The Onus Is On The Biden Campaign To Persuade Progressives He Deserves Their Votes-- So Far He Hasn't Done Much Persuading

End Of The Line by Nancy Ohanian

If you would vote for a pile of dog-shit in the street to get Trump out of the White House, Biden is your man and there's no real need to keep reading. Besides, if you read this blog much, you already know that there's nothing on earth that will get me to vote for Trump or Biden. I can barely think of two less fit individuals to be president. Well, my bother-in-law but he's delighted with Trump, so he's not going to run. If Trump decided to institute Medicare-for-All, I wouldn't vote for him because I don't trust him. If Biden were to start campaigning vigorously on it-- really vigorously-- and persuaded me he's for real, by explaining why he's changed his mind, I would reconsider voting for him. Not that he needs my vote. Trump lost California in 2016 by a landslide-- 8,753,788 (61.73%) to 4,483,810 (31.62%). He lost my county-- Los Angeles-- by an even greater landslide: 71.4% to 23.4%. He'll win L.A. by an even bigger margin this year and same with California. Biden will probably outpoll Hillary, at least percentage-wise in the Golden State. But I decided to turn to another voice, a trusted voice, Jeremy Scahill on the conundrum around a third of progressives find themselves in now, whether to vote for the lesser evil or not. Scahill's post Monday for The Intercept asks about the moral and strategic calculus of voting for Biden to defeat Trump.

Scahill agrees with the editorial position of DWT that Trump ran his campaign and runs his presidency on a foundation of hate, greed, xenophobia, misogyny and racism and that "literally everything this man does is a racket." But, as much as he agrees that Trump is a fascist be thinks the term gives him more credit than he deserves. "He has largely been an incompetent authoritarian, albeit one whose key policies have caused massive suffering and death. What we have seen throughout his career and his three and a half years in power is that Trump is primarily concerned with making money for himself, his family, and his cronies."

Like myself, Scahill wonders about the lesser evil when it comes to foreign policy. After all, Biden is a lifelong warmonger and Trump... well, he's just a deranged narcissist.

His foreign policy has been hawkish and reckless, but aside from his often insane rhetoric and public threats to annihilate various countries, it has not represented a radical departure from that of his predecessors. He acts like an unstable buffoon on the international stage, and he burns bridges with traditional U.S. allies, governments, and international bodies across the globe. Trump openly embraces vile authoritarians and mocks democratic leaders and institutions. All of this is certainly dangerous and unsettling, though some of it is disproportionately offensive to establishment foreign policy elites. Trump’s predecessor started his own share of wars, did some regime change, ratcheted up an existing war, downsized another, and greatly expanded the use of weaponized drones and so-called targeted killings. But Barack Obama delivered these policies with an intelligently crafted, though at times absurd, justification wrapped in the notion of inventing a “smarter” way to wage war. Liberals ate it up. Obama’s policies killed a lot of innocent people.

The few times Trump has signaled his openness to pursue a less militaristic approach to long-existing crises, such as the war in Afghanistan or the conflict with North Korea, he has been ridiculed by leading Democrats and liberal pundits. In terms of Trump’s military pursuits, he has proven less murderous than George W. Bush and more of a war criminal than Jimmy Carter. So far. That can certainly change with a second term.

Perhaps the gravest threat posed by the unstable narcissist in the White House is that of the use of a first strike nuclear weapon. It has never been beyond the pale to imagine an apocalyptic nuclear scenario that begins with a tweet from a foreign leader Trump hates. The fact that we can even imagine this is nothing to wag a stick at.

...What would happen if Trump wins the election in November? In practical terms, it would be a nightmare. Trump would emerge emboldened beyond imagination. What minuscule restraints that currently exist would be wiped out entirely. He would almost certainly be in a position to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with yet another atrocious extremist. An ability to further stack the court will have a multigenerational impact on a legion of issues; among them are voting rights, civil liberties, corporate power, workers’ rights, civil rights, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, executive power, and the climate. No one should minimize the dangers of Trump remaining in office. And his reign will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, much like the coronavirus, and the terrors will ricochet for many years to come. Trump encourages and emboldens racists and bigots and embraces far-right ideology and action. Four more years of this will be deadly.

It is in contemplating all of the above that the emergence of Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presumptive choice to take on Trump is a deeply disturbing and risky response to the threats we face. It is easy to underestimate Biden’s chance of winning in November. Biden is a terrible candidate in many ways, but it is possible that “I’m not Trump” combined with Biden having been Obama’s vice president will appeal to enough of the population to win not only the popular vote (a virtual certainty) but the Electoral College-- especially if the party keeps him under wraps until the final stretch, as appears to be the strategy. Still, that seems to be a dangerous gamble given what is at stake.

Biden has an abominable public policy record on a wide range of issues. He has a penchant for lying-- about his role in the civil rights movement and about being arrested in apartheid South Africa. He continues to lie and mislead about his support for the war in Iraq, the most consequential foreign policy decision of the post-Vietnam era. He has been accused by eight women of misconduct, including one allegation of very serious sexual assault by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade. Biden’s cognitive health and mental acuity is, to say the least, questionable, particularly when you compare his current performance with videos from just a few years ago. He frequently rambles without a clear point, forgets what office he is running for, and has to rely on teleprompters and notes to make it through interviews and speeches without saying something embarrassing. In numerous interactions with voters, Biden has poked their chests in an aggressive manner; told an immigrant rights activist to “vote for Trump”; called voters childish names; and threatened a union worker in Detroit, telling the man to stop objecting to Biden pointing his finger in his face unless the worker “want[s] to go outside with me.” Let’s not even discuss the tale of his showdown with a rusty razor-wielding “Corn Pop” at the pool. Trump’s temperament is frightening, but Biden isn’t exactly a cool head who exudes competence or confidence.

Liberals may poo poo the whole Hunter Biden-Burisma-Ukraine-China attacks from Trump, but this is going to be a problem in the general election. On many of the key issues where Democrats could attack Trump, Biden is going to be virtually incapacitated by his own skeletons. What Sen. Elizabeth Warren did to Mike Bloomberg at a February debate would be impossible for Biden to do to Trump. “You have more allegations of sexual assault than I do, Donald,” is not a good line. “Your sons have profited off the presidency more than my son did off my vice presidency”-- also not a winning zinger. And don’t think for a moment that Trump won’t hammer away on Biden’s Iraq War vote and his trade policies. The Democratic primary is not the general election.

There is no point to going through and listing all of the terrible aspects of Biden’s career, his policy record, his mental stamina, or his substantial failures to make himself visible or consistently cogent since securing the presumptive nomination. All of this is going to be put on display for the next six months. The Democratic Party and the voters in the roughly 50 percent of primaries that were held have committed our fate to Biden’s candidacy. Obama and other senior party leaders, major news organizations, and a lot of money deployed to attack Sen. Bernie Sanders also played a role in manufacturing this reality. Sanders ending his campaign and vowing to support Biden leaves people with two viable candidates on the ballot. Barring a health crisis or death of one of these older men, the only two candidates with enough public support to win the presidency will be Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

What we get with Trump is as clear as it is terrifying. What we get with Biden, in his current form, is less apparent. Biden will have a team of competent (for better and worse) technocrats and, in all likelihood, an incredibly influential vice president and an unelected chief of staff running the show. Biden’s administration will also include appointments aimed at throwing some bones to progressives and likely other Cabinet appointments that recognize the growing influence of progressive ideas. It will, without a doubt, also be riddled with a disproportionate number of hawkish, corporatist Democratic apparatchiks. It will be an administration that does the bidding of Wall Street, believes in bloated war budgets, and will put a friendlier face on the worst excesses of empire. It’s always worth remembering that Biden was picked in 2008 to make Obama less threatening to moderates-- so we can’t even bank on a return to Obama’s brand of neoliberalism. But there will be policy areas where some victories may be possible for a well-organized and militant left willing to take Biden on. Such a dynamic wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and would be better for more people than a second Trump term in virtually every tangible way.

Biden isn’t great on many issues that motivate young voters. His health care plan keeps the profit-driven system intact, and it will result in millions of Americans remaining uninsured. His policy to confront massive student and consumer debt is anemic. Biden’s climate plan is uninspiring and generally milquetoast when weighed against the severity of the crisis the planet faces, though this is an area in which he might be susceptible to pressure from activists. Some of his foreign policy positions are downright disturbing, if not explicitly right-wing. The latest Biden campaign ad is a fearmongering attack on China and an effort to outbid Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. Biden’s long record indicates that he could prove more inclined to authorize military interventions than Trump, who has been quite belligerent himself, without following through on most of his threats. Biden is almost certainly going to start and continue wars, impose deadly economic sanctions, and support or enact regime change efforts.

There is an abundance of justification to oppose a Biden presidency. And principled people are right to ring loud alarms over Biden’s record, policies, and some of his personal conduct. At the same time, it is not honest to imply there would be no difference between a Biden and Trump administration.

The Obama-Biden administration’s immigration policy has now been dwarfed in awfulness by Trump, but in its own right it operated as a cruel, mass deportation machine that also separated families. During the campaign, Biden has responded to extraordinary activist pressure and eventually began to carefully distance himself from the record of the “deporter in chief,” as Obama was labeled by immigrant rights activists. When pressed on the mass deportations under Obama, Biden acknowledged that deporting people without criminal records was a “big mistake.” At a Democratic debate, Biden was asked whether he would resume Obama’s torrid pace of deportations. “Absolutely not,” he said, adding that he was vice president, not president, drawing a rebuke from Julián Castro, who observed accurately that Biden was content to bathe in the glow of his former Obama boss while looking to sidestep responsibility for his more unpopular policies. At the same time, Biden’s campaign has made a sweeping series of pledges that he could implement as president that would potentially protect millions of vulnerable people. On immigration, the alternative to that is four more years of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, an extremist nut who shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a consequential decision-making process.

...Biden has a troubling record on Iran, including his support for deadly sanctions, but he has emphatically said he would reenter the Iran nuclear agreement, which is also no small matter. Similarly, Biden has been politically forced to denounce the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen, despite the fact that it was initiated under the Obama-Biden administration. He has also had to publicly accept that viewing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as an unsavory murderer is now widely held by many Democrats, including centrist figures. Remarkably, Biden has vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into “a pariah.” That’s an incredible statement given the long bipartisan love affair with the kingdom’s despots and raises all sorts of questions about what that would mean if Biden is elected.

Among the wild cards of a Biden administration will be the issue of whether he has the actual mental stamina to govern, or if he is going to be frequently disoriented and infrequently seen or heard. Setting aside the protestations of people who pretend they don’t see exactly what everyone else does when Biden speaks in public, we are not actually being asked to vote for Biden as the candidate, because the Biden we see is a shell of his former self. We are being asked to vote for a spin-off of the Obama show, a cast of familiar characters and a few exciting new additions who would take charge of the executive branch, without the popular star of the original show among the visible cast. The fact that the Democrats have forced through a candidate that many people don’t believe is fully functional and will rely on the strength of “the team” assembled around him is a pretty grim statement about the state of democracy in the U.S. If Biden is the best the Democrats have to offer in the face of Trump, the system is rotten.

So what should people who want Trump gone but cannot stand Biden do? First of all, no one should be shamed for letting their conscience dictate their vote or decision not to vote. (Full disclosure: I always vote.) Our system is dominated by corporate influence, big money, and the skewed rules of a default duopoly, and it actively fights to prevent third parties from receiving federal matching funds, joining debates, or gaining ballot access. There is no mandatory voting in the U.S., roughly 40 percent of Americans do not belong to either major political party, and people have a right to register their dissatisfaction with the entire system by not voting. In an atmosphere where tens of millions of U.S. citizens choose not to vote, shaming the minuscule number of people who vote for the Green Party is a disgrace. There are hundreds of thousands of voters whose principled belief is that breaking the two-party stranglehold on U.S. democracy is the only path to meaningful systemic change. Votes for Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins are not being taken away from corporate Democrats. Those votes belong to the people who cast them and they have a right to vote however they choose, and the candidates they support have a right to run for office.

It is also an understandable and morally principled decision to say, “I believe Tara Reade was sexually assaulted by Joe Biden, and I will not vote for a rapist.” It is an understandable and morally principled position to say, “I will not vote for anyone who supported the war against Iraq.” None of these people’s votes belong to Biden or Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Party or Twitter mobs-- and they are not votes for Trump.

Ultimately, however, given the abomination of our two-party system, progressive voters are forced to make not just a moral but a strategic choice with their votes. Recognizing that Biden is a terrible candidate and being honest about that but voting for him in an effort to prevent Trump from further consolidating his agenda is a strategically sound position. This is ultimately what the majority of Sanders supporters will do, just as they did in 2016. It certainly has a better chance of improving the country and the world than enthusiastically pledging to vote for Biden while closing your ears to everything that is wrong about him and his record. Voters in swing states, where voting for a candidate other than Biden or not voting at all may help tip the balance to Trump, face a more consequential moral and strategic choice than people in New York or California. In 2004, the Green Party candidate told his supporters to vote their conscience in swing states, including if they believed they needed to hold their nose and vote for John Kerry to defeat Bush.

If you believe that progressives or leftists should be “bending the knee” for Biden by promising right this second that they will vote for him in six months and that they will never utter an inconvenient fact about him or express their anger with their meager Election Day options, please show them all of your work fighting for Medicare for All, for ending the carceral state, for serious radical action on climate change, your work opposing the most dangerous aspects of the Obama-Biden administration, including on issues of war, immigration, and, yes, health care.

Many of the social and political movements that backed Sanders were populated by people in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. It was an incredibly diverse coalition of supporters and drew millions of primary voters in 2016 and 2020. Its backbone was young voters, including young African Americans, Latinos, students, immigrants, and independents. These groups and many of Sanders’s supporters have spent nearly four years fighting Trump nonstop. Many of them organized against Obama’s troubling policies before that. That should be commended not scorned. You want to label these people Trump supporters because they are intensely disturbed by the corporatist candidate you have chosen to take on Trump? Show them your work on the issues they care about, explain what Biden’s policies are on those issues and make the most convincing case you can for why they should vote for him. Better yet, explain to them how you are fighting to make Biden’s platform one that even minimally pretends to want their votes.

In the bigger picture, Sanders organized the most significant challenge to the Democratic Party’s centrist and center-right establishment since Jesse Jackson ran twice for president in the 1980s. Unlike Ralph Nader’s independent runs for president, Sanders attempted to deliver sweeping change within the Democratic Party’s own framework. He fought against an extremely hostile corporate media environment and some pretty vile smear campaigns, where he was compared to the coronavirus, his supporters were called brown shirts, and his primary victories described as akin to the Nazi invasion of France on liberal TV networks. Despite the powerful chorus of red-baiting and lies, Sanders still came extremely close to pulling off a victory.

Biden was usually the frontrunner and always the favorite, even though he came close to being defeated by Sanders early on. The establishment fiercely defended its territory in an effort capped off by the last-minute secret diplomacy from Obama ahead of Super Tuesday to pressure other candidates and the party to coalesce around Biden. Ultimately, the party’s primary voters, at the crucial moment, threw their weight behind a name they know and who served as vice president of an administration they trusted. These voters should not be collectively shamed either. Most of them are not party cogs, but people genuinely scared of what four more years of Trump will mean for their survival, particularly older African American voters.

The traditional, moderate, and right-wing forces within the Democratic Party united and won the primary battle. Sanders may have surrendered too early, but there is little value to debating that right now or wasting energy attacking Sanders.

The war for the future of the Democratic Party is intensifying. There is a possibility of a fracture or at least more clearly defined factions within the party. There will be serious discussions around forming a new party that isn’t the Green Party, but rather an outgrowth of the “Not Me, Us” framework of the Sanders campaign and the growing popularity of groups like the Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, prison abolitionists, immigrant rights groups, and Democratic Socialists of America. It would be a great thing for this country to have a democratic socialist party grow, one that runs serious political campaigns. We have already seen early stage efforts at this with mixed results. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands the need to engage in strategic partnerships with establishment Democrats to achieve meaningful policy change and strengthen the areas of common ground. But there will need to be a lot more like-minded politicians elected for the strategy to succeed. This primary has shaken the Democratic establishment to its core, and that is a good thing and should be built on.

But none of that is going to happen before November.

Some Sanders supporters who are deeply concerned by the candidacy of Biden have said he can have their vote but not their soul. For many people that will be their strategic rationale. For others, it will be a question of individual or collective morality in the face of Trump’s horrors. Leftist voters in swing states shoulder a greater moral burden than the rest of us, and many will decide to vote against Trump by pulling the lever for Biden.

There are also very vocal opponents of Biden who are fed up and are flat out going to refuse to vote for him. They recognize that the opposite of Trump is not Biden. They want a society where free health care is a right and wars are ended, where everyone has housing and work that pays livable wages, where you don’t amass a mountain of debt to get an education, and one that treats immigrants and workers with dignity and defends a woman’s absolute right to choose. They want the racist justice system dismantled and ICE to be abolished. They believe we are in a climate emergency and that Biden is a part of the problem. Mainstream Democrats tell them they want much of that too and electing Biden is a strategic step in that direction or that President Biden will be more susceptible to progressive pressure. They reject that. They don’t believe that forcing a choice between two bad candidates is right, even if one is admittedly worse. Electing Biden might solve some problems, but it also could result in a strengthening of the far right in the U.S. and could produce a worse threat than Trump in 2024. A Biden administration, they believe, will undoubtedly be a massive corporate-friendly juggernaut that wages military and economic wars and, for them, voting in the affirmative for that is a bridge too far. And many of these people hold the Democratic Party responsible for Trump because of the terrible campaign it ran in 2016, so trying to convince them to buy into the same strategy twice is a losing battle. They are tired of being Democrats’ cheap dates-- treated with contempt, offered few and paltry concessions, and expected to go along. As a strategic matter, at this juncture, they regard supporting Biden as tantamount to telling Democrats to continue to take them for granted.

If Democrats want to try to win them over, they should use the next six months to show them you take their concerns about 2016 seriously and map out the ways this campaign is different. Most people on the left who oppose Biden but also view Trump as the gravest danger are going to vote against Trump by voting for Biden. But those who disagree with that strategy do not support Trump. For them, “He’s not Trump” is not a gamble worth taking. The onus is on the Biden campaign and its supporters to make their case to every eligible voter in this country and earn their votes. No one should be taken for granted.

I don't believe Joe Biden has what it takes to win an election-- at this point, for anything. But luckily for him and the Democratic establishment this election is likely to be nothing more or less than a referendum on the worst president in American history-- Donald J. Trump. And even if Biden is likely to be a contender for second-worst president ever, no one will ever match Trump. Biden won't win but he could well wind up as president because Trump will lose. Most Americans hate him and hate what he's done to our country. Most will willingly and gratefully vote for the lesser evil.

Trump Has Utterly Failed His Test-- Guess Who Suffers (+ Bob Dylan's 17 Minute Song)

The GOP death cult is super-duper strong in Alabama, where the moron governor has challenged the coronavirus to come and kill all her citizens. Still, Nazis, fascists and assorted racists from all over the U.S. head up to their idea of an Aryan Nation-- Idaho's panhandle. The state voted or Trump in 2016 by a massive margin-- 59.25% to just 27.48% for Hillary (who won just two of the state's 44 counties.) The panhandle counties were even Trumpier than the rest of the state:

• Benewah- 74.0%
• Bonner- 60.8%
• Kootenai- 67.1% (the neo-Nazi capital of America)
• Shoshone- 64.4%

And even though Trump's net approval has decreased by 10 points since he first occupied the White House, 58% of Idaho voters still approved of the job he is doing, compared to just 39% who don't. None the less, Idaho's very conservative Republican governor, Brad Little, just issued a statewide 21-day stay at home order. Like most states, there is a long list of exceptions to the shutdown:

• Healthcare operations
• Grocery stores including liquor stores
• Food cultivation such as farming, fishing, and food processing
• Businesses that provide food, shelter and services for economically disadvantaged individuals
• News media services
• Gas stations, auto supply and repair facilities
• Banks, credit unions and financial institutions
• Plumbers, electricians and landscapers
• Hardware stores and firearm businesses
• Businesses providing mailing and shipping services
• Educational institutions to provide distance learning resources
• Childcare providing services that enable employees exempted in this order to work as permitted
• Laundromats and dry cleaners
• Restaurants can stay open but can only provide take out or drive-thru services
• Hotels, motels and shared rental units
• Businesses that supply people products to work from home
• Shipping businesses that deliver food, goods or groceries
• Airlines, taxis and private transportation needed for essential travel
• Home-based care for seniors, adults or children
• Essential tribal operations
• Legal or accounting services when necessary

Yes, even Idaho. And even Fox News. Their website carried a warning from the Surgeon General that the U.S. could be worse than Italy if 15-day guidelines are disregarded. Who's stupid enough to disregard them?

Jerome Adams explained his divergence with Trump by noting that the non-leader in the White House "is trying to be optimistic for Americans with his Easter timeline and also asked those not taking the coronavirus seriously to understand there is a possibility America could reach a worst-case scenario if residents do not follow the guidelines."

And optimistic for himself? I mean, Pope Francis asked the faithful to stay out of churches on Easter Sunday; Trump wants them filled with people celebrating his own resurrection. That's some step from "Hoax!"

Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that a record-breaking 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits. The Washington Post put it like this: "Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April. Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once."

“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures.

The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.

...“We may well be in a recession,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in his first appearance on morning television on NBC’s Today show. “The first order of business is to get the virus under control and then resume economic activity.”

...Both the scale of the layoffs and the speed at which they are happening are unprecedented. During the Great Recession, for example, the worst week for jobless claims was 665,000. Last week the nation saw five times that amount.

The Trump recession has begun and now what we have to hope for is that it doesn't become the Trump Depression. With him at the helm, we could be looking at 40 million unemployed by Easter. Read any independent economist and the words "it’s going to get worse" are always in their analysis. Writing for HuffPo, Zach Carter and Amanda Terkel reported that Mnuchin is basically in his own delusional world and that everything will be fine after he gets his hands on the half trillion dollar slush fund. After the unemployment spike was announced yesterday, he told CNBC's audience that "I just think these numbers right now are not relevant, and you know, whether they’re bigger or smaller in the short term. I mean, obviously, there are people who have jobless claims. And again, the good thing about this bill is the president is protecting those people. So you know, now with these plans, small businesses hopefully will be able to hire back a lot of those people. Last week, they didn’t know if they had protections. They didn’t have any cash. They had no choice. Now with this bill passed by Congress, there are protections."

This is wishful thinking, to put it mildly. Despite its big price tag, economists believe the legislation passed by the Senate on Wednesday is far too modest to meet the scope of the coming economic crash.

The $349 billion the legislation sets aside for small businesses will be exhausted quickly, but experts also believe that it will take months for the aid to reach most small firms. During that time, many of them will simply fail, and you can’t rehire workers if you don’t have a company.

The key provision of the bailout bill is a $454 billion program overseen by Mnuchin that can be leveraged 10 times over by the Federal Reserve to do essentially anything Mnuchin and the Fed want to do with it. But firms that receive this money will still be allowed to lay off up to 10% of their workforces over the next six months-- and that figure would be calculated based on this week’s employment. The 3.3 million people who were laid off last week wouldn’t count.

The coronavirus crash isn’t a simple shortage of cash. It’s a crisis on several different economic fronts that will require months, if not years, of aggressive government action to combat.

Global supply chains are breaking down as companies that manufacture goods in other countries find themselves unable to access factories and materials that they have relied upon for years. The collapse in U.S. consumer spending won’t simply return to normal.

The legislation’s protections for people who are laid off or struggling to pay the bills are simply too paltry to restore the plunge in purchasing power from unprecedented layoffs, not to mention the fear that most families are now experiencing. Every household in America will be pinching their pennies for the foreseeable future, and that loss of spending translates into a loss of revenue for businesses, and lower payrolls. The loss of American purchasing power will resonate both at home and abroad. This may well culminate in a shock to the financial system akin to the meltdown of 2008.

Thursday’s unemployment number is likely undercounting how many people are without work as well. Some people who have tried to apply for unemployment benefits have reported phone lines and websites frozen and jammed up by the crush of applicants. And people who are self-employed, undocumented, students or gig workers are ineligible to apply and therefore not counted.

Don Beyer (New Dem-VA), vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee: "These numbers are far worse than anything we saw during the Great Recession. We need to move quickly to help those that are getting hurt. It not only protects those families but it protects the economy-- so everyone benefits. That is why the bill passed by the Senate to increase unemployment insurance by an extra $600 a week for four months and make billions available for small business grants and loan payments is so important-- only Congress can make sure that those who are out of work right now, and the small businesses that employ them, do not go broke. It is vital that the federal government continue to follow the directives of medical professionals and public health experts, and not yield to the urge to 'reopen' the economy too soon. Doing so could cost lives and drastically deepen and prolong the damage to the economy. Stopping this pandemic and protecting human life is the most important thing we can do, and it is also the best thing we can do for the economy. I continue to urge all who can to please stay home."

As Chris Martenson says every single day in his podcast-- not to mention Erasure-- it didn't have to be this way. Obama made it look so easy that even a brainless blowhard-- who assured us he only hires "the best people"-- could be president. Turns out, he only hires the worst people. In yesterday's NY Times Jennifer Steinhauer and Zolan Kanno-Youngs noted that "Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary who recently was unable to tell a Senate committee how many respirators and protective face masks were available in the United States. The National Park Service, which like many federal agencies is full of vacancies in key posts, tried this week to fill the job of a director for the national capital region after hordes of visitors flocked to see the cherry blossoms near the National Mall, creating a potential public health hazard as the coronavirus continues to spread. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers. Empty slots and high turnover have left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what may be the largest public health crisis in a century, said numerous former and current federal officials and disaster experts. Some 80 percent of the senior positions in the White House below the cabinet level have turned over during President Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Mr. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Between Mr. Trump’s history of firing people and the choice by many career officials and political appointees to leave, he now finds himself with a government riddled with vacancies, acting department chiefs and, in some cases, leaders whose professional backgrounds do not easily match up to the task of managing a pandemic."

Trump rules by chaos, fear, personal loyalty and whim. No American president was ever less prepared for something as catastrophic as this pandemic as Trump was. There is no part of the federal government functioning adequately.





Last night, Bob Dylan alerted his fans, via tweet, that this previously unreleased 17 minute song, "Murder Most Foul," is now available. Alexis Petridis for The Guardian: "People have mooted that it’s a standalone release, appearing now because Dylan understandably thinks it’s timely, March 2020 being a pretty apropos moment to release an epic song filled with death and horror and apocalyptic dread ('The age of the antichrist has just begun... it’s 36 hours past judgment day'), or perhaps to give his diehard fans further incentive to stay indoors. You rather get the feeling some of them will still be self-isolating months after the coronavirus all-clear has sounded, delicately unpicking its manifold knotty allusions-- the line about playing it for Carl Wilson down Gower Avenue requires the listener to know that the late Beach Boy sang backing vocals on Desperados Under the Eaves, the concluding track from Warren Zevon’s eponymous 1976 album, which ended with the line 'look away down Gower Avenue'-- and arguing on message boards as to whether the Susie mentioned midway through is just a reference to the Everly Brothers, or to Suze Rotolo, the girlfriend with whom Dylan watched the aftermath of Kennedy assassination unfolding, holed up in their New York apartment... The point is clearly the lyrics, which are dense and intriguing enough to hold your interest, and give the listener plenty to digest. Quite aside from all the cultural references, there’s a narrator that keeps switching from Kennedy himself to Dylan, who in turn seems to keep switching from firebrand mode to the grimly resigned old grouch of Things Have Changed and It’s All Good ('I hate to tell you Mister but only dead men are free') and a plethora of details about the assassination itself: 'Don’t say Dallas don’t love you, Mr President' is a mangling of the last words spoken to Kennedy by Nellie Connally, the first lady of Texas."

What Can Be Done About A Criminal Presidency? Just Grin And Bear It? Pelosi Still Refuses To Protect The Country And The Constitution

Remember when fact-checking Trump and reporting how many lies he had told was a national sport? [Update, according to PolitiFact, 84% of the Trump statements they've checked have been false or partially false. Biden, who lies just 61% of the time, almost seems like a paragon of virtue compared to Trump.] But now Jonathan Chait is starting a new game. How many impeachable acts has Trump committed today?

Yesterday, he wrote that Trump had committed 5 more just this week. I know; it's not funny and it's not a game. But with Pelosi's partisan calculations making it impossible for Democrats to even begin the process of holding him accountable, what can we do other than look on in horror? Chait wrote that at his MAGA rally in an airplane hanger in tiny Montoursville, Pennsylvania this week, "Trump’s characteristic threats of vengeance against his enemies took an especially chilling turn. 'There was treason!' he announced, summarizing the investigation into the Mueller probe. The crowd began chanting, 'Lock them up! Lock them up!'"

Trump initially returned to his prepared text, itself a creepily ethno-nationalist paean to his narrow Electoral College win. “You reclaimed your destiny, you defended your dignity, and you took back your country,” he read, in a passage that probably sounded better in the original German. But the “Lock them up!” chants persisted, and, with his showman’s gift for timing, Trump turned back to his audience and paused as the chants increased, then theatrically relented to the demands of the crowd that he had stoked. “We have a great new attorney general who will give it a very fair look, very fair look,” he promised... As Trump said “very fair,” he wore an arch expression. Trump of course does not use “fair” in anything like the dictionary definition of the term. Trump’s notion of “fairness” is purely positional, revolving entirely around his own self-interest. With his expression, Trump-- unusual for him-- brought the crowd in on the joke. “Very fair” was a punch line.

Trump’s notion of a “fair” attorney general, as he has stated many times, is one who loyally protects the president’s political interests. His frequent expressions of confidence in William Barr are therefore an important indicator. Barr conspicuously refused to answer a question about whether he had been ordered to investigate anybody, then announced a new, third, investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. Barr has also repeatedly prejudged the outcome of that probe in public. Trump “has told close confidants that he ‘finally’ had ‘my attorney general,’ according to two Republicans close to the White House,” reports the Associated Press. Every indicator suggests Trump believes, correctly or otherwise, that his attorney general shares his peculiar, mob-family sense of fairness.

In a pre-Trumpian world, this sequence of events would set off a political crisis. In the surreal landscape we inhabit, it barely registers. But it is worth noting that Trump continues to commit impeachable offenses at an unprecedented pace. Last night’s threats to make good on his “lock them up” promises are merely one more in another recent flurry. The space between Trump’s long-standing authoritarian rhetoric and the deployment of his powers of office is slowly collapsing on several fronts.

Consider some of the events of recent days. Sunday, the New York Times revealed that Deutsche Bank’s internal investigators raised concerns that the portfolios of Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner involved money laundering. Trump is suing Deutsche Bank to block it from complying with congressional investigators. The notion that the president is entitled to engage in red-flagged dealings with money launderers, and conceal it from Congress and the public, is a wild transgression of transparency norms.

The same day, the Times reported Trump is preparing pardons for several American war criminals. Trump has long fantasized about war crimes and human-rights violations as part of his idealized military, from repeating a fantasized historical account of General Pershing shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood to proposing that the United States seize Iraqi oil as spoils of war. His prospective pardoning of war criminals are steps toward institutionalizing this vision as de facto law.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Michael Cohen told a closed House panel that Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, encouraged him to lie to Congress in 2017. Cohen’s lie concerned his handling of a deal to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. The subject of the lie is itself a massive scandal: Vladimir Putin, who habitually corrupts foreign politicians with bribes disguised as lucrative deals, was dangling a contract worth several hundred million dollars, with no financial risk or downside to Trump.

Cohen has testified that Trump encouraged him to lie by repeating, in his characteristic mobster code-- “There’s no Russia”-- a cover story both men knew to be false. (Trump of course signed the letter of intent for the Moscow Project.) The new report shows that Sekulow was involved in crafting his false testimony, and that, far from the president’s lawyer freelance ordering perjury, Cohen understood Trump to be working through Sekulow.

The new disclosure fleshes out more evidence that the president suborned perjury to conceal evidence that he was deeply compromised by Russia during the campaign.

Also yesterday, former White House Counsel Don McGahn refused to appear at a House hearing to testify to yet another serious presidential crime. According to the Mueller report, Trump ordered McGahn to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller, an order McGahn refused. Trump later told McGahn to falsely deny Trump had ever told him this.

Trump has publicly insisted none of this has happened, a denial that makes McGahn’s testimony highly pertinent. There is no basis for refusing to let McGahn testify. It’s not executive privilege, a right McGahn already waived by discussing it with Mueller. Instead, the White House is advancing the novel and extreme argument that Congress can never compel testimony from a senior White House official. That precedent, if accepted, would negate vast swathes of Congress’s long-standing investigative powers.

What’s more, Trump is backstopping his demand with financial blackmail. The AP reports that “Trump has mused about instructing Republicans to cease dealing with the firm” currently employing McGahn, which relies on Republican connections for its business. So Trump, in short, is using financial blackmail in support of a fallacious legal argument in order to cover up a clear instance of obstruction of justice-- a seamless garment of corruption.

What cynics had waved off as Trump’s cartoonish musings is slowly seeping its way into sanctioned government policy. The question of whether or not to impeach Trump has attached itself to the discrete drama of the Mueller report, which contains a large cache of Trumpian misconduct. But the misconduct is also an ongoing process with no clear endpoint. The impeachable offenses just keep coming.

Reporting from Pam and Russ Martens on Monday is even more of a deep drive into the criminal conspiracy that has taken grip of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Foreign money flows is their topic. Trump tweeting that the NY Times bombshell about Deutsche Bank employees having flagged suspicious activity in Trump's and Kushner-in-law's bank accounts involving those aforementioned foreign money flows was par for the course, but... turned out to be not quite enough to gaslight the country with. Their Deutsche Bank superiors stopped them from reporting the suspicious activities to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). But what Trump claimed in his tweets was that the employees being anonymous sources that were fabricated and didn't exist. That was odd since the source wasn't anonymous, but a legitimate whistleblower, Tammy McFadden, one of the five sources for their story. She is described as "a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office," who "found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals," and "concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government-- in part because federal regulators had ordered Deutsche Bank, which had been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians, to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions"-- clearly money laundering. When McFadden wrote up a suspicious Activity Report it was blocked from being sent to FinCEN by Deutsche Bank's Private Bank and McFadden was fired.

Deutsche Bank settled with U.S. and U.K. authorities over a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme in 2017, paying a combined fine of $630 million.  Deutsche Bank’s offices in Frankfurt, Germany were raided in November of last year by 170 law enforcement officials. The probe involved potential money laundering. The draft report released by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 13 of last year contained this paragraph:

“Donald Trump’s finances historically have been opaque, but there have long been credible allegations as to the use of Trump properties to launder money by Russian oligarchs, criminals, and regime cronies. There also remain critical unanswered questions about the source of President Trump’s personal and corporate financing. For example, Deutsche Bank, which was fined $630 million in 2017 over its involvement in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme, consistently has been the source of financing for President Trump, his businesses, and his family. We have only begun to explore the relationship between President Trump and Deutsche Bank, and between the bank and Russia.”

Over the years, Deutsche Bank has loaned Trump “a total of well over $2 billion,” according to an earlier report in the New York Times. A significant part of that money was loaned when other major banks would not loan to Trump due to his defaults and business bankruptcies.

The current New York Times article has this to say about bank accounts directly involving Donald Trump:

“After Mr. Trump became president, transactions involving him and his companies were reviewed by an anti-financial crime team at the bank called the Special Investigations Unit. That team, based in Jacksonville, produced multiple suspicious activity reports involving different entities that Mr. Trump owned or controlled, according to three former Deutsche Bank employees who saw the reports in an internal computer system.

“Some of those reports involved Mr. Trump’s limited liability companies. At least one was related to transactions involving the Donald J. Trump Foundation, two employees said.

“Deutsche Bank ultimately chose not to file those suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department, either, according to three former employees. They said it was unusual for the bank to reject a series of reports involving the same high-profile client.”

Historically, the Justice Department has avoided jailing, or even prosecuting, banksters. Really? Oh yes In 1999 the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations exposed the international money dealings at Citigroup’s commercial bank, Citibank. In his opening remarks, Senator Carl Levin explained how the bank operated:

Today we are looking at the private bank of Citibank. It is the largest bank in the United States, and it has one of the largest private bank operations. It has the most extensive global presence of all U.S. banks, and it had a rogues’ gallery of private bank clients. Citibank has been private banker to:

• Raul Salinas, brother to the former President of Mexico; now in prison in Mexico for murder and under investigation in Mexico for illicit enrichment; [Salinas had his murder conviction overturned on appeal and was released from prison in 2005.]
• Asif Ali Zardari, husband to the former Prime Minister of Pakistan; now in prison in Pakistan for kickbacks and under indictment in Switzerland for money laundering;
• Omar Bongo, President of Gabon; subject of a French criminal investigation into bribery;
• sons of the General Sani Abacha, former military leader of Nigeria; one of whom is now in prison in Nigeria on charges of murder and under investigation in Switzerland and Nigeria for money laundering;
• Jaime Lusinchi, former President of Venezuela; charged with misappropriation of government funds;
• two daughters of Radon Suharto, former President of Indonesia, who has been alleged to have looted billions of dollars from Indonesia…
• General Albert Stroessner, former President of Paraguay and notorious for decades for a dictatorship based on terror and profiteering.

During the hearing the subcommittee's counsel, Robert Roach, explained the services that Citibank had provided to then Mexican President Carlos Salinas' brother Raul:

“The private bank…established a shell company for Mr. Salinas with layers of disguised ownership. It permitted a third party using an alias to deposit funds into the accounts, and it moved the funds out of Mexico through a Citibank concentration account that aided in the obfuscation of the audit trail. Cititrust in the Cayman Islands activated a Cayman Island shell corporation called a PIC, or private investment corporation, called Trocca, Ltd., to serve as the owner of record for the Salinas private bank accounts…

“Cititrust used three Panamanian shell companies to function as Trocca’s Board of Directors. Cititrust also used three Cayman Island shell companies to serve as Trocca’s officers and principal shareholders. Cititrust controls all six of these shell companies and routinely uses them to function as directors and officers of PICs that it makes available to private clients. Later, Citibank established a trust, identified only by a number, to serve as the owner of Trocca, Ltd. Raul Salinas was the secret beneficiary of the trust.

“The result of this elaborate structure was that the Salinas name did not appear anywhere on Trocca’s incorporation papers. The Trocca, Ltd. accounts were established in London and Switzerland…

“To accommodate Mr. Salinas’ desire to conceal the fact that he was moving money out of Mexico, Ms. [Amy] Elliott [a Relationship Manager at Citibank] introduced Mr. Salinas’ then-fiancee Paulina Castanon as Patricia Rios to a service officer at the Mexico City branch of Citibank. Operating under that alias, Ms. Castanon would deliver cashiers checks to the branch where they would be converted into dollars and wired into a concentration account in New York. The concentration account is a business account established by Citibank to hold funds from various destinations prior to depositing them into the proper accounts. Transferring funds through this account enables a client’s name and account number to be removed from the transaction, thereby clouding the audit trail. From there, the money would be transferred to the Trocca, Ltd. accounts in London and Switzerland…

“Between October 1992 and October 1994, more than $67 million was moved from Mexico to New York and then on to London and Switzerland by way of this system…Yet no one questioned Mr. Salinas about the origin of these funds. Far from inquiring about the sources of the funds, Ms. Elliott wrote to her colleagues in June 1993 that the Salinas account ‘is turning into an exciting, profitable one for us all. Many thanks for making me look good.'"

Roach further expounded on how the Relationship Manager’s need to “please the client” trumped their responsibilities under the law, stating that “After Mr. Salinas was arrested, Hubertus Rukavina, the head of Citibank Private Bank at the time, suggested that the Salinas accounts in London be transferred back to Switzerland because they would be afforded more secrecy there.”

Amy Elliott, according to Roach, even advised Mrs. Salinas “that it might be wise to move the Trocca, Ltd. account out of Citibank because it might be more difficult for Mexican authorities to obtain account information from a non-U.S. bank.”

At one point during the hearing, Senator Levin questioned Amy Elliott on the transcript of a phone conversation she had with a colleague:

Senator Levin: “On another matter, the day after Mr. Salinas was arrested, you said the following: ‘Everybody was on board on this.’ Later, in the same conversation, you said, ‘I mean, this goes in the very, very top of the corporation this was known, Okay? On the very top.’ Then you said, ‘We are little pawns in this whole thing, Okay?’ Who were you referring to when you said ‘this goes in the very top of the corporation this was known’? Who are you referring to at the very top of the corporation?”

Amy Elliott: “Bill Rhodes…I am sitting four or five down from the chairman, and Bill Rhodes was and is the vice chairman of the bank. To me, that’s pretty top.”

The Martens made it clear to their readers what I hope you have already figured out on your own: "It should be crystal clear that the U.S. Department of Justice can’t be in charge of this new investigation if America expects to ever extricate itself from this unprecedented era of corruption." A new poll released by Monmouth today found the highest percentage yet of registered voters saying they do not think Trump deserves a second term-- 60%. Just 37% say he should be reelected in 2020.

Even When Trump Inadvertently Does Something Right...

Jeremy Scahill is one of the best investigative journalists in the country. You might know his work, particularly on matters related to foreign policy, from The Nation or from The Intercept or from his books, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program or Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. Yesterday an early morning tweet storm may help people to understand their own mixed feelings about Trump's moves this week in regard to Syria and Afghanistan. Progressives want to end American involvement in those two tragic wars. But... Trump. Scahill:

1. I support withdrawing US troops from all these wars, overt and covert.
2. Trump is an unstable authoritarian who cannot be trusted.
3. “Mattis was an adult” is bullshit. He’s a hawkish war criminal.
4. It’s very telling that the war party in DC is furious.
5. This is an opportunity for progressive forces to assert an alternative vision for US foreign policy.
6. Trump is a crooked charlatan. But these withdrawals would represent a dent in the armor of the bipartisan war machine.
7. This chaos presents opportunity.

First off, who isn't critical of Trump's wag the dog motives in Syria? It's perfectly legitimate for anti-war progressives to criticize him and what's left of his tattered and corrupt regime for a lack of coherent strategy in regard to what apsses for a foreign policy. That's different from the pro-Military Industrial argument news outlets-- just watch MSNBC-- are making. Glorifying Mattis just because he called out Trump is as much a mistake as is glorifying U.S. policy of engaging in endless wars.

Remember, Bernie would also be withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East (albeit within a more coherent and clear policy agenda).

As soon as Trump made his announcement this week, Win Without War director Stephen Miles issued a statement that helps speak to how progressives looks at Trump's troop withdrawals.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the United States has gotten its response wrong every step of the way, and Donald Trump’s latest moves are no exception.

From day one, Win Without War has opposed a U.S. military response to a crisis with no military solution, and we continue to support the full withdrawal of American military personnel from Syria. However, Donald Trump’s plan to declare ‘victory’ and walk away from an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe-- one that the U.S. in part helped create-- is reckless, shortsighted, and wrong. Even worse, given that just yesterday a federal court judge chastised Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor for ‘selling out our country’ to Turkey, we are left wondering what secret deals and backroom arrangements with Turkey and other major players in Syria may actually be driving this Administration’s new plans in Syria.

...When Congress reconvenes in January, it must conduct the basic oversight of Donald Trump’s foreign policy that under Republican House and Senate majorities has thus far failed to provide. Congress must connect the dots between Trump’s web of foreign ties and questionable deals with a growing axis of authoritarian dictators. Any oversight initiative must also shine a light on the continued violence, instability, and human suffering caused by our military misadventures in nearly every corner of the globe.

The people of Syria have suffered immensely for our nation’s repeated fueling of war and limited efforts at peace. Now, as we bring our service-members home from the battlefield, we must not continue to repeat those very same mistakes.

Remember, the Republicans turning on Trump over Syria, Afghanistan and Mattis-- like Lindsey Graham, Kinzinger and Marco Rubio-- are not our friends and are not advocates of good policy. When someone who votes for all TRump's right-wing crap, like Ben Sasse (R-NE), says "This is a sad day for America," he means a sad day for the Military Industrial Complex he represents.

Yesterday, Eli Lake, in a column for Bloomberg News, wrote that "Trump may not know it yet, but his presidency is collapsing. [His] supporters may still feel unfazed, even confident. Trump has burned through two chiefs of staff, two national security advisers, a secretary of state and an attorney general in less than two years. He has survived. This resignation, though, is different... Mattis provided Trump with a powerful shield. Whatever you thought of his views, Mattis embodied military virtue and the spirit of public service. As long as he served the president, reluctant Republicans could point to the Pentagon and say: If Mattis supports Trump, then so do I. They can no longer do that." Well... we'll see if they do or they don't-- and for how long. My expectation from Republicans is... low.

Philip Rucker and Bob Costa reported in that Washington Post yesterday that Trump's decisions and conduct have led to a fracturing of his coalition. "Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Conservatives called him a 'gutless president' and questioned whether he would ever build a wall. Political friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in... Said one former Trump administration official: 'There’s going to be an intervention. Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow. He’s the most credible member of the administration by five grades of magnitude. He’s the steady, safe set of hands. And this letter is brutal. He quit because of the madness.'"

I hope you saw Marcy Wheeler's post yesterday, We Will Not Get Peace From The People Who Dismember Dissidents Alive. She warned that while she appreciates that Scahill really does capture this ambivalence [in that tweet storm], "far too many others welcoming a potential troop withdrawal are not recognizing the complexity of the moment. While we don’t yet fully understand the complex dynamics that led to it, Trump decided to withdraw from Syria during a phone call with a man who has spent two months embarrassing Trump, Trump’s son-in-law, and the corrupt Saudi prince whose crackdown Trump has enthusiastically backed by releasing details of how that prince lulled an American resident dissident to a third country so he could be chopped up with a bone saw while still breathing. And even while Erdogan was embarrassing Trump with those details about Khashoggi’s assassination, he was pressuring Trump to extend the same favor to him by extraditing Fethullah Gulen so he could be chopped up in some grisly fashion."

She asks how Trump's fondness for fossil fuels and arms sales can be countered and insists that "no withdrawal is going to lead to 'peace' or even a retreat of the US empire so long as Trump exacerbates an already unforgivable US addiction to fossil fuels and reliance on arms sales. Particularly with Saudi Arabia but also with Turkey, Trump has excused his fondness for authoritarianism by pointing to arms sales. And on these issues, Trump actually agrees with the “war party in DC,” which will make it far harder to counter them. Yes, many of the new Democrats entering Congress-- most of all Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-- don’t have these horrible habits. So what can you do to make sure her Green New Deal not only isn’t squelched by party leadership, but is seen as the alternative to Trump by centrists?"

What Kind Of Congress Member Do YOU Want? We Already Know What Kinds The DCCC Wants

Even though congressional party leaders are blocking it from becoming part of the official Democratic agenda and even though both the DCCC and the DSCC screened candidates to find ones who didn't back it, 84.5% of Americans (and 70.1% of all Americans) support Medicare-For-All. Friday in Illinois, President Obama explicitly expressed-- for the first time, at least in public-- his support for Medicare-for-All.

Democrats and independents are about to turn out in droves to defeat Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress. The media is calling this a "blue wave." But that's utter bullshit. This is an anti-red wave. Pelosi and her PAY-GO, that is meant to prevent programs like Medicare-For-All from moving forward-- are hardly what voters are embracing. Pelosi is doing exactly what she did in 2006. Then she and her numbscull allies set up a catastrophic 2010. Today they are setting up what will be, inevitably, a catastrophic 2022. The Democratic establishment does not learn. I used to oppose term limits. I was wrong. Term limits is the only thing that will stop grotesquely out-of-touch yesteryear politicians like Pelosi from growing roots their positions while the world moves along without them.

Her DCCC is working hard to perpetuate establishment and donor class power, while violently assaulting the progressive ideas that power the enthusiasm that is turning the anti-red wave into reality. Pelosi, Hoyer, Lujan, Schumer... the whole Democratic clown parade are picking out their outfits for the victory parade and practicing their talking points for MSNBC, CNN, Meet The Press, etc al right after the elections. What a great job they did, they will claim and their TV hosts will agree. Without the DCCC, without Pelosi and her leadership team, without the Blue Dogs, New Dems, ex-Republicans and the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party, how many more seats would the GOP be ceding in November.

Imagine a party actually running on what Americans want-- instead of failed austerity programs like PAY-GO that Pelosi and the DCCC are going to use to turn Democratic victory into shit in our mouths!

Maybe the DCCC should have been screening out conservative candidates who didn't support Medicare-For-All. Instead they were busy this cycle looking for all kinds of ridiculous candidates with spurious "qualifications" that have nothing to do with what Democratic voters want from Congress. Early Saturday morning, NBC News reported on one of the ones we've been looking at (askance) all cycle: ex-intelligence officials. That's a recruitment qualification? For the DCCC it has been. Adam Edelman is as enthusiastic about them as the DCCC recruitment committee wanted him to be: "They put their lives on the line in foreign war zones, conducted secret missions to collect valuable intelligence and made enormous sacrifices for their country — only to see their former colleagues disrespected by President Donald Trump. Now, driven by the president's conduct, they're taking matters into their own hands and gearing up for a different challenge: Running for Congress as Democrats."

How are they on Medicare-For-All? Job Guarantee? Free state colleges? Anything?

Nah... they're just "fed up with what they see as Trump's disdain and distrust of the intelligence community." Oh, well, by all means, let's get them into Congress as members voting on (see above). Oh and, by the way, they all seem to be part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, of course. Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Elissa Slotkin (MI), both New Dems (the corrupt, Wall Street-owned conservative caucus) seem to think that running for Congress is "a matter of restoring respect for the agencies they gave so much of themselves to."

And there are more: Gina Ortiz Jones (TX) is running against a Republican incumbent, Will Hurd, who was also a CIA operative. Fun.

Two who lost their primaries in NY-19 were Jeff Beals and Patrick Ryan. But another one the DCCC managed to get through the primary against a progressive-- Tom Malinowski, who's running against Leonard Lance in New Jersey's 7th district-- wasn't mentioned in the NBC report. I wonder why (not really). The DCCC is trying to sell Malinowski to voters as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor who "earned national acclaim for standing up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un." Is that so?

TOM MALINOWSKI AND THE TORTURE LOOPHOLE

The campaign messaging circulated by Malinowski for Congress highlights their candidate’s background as having fought against the sanctioning of torture during the Bush administration. The particulars of this language should not be overlooked. Why? Because once Tom Malinowski became a part of the Obama Administration as an Assistant Secretary of State, his function was not to end practices that were regarded by international legal and human rights organizations as torture. Instead, he facilitated the continuation of protocols by United States that created a “torture loophole,” a framework by which interrogators could initiate tactics and practices that when used in correlation, their aggregate effects result in the torture of a prisoner. This was accomplished through his defense of the interrogation protocols sanctioned by Appendix M of the US Army Field Manual.

This troubling history was recently brought to light during the confirmation hearing for CIA Director Gina Haspel. Around that context, the wider implications of the shameful legacy of US-sanctioned torture was discussed in a recent podcast by The Intercept (Intercepted, Episode 57, 5/23/18), in which Tom Malinowski’s role in the continuation of torture by the United States was discussed by author and anti-torture activist Dr. Jeffrey Kaye and host Jeremy Scahill:

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye: And the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M is quite clear that its import is to prolong trauma, to prolong what they call “the shock of capture,” and to induce compliance and take away the will of individuals.

And the United Nations Committee against Torture, in 2014, did its investigations on various countries’ compliance with the treaty against torture and when it came around last to the United States, it pointed out and said: You know, Appendix M is inducing psychosis in people. We have real questions about what you’re doing with isolation, and sleep deprivation is actually amounting to torture.

The former member of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, who at that point was an Obama administration State Department official, responded to the U.N. Committee against Torture and defended the use of Appendix M and said that it had, you know, plenty of safeguards against misuse and torture.

Jeremy Scahill: You’re saying that a former staffer or official at Human Rights Watch, who then goes on to work in the Obama administration, was the official who was put forward to defend the techniques that you’re describing, as they exist in Appendix M, under the Obama administration.

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye: Yes. He was one of four or five officials who were put forward and went to New York to formally respond to what the U.N. officials were criticizing about U.S. interrogation. Yes.

Amnesty International railed against the Obama administration's Malinowski-led effort to deflect criticism for a wide assembly of international human rights advocates at the hearing of the UN Committee Against Torture, stating:

"The USA merely reiterated what the Committee found inadequate during the review, namely that an investigation into CIA interrogations had been conducted and closed, with no charges referred. It also repeated its focus on the future by seeking to consign to history and impunity what had happened in the program...Accountability and remedy for undoubted crimes under international law have fallen by the wayside in this self- congratulatory analysis... So the story on these issues is one of double standards, impunity for crimes under international law, indefinite detentions, secrecy serving to block truth, remedy, and accountability, and rejection after rejection of the recommendations of UN treaty bodies and other human rights experts."

So even though the evasive answers put forward by Malinowski and his team at the 2014 hearing of the UN Committee Against Torture gave the Obama administration the breathing room to allow US interrogation practices to continue, the facts are undeniable: allowing interrogation to operate under the guidelines of US Army Field Manual Appendix M opened up a "torture loophole" by which the human rights of prisoners could continue to be violated within a framework where the United States government could claim plausible deniability. Tom Malinowski had the opportunity to take a principled stance against this inhumane policy. Unfortunately, Malinowski instead chose to be an advocate and apologist for the torture loophole.

So where is he on Medicare-For-All? Did the DCCC ask him? Why bother? He's better than Leonard Lance... certainly the lesser evil. Isn't he? Anyone know? Of course, he's a New Dem, so not an actual Democrat. Someone wrote him a good  persuasive issues page on his campaign website and he does sound good. Let's see what happens when he gets into Congress. We'll watch and report back.

Malinowski's campaign ad sounds... well, also persuasive. That's what TV ad makers get paid to do. And he says he "worked with both parties to ban torture." Somewhat different from the record but, hey, everyone tells stories from their own perspective, right?