A Sinking Ship-- Trump's-- Drags Down All Boats With It

 

Kansas is a very red state. In fact, the candidate Schumer recruited to run as a putative Democrat, Barbara Bollier is, in fact, a Republican. She served as a Republican in the state House from 2011 to 2017 and has been in the state Senate since 2016. At the very end of 2018, she switched parties, no doubt with Schumer promising her the U.S. Senate nomination. He forced former United States Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom to drop out of the race and endorse her as soon as Bollier declared a few months later. A new GOP internal poll shows her beating Trump-aligned Republican Congressman Roger Marshall 45-42%.

The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was an exceptional circumstance. Before he triggered the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover picked Kansas Senator Charlie Curtis to be his VP. After Hoover and Curtis were inaugurated, the governor, Clyde Reed, appointed ex-Gov. Henry Justin Allen as interim Senator. When Allen ran to complete the rest of Curtis' term 6 months later, the Republican Depression was in full swing and Allen was defeated (as was the GOP gubernatorial candidate). Democrat George McGill was elected and was reelected in 1932, the last time a Kansas Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Many voters in traditionally super-red areas think Trump is as bad as the Great Depression. He is losing millions of dependable Republican voters across the country-- and dragging Republicans down the toilet with him. In Kansas' case, Trump beat Hillary 671,018 (56.16%) to 427,005 (35.74%). This year, it's likely Biden will do significantly better than Hillary, though not better enough to win the state's 6 electoral votes. Bollier, an actual Republican just pretending to be a Democrat, could very well win the Senate seat. Why, you ask?

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, former top Republican political operative, Stuart Stevens wrote that Republicans have lied so much to constituents about Trump as he led the party to ruin that they are seen as his enablers. Many still have their heads up his ass-- although Stevens politely calls what they're doing as genuflecting. "As he turns his own covid-19 diagnosis into a reality TV show, mocking his administration’s own public health guidance, showing the Americans who have suffered that he doesn’t give a whit for their plight," wrote Stevens, "[t]hey know they’re defending the indefensible, and they know if the president were a Democrat, they wouldn’t hesitate to condemn him. With a straight face in Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Pence claimed, 'From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.'" Wednesday Kansas had 1,095 new cases, bringing the state total to 65,010-- 22,315 cases per million Kansans. And there were 17 more deaths reported, bringing the total to 723. Kansans who heard Pence on Wednesday night, knew he was full of shit and knew Trump had made very wrong decision that could me made during the pandemic. But, as Stevens wrote, Republican officials are "so used to this routine that co-signing Trump’s bad behavior is now habit and shooting straight is completely foreign."

Even after the party’s turn away from time-honored Republican principles, I couldn’t have imagined a party that would abandon any pretense of standing for conservative values, decency or common sense. Having spent four years defending their guy at every turn, they’re stuck. In for a penny, in for a pound: Republicans can’t tell the truth about Trump anymore. Even if they wanted to.


Many GOP candidates know they face near-impossible odds this year. Across the nation, every morning there are campaign team calls on which political professionals try to think of ways their bosses might escape impending electoral doom. I’ve been on calls like this more times than I’d care to remember, and I know they will take on an increasingly desperate tone as reality sinks in. In a week or two, it’ll be all gallows humor from here on out as they mask the pain. Even the normal conversations about where campaign staffers might go to unwind after the campaign will be abnormal: Paris? Nope. How about Serbia?

Their 2020 plans were shattered by a combination of incompetence and fate. What was intended to be an election celebrating a booming economy, waged against an opponent who could legitimately be tagged as a socialist, has turned into a defensive battle for Trump and Republicans: Trying to justify dramatic job losses and business failures against the backdrop of more than 210,000 Americans, so far, dying in a badly managed public health crisis. Instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), they drew former vice president Joe Biden, a man so unthreatening that even Trump, the master of nicknames, is reduced to calling him “sleepy”-- a snoozer of a put-down if there ever was one. In recent weeks, Biden’s polling lead has widened. Senate Republicans in once-safe seats are fighting to hang on. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC), running in a solid-red state, has been reduced to begging for money on Fox News. Five years ago, he accurately tagged Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” Now he’s Trump’s semiregular golf patsy.

Instead of covid-19 fading as an election issue, the pandemic has struck the president’s inner circle, a cluster of his family members, favorite White House staffers, his campaign manager, members of his debate prep team and the GOP chair.

...Every day Trump makes it worse: After his first debate with Biden, instead of focusing on jobs and the economy, campaigns had to scramble just to prove that their bosses weren’t fond of a group of thugs founded by the author of How to Piss in Public. After springing himself from a brief hospital stay, Trump’s tweets and videos ham-handedly and disrespectfully implied that those who have fallen to covid-19-- those who didn’t have a president’s access to experimental drugs and round-the-clock care-- are weak. He says he’s calling off coronavirus relief talks with congressional Democrats because he can’t get his way. (Art of the deal, right?) His staged White House return from Walter Reed military hospital created a gold mine for mockery, and I confess it was great fun to pan some of that gold.

Like Americans abroad who can’t speak the language, Republicans are saying the same thing they’ve been saying for at least four years, only louder. In his debate last week with challenger Jaime Harrison, Graham had the gall to babble that “the people running the Democratic Party today are nuts” at the same time that he’s trying to win reelection in a party headed by a man who suggested household disinfectant might cure covid-19.





With the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), no office-holding Republican with a national profile has even tried to establish an identity separate from Trump. With a combination of cowardice and convenience, Republicans went quietly into the night of Trump’s instability, grievances and immorality. Their occasional gestures at restraining the president-- I have very serious concerns. I wish he’d spend less time on Twitter-- are the stuff of late-night comedy. Their words have only served only to highlight their pathos. There could be no better metaphor for their fecklessness than justifying their enabling ways by touting the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. You think a Justice Barrett will save you, Republicans? You couldn’t even get through her Rose Garden ceremony without a coronavirus outbreak.

Republicans should start telling the truth. They should go in front of the cameras and say what the public knows just from living their daily lives: Trump has failed on covid-19. We need a national strategy. Give me a second chance. I was wrong to put my faith in the president. They should take some responsibility. But you can’t really say you’re quitting drinking while ordering another round at the bar.

So why won’t they? Call it the flight, flee or freeze syndrome wired into our DNA. Most politicians call themselves “fighters,” but in truth, almost all of them are starved for approval. These Republicans would cut and run, but where would they go? On the Trump battlefield, there’s no safe zone. So, they freeze, hoping something will magically save them.

The few Republican consultants who still talk to me begin most conversations with: “What a terrible year,” like farmers who’ve been hit by drought. Behind the scenes, that’s the mood. Everyone sees where we’re headed. No one dares challenge their king.

On Wednesday Greg Sargent, also for The Post, wrote that "When you step back and survey the last two years of U.S. politics, one of the biggest story lines that comes into view is this: One after another, a whole string of deeply corrupt schemes that President Trump has hatched to smooth his reelection hopes have crashed and burned. In all these cases, Trump has either blown up the schemes himself or compounded the damage they did to him when they self-destructed. In some cases he did both... When you view these things in one place, the true scale of Trump’s commitment to winning the election through corrupt means becomes a lot more striking. And, since many of them are doing great damage to the country, his sheer destructiveness also comes into much sharper relief."

And now even sports-prognosticators who think they know more about politics than they do-- and who just a few short months ago were arguing among themselves about how the GOP would probably not win enough seats to win back the House majority-- are on the cusp of admitting that the anti-Trump/anti-GOP wave is going to destroy dozens of Republicans' careers. And it's only early October. Yesterday, Cook, Sabato and Silver all seemed to wake up-- somewhat stunned-- to what's happening to the GOP as it crumbles and starts fall apart. By November 4th or 5th they will all have it-- or most of it-- right.

Is Trump The Strom Thurmond Of 2020?

If you remember Strom Thurmond at all, you probably recall him as a senile, diaper-wearing far right Republican Senate pal of Joe Biden's, who died in 2003 (age 100)-- but that Republican part wasn't part of the equation until 1966. He was prominent politically decades earlier-- even as a presidential candidate. Earlier still, he was elected governor of South Carolina in 1946 as a Democrat (and with no opponent). Two years later, furious that Truman had desegregated the U.S. military, he jumped into the crowded 1948 presidential election as a Dixiecrat (States' Rights Democratic Party), winning 1,175,930 votes (2.41%), carrying 4 states-- South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana-- and being awarded 39 electoral votes, including one from a faithless Harry Truman elector from Tennessee. His most famous campaign speech included the line: "I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

Even after that shit-show-- which could have thrown the election to Thomas Dewey-- and after the beginning of an unending rant about the Democrats being "socialists," the Democratic Party was still happy to have him and his blatant racism in the party. Big tent! In 1952, he endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson... but the Democrats still kept him in the party.

Two years later, still as a Democrat, he lost the Democratic Senate primary to incumbent Olin Johnston and then 4 years later (1954) ran as a write-in candidate ("Independent Democrat") and won over 63% of the vote against Democrat Edgar Brown. After that, he ran as a Democratic incumbent (1956) and (1960) winning with no opposition. He was the longest-serving senator in U.S. history but left the Democrats in 1964 over passage of the Civil Rights Act. (In 1957 he had conducted the the longest filibuster ever by a single senator-- 24 hours and 18 minutes-- against a very modest GOP-backed Civil Rights Act). It's worth noting that when he was 22 he had raped his family's 15 year old African-American maid, and never acknowledged their daughter, Essie Mae Washington, but did pay for her education and gave her money from time to time to keep her from exposing him, although she says she kept silent out of respect for him.

Having switched parties in the middle of his term, he was reelected 1966 as a Republican and became the first Republican to win a South Carolina Senate seat since 1872. He was reelected in 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990, and 1996, after which he retired, barely cognizant of his name and unable to control his bowels at his Senate desk.





If Trump keeps running the kind of campaign he's running today he's likely to win the same 4 seats Thurmond won plus Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wyoming, West Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, probably Kansas and possibly Nebraska and South Dakota. That's 82 electoral votes. But, according the Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent, that-- and all the House and Senate seats they would lose with Trump at the top of the ticket-- would be just the beginning of the pain for the GOP. His point yesterday was that young people’s attitudes toward the protests should worry the Republicans, which, he wrote, "could create long-term problems for the party. He noted that the New York Times has a good report on how dramatically the culture is shifting on questions involving systemic racism and police brutality, and how isolated President Trump has become on these issues. This quote really jumps out:

“Younger Republicans want to see racial disparities fixed,” said Wesley Donehue, a South Carolina-based G.O.P. strategist. “If Republicans don’t address these issues now, we will lose the next generation of young voters, just as we have minorities.”

Sargent backs it up with poll numbers, noting that 60% of Americans "think Trump has been delivering the wrong message about the protests. Remarkably, a majority of white Americans, 52%, say the same." And it gets worse for the GOP as you dig down:

The youngest U.S. adults, those ages 18 to 29, have the harshest assessment of the message Trump has been delivering about the protests. About three-quarters (76%) of those ages 18 to 29 say his message has been wrong, including close to half (48%) who say it has been completely wrong. Just 22% say it has been right.

"What’s more," wrote Sargent, "the new Pew polling also finds that an extraordinary 80 percent of those young Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement, 54 percent of them strongly. A recent Post Schar School poll helps underscore the point. Here’s what it found among Americans aged 18 to 29 years old:

• 82 percent of them support the protests
• 77 percent of them see the killing of George Floyd as a sign of broader problems in police treatment of black people
• 63 percent of them disapprove of Trump’s response to the protests
• 83 percent say police need to keep making changes to treat blacks equally to whites
• 58 percent prefer a president who will address the nation’s racial divisions, as opposed to restoring security by enforcing the law

Domestic Terrorism: The Oval Office by Nancy Ohanian

This group was born roughly between 1990 and 2003, when Thurmond finally died in a pool of his own excrement. "For them," wrote Sargent, "the touchstones we keep using to discuss this moment-- the racial turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Nixon, 'law and order,' the 'silent majority,' hippies, hardhats, etc.-- might as well have unfolded in black and white. The oldest in this group turned 18 at around the time Americans elected their first black president. The youngest spent much of their childhood and teen years with America’s first black president in the White House. A large chunk of them probably don’t have any clear memory of any presidents other than Barack Obama and… Donald Trump."

Yet Trump, the only Republican president many of them really lived under while being politically aware, is entirely out of step with them on the underlying issues at stake. Numerous Trump administration officials have denied in recent days that systemic racism is a problem in law enforcement.

And even when Trump edges toward saying the right things, he does it with a sneer: He just told Fox News that it might be time to end chokeholds, but he also said the tactic “sounds so innocent, so perfect.”

Meanwhile, those young people are seeing mass protests fill cities across the country, in perhaps the largest outpouring of political aspirations they’ve ever experienced.

Yet they’re watching as Trump calls the protesters “THUGS,” rages that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” threatens to send in the military, lords over and then celebrates the tear-gassing of peaceful demonstrators, and urges Republicans to stand behind keeping military installations named after Confederate figures, in effect demanding that the GOP brand itself as an explicitly neo-Confederate party.

“This is a movement that’s questioning the power of the state-- the power of the police to kill people,” GOP strategist Rick Wilson, a frequent Trump critic, told me. “These young people are seeing this up close.”

Wilson added that many young people are experiencing this political movement in an “intimate” way, noting that its “size and demographics” threaten to usher in a “disastrous political moment” for Republicans.

“This has the potential to shape 20 years of American politics," Wilson told me. “It’s got every downside in the world built into it for the GOP."

Times Like This Don't Call For Self-Serving Politicians Like Trump Or Biden. There Is Someone Who Could Help Though

It's bad in New York right now-- at least in part because of Andrew Cuomo's reactionary stance on healthcare. (Gee, if you watched Rachel Maddow, a thorough imbecile on anything out than Putin-Gate, you would have thought Cuomo is a national hero who should be the Democratic nominee, but... she lives in Boston so... yeah.) Anyway, Cuomo is a skillful politician with a knack for doing what American politicians must be able to do to survive-- making himself look good on TV. He's actually a pile of crap-- a better pile of crap than Trump... but that kind of pile of crap... even if he, as Ross Barkan wrote a few days ago, comes across as "calm, coherent, and blunt, in a strangely reassuring way... But the same Cuomo who is racing to expand New York’s hospital capacity and crying out for more federal resources is quietly trying to slash Medicaid funding in the state, enraging doctors and nurses, and elected officials of his own party. The same Cuomo who holds press briefings at a major New York City convention center, now the home of a temporary 1,000-bed hospital, presided over a decade of hospital closures and consolidations, prioritizing cost savings over keeping popular health care institutions open. It’s the same Democratic governor-- every liberal pundit’s tried-and-true Trump antidote-- who is doing damage to his state’s health care system at the worst possible moment, in the eyes of the critics who follow him most closely. 'Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly stated, over and over again, that New York has excess capacity of hospital beds, that it’s too expensive and not needed and we need to reduce spending. He said this over and over again throughout his entire tenure,' said Sean Petty, a pediatric nurse at a public hospital in the Bronx and a high-ranking member of the state’s politically active nurses’ union. 'If this budget goes through in April, next year’s health and hospitals budget is going to be devastating.' What’s striking to Petty and other health care experts is how Cuomo has not backed off his plan to cut Medicaid, despite the horrific Covid-19 outbreak. Earlier this year, Cuomo empaneled what is called a Medicaid Redesign Team to slash Medicaid spending in New York after a $6 billion budget shortfall, driven largely by rising Medicaid costs, became evident in late 2019."

That's the politician-made New York mess. In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent made it clear that the politician-made mess in the red states is going to be worse... much worse. Right Paul?

"What's coming," wrote Sargent, "is a kind of perfect storm," according to experts he spoke with: "Soaring unemployment risks pushing huge numbers of people into the ranks of the uninsured. Many of those people will probably seek Medicaid coverage, further straining state budgets," presuming they're in states offering much of anything at all-- which many red states that refused to extend Medicaid coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act do not. "And into that combustible mix," continued Sargent, "a coming wave of coronavirus cases, and you have what health economist Austin Frakt described to me as a 'looming catastrophe.' This may be felt with great intensity in the south. That's because in that region, there is a developing situation that could prove very distressing in coming weeks. On one hand, there hasn't been enough social distancing in these places. On the other, many of those states have not opted into the Medicaid expansion, which could make the health care crisis far more acute."

Frakt told Sargent what he sees headed for the old slave holding states "a lot more hardship, health problems and death. People who have lost their jobs and have nowhere else to turn, they'll have great difficulty affording the care they need" without Medicaid.

The twin crises we're facing-- an all-consuming pandemic emergency combined with a slide into a horrific economic downturn-- are revealing with unique force just how exposed and vulnerable individuals have been left by our failure to invest sufficiently in public health and a robust welfare state. A lot more than any of us can bear.

The other day, in a post called Fear The walking Dumb, John Pavlovitz wrote that "the reckless defiance to stay at home orders is a political statement" and described the Trumpists still spreading the contagion despite the warnings of scientists and experts they hate: "They simply cannot acknowledge how dire the situation is, because to do so would mean finally having to admit that this was never a 'Democratic hoax,' as their beloved president had said-- and so in a partisan, Fox News-induced stupor, they play golf and hang out with friends and share food to Make America Great and own the Libs.

Some are choosing to make a showy religious declaration; calling upon God to deliver them as though from the encroaching Egyptians at the water’s edge-- not bothering to consider that God could have given them doctors and scientists and trained experts, who are telling them that the greatest exodus from harm and captivity, is to simply stay home.

Others are a victim of their own nationalistic fervor and Don’t Tread on Me mythology. Their desire for personal freedom at any cost is making them defiant in their unconscientious objection. They are more interested in not feeling restricted-- than they are in making a small, temporary personal sacrifice for the greater good. They would rather be “free” than responsible with people around them.

Some are afflicted with garden variety selfishness. They simply don’t care, because they feel themselves immune and invincible, and so they give no thought to people for whom a diagnosis would most likely be a death sentence: the immunocompromised or the elderly or those with lung ailments. They don’t consider the strain on the already taxed healthcare system or the cost to businesses that are more likely not to survive with each passing day or the schools that can’t open and the millions of students whose educations are being further detoured the longer this goes on. They don’t stop to reckon with the ripples of their actions and so they shop and workout and don’t wash their hands, because they see no reason not to.

Pavlovitz wrote that he doesn't "want to be afraid of the people I share this world with. That’s a pretty lousy way to go through life. I just wish more of them saw beyond themselves and considered the way their lives rub up against other people’s, especially when life and death literally reside in their choices. I wish they’d stop helping this virus and start helping one another. I wish they would stay home and end this nightmare. That would be a story worth living in."

In an e-mail to his supporters yesterday, Bernie acknowledged that the country is facing its worst crisis in modern history-- a combination, as Sargent noted, of a "pandemic that could lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and infect millions of others, and an economic downturn that could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s... In this unprecedented moment in modern American history, it is imperative that we respond in an unprecedented way. And that means that Congress must pass, in the very near future, the boldest piece of legislation ever written in modern history. There are many, many issues that must be addressed in our response to this pandemic, and working together, we will make sure they are addressed. He then outlined 6 core provisions that must be included in the next legislation Congress passes to support working people in our country.

1. Addressing the Employment Crisis and Providing Immediate Financial Relief

There is little doubt in my mind that we are facing an economic crisis that could be even worse than the Great Depression. The St. Louis Federal Reserve has projected that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32 percent. In my view, we must make sure that every worker in America continues to receive their paycheck during this crisis and we must provide immediate financial relief to everyone in this country.

An important precedent for that approach was taken in the recent stimulus package in which grants were provided to the airlines for the sole purpose of maintaining the paychecks and benefits of some 2 million workers in that industry through September 30. We must expand that program to cover every worker in America and we must make it retroactive to the beginning of this crisis. This is not a radical idea. Other countries, such as the UK, Norway, Denmark, France, and others have all come up with similar approaches to sustain their economy and prevent workers from losing their jobs.

Our primary goal during this crisis must be to prevent the disintegration of the American economy. It will be much easier and less expensive to prevent the collapse of the economy than trying to put it back together after it collapses.

To do this, we must also begin monthly payments of $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in our country, and guarantee paid family leave throughout this crisis so that people who are sick do not face the choice of infecting others or losing their job.

2. We Must Guarantee Health Care to All

Let’s be clear: we were facing a catastrophic health care crisis before the pandemic, and now that crisis has become much, much worse. Already, 87 million people are uninsured or underinsured. Layoffs will mean tens of millions of people more will lose their current insurance-- which will result in countless deaths and bankruptcies. Already in the last two weeks, an estimated 3.5 million people have lost their employer-sponsored insurance.

And as the pandemic grows, we are seeing more and more reports of people who have delayed treatment due to concerns about cost. In this pandemic, uninsurance will lead to deaths and more COVID-19 transmissions.

Therefore, during this crisis, Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one in America who is sick, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this national pandemic. Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future. But, for the moment, we must act boldly to make sure everyone can get the health care they need in the coming months.

3. Use the Defense Production Act to Produce the Equipment and Testing We Need

Unbelievably, in the United States right now, doctors and nurses are unnecessarily putting their lives on the line treating people suffering from the coronavirus because they lack personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, and surgical gowns. The CDC has directed health professionals to use homemade gear like bandanas or scarves and some workers at the VA are being told to re-use one surgical mask for a week at a time. HHS estimated that our country needs 3.5 billion masks in response to this crisis.

President Trump has utilized the Defense Production Act thousands of times for the military and for enforcement of his immigration policies, yet he has resisted using its power to save lives during the pandemic. That is unacceptable. We must immediately and forcefully use the Defense Production Act to direct the production of all of the personal protective equipment, ventilators and other medical supplies needed.

We must also utilize this power to produce antibody tests so we can begin figuring out who has already contracted the virus and has developed some immunity to COVID-19.

In addition, OSHA must adopt a strong emergency standard to protect health care workers, patients, and the public during this crisis. We must crack down aggressively on price gougers and hoarders, and use any means necessary to secure supplies.

4. Make Sure No One Goes Hungry

Even before this crisis hit, one in every seven kids in America was going hungry and nearly 5.5 million seniors in our country struggled with hunger. Already in this crisis we see lines at food banks and growing concern that our most vulnerable communities and those recently unemployed may struggle to feed their families.

As communities face record levels of food insecurity, we must increase SNAP benefits, expand the WIC program for pregnant mothers, infants, and children, double funding for the Emergency Food Program (TEFAP) to ensure food banks have food to distribute, and expand Meals on Wheels and School Meals programs. When necessary, we must also develop new approaches to deliver food to vulnerable populations — including door-to-door drop offs.

5. Provide Emergency Aid to States and Cities

Even as state and local employees like police officers, firefighters and paramedics work on the front lines of this pandemic, states and cities that pay their salaries are facing enormous budgetary pressures.

Congress must provide $600 billion in direct fiscal aid to states and cities to ensure they have the personnel and funding necessary to respond to this crisis. In addition, the Federal Reserve must establish programs to provide direct fiscal support and budgetary relief to states and municipalities.

6. Suspend Monthly Payments

Even before this crisis, half of the people in our country were living paycheck to paycheck. In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Now, with growing unemployment, families are facing financial ruin if we do not act quickly and boldly.

That’s why we must suspend monthly expenses like rent, mortgages, medical debt and consumer debt collection for 4 months. We must cancel all student loan payments for the duration of this crisis, and place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs.

Brothers and sisters: In this unprecedented moment in our history it is easy to feel like we are alone, and that everyone must fend for themselves. But that would be a mistake and a terrible tragedy. Now, more than any other moment in our lives, we must remember that we are all in this together-- that when one of us gets sick, many more may get sick. And when my neighbor loses their job, I may lose my job as well.

You waiting for Trump or the walking corpse the Democratic Party establishment wants to run against him to offer some operable ideas? Don't hold your breath-- or you could be turning blue long before there is any light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. Please contribute to Bernie's campaign by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right. Bernie ended his e-mail by reminding us that "we cannot wait until our economy collapses to act. It will be far easier and less expensive to act now, in a very bold way, than to try to rebuild our country later. If we work together and unite behind these basic principles of economic and health justice, I am confident that we will not only get through this unprecedented crisis together but that we will lay the groundwork for a better and more just America in the future."

As for Trump... well, at least we have this:

Jared by Chip Proser

How Much Do Voters Care About Honesty And Trustworthiness? We'll Soon Find Out

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian

In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent explained why evidence that Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint when he unfroze military aid to Ukraine is devastating evidence against him, reducing his absurd "I want nothing-- no quid pro quo" defense to smoking ruins. No doubt the Judiciary Committee members-- think Ted Lieu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline, Joe Neguse...-- were thinking about this yesterday as they prepared for next week's impeachment hearings. Those are some of the sharpest mind's in Congress. Will the eyes of the country be focused on the hearings? Yesterday, the L.A. Times reported that "more than 70 million viewers watched some portion of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry."

Trump likes screeching at his bund rallies that no one was watching. He wishes! "Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw significant year-over-year increases in audience levels for November. MSNBC’s daytime viewing levels for November were the highest in its 23-year history."

Viewing of live gavel-to-gavel coverage that aired on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the three major broadcast networks peaked on its opening day, Nov. 13, when it reached an average of 13.1 million viewers. By the fifth session on Nov. 21, the audience leveled off to 11.3 million, comparable to what a top-rated non-sports entertainment program draws in prime time. Fox News was the most-watched network each day.

Gym Jordan by Nancy Ohanian

The figures reflect the average number of people who watched the coverage at any time. The total number of viewers who tuned in-- determined by Nielsen as those who watched at least six minutes of coverage over five days-- came in at 70.8 million. The number does not include C-SPAN or PBS stations that carried the coverage.

The daytime impeachment hearings also gave a boost to cable news opinion shows in prime time. Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.4 million viewers in November, a record high for the program. Hannity also reached an all-time high with 3.6 million viewers. Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers in prime time, up 15% from November 2018, a high-rated month that included coverage of the midterm elections. MSNBC was up 12% to 2.06 million viewers as The Rachel Maddow Show had its best month since January with an average of 3.3 million viewers. CNN was down 11% to 999,000 viewers.

Many more people also watched some portion of the impeachment hearings online, with all the networks citing a lift in traffic. NBC News counted 9.6 million video “starts” for impeachment coverage across its streaming platforms, which include Twitter and Facebook. CNN said digital viewing boosted its November audience by 3.4%, the largest lift the network has ever seen.

The new SSRS poll released yesterday by CNN asked voted how important the impeachment inquiry be in their vote for president:

• extremely important- 27%
• very important- 19%
• moderately important- 12%
• not that important- 39%

Along with the 2% who have no opinion, that 39% is the pool from which concentration camp guards could be drawn were Trump to win a second term.

That same poll asked all voters regardless of party if Trump is honest and trustworthy. 36% said he is, 62% say he isn't. On top of that, Pro-Publica just published a devastating exposé on Trump's tax swindling. "Documents," wrote Heather Vogell, "show the president’s company reported different numbers-- higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials-- for Trump’s signature building," part of a pattern Trump has long engaged in.

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.

In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.

...Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.

...Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.

The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.

The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)

Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jail to the chief? What do you think? So far, no former American president has ever been thrown in prison. Of course, we've never had one as crooked as Trump, have we? I think it's time, primarily because he deserves it-- but also as a warning to future presidents. We don't elect kings... and we won't accept candidates conspiring with foreign powers to meddle in our elections.

The Third Stooge: Devin Nunes

Devin Nunes has been one of Trump's most consistent defenders, co-conspirators and enablers in Congress. As Mark Sumner pointed out yesterday at Daily Kos, Nunes has been pretending to be an investigator, when he was part of the criminal syndicate all along. At the very least, an Ethics Committee investigation is required and likely inevitable-- and probably a great deal more. Vicky Ward's CNN exclusive yesterday was a shocker-- and possibly a harbinger of the end of Nunes' career in politics. Lev of Igor and Lev has ratted him out-- and in a big way!

Ward wrote that Joseph Bondy an attorney for Giuliani crony Lev Parnas told CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings Nunes had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up-- or manufacturing-- dirt on Joe Biden and his son. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes. Shokin is the crook who Biden helped get fired for not persecuting corruption cases. Bondy told CNN that Lev and Nunes "began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine." So... Nunes was the third stooge-- Igor, Lev and Devin!

Bondy tells CNN his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Bondy suggested in a tweet on Friday that he was already speaking to House Intel though the committee declined to comment.

Giuliani has told CNN previously about his conversations with Shokin and  Parnas, saying that this was part of his legal work for his client, President Trump. Parnas' claims about Nunes' alleged involvement offers a new wrinkle and for the first time suggests the efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens involved a member of Congress.

Parnas' claims that Nunes met with Shokin, which has not been previously reported, add further context to a Daily Beast report that Parnas helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Nunes last year, citing another Parnas' lawyer, Ed MacMahon.

Those revelations came to a head on Thursday when Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell raised the Daily Beast story publicly during the impeachment hearing.

Parnas, who was indicted on federal campaign finance charges last month, worked with Shokin and Giuliani to push a pair of unfounded claims: that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats, and that Biden was acting corruptly in Ukraine on behalf of his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.

According to Bondy, Parnas claims Nunes worked to push similar allegations of Democratic corruption.

"Nunes had told Shokin of the urgent need to launch investigations into Burisma, Joe and Hunter Biden, and any purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election," Bondy told CNN.

...Parnas is currently under house arrest in Florida and has pleaded not guilty to charges of federal campaign finance fraud.

Over the past two weeks, CNN approached Nunes on two occasions and reached out to his communications staff to get comment for this story.

In the Capitol on Nov. 14, as CNN began to ask a question about the trip to Vienna, Nunes interjected and said, "I don't talk to you in this lifetime or the next lifetime."

"At any time," Nunes added. "On any question."

Asked again on Thursday about his travel to Vienna and his interactions with Shokin and Parnas, Nunes gave a similar response.

"To be perfectly clear, I don't acknowledge any questions from you in this lifetime or the next lifetime," Nunes said while leaving the impeachment hearing. "I don't acknowledge any question from you ever."

Congressional travel records show that Nunes and three aides traveled to Europe from November 30 to December 3, 2018. The records do not specify that Nunes and his staff went to Vienna or Austria, and Nunes was not required to disclose the exact details of the trip.

Nunes' entourage included retired colonel Derek Harvey, who had previously worked for Trump on the National Security Council, and now works for Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee. Harvey declined to comment.

Bondy told CNN that Nunes planned the trip to Vienna after Republicans lost control of the House in the mid-term elections on Nov. 6, 2018.

"Mr. Parnas learned through Nunes' investigator, Derek Harvey, that the Congressman had sequenced this trip to occur after the mid-term elections yet before Congress' return to session, so that Nunes would not have to disclose the trip details to his Democrat colleagues in Congress," said Bondy.

At the time of the trip, Nunes was chairman of the Intelligence Committee. In January, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff  took over as chairman of the powerful committee, which is now conducting the impeachment inquiry.  

Bondy says that according to his client, following a brief in-person meeting in late 2018, Parnas and Nunes had at least two more phone conversations, and that Nunes instructed Parnas to work with Harvey on the Ukraine matters.

Parnas says that shortly after the Vienna trip, he and Harvey met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where they discussed claims about the Bidens as well as allegations of Ukrainian election interference, according to Bondy.

Following this,  Bondy says that in a phone conversation Nunes told Parnas that he was conducting his own investigation into the Bidens  and asked Par nas for help validating information he'd gathered from conversations with various current and former Ukrainian officials, including Shokin.

Parnas says that Nunes told him he'd been partly working off of  information from the journalist John Solomon, who had written a number of articles on the Biden conspiracy theory for The Hill, according to Bondy. 

  ...Bondy tells CNN that Parnas is also willing to tell Congress about a series of regular meetings he says he took part in at the Trump International Hotel in Washington that concerned Ukraine. According to Bondy, Parnas became part of what he described as a "team" that met several times a week in a private room at the BLT restaurant on the second floor of the Trump Hotel. In addition to giving the group access to key people in Ukraine who could help their cause, Parnas translated their conversations, Bondy said.

The group, according to Bondy,  included Giuliani, Parnas, the journalist Solomon, and the married attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.  Parnas said that Harvey would occasionally be present as well, and that it was Parnas' understanding that Harvey was Nunes' proxy, Bondy said. 

Solomon confirmed the meetings to CNN but said that calling the group a team was a bit of a mischaracterization. Solomon said that connectivity happened more organically, and that his role was only as a journalist reporting a story. 

Solomon also said that Di Genova and  Toensing, his lawyers, introduced him to Parnas as a facilitator and interpreter in early March. "Parnas was very helpful to me in getting Ukraine officials on the record," Solomon told CNN. "I only gradually realized Lev was working for other people, including Rudy Giuliani."

...In the weeks since his arrest, Parnas has become disenchanted with Trump  and Giuliani, according to Bondy as well as other sources who spoke to CNN. Parnas, these sources say, was particularly upset when Trump denied knowing him the day after Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were arrested in October.

Last week, CNN reported that Parnas had claimed to have had a private meeting with Trump in which the President tasked him with a "secret mission" to uncover dirt on Democrats in Ukraine.

"He believes he has put himself out there for the President and now he's been completely hung out to dry," a person close to Parnas told CNN. Last week, the White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment to a series of questions regarding the meeting and Trump's relationship with Parnas.

On Thursday, Bondy promoted the hashtag #LetLevSpeak on Twitter in response to a number of questions about whether Parnas would testify in front of Congress.

Bondy tweeted directly at Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy Thursday night after McCarthy accused Schiff of blocking important witnesses from testifying, saying "I don't agree with your premise, but please, if you mean what you say, call my client, Lev Parnas. #LetLevSpeak."

The progressive Democrat running for Nunes' Central Valley seat, Dary Rezvani told me that "All of this just continues to show how little Congressman Nunes actually cares about being a representative. The country is largely focused on just how corrupt these actions are and I have seen multiple comments asking how our district could ever vote for someone like him. Nunes has continued to be Trump biggest defender in Congress and this just shows how far he has been willing to go in his attempted protection and defense of Trump. All of that being said what is more concerning to me is that all of this protection has taken precedent over serving the constituents of CA-22. As our opioid crisis continued to worsen, as healthcare providers continued to leave our rural communities, and as our air and water quality continues to rank as some of the worst in the nation, Nunes has decided that further implicating himself with the corrupt actions of this administration was more important than addressing any of the issues impacting his district. He would know that if he had taken even a moment of time to hold a town hall in the last ten years. We are losing family farms to large corporations who don’t care about the district and continue to poison our communities with harmful pesticides yet he totes himself as a farmer who protects farmers. He is nothing more than a politician who protects his own interests and those of corporations seeking to make a quick buck off of an already impoverished  community that lacks the resources to fight back. I want to believe that at one point he became an elected official to do the right thing but the more I talk to farmers in our south valley, the less I believe this was ever the case. The reason Nunes has continued to be re-elected is because our district’s issues are systemic and just saying how bad Nunes is will never work simply because we have such low voter engagement. We will replace him when our Democratic nominee understands the root cause of our issues and has plans to fix them."

The Democratic Party has long ignored CA-22 in the Central Valley. As the party discovered last cycle, that's been big mistake. Had they been registering voters and building infrastructure over the last few years, Nunes would have bee defeated in 2018. Right now the district's population is 39.1% white, 47.5% Latino, 7.6% Asian and 2.9% black. That sounds like a winnable California district. But party registration isn't reflected in those demograhics. The Fresno County part of the district has 93,787 registered Republicans, 75,314 registered Democrats and 54,439 decline-to-state voters. The Tulare County part of the district has 50,371 registered Republicans, 39,635 registered Democrats and 32,590 decline-to-state voters. Please consider helping Rezvani replace Nunes in Congress by contributing to his campaign via the Blue California thermometer on the right.

Greg Sargent wrote today in his Washington Post column that "We need a deep reset. It's time to rhetorically treat Trump's defenders like his criminal accomplices." Yes-- and not just rhetorically... judicially as well.

UPDATE: Nunes Says He's Suing

The Central Valley crackpot says he's suing CNN and the Daily Beast. Nunes to right-wing media site Breitbart: "These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth. Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them. I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets, as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law. I intend to hold the Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving." I wonder if they get to sit next to @DevinCow, who Nunes is also supposedly suing.

Every Time Another Trump Lie Is Exposed, Another Republican-Held Seat In Congress Is Put In Jeopardy

Rhapsody In Blonde by Nancy Ohanian

Republicans favor Trump and Democrats don't. That's not news. The new poll from YouGov for The Economist breaks down Trump's favorable/unfavorable ratings among independent voters. And the news is bad for Trump. Among self-identified Independents 22% view him very favorably and 19% view him somewhat favorably for a total of 41%. Meanwhile 36% view him very unfavorably and 13% view him somewhat unfavorably (49%). Worse is that his momentum is all downward. Every single day the news grows worse and worse for him.

And voters are now aware that his defense is to lie and lie and lie. Few voters other than Republicans believe anything he says. Glenn Kseeler and his fact checking crew and the Washington Post wrote Monday morning that as Trump "approaches his 1,000th day in office Wednesday, he has significantly stepped up his pace of spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods. As of Oct. 9, his 993rd day in office, he had made 13,435 false or misleading claims… That’s an average of almost 22 claims a day since our last update 65 days ago."

Greg Sargent made it clear in his Post column yesterday that there are machinations behind the barrage of lies and that Trump is attempting to shore up his base by assuring them that he is, basically above the law. Sargent wrote that "It’s worth stepping back and stating in plain language just how profoundly" Señor Trumpanzee "is corrupting our political system right now... his total defiance of oversight poses a massive challenge to our constitutional order. [But] that’s only half the story... Trump is not merely staking out an absolute refusal to cooperate with any and all lawful subpoenas, on the deeply absurd grounds that the House’s impeachment inquiry is illegitimate, as the White House counsel has argued. Rather, Trump is adopting that stance while simultaneously claiming the absolute right to bend large swaths of the government toward his goal of rigging the next election on his own behalf. Thus, Trump is declaring absolute authority to use extraordinarily corrupt means to avoid facing a fair election next year, while also declaring total immunity to any and all congressional efforts to prevent him from rigging that election, or even to hold him accountable for it. What Sragent is getting across is that "Trump’s explicitly declared position is that he is constrained by no existing legitimate mechanism of accountability.

Hole-in-One by Nancy Ohanian

“It’s now the official position of the White House that soliciting foreign election interference is appropriate,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. The White House isn’t even contesting that this happened any longer: “The White House is saying, ‘Yeah, he did it, and it’s fine.'"

Let’s also note the multidimensional nature of this “appropriate” conduct. Trump is enlisting a foreign power both to falsify the corruption of the last election on his behalf-- by covering up the truth about it-- and to facilitate the corruption of the coming election on his behalf, as well.

Much of the government has been enlisted in this effort-- and to prevent the full truth about it from coming out. Attorney General William P. Barr is traveling the globe in pursuit of the first aspect of that mission. Barr’s Justice Department and the acting director of national intelligence tried to unlawfully bury the whistleblower account of the scheme. Now that it did come out, the State Department is defying legitimate subpoenas designed to get to the bottom of it.

Trump himself is now claiming absolute authority to do all of this. He says he has an “absolute right” to ask other countries to investigate “corruption,” while saying openly that the corruption he’s talking about involves Biden, thus claiming total authority to solicit foreign help in rigging the next election.

Add to this the fact that Trump’s lawyers argued that his extensive and likely criminal obstruction of justice could not constitute obstruction by definition, because Trump has the power to shut down any inquiry into himself, for any reason. Those obstruction efforts, too, constituted an effort to bury the truth about the corruption of the last election on his behalf, and to elude accountability for it.

All this is the larger context in which we should view Trump’s declaration that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate.

As Josh Chafetz notes, this level of defiance of oversight probably amounts to contempt of Congress, which is a crime. Trump is declaring the authority to engage in bottomless corruption to prevent his removal in a legitimate election, while also declaring the authority to corruptly-- and perhaps illegally-- shut down the people’s last resort against it.

Trump’s effort to corrupt the election, and his placement of himself beyond all congressional oversight, are part of the same story: the attempted destruction of any and all mechanisms of accountability.

Meanwhile, David Leonhardt was tackling the question of who would be hurt worse by the impeachment process, Trump or the Democrats. "Trump," he wrote, "deserves to be impeached on the merits, and, if he is, it will probably further sully him in the eyes of swing voters, much as it did to Clinton. The big question now is how well will Democrats handle the process. They should move quickly to hold more public hearings, rather than the private sessions they held last week, so Americans can better understand how Trump has perverted American foreign policy and national security for his own benefit. Ultimately, impeachment may well hurt some Democrats from Trump-friendly districts, much as it hurt several Republicans 20 years ago. But it is also very likely to damage Trump-- as his own sullen reaction suggests that he realizes. That’s a trade-off worth making."

In real terms, that means the Republicans might pick up a tiny handful of seats held by utterly worthless Blue Dogs in red seats-- probably Kendra Horn in Oklahoma and Joe Cunningham in South Carolina-- while losing dozens of House seats to Democrats in districts where winning majorities is dependent on independent voters. The GOP might as well get ready to say goodbye to half a dozen seats in Texas alone. Trump is endangering reelection bids by Republicans who Trump would never be able to identify in a police lineup-- from Ross Spano, Vern Buchanan and Brian Mast in Florida and Republicans across the Midwest like Fred Upton (MI), Steve Chabot (OH), Steve King (IA), Rodney Davis (IL), Mike Bost (IL), Don Bacon (NE) and Tim Walberg (MI) to incumbents in the northeast like John Katko, Lee Zeldin and Peter King in New York and Brian Fitzpatrick, Scott Perry and Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania. Please consider helping Señor Trumpanzee clean out more congressional Republicans by clicking on the 2020 Blue America thermometer on the right and contributing what you can to the progressive candidates of your choice.