’s got to do something' about 'antifa and the left.' He refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the (likely) event that he loses. He threatened months and months of chaos if the election does not go his way.

Trump yelled, threatened, interrupted-- and changed nothing. All he did was confirm the horror and revulsion of the large American majority that has already begun to cast its ballots against him.

Correction, Trump did one thing. On the Cleveland stage, Trump communicated that he will seize any opportunity to disrupt the vote, and resist the outcome. He communicated more forcefully than ever that the only security the country has for a constitutional future is that Biden win by the largest possible margin.

...Who and what Trump is, could not have been more vividly displayed in all the psychological reality. Debate one was not Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, or red versus blue. It was zookeepers versus poop-throwing primates.

Biden may be faded from what he was: perhaps less crisp, less sharp, less fast. But when Biden spoke, he spoke to and about America. Trump spoke only about his wounded ego. Biden communicated: I care about you. Trump communicated: I hate everybody. Biden succeeded in putting his most important messages on record: your healthcare, your job, your right to equal respect regardless of race or creed-- all against Trump’s disregard and disrespect. Trump may have imagined he projected himself as strong. The whole world witnessed instead the destructive rage of a bully confronting impending defeat. Trump disgraced the presidency on that stage. He may just have delivered the self-incapacitating wound that pushes the country toward self-salvation.