"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, November 05, 2020
The Next Speaker of the House
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer (Getty Images)
by Thomas Neuburger
A short note to let you know that if Nancy Pelosi doesn't step down as Speaker, it's possible, though not likely, that she'll be challenged when the new House convenes in January. With a smaller majority this time (from 232 to maybe 227), it won't take many of her opponents to be able to gridlock the Speaker's vote until there's a compromise candidate. With a caucus of 227, it would take only 11 members to hold the election hostage.
But even if that doesn't happen and she retains her position until 2022 when she's promised to retire, the question of the next Democratic caucus leader is an important one. Who that might be is anyone's guess, but most people's money is on Hakeem Jeffries — it's an open secret he's being groomed for the job. (More on Jeffries here.)
Which brings to mind this event from 2012. The fifth-ranking House leadership position was vice-chair of the caucus. Corrupt New Dem Joe Crowley wanted that position, but he was opposed by progressive Barbara Lee. Finally, progressives thought, someone they could support!
But it was not to be. Prior to a vote in the caucus — and likely to prevent one — Lee was talked into resigning (or talked herself into it after counting the votes). Politico put it this way:
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that she is dropping her
leadership bid in what would’ve been the only contested race among House Democrats.
This means Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) [former vice-chair of the New Dem Caucus] is a sure bet to become the next vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the fifth-ranking post in leadership. …
Lee, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was withdrawing her bid in order to “unify” lawmakers around Crowley. [emphasis added]
No real progressive wants this kind of unity this time around. Jeffries is a Party man, not as corrupt as Crowley, but no AOC either. He'll do what the donors say to do.
Real progressives want people like these deposed, not promoted, even if it means losing this time around to build a base for the fight next time — and even if it means pitting the base against the Establishment the way Keith Ellison's run for DNC Chair roiled the base and riled the leaders.
At some point, a progressive has to fight for the base, against the leadership, and do it openly, even if it exposes Party leaders to (well-deserved) scorn.
If no one on "our" team dares to do that, we've gone nowhere and we're getting nowhere, no matter how many "bold progressives" we send into that pit.
By the way, if there was any year in which current Party leadership should be challenged, it's this year, after the debacle of this election. Just saying.
(Note: For those who like my work, I'm launching a Substack site. You can get more information here. If you decide to sign up — it's free — my thanks to you!)
Amy Coney Barrett, Liar and Climate Denier, Disqualifies Herself for Any Position Involving Factual Evaluation
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by Thomas Neuburger
It couldn't be more simple. When Notre Dame Law professor and Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was asked at her Senate hearing about climate change (one of the few times senators questioned her on this subject), she had this to say:
“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not.”
Every human on the planet is "competent to opine" on what causes global warming. Every human on the planet knows what causes global warming. We are causing global warming, and we will drive most of our children off of the planet and to their graves if we don't start addressing it in a meaningful and effective way.
Here's her full quote, courtesy of this piece by David Sirota and Andrew Perez:
“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not. I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge, nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough and I haven’t studied scientific data. I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion on what I think causes global warming.”
All of this is disqualifying on its face — not just her denialism, but this as well:
I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge.
Less than two weeks before the confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Royal Dutch Shell and other oil giants that are being sued by cities and states for the climate damage those companies created. Shell and the others are asking justices to allow the case to be heard in federal court.
In 2018, Inside Climate News reported that “internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.”
Barrett’s father, Michael, has written that “most of my legal career was spent as an attorney with Shell in New Orleans.”
Her "views on global warming" will be "relevant to the job" she does almost immediately, and hundreds of times more as well in the 40 years she could reasonably expect to serve.
Again, a liar, disqualified by her own testimony from any judicial position involving evaluation based on facts.
Laughing On the Way to the Gallows
Twitter had fun with her answer, though the consequences of it — a climate denier on the Court — will be no fun at all. Bill McKibben's quip is above. Here are a few others:
Sunrise Movement: "I have read things about gravity. I would not say I have firm views on it ... this answer is disqualifying."
Chris Andrea Robert: "Is the Earth flat or round? I've read things, I would not say I have firm views on it."
Gallows humor. Graveyard jests. Grinning on the way to the needle and the rope.
As Eric Holthaus wrote,
"It’s ... a sign of a complete failure of our democracy – to be
confirming a climate denier to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme
Court during a moment when urgent climate action is an existential
priority."
Notre Dame Helps Trump Put a Climate Denier on the Court
And a complete failure of the University of Notre Dame as well, which appears, both institutionally and from its Law School, to fully support her nomination.
Barrett certainly has the support of it president, Fr. John Jenkins (Barrett is "a person of the utmost integrity who, as a jurist, acts first and foremost in accord with the law"), and the Dean of its Law School (she's "an absolutely brilliant legal scholar and jurist [and] one of the most thoughtful, open-minded...people I have ever met").
In 2017, when she was nominated to the 7th District Court, she had 100% support of its Law School faculty. A 2020 letter signed by 88 faculty members requested that she "halt the nomination process until after Election Day," but no faculty members of the Law School signed on.
This tells you more about Fr. Jenkins, the makeup of its Law School, and, frankly, Notre Dame in general, than it does about Amy Coney Barrett, who doesn't have the guts to say word one about the greatest challenge facing our species — and her children — in the 40 years she'll sit permanently on the Court.
A Complete Failure of Democracy
Speaking as a graduate of the university in question myself, I'm beyond appalled — and appalled by the Democrats' lack of response at the hearing as well.
Where are their cries that in 2020 a climate denier is unqualified to sit on any federal bench, much less the Supreme Court? And where is the first question from the Democrats about the pending Shell Oil case?
Holthaus is right: this is a failure of our democracy. The consequences will be great, and God help Amy Coney Barrett if her God is just.
What's the Earliest a Progressive Democrat Can Be Elected President?
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by Thomas Neuburger
Among the many thoughts these rebellious times inspire is this one: How will it ever end?
It could end in mass and chaotic violence, of course, with anti-killercop protests hijacked by cop provocateurs and Proud Boy "bust 'em up" squads, followed by the inevitable law-and-order crackdown that shuts the whole thing off in a National Security State way — a crackdown that white and suburban liberals and conservatives alike will applaud till the sun sets in the west.
That's certainly one of the choices.
It could end like the sixties and seventies Movement ended, with a Jimmy Carter in the White House (our proto-neoliberal), followed by the end of the Vietnam War, a temporary end to the war on pot, the so-called "greening of America," and hippies going back to their day jobs with a sense of having won at least something for the effort.
But it won't — that's not one of the choices, simply because there's no slack in the schedule for the Late Seventies and Reagan Eighties breather that sent people dancing to Disco and off to watch, in envy and hope, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
That's certainly not a choice given what's teed up for us today — relentless economic neoliberal misery; ongoing unrelieved anger and resentment; ginned-up battles between a "left" that pretends to stand for workers and doesn't, and a "right" that pretends to stand for freedom and doesn't; and the Big One, William Gibson's "Jackpot," the worldwide climate conflict that won't end till we stop feeding money to the Carbon Barons — and even then, if we don't start stopping soon, maybe never.
It could also end with the election of a true progressive president, a real FDR, an unbought, skillful champion of the people, who "welcomes the hatred" of the rich and destructive and means it. Not a pretender; the real thing.
When Is the Earliest the Nation Can Elect a Progressive Democratic President?
With the last thought in mind — it ends when we elect an actual progressive — let's see when's the earliest this could occur. (The following is borrowed and expanded from this insightful piece at Reddit's "Way of the Bern.")
Consider these scenarios:
• Trump wins in 2020. With no Democratic incumbent, a progressive can run and (if she's not sabotaged) win in 2024.
• Biden wins in 2020 and he or his VP (who will always have the inside track) loses to a Republican in 2024. A progressive can run, and maybe win, in 2028.
• Biden wins in 2020 but isn't on the ballot in 2024. His faux-progressive (neoliberal) VP wins in 2024 and but loses to a Republican in 2028. A progressive can run, and maybe win, in 2032.
• Biden wins in 2020 but isn't on the ballot in 2024. His faux-progressive (neoliberal) VP wins in 2024 and
2028. Then his or her same-stripe VP loses in 2032. A progressive could run in 2036.
• Biden wins in 2020 but isn't on the ballot in 2024. His faux-progressive (neoliberal) VP wins in 2024 and
2028. Then her same-stripe VP wins in 2032 and 2036. If her VP doesn't run, a progressive could run against a non-incumbent Democrat in 2040.
Exceptions:
• Biden picks a progressive VP in 2020, a real one, someone Sanders-like, who would run in 2024 if Biden doesn't.
But would anyone with sense take a bet he'll do that? Consider: Barack Obama put Biden where he is precisely to stop a Sanders-like candidate from winning. Why would Biden or the people behind him throw that gift away?
• Biden's same-stripe VP picks a progressive VP, a real one, someone Sanders-like, who might possibly be allowed to run in 2036.
That last is too far off to bet on, but I would take the bet that says neoliberals will make a hash of the climate emergency that's sure to show up by then, making all bets on democratic governance afterward moot.
We're left with these conclusions. We can run a progressive against a non-incumbent Democrat:
• In 2024, if Biden loses to Trump.
• In 2028, if Biden wins and his VP loses in 2024.
• In 2032, if Biden wins, his VP wins next, but loses in 2028.
• In 2036 or later in all other cases.
Do you see where this is headed? 2036 is more than a decade away. Because no progressive will win — and likely won't even run — against a Democratic incumbent, either the Democratic Party must self-reform, or a Republican must take the White House before a progressive Democrat can run.
In other words, unless the Democratic Party becomes suddenly anti-neoliberal, the answer to our initial question — What's the earliest a progressive Democrat can be elected president? — is Never or Too Late.
The latest final results from Iowa as of the February 9 (source, also here, though the Des Moines Register begs to differ). Despite having a lead of less than 1% in SDEs, Buttigieg has now been given a lead of two national delegates (16% more delegates than Sanders is given).
by Thomas Neuburger
I can't leave the Iowa Caucus story without noting this. According to Trip Gabriel of the New York Times, the Iowa Democratic Party will not change even blatant errors in its report of results because it wants to "ensure the integrity of the process" — while at the same time saying that "The Iowa Democratic Party continues to be fully committed to ensuring the accuracy of the caucus data that we report".
You read that right. Mr. Orwell would be proud.
Gabriel writes via Twitter, quoting the opinion of the IDP attorney:
"The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process. ... The IDP's role is to facilitate the caucus and tabulate the results. Any judgement of math miscalculations would insert personal opinion into the process by individuals not at the caucus and could change the agreed upon results. That action would be interfering with the caucus' expression of their preferences.
"There are various reasons that the worksheets have errors and may appear to not be accurate, however changing the math would change the information agreed upon and certified by the caucus goers. If campaigns want further recourse they will need to work all of the way through the process to a Recount where the Presidential Preference Cards are opened and counted."
But there's a problem with those Presidential Preference Cards. Gabriel notes that "going back to the "presidential preference cards" that each caucus-goer was supposed to turn in — wouldn't be definitive either. Random caucus chairs I interviewed said several people in the room who voted never turned in their cards for whatever reason."
As Gabriel notes in his NY Times piece on the same subject:
“The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process,” wrote the party lawyer, Shayla McCormally, according to an email sent by Troy Price, the chairman of the party, to its central committee members. The lawyer said correcting the math would introduce “personal opinion” into the official record of results.
It's a "personal opinion" that 1+1=3 is incorrect?
The Boldest of Catch-22s
This is the boldest of Catch-22s. To ensure the "integrity of the process, worksheets that "have errors and may appear to not be accurate" cannot be changed, since they are a legal record of the caucus.
So, for example, an error as obvious as this one...
...might never be corrected. Ryan Grim has noted via his newsletter: "Certifying knowingly false election results is arguably against federal election laws, and the Iowa Democratic Party is playing with fire here," but that seems to have stopped no one at the IDP.
Sanders To Ask for a "Partial Recanvas"
The latest news is that Senator Sanders has asked for a partial recanvas of the Iowa vote:
A campaign aide confirmed the plans Sunday night, ahead of a Monday deadline for candidates to ask the Iowa Democratic Party to recanvass the results. A recanvass is not a recount, but a check of the vote count to ensure the results were added correctly.
The state party released updated results on Sunday showing Pete Buttigieg leading Sanders by two state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 counted.
The Associated Press remains unable to declare a winner because it believes the results may not be fully accurate and are still subject to potential revision.
I'm not sure what good that will do in producing an outcome that can be believed, and in the end the one or two delegate difference won't make much difference at all at the Convention, but we can applaud, at least, the effort to save face for the Iowa Democratic Party, whose own face it's determined to tar.
A Clown Show Performance Without Appearance of Impartiality?
The Iowa Democratic Party seems intent on proving all suspicions of bias correct, despite an overwhelming number of commenters willing to offer the lesser explanation, incompetence. As Matt Taibbi astutely put it, in the end the Iowa Caucus was a "clown show performance by a political establishment too bored to worry about the appearance of impartiality."
Though we may close the book at some point soon on this sad open to the 2020 Democratic Primary, voters may not. By the time the Convention chooses its nominee, the clown show performance in Iowa, with no appearance of impartiality may come to characterize the whole of the rest of the exercise.
If it does, if the Milwaukee end of the process looks as false as its corn field start, the effort to defeat Donald Trump may well have received its final, fatal blow a full nine months before the first November ballot was cast.
How Iowa Chooses National Convention Delegate and What That Means For Us
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Iowa's four congressional districts. Note Cedar Rapids in CD1, Iowa City (a major college town) in CD2, Des Moines in CD3 and Ames (the other large college town) in the otherwise heavily rural CD4.
by Thomas Neuburger
Most people think, innocently enough, that the coming Democratic Party Iowa caucuses held in each of the state's voting precincts selects pledged delegates to the national convention.
The real situation is much more complex. Precinct caucuses do select pledged delegates, but the delegates they select are to the county convention. At the county conventions, delegates are selected to the congressional district conventions, where, finally, pledged delegates to the national convention are selected.
All of this layering, despite its indirectness, is nonetheless intended to produce a national delegate mix that roughly approximates the vote ratios at the precinct caucuses — "roughly" because of rounding rules. Are there unfortunate consequences to this indirectness? Yes, and they could be considerable.
Iowa Delegates, What Kind and How Many
Let's start with the pledged delegate allocations themselves, then look at the process in more detail. For a source we'll use an excellent if weedy site, The Green Papers, to explain the details. (Here's the Iowa Democratic Party's explanation, if you want to look at the ultimate source.)
Iowa, like all states, has been allocated a number of pledged and unpledged delegates by the DNC. Pledged delegates come in three kinds or types: per-district, at-large, and "pledged PLEOs" (party leaders and elected officials).
Starting with per-district pledged delegates: The state has four congressional districts (CD1, CD2, CD3, CD4), each of which, at its district convention, allocates its assigned delegates based on viable candidates' performance at the precinct caucuses in that district.
"Viable" means that a candidate has received at least 15% or more of the caucus vote in a precinct (but see explanation and example below; the viability threshold changes depending on the number of pledged delegates available in a precinct's district). Any candidate who receives less than the viability minimum of caucus votes for that precinct's district gets no delegates.
In addition, the DNC has granted Iowa Democrats a number of at-large or state-wide pledged delegates, which are allocated at the state convention to viable candidates based on their performance in the precinct caucuses.
Finally, Iowa Democrats have been granted a number of pledged PLEO ("party leader and elected official") delegates who are also allocated at the state convention — again, according to viable candidates' performance at precinct caucuses.
In Iowa's case, the pledged delegate allocations are as follows:
7 for CD1
7 for CD2
8 for CD3
5 for CD4
9 at-large or state-wide delegates
5 pledged PLEOs
Total = 41 pledged delegates
In top of all of that, the state has been granted eight unpledged PLEO delegates — these are the so-called superdelegates — for a grand total of 49 delegates to the national convention.
How Iowa Delegates Are Chosen
Here's a more detailed look at the selection process for the pledged delegates from The Green Papers (emphasis and some reparagraphing mine). Note how many layers it contains and how byzantine the process is.
Democratic Party Caucuses meet in each precinct at 7 PM CST. Absentee or proxy voting is not allowed. Each Precinct Caucus chooses the precinct's delegates to the County Conventions based on presidential preference. ...
At each caucus, each presidential contender who fails to get at least 15 percent support among the participants in the initial balloting after a period of discussion will be considered "non-viable" and all supporters of such "non-viable" presidential contenders will then be required to join in the support of presidential contenders who have remained "viable".
To determine the viability of a presidential contender, multiply the number of eligible caucus attendees by the percentages below and round to the nearest whole number. This is the minimum number of delegates needed for the contender to remain viable.
50% (majority vote) for caucuses electing 1 delegate.
25% (one quarter) for caucuses electing 2 delegates.
16.66...% (one sixth) for caucuses electing 3 delegates.
15% for caucuses electing 4 or more delegates.
Example. 57 people attend a caucus electing 3 delegates [case 3 above]. The viability is 1/6th of 57 = 9.5 rounded which is 10. Say 29 people support candidate A, 19 support candidate B, and 9 support candidate C. Candidates A and B are viable since they have support of 10 or more of the attendees. Because candidate C did not receive the support of 10 attendees, those supporting candidate C must realign to another candidate [or go home]. At this point, the attendees realign themselves so 34 support candidate A and 23 support candidate B.
The caucus will next choose the precinct's delegates to who will be allocated in proportion to the percentage of the support each "viable" presidential contender received in the second round of balloting at the precinct caucus as of the time of its adjournment.
Continuing the example from above: For Candidate A: 3 (total precinct delegates) × 34 (supporters) ÷ 57 (total attendees) = 1.789 which rounds to 2 precinct delegates. Candidate B receives 3 × 23 ÷ 57 = 1.211 which rounds to 1 precinct delegate. Note: Due to rounding, the sum of precinct delegates may exceed the total number of precinct delegates allocated to the caucus. If this happens, round down the candidate with the smallest fraction. Candidates receiving 1 precinct delegate are not subject to this rule, that is, candidates cannot loose their only precinct delegate during this adjustment.
National Convention delegates are allocated from the state delegate equivalency results of the precinct caucuses. ...
Saturday 21 March 2020:County Conventions convene in each county to choose Congressional District delegates of which the county is a part as well as the county's delegates the Iowa State Democratic Convention.
Saturday 25 April 2020: Democratic Party District Conventions convene in each congressional district at 9:00am to elect the district's delegates to the Democratic National Convention according to the results of the precinct caucuses.
This accounts for the congressional district delegates. Now for the selection of pledged at-large delegates and pledged "party leaders and elected officials" (PLEOs):
Saturday 13 June 2020: The Iowa State Democratic Convention convenes at 9am CDT. The State Convention elects the 9 At-Large and 5 PLEO of the Iowa's Pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention according to the results of the precinct caucuses.
Finally, this is the makeup of the group of Iowa's unpledged or superdelegates:
The remaining 8 National Convention delegates consist of 8 Unpledged PLEO delegates:
5 Democratic National Committee members.
3 Members of Congress (0 Senators and 3 Representatives).
0 Governors.
0 Distinguished Party Leaders.
These 8 delegates ... will go to the Democratic National Convention officially "Unpledged".
Again, notice the layers.
How to View the Delegate Selection System
I offer three takeaways from this look at the selection process.
First, in an honestly run election the process will indeed, at each stage, allocate pledged delegates "according to the results of the precinct caucuses" as required by the rules — allowing for very small differences due to rounding.
Second, because the entire selection process isn't over until after the June 13 Iowa state convention, those small differences can (and most likely will) be reported intermittently as adjusted per-candidate delegate totals. That is, a candidate may be reported as having X number of delegates on caucus night, but actually receive a slight different number by the time the state convention is held.
Third, because of the many layers...
Precincts choosing precinct delegates to county conventions, followed by
County conventions choosing delegates to the congressional district conventions, followed by
Congressional district conventions choosing delegates to the national convention
...the people chosen as delegates by the precincts are unlikely all to be the people who vigorously represent the candidates at the national convention. (This will almost certainly be true of many of the "pledged PLEOs.") Instead, national convention delegates are just as likely to be people who have been most deeply involved with the Democratic Party for the longest time and have simply promised to vote a certain way on round one. This is not just true of Iowa pledged delegates, by the way, but to all of them.
Which means that at the national convention, a Sanders or Warren or Biden pledged delegate may not in fact be a Sanders or Warren or Biden loyalist. In many cases, that delegate may just be a state party official or loyal party functionary who's being rewarded for their service with a nice, perhaps pre-paid, trip to the week-long party (in both senses) event in Milwaukee.
What Will the Democratic Party Do On the Second Round of Convention Voting?
Keep all this in mind as you game out the results of a second round of voting in Milwaukee, when all delegates who were "pledged" on the first round, become decidedly unpledged on all subsequent rounds. The opportunities for second-round mischief are many.
On the second round of voting, and on each round afterwards, the entire convention is composed of unpledged delegates, many of them merely state party loyalists, each free to vote as they choose. The aggregated response of the Party to that second-round freedom may well define the Party in the eyes of voters for the next generation.
And the response of voters to the way the Party exercises that freedom may well define the Party's future, or lack of it, as well. After all, if primary voters select one of the revolutionary candidates by a solid plurality, and at the convention the Party denies that candidate the nomination, the Party itself may not survive the voter revolt against it in the battle to unseat Donald Trump.
Could the Democratic Party actually Whigify itself in 2020? It seems unlikely given the many advantages secured by the bipartisan duopoly.
But do stay tuned. These are epic times, when even the most unthinkable of outcomes is entirely possible.
Earlier today, we noted Ro Khanna's leadership in regard to the excesses of Trump's Pentagon Budget, basically Trump ripping up Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex speech and using if for toilet paper and then flushing it 15 times. I want to remind you that Khanna is also Bernie's chief congressional surrogate and has worked tirelessly to make a cohesive case for Bernie's election and for the platform Bernie is running on. Last cycle, just one member of Congress-- that same Ro Khanna-- was able to see the potential for one of the most revolutionary political happenings in decades, namely replacing corrupt establishment hack, Wall Street suck-ass, and "next Speaker," Joe Crowley with AOC. Khanna endorsed her; not one other member of Congress dared to. Just Ro Khanna. This cycle, Khanna joined half a dozen other members to endorse progressive challenger Marie Newman over anti-Choice, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. And this week Khanna became the first-- and only-- member of Congress to weigh in for Cenk Uygur in the special election to replace Katie Hill in CA-25, a blue-trending district in the suburbs north of Los Angeles. The DCCC, EMILY's List and the political establishment already have a hand-picked candidate-- a meaningless and insipid backbencher-to-be with nothing whatsoever to recommend her: Christy Smith, an assemblywoman with no accomplishments other than her involvement with herding indigents onto buses in Santa Clarita (which she represents) and dumping them off in the Antelope Valley (which she doesn't represent but is part of the district she wants to represent). Other than that, Smith is one big yawn who has assembled a pack of ravenous mercenary consultants and opposes Medicare-for-All, showing, right from day-one her utter contempt for working families. There is no doubt that Cenk is the most revolutionary candidate running for office anywhere in America. Do you like the way AOC, Rashida, Ilhan and Ayanna have shaken up Congress? You ain't seen nothing yet! I always loved this AOC meme-- and the work she's done behind it. Just watch Cenk if he makes it into the House.
In the last few days, he's given me too statements for this blog, one regarding Big PhRMA and one regarding the banksters. Each goes too the root of the problems with the American political system as it has developed over the last several decades:
• "Drug companies don't give politicians money for charity, they do it to buy them. And unfortunately it works. Everyone knows these are bribes. The only people who won't acknowledge it are corporate politicians on both sides and the corporate media. This is a sick system that lets people die for profit. Any politician that takes money from the drug companies is selling out their voters on behalf of their donors." • "No one thinks JP Morgan Chase is giving a politician money for their health or for charity. Everyone knows it's a bribe. And if they give that same politician a second 'contribution' that means they got a return on investment. And to be fair to them, an American politician is the most profitable thing you can buy. And they're almost all up for sale. This is a sick system that has to be fixed immediately. I'm running in CA-25 to make sure we end the obvious bribery and the brazen corruption."
Cenk isn't going to be another weak-knee-ed freshman driven by careerist calculations. We're looking at a real fighter who is as likely to given Pelosi and Hoyer a tough time as he is to drive McCarthy, Trump and MoscowMitch up a wall. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party establishment, headed by Mark Gonzalez, is trying to bum-rush Uygur out of the race. Giving lip service to progressive notions is one thing-- seeing a real live progressive gain power is a bit much, in fact way too much-- for an establishment schlepper like Gonzalez. Last month, on November 13, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent made one of the most memorable statements to the House Intelligence Committee when he said "you can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people." Give that a couple moments of contemplation. In fact, while you're contemplating, or after, give this timely 6 minute polemic by Robert Reich a listen. He's talking about electability in terms of the 2020 presidential race but what he's saying about inspiration isn't just about Elizabeth and Bernie. It's not complicated; it is, however crucial if we're going to build a movement:
What Kent said about corruption is a truth that is felt by any political candidate with the moxie to run on an anti-corruption platform, and what progressive candidates like Cenk Uygur have been facing. The Santa Clarita establishment and state and national Democratic Party insiders are keen to see the seat filled by corporate Democrat Christy Smith. Uygur has made opposition to political corruption a cornerstone of his campaign and has been blunt and outspoken with his views about removing money and corporate lobbying from politics. In his speech announcing his candidacy, Uygur declared in no uncertain terms, "I’m going to fight to get money out of politics, and I’m going to call it like it is. You know what campaign donations are from big corporations and lobbyists? Bribes. They’re bribes when Republicans take them, they’re also bribes when Democrats take them." Those bribes and the politicians who take them have a detrimental effect on the everyday lives of Californians, as Uygur explains, "we have ridiculously low wages and a horrible healthcare system because politicians took money from those industries to sell you out." It is no wonder why party insiders want to keep Uygur out; they have too much at stake to lose. That is why gatekeepers at official organizations like the Los Angeles County Democratic Party (LACDP) have made very undemocratic moves to keep an anti-corruption candidate like Uygur from getting a fair opportunity to make his case to members.
Gonzalez
Recently, Gonzalez, who has been eagerly putting his thumb on the scale in favor of Christy Smith, made it clear that "no club is to have any involvement with Cenk," according to one of LACDP’s chartered Antelope Valley clubs. The statement came in response to Uygur's plans to participate with that club in a Christmas Parade sponsored by the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce. Not an official campaign event for any specific candidate, all candidates were invited to participate. And what makes this Gonzalez incident especially egregious is that the LACDP has not yet endorsed any candidate, and has yet to announce when their endorsement process will even take place. The club refused to exclude Uygur since it would have indicated a clear case of bias. A different LACDP charted club located in Santa Clarita, home of Christy Smith, moved schedules and deadlines around, only giving the information to their favored candidate. Recently, the Democratic Alliance for Action (DAA) has moved up the date of their endorsement meeting from January 23, to December 11, without notifying candidates other than Christy Smith, in an effort to ensure her endorsement by the club, and deny Uygur a platform. The same tactic was used by the California State Democratic Party which abruptly set their endorsement meeting to Saturday, December 14 at the same location as the DAA meeting, with only two weeks’ notice and, as with DAA, did not notify the Uygur campaign. In the case of the State endorsement meeting, the party did not provide Uygur with a list of delegates as of this publication, while the Smith Campaign has had a healthy head start contacting delegates. One potential reason why Gonzalez is so interested in silencing progressives is because of the cozy relationship he and the LACDP have with corporate Democrats, Christy Smith's campaign being just one example. The Smith Campaign hired the wife of the President of the DAA who also happens to be the DAAs former president to work on her campaign in the hopes that she can surreptitiously influence the club’s membership into supporting her. Gonzalez has justified using his influence against Uygur by citing discredited right-wing smears against the progressive candidate. Gonzalez said in a statement, "Cenk Uygur’s comments are both heartless and disqualifying for someone who wants to serve the people’s U.S. House of Representatives. The Los Angeles County Democratic Party does not tolerate hate or discrimination against any group or community. Instead, we celebrate the Democratic values of inclusivity, fairness, diversity and compassion of and for people of all backgrounds and communities. Cenk Uygur’s shameful comments underscore the fact that he believes in the opposite-- and as a result he does not belong in Congress." In his statement, Gonzalez conveniently doesn’t address the dated nature of the comments, and the context behind them. Watch how Cenk responds to the right-wing smears that are being so conveniently marketed by Christy Smith and her allies like Gonzalez:
It is clear that the behind-the-curtain antics of Gonzalez and others at the Los Angeles County Democratic Party as well as the State Democratic Party, are the first layer of the onion of corruption that progressive candidates are attempting to unpeel. If it was one instance, then perhaps it could be dismissed as an oversight, or unprofessional, but to engage in a sustained effort to silence progressive voices in favor of candidates who are open for purchase by lobbyists and moneyed interests is a stain upon the Democratic Party in California.
Meanwhile, the forces behind Smith have assembled a long list of nearly every establishment politician in the state to endorse her. The latest was Nancy Pelosi, who took time out from passing Trump's Pentagon budget, from handing Trump a victory over NAFTA 2.0, from allowing partisan politics to ruin the impeachment process, from betraying the American people with a weak and pusillanimous drug pricing bill, from her efforts to busy the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All... to endorse Christy Smith. "California State Assemblywoman Christy Smith is a proven leader," she shat out of her mouth, clueless of anything about Smith whatsoever and attempting to mislead the voters in CA-25 the same way she misleads in everything she does these days. "We need her in Congress so that she can help advance our for the people agenda in Washington. I am proud to endorse Christy Smith because she will work to fight corruption, lower the cost of prescription drugs, fully fund public schools and build a strong middle-class economy that works for all Americans." All bullshit. Christy Smith actually favors corruption and is furious with Uygur for making it an issue. To Pelosi, she's just another obedient careerist backbencher who will disappear after being elected and never be heard from again, other than bu her donors when she calls them for contributions to finance another sadly meaningless career in politics.
And Ro isn't the only Democrat from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party countering Pelosi and her mob trying to force another corporatist nothing into Congress. "For years," said Bernie yesterday, "Cenk has inspired people all across the country to organize against corrupt forces in our politics, and now he’s organizing the people in his district to do the same... I’m endorsing Cenk because I know he will serve ordinary people, not powerful special interests. He is a voice that we desperately need in Congress and will be a great representative for CA-25 and the country."
A Way-Too-Early Handicapping of the 2020 Presidential Race
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A cigarette, martini, a staircase and Bette Davis — the 2020 election in a nutshell
by Thomas Neuburger
There are two groups of candidates in the Democratic candidate field. The first group contains people like Bernie Sanders. The second group contains all other candidates whom corporate Democratic power brokers will find acceptable.
That makes handicapping this field pretty easy, at least so far. Note that it's very early days still, so this is a way-too-early set of predictions.
Characterizing the Pool of Voters
Before we begin, however, the pool of voters must also be grouped, since they have a role in the coming drama. The three main groups of voters are:
Rebels against the pre-Trump status quo (2020 "change" voters).
Those comfortable with the pre-Trump status quo ("Obama was just fine").
Trump-and-Trump-only voters
There's a certain overlap between groups one and three, but group three rules out all who might vote for any non-Trump candidate. That is, group three isn't all Trump supporters, just his most rabid ones. There could be plenty of Trump voters in the first two groups.
According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump's overall approval is at 39%. The percentage of Republicans, from the same poll, who think the country is on the wrong track is 29%, with 10% not sure. That is, only 60% of Republicans think the country is on the right track, though almost all of them would consider voting for Trump in 2020.
So let's take a guess at the percentage of "Trump and Trump only" voters in the electorate. The latest Gallup poll divides the electorate this way:
That is:
Independents: 42%
Democrats: 30%
Republicans: 26%
This means that perhaps 15% of the electorate (60% of 26%) is in group three, with the rest, or 85% of the electorate, in the other two groups. That's a lot of people who might vote for someone other than Trump. Whom Will the Democratic Nominate in the General Election?
Let's go back to our grouping of Democratic candidates. A recent Morning Consult poll lists the leaders this way:
I would put Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (unless she spins herself out of this group by a terrible misstep) in the "like-Sanders" group — real threats to the status quo, at least on economic policy. Let's call these "actual change candidates," people who don't just preach change, but whom voters can count on to deliver it.
I would put each of the others:
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Beto O'Rourke
Cory Booker
Amy Klobuchar (who has no chance at all)
Somebody Else
in the second category. Let's call them "status quo ante" or "next Obama" candidates — people who want to return to the pre-Trump years when they thought everything was just fine — or at least fine enough — in America. This group may preach "change," but it will clearly be change at the margins of a reasonably OK system. And they will signal that either advertently or inadvertently.
To take the case of Amy Klobuchar, for example, she signaled that inadvertently just recently with her student loan proposals.
For the following, let's assume that (a) Trump is the Republican nominee and (b) all Democratic candidates get all Democratic voters (according to the Gallup division) to vote for them.
Case 1: If one of the Democratic "actual change" candidates — someone who espouses broad Sanders-like Democratic Socialist policies and is believed to be credible by the majority of Sanders most eager supporters — is nominated by the Democrats, that person could easily capture not just all of the Democratic voter pool, but a very large percentage of the independent voter pool and a good chunk of those 29% of Republicans who think the country is on the wrong path.
If that person got the 30% who identify as Democratic, most of the "wrong track" independents, and just some of the 29% of dissatisfied Republicans (remember that much of Trump support came from change voters in a change year), that person could command perhaps 56% of the electorate, if not more:
30% among self-identified Democrats
22% or more among independents
4% among "change" Republicans who think Trump is on the wrong track
That puts a Democratic Socialist in the White House. Remember, the total percentage of "wrong track" independents is 62%, or a full 26% of the electorate — assuming they all vote.
Case 2: If one of the "status quo" candidates is nominated, however, things look different. A true status quo candidate will have to sell him- or herself to independent voters using a small set of appeals. These are:
1. "The Obama status quo is plenty good enough. Don't be scared by all this change-making."
2. "I'm really a change candidate, though my past belies that. I'm just not as change-y as those I like to call ' radicals'."
3. "I have so much charm, you don't care what I think."
About the latter appeal, Joe Biden himself espoused something like that in the 1970s (quoted here): “I don’t think the issues mean a great deal in terms of whether you win or lose,” Biden told Washingtonian back in 1974. “I think the issues are merely a vehicle to portray your intellectual capacity to the voters . . . a vehicle by which the voters will determine your honesty and candor.”
By "honesty and candor" he meant "charm and charisma," since honesty he had none of, even back then.
If he runs, Joe Biden will sell himself as keeper of the Obama status quo, plus folksy charm. Harris, Booker and Klobuchar (before she drops out) will each use the second appeal: "Despite my past, I'm change-y enough." O'Rourke's primary sell is eager charisma; none of his past looks remotely like change, despite the inexplicable addition to his campaign organization of some of the 2016 Sanders alums.
Where Does That Put Them in the General Election?
Again, each will get the 30% of the electorate that identifies as Democratic. Very few staunch Party supporters will withhold their votes from any Democratic nominee in 2020.
Because none of them is a credible change candidate in Republican eyes, very few Republican voters will switch sides if any of these candidates is the Democratic nominee. That puts 26% of the voters against them.
How will independent voters split? According to Reuters/Ipsos, 21% of independents think the country is on the right track, with another 17% unsure. If Trump picks up all of the "right track" independents and a little more than half of the not-sures, his vote totals so far look like this:
26% among self-identified Republicans
9% among "right track" independents
5% among "not sure" independents
With 40% of the electorate already in his pocket, Trump has to win just 17% of the "wrong track" independents to cross 50% of the electorate as a whole.
Again, 62% of the independent voters in America think the country is on the wrong track. Will they vote for Trump, a status quo Democrat, or stay home? They didn't vote for Clinton in enough numbers to guarantee her a sure win. Will they stay home in sufficient numbers twice?
2020 Presidential Outcomes
It comes down to this. If the Democrats nominate a genuine change candidate, she or he will likely win comfortably. I could easily see a 55-45% popular vote split, with an even greater margin in the Electoral College.
If the Democrats nominate a "status quo" or "change-y enough" candidate, on the other hand, the race could be tight, as it was in 2016.
The key is the "wrong track" independents. Will they vote for Trump, vote just to vote against Trump, or stay home? Remember, shrinking the voting pool means shrinking the number of "wrong track" independents who actually vote; many of those lost votes will be lost by the Democrat.
To show you what I mean, if all independents stayed home, the split between Democratic and Republican voters is just 4%. But 9-14% of independents are likely Trump voters. If only they vote, Trump has a 10% cushion among independents that the Democrats must make up. Can a status quo, change-y enough, or charisma-only candidate do inspire them to vote?
45% of all U.S. voters stayed home in 2016, a 20-year low. While all of them weren't independents, that's ironically the percentage of independent voters in 2018.
What Will Democrats Do?
What follows is even more speculative than the rest of this piece, but there's some history to back it up.
1. Unless Sanders or a Sanders-like candidate has such a large lead that the race can't be stolen, the "status quo" (pro-corporate) leaders of the Democratic Party, with media help, will try to steal it.
2. If the theft is so obvious that even NPR news watchers notice, it will drive down Democratic support among independents, who are largely a pro-change group if they see someone they like, and non-voters if they don't.
3. That won't matter to Party leaders. Assuming there hasn't been a palace coup that replaces them, they will run an even more strident version of the 2016 campaign: "Trump?! You want to leave Trump in office?!"
(This is where "Someone Else" comes in, by the way. If each of the other not-Sanders candidates stumbles, Someone Else will be put forward. There are some interesting names in this list.)
4. If a non-Sanders-like candidate is nominated, the 2020 election will be a squeaker, as was 2016, with the incumbent (because this time there is one) likely winning.
5. If the incumbent is Pence, the same applies.
Of the standard-issue Democrats, the most likely nominees at this point, and also the most vulnerable to attack in the eyes of independents and millennials, are Joe Biden (see here for a very long list of his sins) and Kamala Harris, the aggressive, anti-pot pot-smoking prosecutor.
Of course, something surprising could happen between here and there — this is a way-too-early handicapping of the race. And frankly, I hope something surprising does happen; for example, I would love to see the palace coup I mentioned above, though I'm not holding my breath.
The wild card seems to be the amount of support the Sanders-like candidate gets. If that person's support is wildly off the charts, if she or he is ahead by miles, the refs can't steal the primary. Otherwise, it's going to be bumpy ride all the way into November.
In a piece called "Do Democrats Want an Impeachment Fight?" Pat Buchanan asks two key questions for people not focused on the story behind the story, the story of which the story we're watching is just a part. Those question are:
Will Trump resign?
Will House Democrats impeach him?
Yes, I know this is Pat Buchanan we're going to quote, or "Pat F-ing Buchanan" to use the name he's known by on the left. Still, he's been doing some decent work lately — like a stopped clock that's still managed to be right more than twice a day.
(In the era of Trump, does time circle back on itself? That's probably more true than not. We do seem to be caught in a Groundhog Day loop of real problems like climate, Trump tweets about lawyers, and dollar-driven media focus on just the tweets.)
Here's Buchanan on each of these questions. I think his analysis is pretty spot on (with one proviso, which I'll offer at the end). First, part of Buchanan's intro (my emphasis throughout):
Would a Democratic House, assuming we get one, really impeach a president for paying hush money to old girlfriends?
Hence the high-fives among never-Trumpers are premature.
But if Cohen’s guilty plea and Tuesday’s conviction of campaign manager Paul Manafort do not imperil Trump today, what they portend is ominous. For Cohen handled Trump’s dealings for more than a decade and has pledged full cooperation with prosecutors from both the Southern District of New York and the Robert Mueller investigation.
Nothing that comes of this collaboration will be helpful to Trump.
Keep in mind Mueller's ability to keep Cohen, Manafort and many others "singing" as you read on. Now our two questions.
Will Trump resign? Buchanan on that:
Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.
No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival. And as he has shown, these powers are considerable: the power to rally his emotional following, to challenge courts, to fire Justice officials and FBI executives, to pull security clearances, to pardon the convicted.
Second, will House Democrats attempt to impeach him? Buchanan again:
Democrats who have grown giddy about taking the House should consider what a campaign to bring down a president, who is supported by a huge swath of the nation and has fighting allies in the [rightwing] press, would be like.
Why do it? Especially if they knew in advance the Senate would not convict.
That America has no desire for a political struggle to the death over impeachment is evident. Recognition of this reality is why the Democratic Party is assuring America that impeachment is not what they have in mind.
Today, it is Republicans leaders who are under pressure to break with Trump, denounce him, and call for new investigations into alleged collusion with the Russians. But if Democrats capture the House, then they will be the ones under intolerable pressure from their own media auxiliaries to pursue impeachment.
Taking the House would put newly elected Democrats under fire from the right for forming a lynch mob, and from the mainstream media for not doing their duty and moving immediately to impeach Trump.
Democrats have been laboring for two years to win back the House. But if they discover that the first duty demanded of them, by their own rabid followers, is to impeach President Trump, they may wonder why they were so eager to win it.
Don't be shocked if House Democrats under Nancy Pelosi or any other Speaker take impeachment off the table. Some will call that Democratic cowardice, but Buchanan is right about the other factors as well. Right now it's Republicans who are under pressure. If Democrats take the House, the pressure will shift to them — and the country will split even further and more violently.
Are Democratic leaders ready to fight that war? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. We'll just have to wait and see. Regardless of what's moral and right though, there are no good near-term political choices.
I agree with Buchanan that either way, we're in for a hellish year.
How Mueller Can Remove Trump Without Congress
If you've read this space before, you won't be surprised at the next suggestion. There is a way for Mueller to remove Trump from office. Let's go back to Buchanan's explanation of why Trump can't resign:
Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.
He's right as far as he goes. But what if Mueller takes the threat of life in court, and the legal destruction of the Trump Organization, off the table?
In other words, what if Mueller sits down with Trump, just the two of them, and says this:
“Sir, these are your choices. You can stay in office until Congress impeaches you and the Senate convicts, which you think will never happen. And while you're doing that, I’ll burn down the Trump Organization till it’s a smoking hole in the ground. Keep in mind we just flipped your CFO. He's already talking.
“Then, when you finally do leave, you'll leave broke. The only structure in the world with your name on it will be your mailbox, and inside that you'll find a lifetime of summons to court. That's your first option. “Your second option: You walk out of here now for any reason you like, congratulate Mr. Pence on his good fortune, and I will make all of your troubles go away — forever. “It's up to you, sir. Which do you choose?”
I still think this is how the endgame plays out, with a deal offer no one talks about on TV. And I think Trump takes the deal.
To all appearances, Mueller's job is to get rid of Trump and not soil the designated heir (Mike Pence). That's what the whole of the mainstream press and much of the voting public is cheering and wants. I don't think Mueller plans to disappoint.
Side note: If you're cheering for Trump to fall and not asking just as loudly why Mueller is playing hands-off with Pence, you're cheering for Pence to replace Trump. If so, no problem — I hear people say "first things first" all the time. But it would be good to admit that this is what we'll get if Mueller gives Pence a pass while taking everyone else to the cleaners.
I want to take just a few minutes to reflect on Thomas Frank's bepuzzlement, as expressed in his recent exit piece in the Guardian. (Frank is off to write "a few books" and will return in a few years to "see how things have gone." Those will be interesting years.)
His problem is this: "[U]nderstanding the perversity of rightwing populism only brought me to another mystery: the continuing failure of liberals to defeat this thing ... My brain twirls to think that rightwing populism is still running strong in 2018 ... that the invective and the journalism and the TV shows and all the mournful books about the decline of the middle class have amounted, basically, to nothing."
He lays that failure, correctly, at the feet of the Democratic Party, which had the perfect opportunity in 2008 to reverse course, and didn't. Which left the "task of capturing public anger" to Donald Trump.
"We're going to pay for that failure for a long time," he says, then professes not to know why it happened:
For all their cunning, Republicans are a known quantity. Democrats, however, remain a mystery. We watch them hesitate at crucial moments, betray the movements that support them, and even try to suppress the leaders and ideas that generate any kind of populist electricity. Not only do they seem uninterested in doing their duty toward the middle class, but sometimes we suspect they don’t even want to win.
As evidence of his suspicion, he quotes Tony Blair (see the top of this piece). Then instead of saying why all this happened, why the Democrats betrayed their roots, historical and grass, he turns instead to a plea: "Beating the right cannot simply be a matter of waiting for a dolt in the Oval Office to screw things up. There has to be a plan for actively challenging and reversing it".
And there he ends. Which leads me to ask, why is he puzzled? He already knows the answer.
Tony Blair would rather lose to conservatives than to progressives in his own party. It's the same in this country, where 2016 Democratic leaders, in their wisdom and hubris, were more determined to throw the dice with Clinton, who could not fill a gymnasium, than pick the candidate their voting base packed stadiums to see.
We are indeed a nation in crisis (again). That crisis, that revolutionary discussion about the shape of our next constitution, our next agreement between government and the people, is not resolved. The radical right is in ascendance and will soon take complete and lasting control of the Supreme Court unless Democrats block their candidate and stop them.
Will a completion of the radical rightwing agenda resolve this crisis and create a government most of us can live under? Of course not. The truly radical right — a small handful of people — is vastly outnumbered by those opposed to its ideas. No one, not even Republican voters, will live under the government this minority is determined to create.
Will a return to neoliberal rule, to Obamism and Clintonism, create a stable order? Again, no. It's precisely that order that people in both parties rose to resist. The rebellion against that order, unheeded by Democratic Party leaders, created the opening the radical right just exploited.
Even a Sanders-style government, supported by the masses as FDR's government was, will face a counter-rebellion, this time by the dethroned rich — and I strongly suspect the Obamists and Clintonists in the Democratic Party would join that "resistance" as eagerly as they join the present one.
So what is Thomas Frank puzzled about? Isn't he really asking, why do the forces of money hate the people?
Because if he had asked that question, he wouldn't be puzzled at all. His book provides all the answers anyone need.
How to Block the Trump Nomination: Shut Down the Senate
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Imagine this room half empty whenever the Senate tried to vote.
by Gaius Publius
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business
– U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 5
[Update: Since publishing this piece, I'm reminded that Alabama Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election earlier this year. My bad for the oversight. However, this makes the partisan divide even more favorable to the Democrats — 50-49. Fifty senators is not a majority. It would take a truly unusual ruling by the Parliamentarian to allow the Vice President to help constitute a quorum, and even if he did so rule, Democrats would then be in position to tie to their Senate chairs not only all Republican senators, but Vice President Mike Pence as well. In other words, the Democrats' hand is even stronger.]
I'm going to expand on this in a longer piece, but the point is too important not to pass on now. If Democrats are truly serious about blocking any Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice, there is a way. But they have to actually want to block the nomination, not just say they want to.
How To Block the Nomination
This strategy, which I'm convinced will work, comes via Vox writer Gregory Koger. It goes like this. According to the Constitution, Article 1, Section 5:
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business
This means: Neither house of Congress can do business without a quorum, defined as a simple majority.
What if a majority is not present? Section 5 continues:
a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
This means: If there's no majority present, the minority can compel absent members to attend. But how? Here's there's no answer, and in fact nowhere in our government is there a mechanism but shame for compelling congressional attendance.
This gives Democrats, or Republicans for that matter, all the power they need, assuming the numbers work out right.
Now consider the numbers. If there were 60 Republican senators, Democrats could absent themselves forever and nothing would change. Sixty senators comprise a quorum.
But look at the current Senate. There are 46 Democrats, two independents who caucus as Democrats, and 52 Republicans. Yet one of those Republicans, John McCain, may never attend another Senate session due to his health. That puts the partisan split at 51-48.
As Koger notes, "Other than quitting for the day or calling for others to come to the chamber, the Senate can do nothing without a majority of its members — 51 senators — participating in a vote. No bill can pass, no amendment can be decided on, no nominations can get approved."
In other words, every Republican senator would have to appear for every vote from which Democrats were wholly absent, or no vote could be taken. Every one of them. Democrats could simply challenge the vote for lack of a quorum, then leave during the quorum call.
Shutting Down the Senate
If the plan were for Democrats to be absent en masse just for the vote on Trump's Court nomination, the plan would fail. On the day of the vote, 51 Republican senators would show up to vote yes and the nomination would be confirmed.
But if Democratic senators were absent en masse from day one of the decision to do it — if all 48 Democratic and independent senators refused to enter the chamber for any vote at all — it would paralyze the Senate. Every vote of the Senate, from the most important to the least, would require every Republican to be present to ensure passage.
In the ideal world this isn't a problem, since there are, just barely, a quorums-worth of Republican senators. In the real world, however, there is almost never a day in which every senator is present for a vote. Democrats could even force a quorum call any time they wanted on a simple procedural vote, forcing Republicans to be nearby and available at a moment's notice. When would they fundraise? When would they meet with lobbyists?
It's almost certain Republicans couldn't conduct Senate business under those conditions. This move would put Democrats in a position of unblockable power until a future election changed the numbers. They could force — not ask, but force — the nomination to wait until after the 2018 election.
Supporting Aggressive Progressives for Very High-Leverage Offices
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Legal scholar, activist, and Berniecrat Zephyr Teachout shocked the NY and the country when she came close to defeating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for governor of New York. Now she's running for Attorney General. And she plans to sue Donald Trump over his conflict of interest as a business man. Zephyr also talks about neoliberalism, why the Dems need to be on offense, not defense, and why "it's time for a new 21st century trust-busting." (The Teachout interview starts at 1:50.)
by Gaius Publius
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
–Andrew Marvell on the climate crisis
A high-leverage bet is one that risks little for great gain with very favorable odds of success. That combination — small risk, great reward, favorable odds — happens almost none of the time. Either the market sets the reward appropriate to the risk (if you're risking little with favorable odds, the reward won't be much) or sets the odds appropriate to the gain (if you want a great reward with very little risk, the odds will be very much against you). In these instances, in other words, markets are generally efficient.
But not always. When it looked like Chrysler Corporation would go bankrupt in the late 1970s, its bonds were so undesirable, priced so cheaply, that they paid something like 25% interest per year. If you thought it more than likely that the U.S. government would bail them out — if you thought, contrary to the market, that the risk of bankruptcy was actually very low — you would have bought them at a very low cost and made a lot of money.
The government indeed bailed them out — how could it not? Chrysler was one of the "big three" American automakers, a national symbol — and the "bet" turned a very high reward at very low cost for those who spotted the opportunity. Can you imagine making 25% per year on your money today on a company backed by the U.S. government? Opportunities like that are indeed rare and should be taken when identified.
A Low-Leverage Political Bet — Controlling the Democratic Party One Elected Official at a Time
Now apply that thinking to the political sphere, in particular to the progressive political sphere. In our first example the goal was to gain a lot of money at favorable odds with a relatively low cost. In that case the thing invested is money. In the political sphere, the parallel goal is to gain a lot of power — control of the levers of government — at favorable odds with a relatively low investment of time and energy. For this kind of win, it shouldn't take moving a mountain to accomplish the goal, and it shouldn't take a generation to do it.
That last point — a fast, efficient reward relative to the energy invested — is important if you believe like me that the nation, already pre-revolutionary in its desire to be free of the austerity forced on the increasingly poor by the impossibly rich, is near a tipping point toward outright rebellion.
(We're actually near two tipping points, if you also believe that if we don't address climate change meaningfully and now, it will too soon be too late — and worse, everyone on the planet will know it and act accordingly. When that day comes, when people realize the fix they've been put in, the international chaos will only be contained by military action, and then only briefly.)
Time, in other words, is a commodity progressives do not have. Nor is our energy in infinite supply.
Put more specifically, progressives don't have time for a 30-year plan to take over the Democratic Party; nor do we have time to build a viable, national, well-funded third party to challenge it. Consider the effort to "change the Party" by taking over the House and Senate. Not only must masses of progressives replace well-established, well-funded New Dems and Blue Dogs, but progressives must also replace all the New Dem enablers in Democratic leadership. How long will that take, on the current trajectory?
Yes, Democrats may win the House in a 2018 wave election. But which Democrats will control the Party if they do? Even if Democrats take the House and Senate in 2019, those who bitterly fought and defeated Bernie Sanders will still run the show, even if the number of actual, Sanders-like progressives continues to increase.
This is a classic low-leverage effort relative to the time, energy and money needed to accomplish it. Not that this battle should not be engaged — I applaud everyone who engages in it. But time is not the friend of progressive insurgence.
To mitigate that problem, I want to suggest an additional way to achieve progressive goals in a much shorter time — focus on highly aggressive candidates for high-leverage offices, and focus hard.
A High-Leverage Political Opportunity — Sanders for President in 2016
Markets are not always efficient; sometimes a Chrysler bet does come along. Political "markets" are similar; every so often a very high-leverage opportunity occurs. Let me offer two examples, one from the recent past and one from the immediate present.
First, from the past: As it turned out, the race for the Democratic Party nomination by Bernie Sanders represented a low-risk, high-leverage attempt to achieve a nearly unimaginable outcome, the U.S. presidency.
Consider the cost, the risk and the reward. The cost of entry was low. Sanders launched his candidacy with little fanfare and not much in the bank relative to, say, Hillary Clinton. If the opportunity wasn't there — if the nation wasn't ready for a real progressive with very high credibility — it would have been obvious fairly soon and not much would have been risked in terms of time, money and effort.
The risk of betrayal for supporting Sander, the risk of not getting what you voted for, was also low. Sanders has the kind of credibility that only a lifetime of absolute consistency can buy. With Bernie Sanders, the risk of voting for "Yes We Can" and getting "No I Won't" was almost zero.
Now look at the reward. If the attempt to take the Democratic presidential nomination did succeed, here's what progressives would have won — an excellent chance at complete control of the Executive Branch of the government, to the extent the winner could (and was willing to) exercise it. Not only that, but progressives would also win nominal control of the Democratic Party, again to the extent they could (and were willing to) exercise it. All because this was an attempted palace coup, a race for control at the top which bypassed most of the gate-keeper exclusions that keep current Party owners in place.
This was also a direct attempt to control the Party by exercising the voting will of the people to replace their king or queen with ours. Because it relied on votes, the attempt was not impotent. This was not an attempt to control the Party by exercising the will of the people as expressed in polls. That route to change is and has proved to be pointless. Everyone in Washington knows what the people want, and no one who serves the donor class will give it to them.
The only fast, sudden opportunity to force either party to bend in our direction occurs once in four years during presidential primaries. If the people don't want a change, there won't be one. If the people do want a change, they can use voting force to get it, but only when that window opens up.
The Odds of Success Were Greater than Anyone Suspected
As it turned out, the odds in 2016 were very much in Sanders' favor. The nation was ready to revolt and both parties saw insurgent candidacies topple or nearly topple long-time, well-funded Party operatives.
On the Republican side, 2016 voters, abetted by greedy media companies like those that control CNN and MSNBC, swept Trump to the nomination. On the Democratic side, it took every effort by Party operatives to hand Sanders a loss, and even so, for a while it looked like he still had a real shot anyway. In my view, those who think the nomination was stolen from him by a thousand petty larcenies committed by a thousand petty officials — and several major thefts committed by national media names — are correct. It took all that to defeat him.
Yet despite his loss, the Sanders candidacy was a classic high-leverage opportunity for progressives, and as his momentum built, people on both sides of the Sanders fence recognized it. The desire by the public to elect him, as evidenced by his stadium-size crowds, never flagged. At the same time, the effort by Party leaders to defeat him, as evidenced by the many thumb-on-the-scales obstacles put in his way, was similarly relentless.
The list of ways Sanders was disadvantaged by the Party would take up an essay on its own, or even a book, and I won't go into it here. My main point though is this. High-leverage opportunities exist,and if wresting control of the country in the shortest possible time is important, they must be recognized and taken.
The Next High-Leverage Opportunity — Zephyr Teachout for NY Attorney General
Which brings me to this, the next high-leverage opportunity. Just as Sanders' run for the presidency was a high-leverage opportunity for voters, so too is the current race for Attorney General in New York. It's a very high-leverage opportunity in fact, given the absolute and unchecked control over prosecutions exercised by the AG's office.
I'll return to a discussion of this race another time. It deserves to be highlighted separately and I don't want to obscure my main point above, that progressives must recognized and take full advantage of high-leverage opportunities.
But for more on the opportunity it presents, please listen to the recent interview with Zephyr Teachout embedded at the top. If you do, you'll see what I mean. The scope of the power of the NY Attorney General offers a breath-taking opportunity for real national change, assuming we elect someone willing to use it.
There are several candidates at the moment, but Teachout has something only Sanders before her had — an unimpeachable history of credibility that sets the risk of betrayal, the risk of "Yes, We Can but No, I Won't," at almost zero. This race and this candidate represent a Sanders opportunity, one that should not be missed.
