Do You Support A Center-Right Party? You're A Conservative???

I lived in Holland for four years and it was a pretty progressive place, Amsterdam more than the country as a whole, but even the most conservative areas seemed more progressive than the U.S. When I was there, the political party that headed the government was the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy-- better known as the VVD. It's a classic center-right party and pretty much stands for everything the American Democratic Party stands for, not the FDR Democratic Party, but the floating garbage heap Bill Clinton turned the Democratic Party into... except the VVD is maybe slightly more progressive. If the classic center-right party is like the American Democrats, is there a Dutch political party like the GOP? Of course: the PVV (the Party for Freedom). It isn't as far right as the GOP but it's generally a neo-fascist party like what the Republicans have drifted into since Reagan became president. The Dutch also have a couple of left-of-center parties as part of their legislature-- the Socialist Party, the Green Party and the Labor Party-- but the U.S. doesn't have anything like that.

Early this week, AOC spoke at an event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and she explained that there are "left members inside the Democratic Party," progressives, like herself, who are pushing the Democratic Party towards it's Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt roots. "She noted, reported Newsweek "that there are some 'true believers' within the Democratic Party who think capitalism can end poverty. 'If anything, that's probably the majority,' she said, adding that she disagrees. 'That's an area in which I agree with Dr. King, that that assessment is flawed,' Ocasio-Cortez said as the audience erupted into loud applause." She described the Democratic Party as a "center-conservative" party, not as a party of the left. Like King, she believes that capitalism has ingrained poverty into society.

It's why actual progressives argue for structural change in society... and for real change in a Democratic Party which is dominated by its own Republican wing-- New Dems, Blue Dogs, corporatists, corruptionists... AOC: "We don't have a left party in the United States. The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center, or a center-conservative, party." She noted that even with a large, robust Democratic majority-- led by a woman pretending to be vaguely progressive, "We can't even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even a floor vote that gets voted down. We can't even get a vote on it. So this is not a left party."

Newsweek brought up a King speech gave the year before he was assassinated: "And one day we must ask the question: Why are there 40 million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that, more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society." Sounds like Bernie, AOC and a tiny, tiny, tiny handful of today's post-Bill Clinton Democrats. Not like Joe Biden, that's for sure. In fact, AOC had noted in an interview that "In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America we are."

Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a democratic-socialist, as does Sanders and many other progressives within the Democratic Party. This block of lawmakers advocates for progressive policies such as universal health care, or Medicare for All; free college education; student loan forgiveness; a higher minimum wage; and a Green New Deal to address climate change.

Most Democrats-- most, think about that-- do not advocate for those things. It astounds me, that given a choice, Democratic primary voters-- for whatever reason-- often pick the neo-liberal establishment candidates rather than the progressive reformers... not always, but often. In the last few weeks some real progressives have beaten right-of-center Democrats in primaries-- Mike Siegel in Austin, Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in New York and good and very clear examples. But far more progressive reformers didn't make it. I asked Mark Gamba, a thoughtful mayor in Oregon who I expect to see running again, what happened in his congressional race against very conservative Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "Well the short answer," he told me this morning, "is that Schrader used all of that corporate cash to outspend me 10 to 1. Our campaign was really dependent on the grass roots, on door knocking and on events where folks could get to know me and ask questions. Covid killed most of those opportunities, and so it went back to being a race won on who could spend the most. The really funny thing was that when you read Schrader’s 6 mailers, he came off like a progressive. He talked about everyone getting health care and taking strong climate action, neither of which he will actually do. Until we have publicly funded campaigns, the candidate who is the most sold out to the corporations will be the one most likely to win. All the political labels aside, what Americans have to decide is: Do we want a society that benefits everyone, providing a dignified and decent life for every single American? Or, do we want a society designed to make a handful of people obscenely wealthy, while having millions living in desperate poverty? That is literally what we have now, and nothing about the status quo and the neo liberal posturing is going to change any of that."

I asked Alan Grayson, who lost his first race and two years later went on to be, arguably, Congress' most important and effective progressive champion, what he makes of this party split and why more progressives don't get elected. "Progressives," he told me yesterday, "operate at a disadvantage because right-wingers in the party corrode the ability of progressives to deliver on the promises that they make, which undermines the credibility of the party as a whole. When a RWNJ in a red state says 'I will ban abortion more than ten minutes after conception,' there’s no debate about whether he’ll be able to deliver on that promise. When a progressive says 'I will deliver affordable healthcare to everyone,' the widespread public response is 'uh-huh. Well, you haven’t done it so far.' In fact, it’s been more than a decade since anyone in a position of authority in the Democratic Party has promised anything to anyone, except perhaps to lobbyists. This tends to discredit the whole notion that you can make the world a better place-- progress-- which is the first eight letters of progressivism. Obviously, there are serious money issues, as well, without a doubt.  But money is not the mother’s milk of politics. The mother’s milk of politics is promises-- promises that you keep."





Florida produces so many really bad politicians but, ironically, the state is responsible for some really good ones as well. Adam Christensen, still in his 20's and a first time congressional candidate, is going to fall into the latter category. I think Grayson will see a young version of himself when he meets him. "At the end of the day," Christensen told me, "even those who say that they want change and they want progress, don’t ever want to feel extreme. They want to feel like they are at the center, the norm. What has happened is the one party actively fights to silence the radicals within it, and the other doesn’t. The republican party understands that if they allow a few choice individuals to push the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable, then they are able to push the conversation farther than they ever would’ve been able to before. The Democrats do not do that, they fight tooth and nail to silence the left side of their party because they don’t want to appear 'extreme.' When in reality, because they do this, they themselves are seen as the “extreme” left even though they are 'center-right' in any other country.

An entrepreneur and CEO himself, Christensen pointed out that "Every good negotiator knows that you always ask for more than you believe that you were going to get, and you should always have things you are willing to give up in order to get to where you wanted to be in the first place. The Tea Party effectively pushed Republicans to the right and made their moderate wing seem reasonable, despite the fact that they are extreme. Democrats need to do the same thing, they need people/activists pushing farther than anyone has pushed (ie. nationalized healthcare/defund the police) so that things like Medicare For All seem like the 'compromise position,' the 'safe position.' They need a truly left party, so that the semi-progressive ideas can be seen as the middle ground instead of the extreme left. We need a truly LEFT movement in the US to move us back to where we should be, where we were 60 years ago. It’s not 'extreme'-- it’s smart politics."

Hector Osceguera, a thoughtful young reformer in New Jersey who I expect to see running again, just ran his first race. It won't be his last. So what happened to make the voters in northeast Jersey go for an establishment boss-candidate instead Oseguera. "There is one very Jersey-specific reason for the outcomes of progressive challengers in the state," told me. "Our byzantine and anti-democratic ballot structure known colloquially as the 'County Line,' artificially props up incumbents and means that we were effectively running against two Presidential candidates in Joe Biden and Cory Booker. Lining up establishment candidates the way we do in this state creates a perception issue that always hurts challengers and gives an unearned benefit to incumbents."

While we realized how the COVID pandemic made us shift resources to the digital landscape, there was not enough attention on reaching those not on social media. The voting age population trends not to be as active on the web and we should have done a better job finding ways to reach our senior citizens during COVID.

The future lies in taking the lessons we learned this year and amplifying those efforts. Progressives still have a lot of work to do, and now that the primary season is over, we can go back to the drawing board and think like organizers again. Even if this race didn't have the outcome I wanted, I now hope to lay the foundation for the next progressive challenger.

Het Meisje Met Het Rode Haar-- The Girl With The Red Hair-- plus Newt Gingrich And Kyrsten Sinema

This morning when I woke up I found an email from my old friend Toon in Amsterdam. He had heard about the fires ravaging L.A. and he wanted to make sure I was ok. Then he started going on about how Trump and Boris Johnson are ruining the world. That led him in two directions-- were Bernie and Elizabeth too old to get the job done-- I assured him they weren't and that either could-- and then he started writing about how during World War II, "A lot of Dutchmen were completely indifferent about German occupation. A lot of Dutchmen were completely pro or opportunistic." There were not many like our friend (RIP) Hilda van Norden or Hannie Schaft. Hannie Schaft? I didn't know the name. So I took a few moments off from the impeachment news and looked her up. There were dozens of YouTubes... all in Dutch, like one above.

Jannetje Johanna Schaft (Hannie's actual name) was born in 1920. Twenty-four years later, she was arrested at a Nazi checkpoint in Haarlem, her hometown, tortured for a month and shot by Dutch Nazis 3 weeks before the end of the war. 7 months later she was reburied in a state funeral. Queen Whilhelmina called Schaft "the symbol of the Resistance."

As the impeachment trap closes on Trump, will he try a coup? Who's to stop him? If he does, who will be our own Hannie Schaft? You?

Hannie was in law school in 1943 when the Germans occupied the country. University students were required to sign a declaration of allegiance to the occupation authorities. Like 80% of students, Schaft refused to sign and was expelled. Would you sign?

After leaving school and Amsterdam and moving back in with her parents, she joined the Council of Resistance. Eventually she became an assassin and began carrying out attacks on Germans and on Dutch collaborators. She learned to speak German fluently and became involved with German soldiers. She was recognizable by her red hair and wound up on the Nazis "most wanted" list. Eventually, she died her hair black. She was identified by her red roots after she was arrested.

Hannie Schaft, murdered by Dutch Nazis, symbol of The Resistance

I also found an e-mail from Newt Gingrich this morning. "Friend," he wrote, "If you refuse to fight for President Trump... then don't read this email. But don't come complaining to me when anti-Trump socialist fanatics take over!

Sorry to be so blunt, but Democrats have decided to impeach President Trump and we have an urgent deadline to stop them: We're rallying as many Loyal American Patriots as we can for the next 24 hours -- and we've activated 5x-matching for you.

You've already received emails from Steve Scalise, Liz Cheney, Darin LaHood, Drew Ferguson and others...

They ALL want you to know this is the most important request we have EVER made of you. If we fall short now, we will ALL suffer the consequences.

Stand with President Trump, who has been FALSELY accused!

Hannie was offered an opportunity to be a courier when she joined the resistance to the fascists. She wanted the job of killing fascists. At what point is shooting someone like Newt Gingrich the right thing to do? Now? Never? Not 'til they've overthrown democracy entirely? Oh... and speaking of collaborators, as opposed to full on fascists like Newt, Politico ran a piece by Burgess Everett yesterday on putative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, the mentally impaired and deranged freak from Arizona who Schumer decided to make a senator last year. That she, in Everett's words, "hobnobs with Republicans at least as much as she does with her own caucus," is hardly the problem. She started as a socialist, became a Green, then a liberal Democrat, then a conservative Democrat, then the chair of the House Blue Dogs and will soon enough join the GOP and go further right than Marsha Blackburn. "Sinema," wrote Everett, "doesn’t really fit in with her fellow Senate Democrats. Don’t even ask her whether she watches the Democratic presidential debates." She's more into physical fitness-- a regular fräulein of the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen. Her voting record isn't, as Everett claims, "on par with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s." It's worse. Sinema's ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score is much closer to Susan Collins' than to Manchin's:

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)- 52.45
• Doug Jones (D-AL)- 45.21
• Kyrsten Sinema (Freak-AZ)- 34.18
• Susan Collins (R-ME)- 24.97
• Rand Paul (R-KY)- 13.76

Sinema's support for the fascists that Trump nominated-- like Attorney General William Barr-- "and her lack of zeal for impeachment are part of a political profile drawing blowback from progressives and cheers from the GOP. Yet Sinema is also setting herself up to be a pivotal vote the next time the Democrats are in power. And her radical breed of centrism could be a headache for the party. Take the liberal drive to bust down age-old Senate rules in order to pass Medicare for All or a Green New Deal. Sinema not only opposes getting rid of the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, she wants to restore the supermajority requirement for presidential nominees that has been weakened by both parties." Exactly what Schumer wanted when he selected her as Arizona's senator.

“They will not get my vote on [nuking the filibuster],” Sinema said in her office, outfitted with shiny leather and translucent chairs and boasting a vivid shade of purple that pops from the walls. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority… It is the right thing for the country.

Senate allies

Sinema isn’t actively trying to reshape the party. Though she captured a state that Democrats would love to seize in the 2020 campaign, she’s utterly uninterested in using her perch as senator to do cable TV hits, speak to the Capitol Hill press corps or offer general guidance to Democrats ahead of a crucial election cycle.

Yet her record speaks for itself. She voted for Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and opposed attempts to roll back the Trump administration’s coal deregulation regime earlier this month.

It’s an approach that has the potential to revive the Senate’s moribund middle but has left her something of a mystery to her Democratic colleagues, even fellow moderates.

“Haven’t had a lot of interaction with her. She’s kind of doing her own thing,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), a centrist senator with a more liberal voting record than Sinema’s.

Unlike any of her colleagues, she snubbed sitting Sen. Ed Markey and endorsed Rep. Joe Kennedy, an old House colleague and close friend, in the hotly contested Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary. That earned a rejoinder from Manchin: “I would never do that … made no sense to me at all.”

And she is criticizing senators in both parties for “highly partisan” statements on impeachment and is declining to endorse the House impeachment inquiry: “That’s not my job, that’s not my role.”

For all her distance from the establishment, Sinema also seems to have come to an understanding with Schumer, whom she [fake-]opposed as Democratic leader during her 2018 campaign.

Like every member of the caucus, she gets random calls from Schumer frequently enough that she can easily break into a raspy New York accent while doing a brief impression of the minority leader: “‘Sinema! What’s new?’”

But when push comes to shove on important votes, she has a warning for party honchos: Leave her alone.

“Everyone knows that I am very independent-minded,” she said. “And that it’s not super useful to try and convince me otherwise.”

Sinema isn’t especially close with either Trump or Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (neither has her phone number, she said), but she doesn’t light into them the way most Democrats do. She’s working with McConnell to whip votes for repealing Obamacare’s medical device tax and said the president “certainly” knows who she is.

And observers watching her on the Senate floor during a vote would be forgiven for thinking she’s a Republican, considering her chats with GOP senators like Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.

She spends at least as much time on the Republican side of the chamber as the Democratic half and lists Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas as an ally atop the Commerce Committee’s Aviation and Space subcommittee. Cruz returned the favor by declining to lump the Arizona Democrat in with what he sees as an increasingly socialist Democratic Party.

“I said to her one time: Why aren’t you a Republican? … she said: ‘I just couldn’t be,’” Cramer recounted.

Cramer and Sinema came into the House together in 2013, and then arrived in the Senate this year. They are close friends but couldn’t be more different. In fact, there are few like Sinema, the youngest Democrat at 43 who’s trying to figure out how to teach a spin class in the archaic Senate gym and boasts a sense of style that stands out in the tradition-bound Senate.

“I’m sort of a prude and she’s very exotic,” Cramer explained of their contrasting demeanor. “She was very hard on President Obama. So she’s quite feisty.”

There’s one Republican who’s still at arm’s length from Sinema: Martha McSally, whom Sinema defeated in 2018 but was then quickly appointed to fill the seat of the late Sen. John McCain. McSally said that the two “left it all out there on the field during the campaign” and Sinema said their staffs work together.

But after a race in which McSally accused Sinema of saying “It’s OK to commit treason,” and Sinema said McSally was spreading "smears," there’s been no real attempt to put the past behind them.

“There hasn’t been that conversation,” Sinema said flatly.

Sinema isn’t out for revenge, either. She’s currently uncommitted in McSally’s campaign against Democrat Mark Kelly and has no plans to weigh in. She said her constituents “don’t care” about endorsements.

That neutral stance might buy her goodwill with her Republican colleagues, who are in the majority, after all. But it’s another reminder that her moderate stance doesn’t play well with all Democrats. The state Democratic Party put off a censure vote against her this year, but could revive it next year.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a progressive Democrat from Arizona, said Democrats were “a little thrown back” by her vote for Barr and warned her not to forget her state’s increasingly young, diverse voting population as she navigates the tricky politics of being from a swing state.

“She runs her own thing. It worked for her getting elected. In terms of effectiveness, we’ll see,” Grijalva said. “I would be more concerned about not reflecting where the demographics in Arizona are going. And they’re going Democratic and they’re going more progressive.”

Sinema is unmoved and might even see a censure as a badge of honor after McCain received one from the state GOP. Sinema won’t fight the effort and won’t change her positions. And if the censure resolution comes back up next year? “I don’t know. Also, don’t care.”

Sinema’s attempt to be above the political fray is central to her identity and her goal of building relationships with as many colleagues as possible.

Party leaders’ whip counts? Not her problem. Using her platform as senator to regularly promote her views to a national audience? Not interested. Skipping caucus lunches almost everyone else attends? She’ll be there when it matters for Arizona.

And missing votes on the EPA chief for an Ironman race?

“Ironman’s pretty badass. It’s awesome,” she responded when asked if she got any criticism for skipping town for New Zealand just two months into her term.

Less awesome, in her view, is the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. And with her party fixated on beating both McSally and Trump in Arizona, Sinema’s endorsement or even guidance for candidates about how to win there could be key.

But that’s not something she’s interested in, either. She even said it’s “premature” to commit to supporting her own party’s nominee at this point and indicated it could be months before she tunes into a debate.

“Eventually it would be wonderful to have a candidate that shares the values of the majority of Americans,” Sinema said cryptically. “Let’s winnow the field below like, 20 or something, and then maybe it gets easier. Like, when it’s enough for two basketball teams, it’s too much.”

When Kevin Cramer distanced himself from her by saying "I’m sort of a prude and she’s very exotic," he meant she's a lascivious, licentious bisexual. One of her former colleagues in the House, a happily married man who told me she tried seducing him several times, finds her "the strangest member of Congress... a duck out of water... It makes as much sense that she's in the Senate as it does that Trump is in the White House."

Orlando progressive Democrat Alan Grayson also used to serve with Sinema in the House. Yesterday, during a discussion of the Politico article, he told me that "There are a lot of observers who see 'unprincipled' and think 'independent,' or they see 'betrayal' and they think 'moderate.'  No matter how long such 'independent moderates' are in office, the only thing they can ever look back on is being elected. They can’t answer the question, 'what have you done for The People?'"

She used to serve on the same board as I did-- before she was elected to Congress. After a short time I realized she was insane and soon after I realized she was dangerously insane. I always made sure to sit outside of her line of vision... just in case she was carrying a pistol in her handbag and decided to go postal. I'm not joking.

What Will A Post-Trump GOP Look Like?

You probably never heard of him but, as the European version of Politico reported this week Joram van Klaveren converted to Islam. Why is that notable? He is a former member of Holland's parliament, elected on Geert Wilders' neo-fascist anti-immigrant, Islamophobic party, the PVV. How to think about this? Imagine Dana Rohrabacher, Rod Blum or Dave Brat announcing he had just converted.

Van Klaveren said he made the switch from critic to convert while writing a book about Islam. He told a Dutch radio interviewer that "During that writing I came across more and more things that made my view on Islam falter." He had been another garden variety PVV Islamophobe calling Islam a fake religion and spouting junk like "The Quran is poison. Now he says he was wrong and that it was PVV policy that "everything that was wrong had to be linked to Islam in one way or another."

Van Klaveren is the second PVV official to convert. The first was Arnoud van Doorn, who tweeted up a storm, including how: he "never thought that the PVV would become a breeding ground for converts."

Will we see Republicans revolting against Trumpism this way one day? Steve King wearing a serape and sombrero, riding a burro while munching pulled pork tacos? Kevin McCarthy using the millions of dollars in corporate bribes he takes to build mosques in Bakersfield, Tehachapi and at the gateway to Sequoia National Park? Who knows... Geert Wilders is almost as horrible as Trump. But... The Atlantic published a post by Ron Brownstein yesterday, Trump Is Walling Off the GOP that implies the GOP could wither away first. "The most misleading line," he wrote, "in Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this week might have also been the most revealing about how he is reconfiguring the Republican Party and reshaping America’s electoral alignment. 'Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways,' he declared at one point. “I want people to come into our country, in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.' Trump ad-libbed the part about 'the largest numbers ever,' but even the base claim-- that he supports legal immigration-- radically rewrites his record. Trump just last year supported legislation from Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that would have cut legal immigration by more than 40 percent-- the largest reduction since the 1920s... Trump has used almost every administrative tool at his disposal to create more hurdles for legal immigrants. 'The idea that the administration is trying to increase legal immigration, or allow more of it, is just totally contrary to every proposal that they have put out here,' [David] Bier said in an interview. Trump was so determined to restrict legal immigration, he rejected a deal accepted by virtually every Senate Democrat that would have provided him with $25 billion for his border wall in return for a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, the young people brought illegally to the U.S. by their parents."

Trump’s hostility to legal immigration, which he so aggressively sought to hide in his speech, is key to understanding the real implications of his immigration agenda. Once again on Tuesday, Trump signaled that he prioritizes no cause more than building a wall across the southern border, portraying his determination as a sign of his commitment to ensuring Americans’ security and upholding the rule of law. His praise for legal immigration, though distorting his record, provided a critical buttress for that case: It allowed him to suggest that his motivation for the wall isn’t resisting immigration per se, only illegal and dangerous behavior. The truth, though, is that the wall is itself only one brick in a much larger structure aimed at restricting most kinds of immigration.

“This administration and this president are opposed to all forms of immigration regardless of status, really regardless of the type of category that they enter under,” Bier said. “They have attacked them all; they have tried to prevent them from being able to come in. It’s not specific to any region of the world, even. It’s everyone coming into this country from abroad is a threat or a problem and needs to be stopped.”

Each pillar of this agenda faces opposition from a majority of Americans in polls. Surveys show that Trump has never persuaded more than 45 percent of the country to support the border wall, and that number stood at just 40 percent, with 60 percent opposing, in a Gallup poll released this week. National surveys, such as this week’s CNN poll, consistently find that two-thirds of Americans, an even more preponderant majority, oppose Trump declaring a national emergency to build the wall, as he’s threatened to do. Gallup this week found that four-fifths of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., an idea that Trump derides as amnesty.

Gallup has also found that support for legal immigration has steadily increased under Trump: In this week’s survey, the share of Americans who supported increasing legal immigration (30 percent) reached the highest level Gallup has recorded since it first asked the question in 1965, while the share of Americans who want to decrease legal immigration (31 percent) essentially matched the lowest level ever recorded, in June. The combined percentage of Americans who want to maintain legal immigration at its current level (37 percent) or increase it also matched the all-time high.

“In spite of Trump’s policies and rhetoric, more and more Americans support immigrants and immigration-- from citizenship for the undocumented to better pathways for legal immigration,” notes Ali Noorani, executive director of the pro-immigration group National Immigration Forum.

What’s more, the polling evidence clearly shows that Trump has built very little constituency for his wall beyond the hard-core base of Americans most resistant to immigration in all its forms. Seven in 10 Americans who believe that legal immigration should be reduced also support building the wall, according to detailed figures provided to me by Gallup.

But the wall is opposed by nearly four in five of those surveyed who want to increase legal immigration and by more than two in three who would maintain it at its current level. Similarly, Gallup found that three-fourths of Americans who back mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants also support building the wall. But among the clear majority who oppose mass deportation (roughly three-fifths of all Americans), 80 percent oppose its construction.

All this underscores how Trump, across a broad range of immigration issues, is steering the GOP toward the preferences of a distinct minority of Americans. And yet the evidence is also clear that Trump is systematically eradicating opposition to his agenda inside the GOP. More than four-fifths of Republicans in the House and nearly three-fourths of Republicans in the Senate voted for the massive cuts to legal immigration that Trump supported last year, though the bills ultimately failed. (Taken together, that was a much higher percentage than the share of Republicans who backed cuts to legal immigration the last time the party seriously proposed them, during the 1990s.) While many Republicans were initially skeptical of the border wall when Trump first endorsed it in the 2016 campaign, those voices have been almost completely silenced: Until the very end, hardly any congressional Republicans complained about his strategy of shutting down the federal government for five weeks to pursue funding for the barrier.

Republican senators have grumbled more loudly about the prospect of Trump declaring a national emergency to unilaterally fund the wall. But pressure on them to consolidate behind an emergency declaration is rapidly increasing, too: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina this week warned that there will be a “war” within the GOP if Trump issues a declaration and Republicans don’t support him.

The party’s willingness to link arms behind Trump over the wall is especially striking, because the idea faces such preponderant opposition from all the groups that powered the big Democratic gains in November’s midterm elections: young adults, minorities, independents, and college-educated white voters, especially women. The party’s embrace of the wall is symbolic of its larger choice to follow Trump’s strategy of trying to squeeze bigger electoral margins out of groups that are shrinking in society: the blue-collar, evangelical, and rural whites who consistently express the most unease in polls about not only immigration, but also other types of social change, from increasing diversity to evolving gender roles.

“My own sense of it is people like Lindsey Graham are being exceedingly shortsighted,” says Pete Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and a frequent Trump critic. “All they are looking at is the next day and the next week and the next month. If the Republican Party breaks with Trump in a fundamental way, there will be costs to it because it will be a divided party. What they are missing is the medium- and long-term damage in attaching themselves to Trump. He is leaving a crimson stain on the party. And instead of finding ways to remove that crimson stain, they are making it more indelible.”

The damage from that “stain” was evident in last fall’s House races, when Republicans were annihilated in metro-area districts that contain large numbers of immigrants, minorities, and college-educated voters. After the 2018 result, Democrats now control more than 80 percent of the House seats in which minorities exceed their national share of the population, and nearly 90 percent of the seats with more immigrants than average, according to Census Bureau figures. Fewer than one in 10 House Republicans now represents districts with more foreign-born residents than average, compared with about six times as many Democrats. Most of those diverse places moved sharply against Republicans in Senate and governor races, too.

...[T]he magnitude of the GOP’s defeat in House elections last fall suggests the size of the coalition that Trump is potentially solidifying against his party, particularly as the unprecedentedly diverse Millennial and post-Millennial generations grow as a share of the electorate. As Wehner noted, “the real problem” Trump is creating for the GOP is that “the very thing that alienates the Republican Party from most of the public is the very thing that energizes most of the base, which is cultural identity and ethnic nationalism.”

Despite his bravado during the State of the Union, Trump already has conceded that he will, at best, win funding for a wall in designated areas, not the massive concrete barrier he once proposed across the entire Mexican border. But the biggest takeaway from this week’s speech is that Trump may be systematically walling off the GOP from the places in America that are most powerfully forging the country’s future.

Who will pay the price? Of course the one everyone wants to see pay the price is McConnell, who's up for reelection and will have a tough opponent in uber-popular sports-talk radio host Matt Jones. And there's the #2 sack'o'shit, John Cornyn (who Texas Dems want to see Beto to take on. But the more likely GOP victims of Trumpism will be Martha McSally (AZ), Cory Gardner (CO), Sudan Collins (ME), Joni Ernst (IA), Thom Tillis (NC) and possibly David Perdue (GA-- especially if Stacey Abrams takes him on).

In the House... did you notice yesterday that Rob Woodall (R-GA) announced he's retiring next year? Expect lots and lots like that. (Walter Jones of North Carolina has also announced he's retiring, as did Utah's Ron Bishop.) Other walled-in Republicans who will make great targets next year include 4 each in California-- LaMalfa, McClintock, Nunes and Hunter-- and New York-- Zeldin, King, Katko and Collins; Mike Bost and Rodney Davis in Illinois; obviously Steve King in Iowa; Fred Upton and Tim Walberg in Michigan; Don Bacon in Nebraska; Brian Fitzpatrick, Scott Perry and Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania; and an astonishing TEN seats in Texas! For starters.

This morning Gabriel Sherman asserted at Vanity Fair that Trump is hated by "everyone inside the White House." He wrote that "Morale inside the White House, never high to begin with, has turned particularly bleak, according to interviews with 10 former West Wing officials and Republicans close to the president. The issue is that many see Trump himself as the problem. 'Trump is hated by everyone inside the White House,' a former West Wing official told me. His shambolic management style, paranoia, and pattern of blaming staff for problems of his own making have left senior White House officials burned out and resentful, sources said. 'It’s total misery. People feel trapped,' a former official said. 'Trump always needs someone to blame,' a second former official said. Sources said the leak of Trump’s private schedules to Axios-- which revealed how little work Trump actually does-- was a signal of how disaffected his staff has become."

White House Communications Director Bill Shine has told friends he’s angry that Trump has singled him out for the bad press during the government shutdown. “Bill is like, ‘you’re the guy who steps on the message more than anyone,’” said a Republican who’s spoken with Shine recently. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow has told people he’s probably got six months left. “Larry’s really tired of it all,” a source close to Kudlow said.

What’s driving a lot of the frustration is that Trump, now more than ever, runs the West Wing as a family business. Four sources said the only White House advisers he truly consults are daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. “This is a family affair, and if you’re not in the family, you’ve got problems,” a former official said. The special privileges and access afforded to Kushner and Ivanka have been alienating Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. “Mick is not entirely thrilled with the family,” a Republican close to Mulvaney told me. Multiple sources said Mulvaney is looking for a way out of the West Wing. He’s said to be interested in a Cabinet position, either at the Commerce Department or Treasury, and he’s reportedly been pursuing the University of South Carolina presidency. A senior White House official recently lobbied a friend of Mulvaney’s to convince Mulvaney to stay.

In the meantime, Mulvaney is working to stave off another political crisis before Trump either shuts the government down again or declares a state of emergency to fund his southern border wall. One source briefed on the internal debate said that Mulvaney is advising Trump to accept less than his demand of $5 billion and make up the difference by shuffling money around the existing budget. “Mick wants to re-program existing funds,” the source said. Trump has insisted he won’t compromise, but he faces no good options, with a G.O.P. revolt likely if he goes the national-emergency route. “Trump is going to declare whatever happens a victory,” a former West Wing official said.

Perhaps Trump can bring back the A-Team?

Holland Used Paper Ballots To Foil Putin But, Despite Hacking, Georgia Refuses To Do Likewise

Holland was smart. They chucked their electronic voting system this week and everyone voted using paper ballots after Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear were caught trying to hack into electronic voting equipment the way they did in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Ohio, putting Trump over the top. Instead Putin's candidate in Holland, neo-Nazi Geert Wilders, did significantly worse than polls had predicted, winning just 20 seats in the House of Representatives, where he and his racist thugs will just be a noisy opposition party in the 150 seat chamber. The U.S. should go back to paper ballots immediately-- starting with Georgia. Why Georgia? (Ahhh... Glad you asked.)

Georgia's a very gerrymandered state. There are 4 Democratic seats with strong enough Democratic registration advantages so that no Republican can win in any of them. Nice for team blue, right? No, terrible for team blue. That's because there are 10 Republican seats with strong enough Republican registration advantages so that no Democrat can win in any of them. Here's how that works. John Lewis' GA-05 has a PVI of D+32. In 2008 Obama beat McCain there, 84-15%. In 2012, Obama was reelected 83-16%. Hillary did even better, beating Trumpanzee 85.0% to 11.9%. John Lewis was reelected with 75.6% of the vote, nearly a 200,000 vote margin.

The most backward pigsty of a district in George is Doug Collins' GA-09, in the far northeast corner of the state where rural Georgia meets rural North Carolina and rural South Carolina. There are 20 counties with no cities. Hall County is the closest thing to a population base, where the county seat, Gainesville has a population of 35,000. GA-09 is very white and very poor and with the fewest number of blacks of any district in the state. McCain beat Obama 75-24% and Romney beat Obama 78-21%. And the 9th was, predictably, Trump's strongest district in Georgia. He beat Clinton 77.8% to 19.3%. No Democrat bothered to even run against Collins last year but he took 81% of the vote the last time a Democrat did run against him.

Those are both safe seats-- which is exactly what they were drawn to be. And so was GA-06 in the suburbs north of Atlanta. And sure enough McCain beat Obama 59-40% and Romney beat Obama 61-37%. This last year incumbent wing-nut Tom Price was reelected 61.6% to 38.4% but then something peculiar happened. Trump wasn't popular in the district. Rubio kicked his ass in the GOP primary and in the general, Hillary nearly did the unthinkable. Trump won 48.3% to 46.8%. Imagine if she had campaigned there! Imagine if there was a Democratic Party fighting for down-ballot candidates there!

After the election, Pence picked Price, an old crony of his and Ryan's to put into Trump's cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services-- just the man to repeal the Affordable Care Act, replace it with TrumpCare (basically nothing), and set off to destroy Medicaid and eventually Medicare. That left an open seat. The election will have two steps: an open (or jungle) primary April 18, followed by a run-off on June 20th. There are 11 Republicans running and 5 Democrats (as well as a Libertarian and a couple of independents). Both polls show Democrat John Ossoff in the lead and indicate a run-off between him and controversial anti-Choice fanatic Karen Handel (although there is also a close friend of Trump's in the race, Bruce LeVell who would get a huge boost if Trump endorses him).

So what's the connection to the Dutch Parliamentary elections from this week? And paper ballots? The race is widely seen as a referendum on Trump. If Ossoff wins, the fear in the White House and the Kremlin is that congressional Republicans will abandon Trump and his legislative agenda in droves. So Putin is feeling around to see if he can steal this one the way he stole swing counties in the Rust Belt. Think I'm kidding? WSB is the biggest TV station in Atlanta. Just over a week ago they reported that the FBI is investigating a data breach at the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University. So? Kennesaw isn't even part of GA-06. It's in the 11th district. But WSB reported that "the state voter data kept by the Center for Election Systems was compromised [and that] the Georgia Secretary of State uses the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State to facilitate elections in all Georgia counties and maintain voting machines... Sources said the breach happened Wednesday night and the hacker made off with millions of voter records."

Now big a deal is this? Of course, Putin isn't claiming responsibility. But... this week a group of technology experts said Georgia should stop using electronic voting machines and switch to paper ballots for the April 18 Special Election. The successfully hacked Center for Election Systems tests and certifies Georgia's voting machines and electronic polling books used to check in voters at polling locations. Employees also format ballots for every election held in the state. In a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R), a candidate for Governor in 2018, twenty technology experts and computer science professors affiliated with the national Verified Voting organization said paper ballots will preserve voters' confidence in the results of an upcoming special election to fill Georgia's 6th District congressional seat. The letter said using equipment maintained by the center while it is the focus of a criminal investigation "can raise deep concerns."

Verified Voting, which closely tracks voting systems used throughout the U.S., and other advocacy groups have long expressed concern with Georgia's reliance on voting machines. Barbara Simons, chairwoman of the nonpartisan organization's board, said paper ballots allow voters to ensure their choices are correct and create a trail if there are any questions about the results. It also lets officials do a hand count of the physical ballots, she said.

"Under the circumstances, the only prudent thing to do is make sure voting is done in a secure fashion," Simons said. "This should not be a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats both care about secure elections."

Wednesday Kemp's office rejected their plea and said the special election will used electronic voting machines, even though the cyberattack could easily have infected the electronic voting machines with a virus that could manipulate vote totals.

Monday the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported a dust-up over this between Kemp, a highly partisan wing nut who could easily be on Trump's or Putin's payroll, and DuBose Porter, chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, who demanded Kemp accept help from the Department of Homeland Security to get to the bottom of the hack. Kemp, true to form, accused Porter of playing politics while trying to create a "manufactured crisis" to help Democratic candidates. Something of a fascist, Kemp said of the Democrats that "They would love nothing more than for us to flout Georgia law and use paper ballots so they can challenge the results when they lose, but we will not cater to such childish antics."

Blue America is helping raise money for Jon Ossoff's get out the vote efforts. That's the key to winning this race-- getting everyone in GA-06 who wants to put the brakes on Trump to turn out and vote. Please consider helping by clicking the ActBlue thermometer on the right and giving what you can. And remember, April 18 is just one month from tomorrow! Republicans are biting their nails over a seat in suburban Georgia. Who would have ever thunk? Let's help put Ossoff in Congress-- and give the folks in Montana an idea that they can do the same on May 25 when Democrat Rob Quist meets crackpot multimillionaire wing-nut Greg Gianforte to replace Ryan Zinke, Trump's Secretary of the Interior, in another special election.


UPDATE: Remember How East-Peasy It Was To Hack Diebold Machines?

One of the country's top experts on electronic voter fraud just responded to the post above by telling me, among other things, that "Moving to paper ballots in GA would be great, of course. They (with Maryland) were the first state to go to touch-screen voting systems back in 2002 and still use those same shitty Diebold machines-- the same ones we hacked years ago-- in all of their elections. It's insane! Of all of the systems, those are likely the easiest ones to manipulate by both outsiders (hackers) and insiders (officials with access to the machines or, much easier, central tabulator)."

Today Dutch Voters Told Geert Wilders, Vladimir Putin And Vladimir Trump To Go To Hell

Holland voted in parliamentary elections today, electing all 150 members of the House of Representatives. I lived there for nearly 4 years and never could get a firm grasp on their particular brand of multi-party coalition politics. There were 28 parties competing for seats in Parliament today. By this evening, the European headlines were blaring that the Freedom Party (PVV) of neo-fascist politician Geert Wilders-- a Trump ally-- had done unexpectedly badly and that center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte would be back as head of government. We can be happy Wilders got slapped down, but Rutte is no bargain.

The Dutch had no intention of giving Putin an easy win by allowing him to hack-- for real hack, not the bullshit about propaganda-- the electronic voting machines the way he did in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. The Dutch switched to paper ballots. They had near record-breaking turnout (81%) and turned Wilders' and Putin's names to schijten (see, I told you I lived there for 4 years). The U.S. will never admit Putin hacked the machines in fear that no one will vote. Instead, they should switch to paper ballots like the Dutch did.

Yesterday the last Ipsos poll predicted the top 7 parties would come out of today's election with this many seats in Parliament:

• center-right VVD- 29 from 40
• religious right of center CDA- 23 from 13
• fascist PVV- 20 from 12
• centrist Labor Party PvdA- 9 from 35
• progressivish D66- 18 from 12
• left of center Socialist Party SP- 15 from 15
• left of center Green Party GL- 15 from 4

Earlier in the week, several polls had shown Wilders' PVV beating the VVD and winning the most seats. The projected score-- number of seats-- as of this evening is:

• VVD- 33
• CDA- 19
• PVV- 20
• D66- 19
• GL- 14
• SP- 14
• PvdA- 9

So the hackish centrist Mark Rutte will be Prime Minister again-- of another unpopular, ineffective, dysfunctional conservative government wedded to the kind of failed Austerity Paul Ryan is eager to import into America. Wilders had been endorsed yesterday by the French fascist candidate Marine Le Pen, although that doesn't seem to have helped him at all. He polled something between 17 and 18% nationally.

Although the fascists won in Rotterdam, the Green Party finished first in Amsterdam with 19.3%, followed by D66 with 18.2%. Rutte's VVD came in 3rd with 15.2% and Wilders' fascists came in 6th with just 7%. Nationally, the Green-Left Party, headed by 30 year old Jesse "Jessiah" Klaver, quadrupled their 4 seats and are suddenly a real power in Parliament. Klaver is often compared to Justin Trudeau-- there's a slight physical resemblance-- but he is definitely the anti-Wilders guy-- son of a Moroccan father and an Indonesian-descended mother-- he sounded more like Bernie Sanders than like Trudeau. "What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace. Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism." In a much-talked about TV debate he told Wilders that it was rightwing populism, not Muslim immigration, that was undermining Dutch culture and traditions. "The values the Netherlands stands for-- for many, many decades, centuries actually-- its freedom, its tolerance, its empathy… they are destroying it. It’s terrible when people are born in the Netherlands have the feeling they are not part of this society and it is not something to be proud of, but something to be ashamed of. And I want to change that."

As Colonel Morris Davis tweeted this morning, "Too bad for Wilders there's no Electoral College where finishing in 2nd place can still be a win."

Rutte begins negotiating with his coalition partners-- presumably the CDA and D66-- tomorrow and, since he won, he gets to pick this evening's goodnight song-- his favorite:

The Dutch Trump-- Worse Than The Dutch Oven

Look, I like a good harira and a sumptuous tagine as much as anyone. But I haven't been to Morocco more than a dozen times because of either. I first visited Morocco early in 1969; it was my first trip to a "non-Western" country. I loved everything about it, but it was the generosity and welcoming nature of the Moroccan people that blew my mind. That's not just why I keep returning but it was in part why I immediately embarked on a 2 year journey that took me through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, all Muslim-majority countries (as well as India which has over 170 million Muslims-- considerably more people, of all faiths, that live in Russia or Mexico).

1969 was also the first time I visited Holland, though more briefly than my stay in Morocco. Eventually though, I settled down in Amsterdam, got a job and lived there for almost 4 years. I wasn't happy a couple weeks ago when Dutch Trumpist politician Geert Wilders referred to Moroccan immigrants as "scum" while campaigning among Dutch versions of the Trump voters. What always shocks me about racists like the average Trump supporter and like Wilders is that they feel perfectly comfortable chastising an entire race or ethnic group based on their experience with generally desperate impoverished immigrants.

Campaigning, in his own weird way, is what Wilders is doing now. Even as Putin installs neo-Nazi Marine Le Pen (first round April 23, runoff May 7) as president of France, he has a March 15 general election in Holland to win-- for Wilders. Wilders' party, the far right PVV is on track to electing the most members of the House, doubling its number since the 2012 general election. Is he even worse than Trump? The NY Times described him as wanting "to end immigration from Muslim countries, tax head scarves and ban the Quran... omnipresent on social media but lives as a political phantom under police protection, rarely campaigning in person and reportedly sleeping in a different location every night. He has structured his party so that he is the only official, giving him the liberty to remain, above all things, in complete control, and a provocateur and an uncompromising verbal bomb thrower." It's not likely he'll be able to put a coalition together that makes him prime minister next month but he could exercise effective control over the whatever dysfunctional Dutch government is formed. Like Señor Trumpanzee, he's "unafraid to say things in the most direct, divisive, dismissive, and often disparaging and insulting of ways [and] many of his supporters feel buoyed and relieved that he is giving voice to what they cannot say, or feel they are not supposed to say." Sound familiar?

Geert Wilders, far-right icon, is one of Europe’s unusual politicians, not least because he comes from the Netherlands, one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, with a centuries-long tradition of promoting religious tolerance and welcoming immigrants.

How he and his party fare in the March 15 elections could well signal how the far right will do in pivotal elections in France, Germany and possibly Italy later this year, and ultimately determine the future of the European Union. Mr. Wilders (pronounced VIL-ders) has promised to demand a “Nexit” referendum on whether the Netherlands should follow Britain’s example and leave the union.

“The Netherlands is kind of a bellwether, a lot of trends manifest themselves here first,” said Hans Anker, a Dutch political strategist who has worked both in the Netherlands and the United States.

“I wouldn’t rule out that Wilders could be prime minister,” he added. “This one is fundamentally unpredictable.”

Remarkably, Mr. Wilders, 53, has managed to build a movement despite his infrequent public appearances. Living under threat since the police discovered plots against him in 2004 has turned him into a politician ahead of his time, using the internet and later social media to talk to voters without the filter of journalists.

It has proved a particularly effective means of reaching disillusioned citizens. Other politicians have followed his lead but almost none have done it as effectively, Dutch experts said.

“He’s the most strategic, smartest politician out there,” said Sarah de Lange, a political science professor at the University of Amsterdam. “He’s very skilled. He’s a very good debater. He has media savvy. Internationally, he’s compared to Trump. But with Wilders every tweet is thought through, calculated. With Trump it’s emotional.”

Right now Mr. Wilders’s party looks set to win more seats than any other or to come in second. However, he has historically polled better before elections than he has performed in them. Still, after pollsters underestimated the likelihood of both Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump last year, no one is relying on predictions.

But whether Mr. Wilders’s party wins the most votes, or enters a government, hardly matters. He has already succeeded in one of his main ambitions-- to push politics in the Netherlands to the right and make possible a conversation about shutting out immigrants and dismantling the European Union that was unthinkable not long ago.

...Wilders describes himself as an outsider. Yet he is the third-longest-sitting member of the Dutch Parliament and has spent his life in politics since he was about 28... He maintains the image of being present through carefully dispensing Twitter posts, videos and television interviews. His rare public appearances guarantee that every time he ventures out he attracts a media circus.

Last week, he suspended his campaign appearances altogether after reports that a member of his police security detail was suspected of leaking his movements to a Dutch-Moroccan criminal gang.

Still, he manages to travel to give speeches outside the Netherlands, including at the Republican convention in Cleveland, where he spoke at the “Milo Yiannopoulos Wake Up Party,” a gathering of [severely mentally ill] lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people for Mr. Trump... He is described by political compatriots as friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli prime minister... [He] seems to try to outdo himself more for shock value and to grab attention than for practical effect, particularly on immigration.

“In 2012 his position was no new mosques in the Netherlands; now it is ‘close all the mosques,’ ” said Michiel Servaes, a Labor Party member in Parliament who has served with him. “In 2012 it was limit asylum seekers to 1,000 a year; now it’s ‘no new asylum seekers.’”

Yet Mr. Wilders’s stands have brought the mainstream right to advocate strict limits on aid for immigrants and helped spawn new small right-wing parties, all with strong positions against immigration and in support of stricter rules to push immigrants to accept Dutch culture, Mr. Servaes said.

Will The Trump Regime Use Orwell's 1984 As A Playbook?

The delusional self-imagine Trump and his lackeys are pushing out from the White House is colliding with the cold hard facts, if not the #AltFacts. He may style himself a "ratings machine," but his inaugural concert was "a dud, lacking A-list talent. On Friday, the inauguration ceremony pulled in 30.6 million viewers, 7 million less than Obama’s first swearing in, 12 million less than Reagan, and 3 million less than Jimmy Carter-- but slightly above that of Bill Clinton’s first- term ceremony of 29.7 million viewers. Trump, who recently Twitter-shamed Arnold Schwarzenegger for pulling in lower ratings than he had as a reality host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, barely bested George W. Bush, a president whose election was won only after an aborted recount and Supreme Court intervention... At times, the president-elect appeared distracted at his own inauguration. Never known for his patience [attention span], he could not seem to sit still. He rocked in his seat minutes before taking the oath, tapped his fingers together and whispered to newly sworn-in Vice President Mike Pence when others were taking up time on the mike."

Art by Tim O'Brien

No matter how you sliced it, the affair lacked the exuberance and adoration we’ve come to expect from a showman like Trump on the campaign trail. He often cites his own power to amass fans and followers (have you heard he has a Twitter account?) as one of his greatest assets. He’s referred to it as his edge above all the other “losers.”

Those losers seemed to be on his mind later that night as he danced with his model-beautiful wife wearing the look of a high school bully who’d just been named Prom King. Two lines from his inauguration speech seemed especially relevant to the moment: “Everyone is listening to you now... You will never be ignored again.”

Ignored? No, but upstaged, yes. The next morning the Women’s March on Washington flooded the areas around the Capitol Dome that had been noticeably less populated when Trump was waving from and walking near his stretch limo on the parade route. The half-empty parade bleachers and unoccupied ground tarps of Friday were swallowed up by a sea of protesters who’d flown in from across the country to voice concerns about the Trump presidency.

They were thousands among the millions who protested across the nation and the world for women’s rights-- and their concern about a president whose remarks about sexually assaulting women were as disturbing as some of his conservative Cabinet picks’ views of reproductive rights.

Madonna, America Ferrera, Ashley Judd, Scarlett Johansson and Gloria Steinem stoked the crowd’s exuberance in way that Trump did not the day before. It was a rousing spectacle. It was exciting. It was everything the show on Friday was not.

And maybe that is why Spicer was sent out on Saturday to belligerently berate the press-- “the opposition party,” in the words of one Trump official. Here was the “unbelievable” scene-- the likes of which we’d “never seen before.”

The true start of the Trump presidential reality show had begun.

In a Facebook post, Dan Rather warned that "These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures." Will Newt Gingrich want to toss him into prison with Madonna for thought crimes?



Rather's point, though, is not blowing up the White House but that we all must step up "and say simply and without equivocation, 'A lie, is a lie, is a lie!' And if someone won't say it, those of us who know that there is such a thing is the truth must do whatever is in our power to diminish the liar's malignant reach into our society... Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy. And you are either with us, with our Constitution, our history, and the future of our nation, or you are against it. Everyone must answer that question."

Following the path Trump and his lackeys are headed is the road to tyranny and fascism. Are Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell going to countenance that?

Not that the first few days in the Trumpanzee Era were only about distorting the truth, Chuck Todd and his crew pointed out that it also highlighted America's great political divide, the structure on which Trump will build his government. "[Y]ou could argue," they wrote, "that the United States today is more politically divided than it was during the brass-knuckled 2016 campaign. In his inaugural address on Friday, President Trump took aim at Washington's political establishment ('For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost'), big cities across America ('Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones…; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives'), and globalization ('From this moment on, it's going to be America First'). Then, 24 hours later, millions of women-- as well as some men-- protested against Trump across the country and throughout the world. It was Rural America vs. Urban America. Nationalism vs. Globalism. 'American Carnage' vs. Women's Power. And we have 1,457 days to go in Trump's presidency."