Trump Says He "Loves" Alaska But Everyone Knows He Only Loves Trump

In the 2000 election, 167,398 Alaskans (58.62%) voted for George W Bush against Al Gore. Four years later 190,889 Alaskans (61.07%) voted for Bush against John Kerry. Bush was popular among Alaskan voters-- who also backed John McCain (59.42%) and Mitt Romney (54.80%). But Trump isn't well liked by most Alaskans. He barely eked out a majority against Hillary-- 51.28%, pretty sad compared to Bush. And today it was widely reported that Bush had decided he will neither endorse nor even vote for Trump in November. Colin Powell, Bush's Secretary of State, told Jake Tapper on State of the Union that he "certainly can not in any way support" Trump this year and that Trump has "drifted away" from the Constitution, has been an ineffective president, and "lies all the time." Trump's response was to tweet that Powell is "a real stiff." He hasn't savaged Bush yet. None of this is going to make Alaskan independents more likely to back Trump. Independent voters decide who wins elections in Alaska.

Right now, Alaska has two Republican U.S. senators-- Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, the former an independent-minded conservative and the latter a knee-jerk boot-licker for Trump. Sullivan, who is rumored to be considering dropping out of his reelection bid and allowing Gov. Dunleavey to take the GOP nomination so that he (Sullivan) can run for Governor in 2022, is in a toss up race against independent Dr. Al Gross, who has been endorsed by the Democratic Party. Murkowski isn't up for reelection until 2022. But she already has an opponent: Señor Trumpanzee.

As we saw yesterday, she praised Jim Mattis' criticism of Trump and told a journalist she is "struggling" with the idea of backing his reelection. The most thin-skinned sociopath in American politics immediately flipped his wig and let loose with these two nasty, adolescent tweets:

After embarrassing himself by attacking and threatening a senior Republican senator-- despite having promised McConnell he wouldn't do that in return for McConnell's unwavering obeisance-- Trump lavished praise on all the GOP senators most likely to lose in November because of his reverse coattails: David Perdue (R-GA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Steve Daines (R-MT) and, of course, Dan Sullivan. Sullivan is such a nonentity in DC that Trump couldn't even think of a single thing to say about him... so just retweeted 5 random Sullivan tweets from May 22, 23 and June 2.

The Anchorage Daily News reminded its readers that "During the 2016 presidential campaign, both Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) called on Trump to drop out of the race after the release of a video in which the GOP nominee boasted in vulgar language about forcing himself sexually on women. Both said they weren’t voting for him at the time."

This morning, Gross told me that "Alaskans appreciate when their elected officials take a stand and have a backbone. We can all respectfully disagree with one another, but at the end of the day, Alaskans want to be represented by independents-- people who aren't beholden to an orthodoxy, a party, or an ideology-- because here in Alaska if  you can't think for  yourself, you just won't survive. Dan Sullivan doesn't understand this because he doesn't understand Alaska. He's not from here, and has been solely focused on climbing the National Republican political ladder. I have zero interest in climbing any political ladder. My focus is on making Alaskans' lives better. That's my focus and always will be. I'm Always Alaska."

Putin Invested In A Trump Presidency-- He Won Big-- "These Are Dark Times. They Are About To Get Darker."

2020 America by Nancy Ohanian

Will Trump dare go on the attack against Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R), who said yesterday she might not back his reelection? Maybe that's what she wants. Although Trump won the state's 3 electoral votes in 2016, he only scored 52.9% of the vote and his popularity has ticked down ever since. The Morning Consult Trump Tracker's last look at Alaska found that his job approval was at 51% and that since inaugural day he had lost 19 points. An internal campaign poll shows Trump reelect number at just a dismal 47%-- and last time she ran, Murkowski wasn't supported by the Republican Party establishment and won anyway. I bet there are a lot of Republican Members of Congress who wish they could say the same and not be dragged down to defeat in the anti-Trump wave that's going to sweep over the country in November.

This is what Murkowski had to say about Mattis' remarks about Trump yesterday: "When I saw General Mattis' comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up... I was really thankful. I thought General Mattis' words were true, and honest and necessary and overdue. And, I have been struggling for the right words, and I was encouraged a couple of nights ago when I was able to read what President Bush had written. And I found that to be empowering for me as one leader." Asked if she will back Trump's reelection, she said: "I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time I think you know that. I didn't support the President in the initial election, and I work hard to try to make sure that I'm able to represent my state well that I'm able to work with any administration and any president. He is our duly elected President I will continue to work with him. I will continue to work with this administration but I think right now as we are all struggling to find ways to express the words that need to be expressed appropriately, questions about who I'm going to vote for not going to vote for I think are distracting at the moment."

That didn't take long!

The immediate political problem may be Trump, but that is hardly the overarching political problem America is facing-- and our adversaries are aware or it-- and rejoicing in it. "The sight of U.S. police and other security forces tear gassing and beating up protesters are playing on television screens across the planet, offering irresistible fodder for foreign adversaries who’ve long accused the U.S. of hypocrisy. Never mind human rights records that are orders of magnitude worse than anything yet seen on America's streets-- some of these countries are now outright mocking U.S. officials.

Earlier this week, Chris Hedges noted that "The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. What the Roman philosopher Cicero called a commonwealth, a res publica, a 'public thing' or the 'property of a people,' has been transformed into an instrument of naked pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters who loot the U.S. Treasury, pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary, the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to commit financial fraud and theft."

The loss of control over our system of rulership, the misuse of all democratic institutions, the electoral process and laws to funnel money upwards into to a handful of oligarchs while stripping us of power, ominously means that the ruling elites can no longer claim the right to have a monopoly on violence. Violence employed by police and security agencies such as the FBI, which have devolved into occupying forces, to protect the exclusive interests of a tiny, ruling criminal class exposes the fiction of the rule of law and the treason of the ruling elites.

“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience,” Stokely Carmichael warned. And if your opponent is bereft of a conscience, then state violence is inevitably met with counter-violence. Tyranny takes the place of reform. The danger of widespread sectarian violence in America is now very real.

There are three options: reform, which, given the decay in the American body politic, is impossible; revolution; or tyranny. The more things deteriorate, the more the elites feel threatened, the more brutal the police, the National Guard and the organs of state security will become. The longer the serfs defy their masters the more the populations in the jails and prisons, which are already the largest in the world, will swell.

If the mafia state is not overthrown, then America will become a naked police state where any opposition, however tepid, will be met with draconian censorship or force. Police in cities around the country have already thwarted the reporting by dozens of journalists covering the protests through physical force, arrests, tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray.  The huge social divides, largely built around race, will be used by the neo-fascists in power to divert a legitimate rage by a betrayed working class to set neighbor against neighbor. Neo-fascist “patriots” will be unleashed like attack dogs against people of color, Muslims, feminists, intellectuals, artists, the media and liberals. Dissent, even nonviolent dissent, will become treason.

The uprisings in the streets of American cities are not only about the wanton murder by police of yet another person of color, but a frantic fight to wrest back power over our own lives. They go far behind police brutality, a daily reality for those trapped in our internal colonies where 1,100 citizens are murdered by police every year, almost all unarmed. The uprisings are fueled as well by the seizure of the institutional and structural mechanisms that once made some form of equality, always imperfect and always colored by an animus towards the poor and people of color, possible.

Half the country lives in poverty or a category called near poverty. The working class and the working poor are priced out of the health care system. The schools do not educate their children, who live without adequate food and often clean water, are repeatedly evicted from their homes, have their utilities shut off, cannot find jobs, are crippled by punishing debt peonage and with the pandemic are dying at disproportionally higher rates. They get the message the oligarchs are sending. They, and their children, are expendable. They don’t count. Their lives are of no consequence, unless they are locked in a cage where their bodies can generate as much as $60,000 a year for the multitude of corporations, including the for-profit medical services, food services, money transfer services, commissary services, phone services, private prisons and prison contractors, not to mention the large corporations and state governments that exploit the cheap and bonded labor of 1 million of our 2.3 million prisoners.

The prison system is a multi-billion dollar a year industry with lobbyists in state capitals and Washington making sure these bodies remain in cages or are put back into cages soon after they are released. The neo-slavery in our prisons is the corporate model envisioned for all of America.

The two ruling parties are equally complicit in this assault. The Democratic Party, in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, is trying to sell us a presidential nominee, Joe Biden, who was one of the principal architects of de-industrialization and responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of good, union jobs. Biden and Bill Clinton also destroyed our welfare program, where 70 percent of the recipients were children, and orchestrated the doubling of our prison population and the tripling and quadrupling of sentences.

...It is only the dwindling and largely white middle and professional classes who still believe the fiction that this election offers a choice or that we live in a democracy. The working class and the working poor know better. Their lives were, as Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, one long emergency before the pandemic. Now they face the prospect of bankruptcy this summer when unemployment and stimulus checks run out, the moratorium is lifted on evictions to double or triple the unhoused population of 11 million people and unemployment skyrockets to 25 percent. Forty-eight percent of front line workers remain ineligible for sick pay, and some 43 million Americans have just lost their employee-sponsored health insurance. Food banks are already overrun with tens of thousands of desperate families.

And in the midst of this crisis, what did our kleptocratic rulers do? They looted $4 trillion on a scale unseen since the 2008 bailout overseen by Barack Obama and Biden. They gorged and enriched themselves at our expense, while tossing crumbs out of the windows of their private jets, yachts and palatial homes to the suffering and despised masses.

The CARES Act handed trillions in funds or tax breaks to oil companies, the airline industry, which alone got $50 billion in stimulus money, the cruise ship industry, a $170 billion windfall for the real estate industry, private equity firms, lobbying groups, whose political action committees have given $191 million in campaign contributions to politicians in the last two decades, the meat industry and corporations that have moved offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. The act allowed the largest corporations to gobble up money that was supposed to go to keep small businesses solvent to pay workers. It gave 80 percent of tax breaks under the stimulus package to millionaires and allowed the wealthiest to get stimulus checks that average $1.7 million. The CARES Act also authorized $454 billion for the Treasury Department’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a massive slush fund doled out by Trump cronies to corporations that, when leveraged 10 to 1, can be used to create a staggering $4.5 trillion in assets. The act authorized the Fed to give $1.5 trillion in loans to Wall Street, which no one expects will ever be paid back. American billionaires have gotten $434 billion richer since the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, whose corporation Amazon paid no federal taxes last year, alone added $34.6 billion to his personal wealth since the pandemic started.

How long can you expect people to watch their children go hungry? How long can you expect people to watch their loved ones suffer and die because they can’t get medical care? How long can you expect people to be abused by lawless police and a court system designed to railroad the poor into jails and prisons? How long can you watch the rich profit from your misery?

I would prefer that our revolution eschew the poison of violence, which I know too intimately from my two decades as a war correspondent. But I also know that when everything around you conspires to crush you, the only way left to affirm yourself is to destroy, not only the structures and institutions that have oppressed you, but often yourself. I saw this when I lived in the impoverished neighborhood of Roxbury in Boston and when I worked as a reporter in Gaza. This understanding was something Malcom X, who came out of poverty, always understood and Martin Luther King, a product of the black bourgeoisie, learned later.

It is ultimately the ruling elites who will determine the mechanics of resistance. When they close every escape route, when they speak exclusively in the language of force, then the language of force becomes the only form of communication. Trump’s demand that states use the National Guard to crush the protests and threat to deploy the U.S. military in the streets of American cities only heightens the anger and frustration that led to the uprisings.

The ruling elites are, at the same time, desperately seeking scapegoats. The idea that Antifa, which on the spectrum of terrorist groups would rank alongside the Boy Scouts, is behind these clashes is as ridiculous as the idea that Russia is responsible for the election of Trump. This desperate search for explanations that absolve the ruling elites saw Susan Rice, who was Obama’s national-security adviser, blame the violence on “foreign actors,” adding that “this is right out of the Russian playbook.” This trope is always trotted by despotic rulers to discredit dissidents who are branded as the enemy of the people.

The longer the ruling elites refuse to address the root causes behind these protests, the more they loot the treasury to enrich themselves and their fellow oligarchs, the more they engage in futile and absurd efforts to deflect blame, the more unrest will spread. The last desperate resort by the oligarchs to save themselves will be to stoke the fires of racialized violence between disenfranchised whites and disenfranchised people of color. This, I fear, is the next chapter in this saga. I saw this tactic used to deadly effect in the former Yugoslavia. These are dark times. They are about to get darker.

A President Cannot-- Not Even An Illegitimate One-- Be Impeached For Character-- No Matter How Bad It Is

I don't think anyone in the House thinks they're going to get 20 Republicans to vote to remove Trump from office. They'll be lucky if they can keep Joe Manchin, Doug Jones and Kyrsten Sinema on the reservation and get even one Republican, presumably Collins or Murkowski. Instead, I think what the Democrats are trying to do is create a record for posterity and make a case against Trump's reelection. And they're been very successful in doing just that. Attacking Trump's character is certainly an indictment for voters to consider, both when they decide for whom to vote in the presidential election and for how to look at Republicans how chose to back Trump in the impeachment and subsequent trial.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Elise Viebeck, Karoun Demirjian and Mike DeBonis wrote that the Democrats argued that Trump's behavior towards Ukraine "reflected a dangerous reflex toward political expediency and a lack of character that will backfire on Republicans if they do not help remove him from office. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) and his colleagues attempted to drive this argument home Friday.

The trio of reporters wrote that the purpose was "to sway a handful of Republican senators whose position on gathering further evidence will determine the arc and scope of the trial." In other words, will the Democrats be allowed to call witnesses this week. Mitt Romney said he would probably vote to allow witnesses. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins may have found the excuse they wanted-- Adam Schiff's aggressiveness-- to vote against calling witnesses. As our trio of Post reporters asserted, "there were few signs that any Republican was persuaded, leaving open the matter of possible witness testimony and further dampening Democrats’ already meager hopes of a conviction in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Schiff’s pointed and increasingly personal approach was an attempt to go beyond the specifics of House Democrats’ case to make the broader argument that Trump is an untrustworthy president who is likely to repeatedly flout the Constitution if allowed to stay in office.

“It goes to character,” Schiff said. “You don’t realize how ­important character is in the highest office in the land until you don’t have it.”

The Democrats’ closing statements were their final appeal to senators before the next phase of the trial: an aggressive rebuttal from Trump’s lawyers that will kick off Saturday and continue in earnest on Monday.

Speaking Friday on the Senate floor-- hours after new evidence emerged of Trump’s campaign to oust the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine starting in 2018-- Schiff predicted that Trump’s future behavior would vindicate Democrats’ claim that he abused his power, and he warned Republicans the president, now their ally, could ultimately turn on them.

“Do you think for a moment that any of you-- no matter what your relationship with this president, no matter how close you are to this president-- do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn’t ask you to be investigated?” he asked.

...Democrats need four Republicans to join them in any attempt to secure new testimony or evidence, and the senators being targeted have been careful to say that they have made no decision-- while giving no indication they are moving closer to supporting any subpoenas.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), one of the most closely watched Republican senators, said Friday that the House managers had “presented us with a mountain of overwhelming evidence,” though it was unclear which way he was leaning on the question of hearing more.

Alexander told reporters that he will make his decision on admitting witnesses and other new evidence only after the White House defense team makes its case.

“I think that question can only be answered then,” he said. “We’ve been polite to the House managers, listened to them carefully, and now we’re going to do the same with the president’s lawyers. I think the House managers have done a good job of making their arguments. But that doesn’t mean I will agree with them.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) raised the prospect that a Senate trial could drag on for months if Trump administration witnesses are called, arguing that the issue of executive privilege would have to be litigated in the courts.

“This could tie up the Senate through the election and even beyond as the courts litigate these claims,” Cornyn said during an appearance on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio show. “We’ll wait and see, but right now, I’m not for extending this for months and months while claims of privilege and the like are litigated in the courts.”

The question of whether the Senate will seek more evidence was heightened Friday by a new Washington Post-ABC News poll revealing that a majority of American adults, 66 percent, support the Senate calling new witnesses to testify, as opposed to 27 percent who don’t.

ABC News also reported Friday that it reviewed a recording of Trump at a private dinner telling associates that he wanted then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gone, a reminder of the evidence yet to be uncovered about Trump’s actions.

“Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it,” Trump is heard saying, according to ABC News.

Schiff challenged the Senate to call the administration’s bluff on whether witnesses would be limited from testifying by executive privilege and let Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is presiding over the trial, make those calls.

Calling executive privilege “the last refuge of the president’s team to conceal the evidence from the American people,” Schiff argued that Roberts should “decide issues of evidence and privilege” whenever witnesses or the president claim it, but that the assumption Trump will try to silence certain witnesses by claiming executive privilege should not keep the Senate from calling them to testify.

“The Senate will always have the opportunity to overrule the justice,” Schiff said to reporters, adding that “you cannot use executive privilege to hide wrongdoing or criminality or impeachable misconduct, and that is exactly the purpose for which they seek to use it.”

After Roberts scolded both sides for overheated rhetoric late Tuesday night, Democrats took pains to tone down their accusations against Trump and his supporters in the Senate.

Yet Schiff also sharpened his case on Friday, arguing that Republicans trust Trump at their own peril.

He invoked the late senator John McCain (R-AZ) in arguing about the strategic importance of Ukraine as a U.S. ally and quoted him as saying, “We are all Ukrainians.”

And he made a lengthy case that Trump’s skepticism about the conclusions of U.S. intelligence services-- particularly about Russian interference in the 2016 election-- represents a “coup” for Russia.

“Has there ever been such a coup? I would submit to you that in the entire length of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had no such success. No such success,” Schiff said. “I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the president. Because it certainly wasn’t worth it for the United States.”

...Schiff concluded his remarks Friday night with a different message as he urged senators to support hearing more evidence.

“I ask you. I implore you: Give America a fair trial,” he told senators. “Give America a fair trial. She’s worth it.”

This morning, Philip Bump did an insightful analysis of the Trump tape that the Senate will never subpoena and that Fox isn't likely to broadcast. "Parnas, wrote Bump, "would become tightly integrated into Trump’s circle, though the distance at which he was kept varies depending on who you ask. Trump insists that Parnas, an eventual business associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, was only given access to the president because he’d contributed to Trump’s campaign or to America First. Parnas, the argument goes, was simply one of hundreds of such people who take photos with the president. To hear Parnas tell it, though, his work for Giuliani in late 2018 and in 2019 was well-known by Trump and was integral to the effort to get Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a possible opponent of Trump’s in the upcoming election... [A]t one point, Parnas tells Trump that then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had disparaged the president, prompting Trump to say that she should be removed from her position. It’s a response that seems to conflict with the idea that Trump was simply interacting with a random donor, seemingly bolstering Parnas’s insinuations that his relationship with Trump was substantial.

It comes down to a question with no good answer: Is the president lying about his relationship with Parnas or is he prone to endorsing rash personnel changes based on unfounded assertions from strangers?

It’s oddly easy to believe that either might be the case. Trump’s predilection for seeking out the opinions of random nearby individuals is well-documented. This is a president who held a discussion with a foreign leader about an international crisis in the middle of the dining room at one of his properties. This is also a president who has made more than 16,000 false or misleading statements during three years in office. Frankly, it’s easy to see a way in which both could be true: Parnas was just a donor then but eventually made his way into Trump’s inner team.

Bear in mind, this dinner, where one attendee recorded the entire discussion, was not organized by the Republican Party. It was instead for a pro-Trump super PAC, a group to which Parnas allegedly made contributions illegally. Once in the room, he got the president to endorse his opinion of the ambassador to Ukraine.

That exchange has been known for a while; the Washington Post first reported it in November. Given what we know about where Parnas wound up and the extent to which he was involved in the successful effort to oust Yovanovitch that picked up steam in early 2019, it’s worth asking: How does Parnas’s request fit into what we know about Yovanovitch’s firing?

Parnas was not yet working for Giuliani during that April 30 event; Giuliani had himself only begun working for Trump two weeks prior.

A few weeks after the dinner, though, Parnas and a colleague met with then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), at which point the two advocated for Yovanovitch’s ouster and, according to the later indictment of Parnas, agreed to raise money for Sessions. The day they met, Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for Yovanovitch to be removed. This, again, appears to have occurred before Parnas and Giuliani were connected.

That effort expanded in early 2019, in part at the encouragement of Yuri Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general and someone who viewed Yovanovitch with hostility. By then, Parnas and Giuliani were connected, with Parnas joining Giuliani’s interviews of Lutsenko in January of that year. While Giuliani clearly embraced the idea of firing Yovanovitch (which took place in late April 2019), it’s still not clear what spurred the idea. Parnas, enacting a long-standing desire? Lutsenko, recognizing an opportunity? Something else entirely?

Photos provided to the House Intelligence Committee complicates the matter of Parnas’s role and relationship to Trump. One image shows a copy of the Sessions letter. Two others show someone, presumably Parnas, holding an envelope addressed to the president and identified as coming from Sessions’s office. The flap is sealed, with Sessions’s signature written across it. A later photo, apparently taken during an America First event in June 2018 shows Trump near Parnas as the president puts something in his pocket that appears to match the shape of the envelope.

What Trump is putting in his pocket may not be Sessions’s letter. But Parnas appears to have had control of the letter at some point. Why? Was it a function of his relationship with Trump? Did it relate to his conversation with Trump in April?

At another point in that April conversation, the group is discussing military aid to Ukraine. One comment from Trump raises a question: How familiar was he with the aid being given to Ukraine?

The same day of the event, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the delivery of American antitank missiles to his country. This is an act of enormous significance to Trump at the moment, since his attorneys have made his support of arming Ukraine a central part of their defense in the impeachment trial underway in the Senate.

“While it’s true that the United States has stood by Ukraine since the invasion of 2014,” Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow said during the trial on Saturday, hours before the release of the recording, “only one president since then took a very concrete step. Some of you supported it. And that step included actually providing Ukraine with lethal weapons, including Javelin missiles. That’s President Trump.”

On the recording, one of the attendees-- perhaps Donald Trump Jr.-- mentions the Javelin missiles.

“I guess there’s supposed to be an order of Javelin missiles over there, right?” he says. “They’re the antitank missiles. I saw that go through today.”

“Today?” Trump responds.

“I saw-- I read about it today,” the person replies. “I don’t know when it happened. It must have happened in the last couple of days.”

This does not suggest that Trump is intimately familiar with the transmission of the weapons. Reporting the prior year suggested that Trump was wavering on authorizing lethal arms sales to Ukraine, something that he eventually approved.

We do know what happened when military aid to Ukraine was announced in mid-June 2019. When Trump saw news coverage of a Defense Department announcement that it would provide $250 million in aid to that country, Trump intervened with questions. A few weeks later, the aid was placed on hold, an act that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s team has argued that the hold was an outgrowth of his skepticism about foreign aid while claiming that his support for Ukraine was steadfast. In that meeting in April 2018, in conversation with a donor he’d met a few times before, Trump seemed unclear on the timing of a major component of his administration’s policy about Ukraine.

No question, though, is more significant than this, at least for Republican senators: What other tapes might exist? The release of this recording spawns new questions related to Ukraine and the actors involved in Trump’s efforts there. Parnas’s attorney told The Post that Parnas had turned other recordings over to House investigators.

If you want to feel how tough this is-- electorally speaking--for a handful of Republican senators who could conceivably vote against Trump's interests-- and, for example, agree to subpoena witnesses and documents-- let's take a look at Alaska, where a more independent-minded Lisa Murkowski is not up for reelection but where 100% Trump puppet Dan Sullivan is. Alaska Survey Research polled the state on both senators and how their votes on impeachment are likely to impact their careers. "Murkowski," they concluded, "has more to lose politically from what decision she makes in the trial because of her diverse base of support... [A]round 20% of people who view Murkowski positively are Democrats and another 20% who view her positively are Republicans. The remainder identified as another party or no party at all. Overall, she has a 51% positive rating and a 35% negative rating according to this poll. That same poll shows that Senator Dan Sullivan (R) has an easier decision to make, since his supporters widely support the president as explained by pollster Ivan Moore."

Moore said at the end of this impeachment trial, Murkowski will be hard pressed to not upset at least some of the people who voted for her.

“She has a 51% positive, but they’re not 50% Republican at all,” he said, “They’re kind of balanced. Much more non-partisan, and they’re 20 plus points in favor of removing the President right? So if she acquits, there’s a lot of political risk.”

Moore said once it comes down to decision making time, he believes that Murkowski will vote in favor of Trump. However, it can’t be completely ruled out since she’s broken rank before.

...From a strictly political strategy view, Moore expects that Murkowski will end up supporting the President in the impeachment trial in a Senate with a Republican majority.

“At the end of the day, if what you’re thinking about is the end result of this thing, it’s not significant at all,” he said, “because the Senate is not going to vote to convict right? So whatever Murkowski votes, whatever she does with her vote is irrelevant to the end result. Where it is relevant is to the people who support her, and to her, and to her election chances.”

Imagine how much tougher that is for Susan Collins who, is up for reelection in November and who has seen her popularity in the state collapsing in the state to the point that she is now the least liked senator in her own state than anyone else in the country-- including Moscow Mitch!





And you almost feel sorry-- almost-- for desperate Colorado sad sack Cory Gardner-- "weak, frightened, impotent... a small man terrified of a political bully." And that's what conservative Republicans are saying about him, not Democrats, who wouldn't dare be that blunt. This is just an internet ad today. Can you imagine the Lincoln Project putting it on television!

Will Lisa Murkowki Be The One Republican With The Guts To Find Trump Guilty As Charged?

She looks thrilled

As of November 17, the Morning Consult Trump Tracker showed that Trump had lost 14 points of favorability with Alaska voters since he was inaugurated. In November, his approval in the state was 53%, compared to 43% disapproval. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary 163,387 (51.28%) to 116,454 (36.55%). Hillary was extremely unpopular in the state and Bernie had beaten her 79.61% to 20.23%, winning every county and every city in the state. (Trump lost to Cruz that same day, although narrowly.) Alaskans like independent-minded politicians.

This week, Fox News Trumpists Jason Riley and Charlie Hurt went after Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, insisting she’s “too independent,” not realizing they were actually promoting her. Riley accused her of using “Democratic talking points.” That’s because she didn’t exactly embrace Moscow Mitch’s decision to insist the Senate GOP abandon the Constitutional strictures requiring senators to pledge impartiality and serve as an arm of Trump’s defense.

"When I heard that, I was disturbed,” Murkowski told KTUU in an interview that aired Tuesday evening. “To me, it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense. And so, I heard what Leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process."

Riley, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, said on "Special Report" that Murkowski indeed has been known for her "independent streak" as a more-moderate GOP senator.

"Murkowski is not up for reelection. She is quirky, she does have an independent streak. We saw that in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, we saw that in the ObamaCare repeal vote," he said. Murkowski bucked her party to oppose Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court last year.

Riley continued, "I do wish she would stop using Democratic talking points to make the argument that she is making. The fact of the matter here is that the House's job is done and this idea that they should have any say in how the Senate conducts this trial just is not supported by what is written in black-and-white in the Constitution."

Riley pointed to the fact that no House Republicans voted with Democrats to impeach Trump, not even retiring lawmakers such as Reps. Will Hurd (R-TX) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who he said had "nothing to lose" if they broke with their party.

"The idea that Mitch McConnell isn't going to be bipartisan enough or objective enough, that is not his job. I expect him to be as bipartisan as Nancy Pelosi was and as Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler were," he added, referring to the speaker and the two committee chairmen who presided over impeachment hearings in a manner widely criticized on the right.

In other remarks, Murkowski said she was "totally good" with being viewed as someone who wasn't a Republican "rubber stamp."

"For me to prejudge and say there's nothing there or on the other hand, he should be impeached yesterday, that's wrong, in my view, that's wrong," she said. "If it means that I am viewed as one who looks openly and critically at every issue in front of me, rather than acting as a rubber stamp for my party or my president, I'm totally good with that."

In her 2010 reelection campaign the Republican Party refused to support Murkowski and she ran as a write-in candidate. She beat the far right-lunatic the GOP backed, Joe Miller (35.5%), and an underfunded Democrat named Scott McAdams (23.5%) with 39.5% of the vote. McConnell backed Miller. She owes him and the GOP Establishment nothing at all and has no fear of their wrath. The NRSC and the Senate Conservatives Fund, both controlled by McConnell, spent, respectively, $888,822 and $243,443 bolstering Miller against her.

Not a good look in Alaska

The Scripted Confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh

Consider the possibility that this is all a pre-planned script whereby Jeff Flake is depicted as the Honest Principled Man who ultimately gives everyone else cover to vote for Kavanaugh https://t.co/IqL3b020mh

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) September 30, 2018

by Gaius Publius

After you come down from praising of Jeff Flake's heroism (or his cowardice in the face of sexual assault victims) consider the following, from an interview with Flake in the Atlantic:

Coppins: So, you were motivated mainly by preserving institutional credibility?

Flake: Two institutions, really. One, the Supreme Court is the lone institution where most Americans still have some faith. And then the U.S. Senate as an institution—we’re coming apart at the seams. There’s no currency, no market for reaching across the aisle. It just makes it so difficult.

Flake's stated goal in insisting on an additional FBI check is to add credibility to the process so that the credibility of the government (which will put and contain Kavanaugh on the high court bench) can be maintained. An additional FBI check also takes away the strongest Democratic Party argument as presented in the hearings: "Why won't you submit to an FBI investigation?" and it gives the Joe Manchins of the world something to say in mitigation after they vote to confirm. 

Flake is worried, and rightly so, that if Kavanaugh is confirmed by raw power alone, without the blessing of the FBI, the Supreme Court will be seen as illegitimate. As I wrote earlier in "Anthony Kennedy and Our Delayed Constitutional Crisis," the Court is teetering on that perception already:

With swing-vote status comes great responsibility, and in the most consequential — and wrongly decided — cases of this generation, O'Connor and Kennedy were the Court's key enablers. They 

• Cast the deciding vote that made each decision possible
• Kept alive the illusion of the Court's non-partisan legitimacy

[...]

The second point above, about the illusion of the Court's legitimacy, is just as important as the first. If the Court were ever widely seen as acting outside the bounds of its mandate, or worse, seen as a partisan, captured organ of a powerful and dangerous political minority (which it certainly is), all of its decisions would be rejected by the people at large, and more importantly, the nation would plunged into a constitutional crisis of monumental proportions.

We are in that constitutional crisis now, but just at the start of it. We should have been done with it long ago. Both O'Connor and Kennedy are responsible for that delay.

I'm not alone in think along these lines. Juan Cole at Informed Comment agrees, offering two ways that Kavanaugh's confirmation, added to Trump's potential firing of Rod Rosenstein, could lead to a "Great American Apocalypse."

The Supreme Court is already a captured agent of the Republican Party. But thanks to "swing vote" justices like Anthony Kennedy, it's merely seen as "divided." That will change.

If Brett Kavanaugh is added to a captured Court via a process that itself is seen as captured, then joins 5-4 decision after 5-4 decision to a) further increase the power of the minority Republican Party via highly restricted voting rights; b) implement radical Koch anti-government ideology by removing, for example, regulatory power from the Executive Branch; and c) enable the freakish dreams of the most rightwing fundamentalists in the country (imagine if contraception were only available on a state-by-state basis) — I think that will tear the country clean apart.

I also think Jeff Flake agrees, and I think he thinks that if he gets the FBI to sign off on Kavanaugh first, he can head that outcome off. He's wrong, of course, but he'll be a lobbyist by the time anyone finds out. His future will be secured, even as ours will be very much more in doubt.

What Happens Next?

What happens next in the Kavanaugh confirmation process is anyone's guess, since the public and its anger are in play. But if I were to place bets on what just the political actors will do, here's the scenario:

• The FBI will issue a blatantly and politically manipulated report that neither confirms nor contradicts the charges against Brett Kavanaugh.
   
• Republicans will declare Kavanaugh vindicated and move the nomination to a vote at the earliest opportunity.
   
• Joe Manchin and Jeff Flake will both vote to confirm, providing 51 Yes votes and leaving one slot open for a single Republican No.
   
• Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will decide between themselves who gets to vote No and save what's left of her reputation and career. The woman at most risk will take that slot.

• Since Susan Collins is under the most fire from hometown voters right now, I expect her to take a "principled stand" and find it in her conscience to vote not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh "for the sake of the women of this country" — all in a losing cause.

Which means:

• Kavanaugh will be seated on the Supreme Court for life, giving it the equivalent of five Antonin Scalias for the next two decades at least.
   
• When a critical mass of voters has had it with the decisions of a fully captured, radical-Republican Court, the country will come apart, just as it did 165 years ago, but not in the same way. 

Read Lincoln's Cooper Union speech. Addressing the people of the South, Lincoln said: "Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events."

In his era, a radical, intransigent, uncompromising "rule or ruin" minority drove the nation into civil war. That same "rule or ruin" minority is back — abetted this time by the very very wealthy — and they're doing it again. Kavanaugh is the next step in their putsch, their capture of the organs of the state, and unless the public derails his confirmation, it will succeed.

Nice work, Mr. Flake. You too, Mr. Manchin. I wish I had a gift for you equivalent to the one you're giving us. If I did have such a gift, it would arrive at your door tomorrow.

GP
 

Read Julie Swetnick's Charges Against Brett Kavanaugh

Does this seem cruel? Perhaps, but not nearly as cruel as what three credible witnesses have now alleged. Are there even more crimes in the wings? In cases like these, there are almost always more more crimes.

by Gaius Publius

Since this is a primary source, and I don't think most people have read it in full, I want to offer an opportunity to read in toto what Julie Swetnick alleges about Brett Kavanaugh and his behavior in the early 1980s.

Her sworn declaration is printed in full below. I could only find image files, but these are good ones. Click each to enlarge it to original size. It should be easy to get through this; there are only three pages.

But it should also be hard to get through this; the content is horrifying. She details multiple instances in which Kavanaugh was complicit in felony gang-rape. He was also likely a rapist as well — he was one of the men lined up outside the doors where drugged women were serially assaulted.

She also details her own drugging and gang-rape at a party attended by Kavanaugh. (She doesn't name Kavanaugh as one of her own rapists, but she says she was drugged against her will at the time.)

Read on:

The self-styled long-suffering virgin of Georgetown Prep.

I still don't know if he'll be confirmed, though if I were betting I'd say yes. Odds are Chuck Schumer will let Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly vote yes, allowing Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to vote a cosmetic no, though things could change quickly.

After that, we'll have to see.

GP
 

Collins And Murkowsky Must Say No To Trump On The Mad Dash To Confirm Kavanaugh

Brett Kavanaugh-- Partisan Supreme Court Nominee by Nancy Ohanian

With all the problems America is facing today, somehow McConnell thought sneaking a ban on funding Planned Parenthood into the must-pass Department of Defense Appropriations Act would be a smart way for the Senate to spend its time. Thursday afternoon a vote was called while three major Planned Parenthood supporters, Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Patty Murray (D-WA) were out of town. With all Democrats sticking together ro beat back the effort being joined by Republicans Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK), the amendment was defeated 48-45.

And the Senate Republicans are now on the verge of rushing through a Trump Supreme Court nomination, Brett Kavanaugh, picked by a clearly self-serving (to put it mildly) and obviously illegitimate "president" who was chose strictly because He doesn't believe a sitting president can be indicted or even questioned. Yesterday at NBC's First Read, Chuck Todd pointed out that Trump "praises and pardons friends/allies who have committed crimes (Manafort, Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza), but calls for the prosecution of enemies who haven’t been charged at all (Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Christopher Steele)... continues to use mob-boss language: Manafort "refused to break" … White House counsel Don McGahn must be a John Dean type 'RAT' ... 'Flipping' ought to be outlawed. This is the president of the United States of America. This is also the guy demanding Kavanaugh be confirmed immediately.

People for the American Way is one of the public advocacy organization working to communicate inside and outside the Beltway the dangers inherent in Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice. Yesterday, the organization sent members and supporters a reminder that "Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort being found guilty of eight counts of bank and tax fraud amazingly was just the tip of the iceberg in yesterday’s news about the rampant corruption and criminality overflowing from Trump World. Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter of California was also indicted on unrelated charges, meaning that along with Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), the first two members of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016 are now both under federal indictment! And, most importantly, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including two for engineering or making illegal “hush money” payments to women who alleged affairs with then candidate Donald Trump-- and Cohen said he made those payments at the Trump’s behest." OK, but what does this have to do with Kavanaugh? Glad you asked.

Trump is now directly implicated in a conspiracy to violate anti-corruption laws at the very same time that Senate Republicans are trying to steamroll the confirmation of his hand-picked Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh-- a nominee who has argued that the president should be above the law-- and burying Kavanaugh’s record with an unprecedented cover up to keep important insights into his work and legal thinking from ever seeing the light of day.

It’s now crystal clear that for the Senate to confirm Brett Kavanaugh would be a brazen assault on our democracy, checks and balances, and the rule of law itself. Talk about enabling corruption and obstructing accountability-- any senator who now supports Brett Kavanaugh will be complicit in helping the president essentially choose the judge who will decide his own legal fate (perhaps on matters far exceeding the charges in which he was implicated by Michael Cohen).

Trump the other day asserted that he has total authority over the Mueller investigation, saying, “I could run it if I want.” We know from Brett Kavanaugh’s writings and statements that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee agrees, which is radical and, frankly, should scare the hell out of all of us.

We cannot let the Senate confirm this lawless, corrupt president’s hand-picked rubber stamp to the Supreme Court.

Our path to victory is getting every Democratic senator to oppose this nominee and at least ONE Republican senator to break from their president and put their country and what’s right above party.

The fact that Collins and Murkowsky voted on Thursday against all the other Republicans seeking to screw with Planned Parenthood-- and in effect-- a woman's right to choose, gives some hope that these two will oppose an extremist SCOTUS nominee who will move quickly to overturn Roe v Wade... as well as an extremist nominee who will do all he can to prevent the legal process from moving forward regarding the serial criminal behavior of an illegitimate "president." Don't forget, Brett Kavanaugh is now the most unpopular SCOTUS nominee in contemporary history. Yesterday, one of their Senate colleagues, Elizabeth Warren, wrote that "The Trump Administration is the most corrupt in modern history. That’s not an exaggeration. Corruption oozes out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue-- the name 'Trump' is basically synonymous with the concept itself. It’s in your face, everywhere-- like the big gold letters on his flashy hotels." Should this man and his enablers in Congress get to rush through the confirmation of another rubber stamp, this one a life-time appointee to the Supreme Court?

Superior Solution For The SCOTUS Emergency

Barrett by Chip Proser

by David Leibowitz

Indivisible has recently posted a web page titled “The 2-Step Strategy to Win the Supreme Court Fight” that clearly lays out the available conventional grassroots tools and strategies for dealing with the SCOTUS emergency. The first step is to block the approval of any Supreme Court nominee during the remainder of the current Senate session. The conventional methods now being brought into play in that effort are worth trying and could succeed, but have a high probability of failure. Neither of the two Republican senators whose cooperation we require is up for re-election this year, with their next general elections being more than two and more than four years away. The three Democratic senators whose cooperation we require are standing for re-election this November--but their primaries are over and their re-election this November seems to be essential if the Democrats are to win control of the Senate next year. The next election at which they could pay any price from the Democratic base for voting “yes” on a SCOTUS nomination this year is a whopping six years off. The grassroots anger that will erupt immediately following any “yes” vote by any of the five senators will have been forgotten by virtually all voters by time each senator’s next election contest rolls around with its fresh current issues. Therefore, all five senators whose cooperation we need in this emergency are effectively free to vote “yes” for a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018 with political impunity—and they know it. If any one of them responds favorably to petitions, phone calls, emails, demonstrations, newspaper ads and other conventional lobbying efforts, it will be as a matter of conscience, decency and political courage only. In politics, other considerations often override those personal attributes. Yet we need a minimum of four of those five senators to vote “No”. There’s got to be a better way!

There IS a better way: the conditional pledge drive. In a conditional pledge drive, a very large number of individuals who cumulatively hold real power over a targeted incumbent politician sign conditional pledges, that are then bundled together by the drive’s organizers and presented to the politician to induce the politician to behave a certain way. The pledges are not declared effective and their submission to the politician does not commence until a targeted minimum number of them has been collected (based on analyses of the voting population and history in the politician’s district). The pledges can take various forms depending on the political context. In the current context, pledge drives can be designed to influence a politician to vote “No” on any nomination to the Supreme Court either for the remainder of the current session of Congress (step 1 in Indivisible’s classification), the entire duration of the next session of Congress (step 2), or the remainder of the current Presidential term (steps 1 and 2 combined). Below, I will discuss, with examples, conditional pledge drives intended to compel a politician to vote “No” during the remainder of the current session of Congress. First I will discuss conditional voter pledge drives, using Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski as examples. Then I will discuss conditional pledge drives targeting Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin III. In the course of that discussion I will introduce two additional kinds of conditional pledge drives and make some recommendations concerning the structuring of conditional pledge campaigns.

Conditional Voter Pledge Drives targeting Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski

In the current context, a conditional voter pledge targeting one of the Republican senators might say, for example:

Dear Senator [Collins][Murkowski]: I am a registered voter in your state. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” on all of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that come to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, then I will not vote for your re-election in [2020][2022] and I will vote for one of your opponents in that election if any opponent is acceptable to me, regardless of your performance as my senator in all other respects. I will behave as a single-issue voter in [2020][2022], basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 failure to vote “No” on all of Trump’s Supreme Court nominations, and my goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

The primary purpose of a conditional voter pledge campaign is to convince the targeted politician that to fail to fulfil the stated requirement of the pledgees now will be to commit a political suicide that will take effect at the politician’s next run for office. This is likely to compel the politician to vote the right way.  The secondary purposes are to raise the consciousness of voters who currently may support the politician and to help remove the politician from office in the next election in case the politician votes the wrong way now. Thanks to these secondary effects, funds invested in a conditional voter pledge drive are not wasted even if the pledge drive fails to achieve its primary purpose. A conditional voter pledge drive is purely an issue-focused drive and welcomes and solicits pledges from all registered voters eligible to vote in the next primary or general election, including current supporters of the targeted politician.

Under the existing circumstances, a well-executed conditional voter pledge drive is the only tool in our arsenal that has the power of compulsion. All other available methods depend upon the good will and reasonableness of the targeted politician and can safely be ignored by that politician-- especially since senators Collins and Murkowski will be under tremendous compulsive pressure from the Republican establishment. The compulsive mechanism of the conditional voter pledge drive relies directly on actual vote numbers. It is therefore more powerful than the compulsive power of the Republican Party, which depends on the granting or withholding of financial support and political favors so is at best one step removed from actual vote numbers. If a sufficient number of conditional voter pledges are collected statewide, our side should prevail.

A conditional voter pledge drive is a major undertaking, comparable to (but less expensive than) an election campaign for a political candidate in the same political district. It also has unique challenges arising from the time delay between the action being sought from the politician and the corresponding response from the voters. On account of those characteristics, it is appropriate for only a small subset of political situations. The current Supreme Court emergency is such a situation because:

(1)      The issue [effectively, a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion] is very easy for virtually every voter to understand;
(2)      The issue is of such great importance, and its linkage with the filling of this particular Supreme Court seat is so strong, that a large percentage of the electorate ought to be willing to become conditional single-issue voters in this particular case;
(3)      The action being requested of the politician [don’t vote for any Supreme Court nominee until the next Congress is in session in early 2019] will seem extremely reasonable to most voters;
(4)      The action being requested of the politician is of a simple yes-or-no nature, with no ambiguity about it;
(5)      The issue is of such great importance that a groundswell of grassroots support can be expected-- which would enable the statewide collection of signed pledges in a reasonable period of time at relatively low expense, once such a campaign is initiated and publicized; and
(6)      The terrible cost to society of failing to stop Trump from getting a nominee approved before 2019 justifies the expense of conditional voter pledge drives.  Well-targeted and well-run conditional voter pledge drives are likely to succeed, whereas all other options currently available seem likely to fail.

A conditional voter pledge drive will not have the power of compulsion unless it is structured in such a way that (a) a sufficient number of the pledges will be redeemable two or more years into the future, and (b) the targeted politician will be convinced that a sufficient number of those pledges will be redeemed at her next election contest to end her political career if she defies the pledgees now.Otherwise, the pledges may have no more power than an ordinary petition. I have already figured out the kinds of structures that should meet the two requirements to make the pledges redeemable and compulsive to the politician.

A conditional voter pledge drive in Maine or Alaska can be reinforced by a conditional future voter pledge drive in the same state and a nation-wide conditional contributor pledge drive.

Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin-- the three Democrats currently known to pose the greatest risk of voting to approve a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018-- are all up for re-election this year but, are effectively immune from attack by any conditional voter pledge drive that comes due in this year’s general election. They will then remain safe until their next elections in 2024.The six-year delay between deed and any potential punishment poses the greatest challenge to a conditional pledge campaign that can be found in American politics. We need a strategy with sufficient power to compel these three senators to hold the SCOTUS seat open until the next session of Congress.

1.        Conditional Voter Pledges. An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______: I am a registered voter in your state, and I am registered under a classification that qualifies me to vote in Democratic Party primary elections. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, and if I still qualify to vote in the respective election(s) in 2024, then: (a) I will vote against you in the 2024 Democratic primary election; (b) if you have more than one challenger in the2024 Democratic primary, I will vote for the one that is endorsed by [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] to avoid splitting the vote against you; and (c) if you are the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election, and if polling close to the 2024 general election suggests that your defeat in the general election will not compromise Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, I will vote for your Republican opponent in the 2024 general election. I will behave as a single-issue voter in that election, basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 vote in favor of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, and my primary goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

Explanations/Comments:  The “SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION” is the special-purpose entity that is set up to carry out the pledge campaign in 2018.  If the targeted senator votes for a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018, that organization will extend its existence for the following six years in order to participate in the 2024 elections. Prior to the 2024 primary election, if the incumbent senator has more than one primary opponent, all the pledgees will be polled to select a single candidate on whom to concentrate their votes. It is essential that there be only one senator-specific pledge organization per senator.

2.        Conditional Future Voter Pledges. An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______:  I am a resident of your state. I meet all of the state’s qualifications to be a registered voter except that I am too young. I will be old enough to vote in one or both of the 2024 Democratic primary election and the 2024 general election.  The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, and if I am still a resident of your state at the relevant future time: (a) I will register or preregister to vote, under a classification that will qualify me to vote in Democratic primaries, in time to qualify to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary (if I will be old enough to vote by its date) or the 2024 general election (if I will be too young to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary). (b) If I qualify to vote in the 2024 Democratic Primary, I will vote against you in that primary election, and if you have more than one opponent in that election I will vote for whichever candidate is endorsed by [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] to avoid splitting the vote against you. (c) If you are the Democratic candidate in the 2024 general election, and if polling close to the date of the 2024 general election indicates that your defeat in the general election will not compromise Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, I will vote for your Republican opponent in the 2024 general election. I will behave as a single-issue voter, basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 “yes” vote in favor of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, and my primary goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

Explanations/Comments: The six-year delay until 2024 offers a big opportunity to recruit individuals who are still too young to vote into the current political process.  Since younger voters are the most progressive voters of all, this type of pledge should really scare the politician!

3.        Conditional Contributor Pledges.  An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______:  I am an individual who is legally qualified to make political contributions in the United States. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me.  Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge:  If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, then I will immediately make a political donation of at least $________ to [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION].  [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] is a single-purpose entity, the sole purpose of which is to persuade you to vote against all of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations for so long as the current session of Congress continues, and to see to it that in case you vote “yes” for any Trump Supreme Court nominee during the current session of Congress, your political career will be ended in 2024.

Explanations/Comments: Six years is a long time and people forget easily. In case the targeted senator votes “yes” for a 2018 Trump nominee, the pledge organization will need to keep track of as many of its pledgees as possible over that period, and inform them from time to time of the most recent terrible Supreme Court decision that was made possible by the 2018 vote of the targeted senator. In election year 2024, the pledge organization will need to remind all pledgees of their commitment, it may need to recruit a high-quality candidate to oppose the targeted senator in a 2014 primary or to conduct a poll of its voter and future voter pledgees to endorse a challenger in the primary, and then it will need to help support the campaign of the challenger in the primary. For all these things it will need adequate funding. The best time to collect those funds will be during the period of outrage that immediately follows the targeted senator’s “yes” vote, and then immediately following news-making terrible Supreme Court decisions during the following years. Furthermore, each signer of any of the three pledge types should be encouraged to make a small financial contribution at the time of pledging. In addition to supporting the pledge effort, this initial contribution will serve psychologically to commit them more strongly to honor the pledge they make.

Concluding Comments

The scope of the voter pledge drives (both kinds) would be limited to the senator’s state, while the contribution pledges would be nation-wide in scope, and all would be carried out by a single-purpose entity created for that sole purpose.

Alternatively, an existing political organization might carry out one or more senator-specific pledge drives, but it would need to set up a segregated account for all pledge-campaign-related activities relating to a given senator.) After the purpose has been achieved (either after the senator votes “no” in 2018 as requested, or else after a senator who voted “yes” has been defeated in 2024) all remaining funds would be distributed and the special-purpose entity would be dissolved. The remaining funds would be distributed preferentially to any similar pledge drives (targeting any other senators who voted “Yes” in 2018) that are still active. If no other such pledge drive remains active, the remaining funds would be distributed pro rata to other ongoing political organizations that were specified by the final fund’s original contributors at the time they made their contributions.

By combining all three types of pledge into a single pledge campaign, and by reminding pledgees periodically over the six-year period of the terrible consequences that the “yes”-voter’s 2018 vote is continuing to have, it should be possible to make the pledges (a) objectively redeemable in 2024 and (b) subjectively convincing and compulsive to the politician in 2018. Appropriate details of the pledge campaign’s structure and plan of action would be explained and documented to the politician in 2018 to persuade the politician that a “yes” vote would be a career-ending vote.

Conditional pledge drive campaigns require work, but they are the only tool at our disposal in the current SCOTUS emergency that has the power of compulsion-- in contrast to all the other standard lobbying methods that consist basically of relatively-impotent, expensive begging. There can be no confidence that the standard lobbying methods will work on the five politicians we need to influence. On the other hand, well-conducted conditional pledge drives against them would seem to be very likely to succeed. There is no time for an individual like me working alone or a small group of individuals with sparse resources to organize a conditional pledge drive in time. Already-existing political groups with existing funding, facilities, and media and campaigning expertise MUST step in and make the effort. Established organizations often don’t want to take risks like this, but the current situation requires at least one of them to do so and to move boldly, quickly and decisively.

If you are a decision-maker in a political group with the resources to participate in such campaigns, I would be happy to help your organization design a conditional pledge campaign.

David Leibowitz
DLpolitical@aol.com