Strong People Can Vote Against Trump Without Forcing Themselves To Wear Blinders About Who Joe Biden Is

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

In the early days of DWT, Paul Lakasiak occasionally graced this blog with guest posts. They were always among my favorite contributions. Paul was back yesterday with a response to a post-- Is The Tent So Big That The Party Has Become Meaningless As Anything MoreThan A Vehicle To Save The Country From Trump?. "The answer to your question is 'yes'," he wrote in the comment section. "And the Democratic Party is getting worse, not better."

Watching the convention over the first three days, I was actually working up some enthusiasm for helping the Dems win big in November. Then I saw the news that Pelosi had endorsed Joey With the Good Hair over reliable, principled progressive (and INCUMBENT) Ed Markey. And now I'm outraged.

I'll still crawl through broken glass laced with tetanus laden rusty tacks and fire ants to vote against Donald Trump in November. But don't ask me to tell anyone that things will get better with Democrats like Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House -- because all I can say is that, under Biden, things won't be as bad as under Trump.

And I suspect that this viewpoint will be shared extensively among real progressives. They know that the democratic party is completely corrupt-- and that Pelosi is thoroughly worthless. And we're most likely to see repeat of 2010 in another two years, as Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer betray the American people in favor of their corporate sponsors.

Biden's acceptance speech Thursday night was excellent. Whoever wrote it with him deserves a lot of praise. Biden delivered it very, very well too. I'm a big admirer of John Pavlovitz and share his thoughts here at DWT frequently. I've never disagreed with him-- until his post yesterday: Joe Biden Is Not The Lesser of Two Evils. Obviously, anyone could agree with his observation that "The only people still defending [Trump] are brainwashed Evangelicals, looney conspiracy theorists, and abject racists. The raking light of history is recording all of it, whether these people like it or not. The human rights violations and the assaults on our Constitution and the attacks on our institutions and the rampant criminality cannot be denied or explained away or buried in fake Fox News headlines." It's his next line, though, that merits some debate: "Joe Biden is not the lesser of two evils, because he is not evil by any measure."

For someone like myself, who doesn't vote for evil, whether it is lesser or not, that's an important assertion, and one I entirely disagree with. Politically-speaking, Biden is profoundly evil. Unlike Paul Lukasiac, let alone John Pavlovitz, I'm not even going to vote for him. On a relative basis of evil, he pales next to Trump. Trump's evil isn't normal political evil... Trump's evil comes from the bowels of hell and I pray that selfless and courageous Secret Service agents spend time meditating on a Satwant Singh and Beant Singh solution to what plagues our country and is bringing it to its knees.




I respect people who look at Trump and Biden and conclude that Trump is so much worse that they will... "crawl through broken glass laced with tetanus laden rusty tacks and fire ants to vote" against Trump in November. I haven interest in trying to persuade anyone to not vote against Trump and do what I can to remind everyone I know-- and readers of this blog-- that Satan has a servant in the White House.

But that doesn't change how I see the Joe Biden I've gotten to know since the mid-1970s, when he only had one issue he ran on as a newly-minted Democrat: racism. His campaign was based on dog-whistles vowing to protect white suburban voters from the horrors of integration. And once he got to the Senate, he was in a constant battle for the position of that body's worst Democrat, consciously-- no, literally, consciously-- fighting to present himself as a conservative. Like I said, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from voting against Trump and I spent the last year talking about Biden's shortcomings. That said, this kind of drivel is not something I'm buying into, no matter the source:

He is a profoundly decent man: a man of faith, a man of compassion; a man who is willing to listen to different viewpoints, capable of evolving, and able to admit his mistakes. He is a man who loves deeply, mourns greatly, and gives fully. He is a man with actual meaningful, healthy relationships with other human beings. He is a humble man who sees others as more important than himself.

Biden is a corrupt conservative and he will head a corrupt conservative administration. Mainstream Republicans love him and they will love him more. He may even achieve their biggest goal-- and his own-- wrecking Social Security with some kind of bogus Grand Compromise he's been working on for his whole miserable career. Is he still better than Trump. Of course. One would be hard-pressed to see Trump as anything less than demonic. Biden is, admittedly, a "flawed human," as Pavlovitz put it. The Democratic Party is also very flawed, very, very, very flawed. There are no Republicans in Congress worth re-electing, not even one. The Democrats have many decent members of Congress-- certainly not a majority-- most congressional Democrats should be defeated-- but there are dozens and dozens of good ones too. Something to build on. The GOP? Needs to start over from scratch.

Pavlovitz is no dummy and only an imbecile would dismiss his thoughts. "It’s one thing to be a good-hearted but flawed human being who sometimes says something stupid or occasionally has an error in judgment or simply gets it wrong," he wrote. "Most of us fall under that category. We’re not any kind of evil, we’re just imperfect , emotional people, and so we fail and fall-- sometimes slightly and sometimes spectacularly. That’s who Joe Biden is. He is one of us. He is human. We need more human these days." How can anyone disagree with that? Especially when he offers the contrast: "It’s something else entirely to be an inherently malevolent creature: to be incapable of empathy, defiantly unwilling to admit mistakes; to wake up every day intending to do harm and feeling no remorse for it. If the word evil can apply to anyone, it’s the current President. He lacks a single noble impulse. Even his supporters know that."

Pavlovitz says he "would much rather be led by a well-intentioned human who sometimes misses the mark, than a purposefully cruel sociopath who has no concern for other people’s pain. False equivalencies are irresponsible here. These are fundamentally different people in every important way one can measure such things."

He should vote for Biden. He's going to. Most voters are going to. Nearly everyone I know and respect is going to. All my relatives-- except one seriously deranged one-- are voting for Biden. All my friends are voting for Biden. I am fairly certain that even my partners at Blue America are voting for Biden. I hope that on November 4th, I'll be thanking God for having defeated Satan the day before. And when Biden starts being Biden, I'll be interested to see how long it takes Pavlovitz to rethink his thoughts on relativity. For example, is Austerity evil? Not as evil as Trumpism, but... well, maybe I'm wrong and that nearly 50 years of Bidenism is suddenly going to change. But I doubt it.

One man pulls us toward unity, the other stokes division. 
One man speaks to our collective better angels, the other to the worst of who we are.
One man is burdened to inspire, the other compelled to engender fear.
One man is continually turned outward and the other is fully self-absorbed.
One man expresses his love for America, the other vilifies over half of it.

Stop telling me the choice isn’t clear.

I’m not voting for Joe Biden begrudgingly.

I’m not holding my nose or halfheartedly standing behind his campaign, and I’m not supporting him simply because he’s opposing Donald Trump.
I'm voting for Joe Biden because I know that he won’t deny the existence of a pandemic.
He won’t blame viruses on Republicans.
He won’t silence medical experts.
He won’t reject Science.
He won’t allow tens of thousands of Americans to die in order to protect his ego.
He won’t tweet demeaning nicknames for his opponents.
He won’t validate nonsensical conspiracies.
He won’t shout over female reporters.
He won’t shut down social media apps when teenagers hurt his feelings.
He won’t dismantle the Postal Service in order to deny Americans their essential liberties.
He won’t make fun of people with disabilities.
He won’t call racists fine people.
And on and on and on.

Republicans for Biden feel a lot like Pavlovitz. Below, on the Bulwark podcast-- a #NeverTrump outlet for conservatives-- two staunch conservative Republicans, Charlie Sykes and Tim Miller, had a discussion of the Democratic Convention. Tim Miller, a former RNC spokesman and Jeb Bush Communications Director, said "I wanted to share one thing that we discussed after the show was over. Both of us we were caught off guard by how emotionally attached we were last night to this candidacy. We had sort of expected to feel this reluctant, begrudging support for the Democratic nominee, to have been left in a tough spot between one normal bad choice and one existentially bad one. But that isn’t what happened. Joe Biden has me energized. And frankly, that he has both Charlie and I reflecting on whether maybe in the past we were just…in the wrong…"


In his wrap-up of the Democratic Convention for Politico yesterday, Ryan Lizza wrote that "Much of the week was spent by Democrats balancing praising Biden for his empathy and character and attacking Trump for-- well, just about everything. What was missing from the big speeches-- with the notable exception of Bernie Sanders-- was a clear articulation of the specific policies Biden would pursue to combat the pandemic and recession. Biden filled in those gaps clearly. He discussed, with some specificity, infrastructure, education, health care, climate change, and tax policy. He gave a detailed list of actions he would take to stop the spread of Covid-19. Overall this was a nimble speech that responded to the dramatically changed circumstances of the last few months, when Biden transformed from being the leader of a faction within his party to the leader of the most diverse electoral coalition in modern politics. In that span, the pre-existing crises he knew he would face as president-- climate change, the diminished standing of America in the world-- were shoved aside by three additional and equally urgent crises."

This morning, a trusted progressive leader in Congress suggested that if I could try to "take it easy on Joe until after the election that would be great-- have to beat the Nazis before we can worry about USSR (to torture an imperfect analogy)." I get it... and believe it or not, I have been "taking it easy" on Joe... relatively speaking.

The Establishment's Stop Bernie Movement Isn't Resonating With Democratic Voters

Reminder-- and this isn't just about Republicans vs Democrats

Bernie's political revolution IS resonating. Economic royalism isn't. Even the Washington Post, economic royalism's biggest cheerleader among newspapers, was forced to admit after the way Bernie's revolution crushed the status quo conservatives in Nevada yesterday that Bernie won "in nearly every demographic group, allowing him to set down a marker in the first state with a significant share of nonwhite voters. Sanders expanded the electorate by attracting relatively large numbers of first-time caucus-goers, providing momentum as the race shifts into a critical stretch over the next 10 days. He prevailed among those with college degrees and those without; those living in union and nonunion households; and in every age group except those over 65. He won more than half of Hispanic caucus-goers-- almost four times as much support as his nearest rival, former vice president Joe Biden-- and even narrowly prevailed among those who identified as moderate or conservative. Despite attacks on his health proposal by the powerful Culinary Union, he won in caucus sites filled with union members."

It's almost like Democratic grassroots voters are abandoning their tainted and corrupt leadership. About time! Early this morning the the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Elections Research Center released a new poll showing Bernie winning in Michigan primary (just as he had in 2016), the Pennsylvania primary and the Wisconsin primary.

Remember, Biden pretends delegate-rich Pennsylvania is his home state instead of tiny Delaware where he lived and based his entire career. Bernie is even beating him there! The primary is April 28.

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 20%
• Bloomberg- 19%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 5%

Wisconsin is Bernie country again, of course. It was a big state for him in 2016 and looks like it will be an even bigger state for him in 2020. The primary is April 7.

• Bernie- 30%
• Status Quo Joe- 13%
• Bloomberg- 13%
• Elizabeth- 12%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Klobuchar- 9%

By the way, that poll also shows Bernie beating Trump in head-to-head match-ups in each of the crucial battleground states that Hillary and the Democratic establishment managed to lose in 2016:

• Michigan- 48 to 41%
• Pennsylvania- 47 to 45%
• Wisconsin- 46 to 44%

Ryan Lizza, writing for Politico this morning, was definitive: Sanders eviscerates the conventional wisdom about why he can't win. Lizza is no revolutionary but even he had to admit that Nevada exposed the opposition to Bernie "as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about their viability." But his main point-- and his most important one-- is that Bernie "laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries." And it wasn't just the anti-working class media establishment that fell; it was also the anti-working class Democratic establishment that got flushed down the toilet. The leaders of powerful Culinary Union, went to war against Bernie over Medicare for All and were tasked by state party boss and anti-Bernie fanatic Harry Reid and by the DNC with weakening him. But the union's grassroots went with Bernie not their overseers. He won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, beating pretend union-supporter Status Quo Joe and all of his other rivals.

Lizza explained how Bernie's campaign "exploded a lot of myths," basically the bullshit the anti-working class pundits and Democratic establishment has been floating about his campaign to derail it. If you watch MSNBC, you can probably repeat all of them with ease.

He was said to have a ceiling of 30% or so. Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47%-53%. (He was at 46% with a quarter of precincts reporting as of this writing.) He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22%) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden.

All of this makes the results of the Nevada caucuses, which in the past have not been treated with the same importance as the contests in the three other early states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina-- matter more this year. They have helped settle lingering questions about Sanders' appeal.

Pete 3 by Nancy Ohanian

The momentum of Buttigieg, who was Sanders' strongest opponent in Iowa and New Hampshire, stalled out in Nevada. He slipped into third place, well behind Biden. Long-shot candidacies need to continue to surge forward with unexpected results to overcome doubts. But Buttigieg’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire was not enough to change the minds of enough people in Nevada. A victory here for him would have been catalytic, but the Sanders blowout has halted his rise. (He is still likely to be second behind Sanders in the delegate race, but the early states are all about momentum, not delegates.)

Let's wrap this up with two narrative versions of relevant Twitter threads from this morning, one from former insurance industry executive Wendell Potter and one from The Times' Paul Krugman. Potter first:

Tonight’s results in Nevada confirm something momentous that would have shocked me when I worked as a health insurance executive: Medicare for All is hugely popular & the winning position for Democrats. Between Iowa, New Hampshire and now Nevada, this is a fact. Here’s why:

Entrance polls out of Nevada show 6 in 10 want a single-payer system. Entrance and exit polls from Iowa & New Hampshire found 6 in 10 voters in both states support Medicare for All. All this after millions were spent by my old industry trying to scare voters away from it.

In Nevada, two top candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, both put deceptive ads on the air attacking Medicare for All. They campaigned explicitly against Medicare for All. And they lost by 30 points.

With these three state results in, we now see that Medicare for All is popular in the Midwest, Northeast, and the West, all with different, diverse populations. Medicare for All can win anywhere-- as the primary's front-running campaign demonstrates.

We know the health insurance industry and its lobbyists won’t quit trying to scare the public. But politicians who parrot their talking points do so at their own peril. It's now clear: Medicare For All is the winning position in the 2020 Democratic primary. And opposing it is not.

And Krugman, the NY Times centrist economist who has been an opponent to much of Bernie's platform for years and who still opposes him but is willing to make the case for Bernie in the general election against Trump, unlike many of our MSNBC "friends," who-- largely to protect their tax breaks-- prefer Trump over Bernie:

Well, Bernie Sanders is now the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination. Lots of things to say about that, but the most important is that he is NOT a left-leaning version of Trump. Even if you disagree with his ideas, he's not a wannabe authoritarian ruler.

America under a Sanders presidency would still be America, both because Sanders is an infinitely better man than Trump and because the Democratic Party wouldn't enable abuse of power the way Republicans have.

And if you're worried about his economic agenda, what's your concern, exactly? That he'll run budget deficits? Trump is doing that already-- and the economic effects have been positive.

I'm more concerned about (a) electability and (b) if he does win, squandering political capital on unwinnable fights like abolishing private health insurance. But if he's the nominee, it's the job of Dems to make him electable if at all possible.

To be honest, a Sanders administration would probably leave center-left policy wonks like me out in the cold, at least initially. But this is no time for self-indulgence and ego trips. Freedom is on the line.

Marianne Williamson has gotten to know-- and generally like-- all the candidates running for president. Once she suspended her campaign, all the remaining candidates have reached out to her for her endorsement. She has a tendency to see what's good about each one-- and she was busy working on helping congressional candidates with platforms akin to her own... but this afternoon, she made her decision. Marianne Williamson is definitely feeling the Bern and has endorsed Bernie's campaign for the presidency!

Trump Is Worse Than Bloomberg, Although Bloomberg Might Be More Dangerous

Yesterday, Ryan Lizza noted that all the vaguely viable Democratic presidential campaigns start with "what one close adviser to Barack Obama calls 'The Pilgrimage': the journey to the West End to meet the former president... Ostensibly the meetings are for the aspiring candidates to gain some wisdom from the last Democrat to win an open presidential primary and the presidency, but they also allow Obama to collect his own intelligence about what he and his closest advisers have made clear is all that matters to him: who can beat Donald Trump."

Sometimes he offers candid advice about his visitors’ strengths and weaknesses. With several lesser-known candidates, according to people who have talked to him or been briefed on his meetings, he was blunt about the challenges of breaking out of a large field. His advice is not always heeded. He told Patrick earlier this year that it was likely “too late” for him to secure “money and talent” if he jumped in the race. Occasionally, he can be cutting. With one candidate, he pointed out that during his own 2008 campaign, he had an intimate bond with the electorate, especially in Iowa, that he no longer has. Then he added, “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”

Shhhh... no one tell Lizza

That dig at Status Quo Joe wasn't the key take-away for everyone though. Many people who read Lizza's article are chattering about the paragraph he wrote next: "Publicly, he has been clear that he won’t intervene in the primary for or against a candidate, unless he believed there was some egregious attack. 'I can't even imagine with this field how bad it would have to be for him to say something,' said a close adviser. Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear. There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him. (Asked about that, a spokesperson for Obama pointed out that Obama recently said he would support and campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee is.)"

Would you vote for Biden? Mayo? Bloomberg? To get rid of Trump, right? I live in California. I didn't have to vote for Hillary and if any of the anti-progressive candidates win the nomination, I won't have to vote for them either. And if I lived in Ohio or Florida... I don't think I would, but how can I be 100% sure? Trump really is an existential threat, on a Civil War or World War II level. That's big, even worse than the disgustingness of a President Status Quo Joe, a President Mayo or a President Bloomberg. You know what, if it was Bloomberg and I lived in Florida I know for 100% I would still refuse to vote for him. Well... 99.9%.

Yesterday, David Siders noted that Bernie and Elizabeth were both railing against the arrogance of billionaires in regard to Bloomberg's bid. Anyone hear anything from Obama on this?




Bernie, after a town meeting with union members in New Hampshire on Monday: "What he believes-- and this is the arrogance of billionaires: 'Hey, I can run for president because I’m worth $55 billion, and maybe I’ll take $1 billion out of that $55 billion'-- not a lot, when you’re worth that much-- and … start running a massive amount of TV ads in California and, in fact, all over this country... I don’t believe that Mr. Bloomberg is going to succeed. Because I think at the end of the day, people of this country do not want to see a billionaire buy an election, and that is precisely what Mr. Bloomberg is trying to do."

Everyone I know who knows Bloomberg tells me he's a real asshole, nearly as bad a human being as Trump is and could be a worse president because he's more competent than Trump is and could get things done even if the things he would get done aren't nearly as bad as what Trump has been trying to accomplish. Holly Otterbein reminded plenty of Politico readers with short attention spans just how bad Bloomberg is. When Bloomberg boasts in his new campaign ad about how he "took charge" of New York City in the wake of 9-11, he neglects to mention how heavily he leaned "on an endorsement from Rudy Giuliani [and how he] trumpeted his support in TV advertising and direct mail, chastising his Democratic opponent for being 'no friend of Rudy Giuliani.' Giuliani is just one of many skeletons in Bloomberg’s partisan closet. As he pursues the Democratic nomination, he’ll have to explain away the millions he’s spent putting Republicans into office, including contributions backing more than a dozen current and former Republican members of Congress."

The billionaire businessman, who has switched parties several times throughout his political career, endorsed George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, contributed to John McCain and even held a fundraiser for a House GOP member as recently as last year.

And that’s not all. Beneficiaries of his largess include former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a vigorous Trump defender, and Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, who once chaired the Senate Banking Committee.

Then there’s former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)-- Bloomberg endorsed and held a fundraiser for Brown against Elizabeth Warren in 2012.

“As a Democratic candidate for president, he makes an excellent Republican donor,” quipped Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who has not yet endorsed anyone in the primary.

Is Bloomberg's candidacy a plot to make Biden look less horrible?

Though Bloomberg has also spent millions to support Democrats in recent years, some Democratic elected officials and party operatives remain bitter that he worked to defeat them up and down the ballot in the past.

Aside from his contribution to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Independence USA, a super PAC funded by Bloomberg, spent money to elect Republicans such as Sen. Pat Toomey, 2012 House candidate Andrew Roraback, and former Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick and Bob Dold.

New York Democrats are particularly angered by his former GOP donations, including some in the not-so-distant past. While spending about $100 million to help Democrats flip the House and win other midterm races last year, Bloomberg simultaneously donated to then-Rep. Dan Donovan, a Staten Island Republican, and held a fundraiser in June for Rep. Peter King, a Republican who represents parts of Long Island.

Co-hosts were asked to collect $10,000 for King. Bloomberg also showered New York Republicans with money when he was mayor, which helped them keep control of the state Senate.

“The path to win the House ran through New York: There were seven flippable seats in the state, and he supported Republicans in two of them,” said Monica Klein, a former consultant for Liuba Grechen Shirley, King’s Democratic opponent. “To come down and say he wants to be the head of the Democratic Party-- the hubris is unbelievable.”

...In 2016, Bloomberg reported spending nearly $10 million to successfully re-elect Toomey in his race against Democrat Katie McGinty. Independence USA ran TV ads in Philadelphia’s collar counties that drew attention to his support of gun control legislation, helping him win over critical moderate voters.

“The fact that Bloomberg was willing to throw his money into it gave Toomey a talking point to appeal to suburban voters in Philly, and ultimately one of the reasons we lost is that he outperformed Donald Trump in the Philly suburbs,” said Mike Mikus, McGinty’s former campaign manager. “I’m certain his hand in giving Mitch McConnell a majority in the Senate will be remembered by a lot of Democratic voters.”

Bloomberg left the Republican Party in 2007 and registered as an independent. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008, an aide said, though he did not publicize it at the time. He wrote an op-ed in favor of Obama in his 2012 reelection campaign, and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2018, he changed his registration to Democrat.

Fetterman, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2016 Senate primary, said there is no appetite for the billionaire’s candidacy among Pennsylvania Democrats: “Absolutely none that I’ve encountered.”

Over the weekend, liberal activists circulated a clip of Bloomberg speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention in support of Bush.

“I want to thank President Bush for supporting New York City and changing the Homeland Security funding formula and for leading the global war on terrorism,” he said at the convention. “The president deserves our support. We are here to support him. And I am here to support him.”

Rebecca Katz, a New York-based consultant to progressive candidates, said the video is important context to understand Bloomberg.

“Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is only telling one side of the story. For years, he helped the New York state GOP hold onto their Republican majority. And while he’d prefer Democrats remember his 2016 convention speech, he also spoke at the RNC for George W. Bush in 2004,” she said. “The only thing that’s been consistent about his party affiliation is that it has always been about benefiting Michael Bloomberg."

Yesterday, AOC told her supporters that "Bloomberg is launching his presidential bid. His plan? Dump piles of cash on media. Typical billionaire move. He’s spending $37 million on TV ads, and that’s just the beginning. Advisors say that Bloomberg is ready to spend up to $1 BILLION to buy the Democratic nomination and (he hopes) the presidency as well... We’re not going to defeat Donald Trump by running an out-of-touch billionaire with a history of demeaning people of color. We need a leader who’s spent a lifetime on the front-line fighting for the progressive change that the working-class people of this country deserve. Bernie Sanders is that leader. He’s spent his entire career fighting to pass Medicare for All, and to build a country with social, economic, racial, and environmental justice at its core."

I can't wait to see who the first member of Congress is to endorse Bloomberg... if anyone even has the nerve to. Any guesses? It would be hilarious if it turn out to be a #NeverTrump Republican! Hilarious... but sensible.

Every wonder why so many Americans don't vote?

Devin Nunes Is No Farmer-- But He Sure Knows How To Fling Bullshit

Towards the end of August there was a stir in the Central Valley when a judge ruled that two GOP congressmen, Jeff Denham and Devin Nunes could call themselves "farmer" on the ballot. Local farmers had complained that "neither was an actual farmer, The plaintiffs said the congressmen added those designations to their ballot descriptions in an effort to score political points in their agriculture-heavy Central Valley districts."

Denham “does not live on a farm or earn any income from work as a farmer,” said the suit challenging his designation. “Instead, he is a member of Congress who also owns a plastic business that sells products to those in the agriculture industry.”

The suit challenging Nunes’ description argued that the House Intelligence Committee chairman and fervent supporter of President Trump shouldn’t be allowed to call himself a “U.S. Representative/Farmer” because he no longer has a connection to his family’s longtime dairy business.

Nunes and Denham say they and their families have spent years as members of the farming community and still earn at least part of their living from agriculture.

But, as Ryan Lizza pointed out over the weekend in Esquire, there's a lot more to the Nunes-farmer connection than meets the eye. "Nunes," wrote Lizza, "has a secret... Nunes grew up in a family of dairy farmers in Tulare, California, and as long as he has been in politics, his family dairy has been central to his identity and a feature of every major political profile written about him... As recently as July 27, the lead of a Wall Street Journal editorial-page piece about Nunes, which featured a Tulare dateline, emphasized the dairy: “It’s 105 degrees as I stand with Rep. Devin Nunes on his family’s dairy farm.” That was a blatant, outright lie by the Wall Street Journal with no basis in fact. Nunes' family farm was sold in 2006 and the family bought a new one in Iowa. But the Tulare farm bulklshit is the story Nunes' p.r. person pushes out to the media. The right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page was happy to lie to their readers about it. Lizza exposed Nunes' lie-- and the hypocrisy-- in his piece.

So here’s the secret: The Nunes family dairy of political lore-- the one where his brother and parents work-- isn’t in California. It’s in Iowa. Devin; his brother, Anthony III; and his parents, Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, sold their California farmland in 2006. Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, who has also been the treasurer of every one of Devin’s campaigns since 2001, used their cash from the sale to buy a dairy eighteen hundred miles away in Sibley, a small town in northwest Iowa where they-- as well as Anthony III, Devin’s only sibling, and his wife, Lori-- have lived since 2007. Devin’s uncle Gerald still owns a dairy back in Tulare, which is presumably where the Wall Street Journal’s reporter talked to Devin, and Devin is an investor in a Napa Valley winery, Alpha Omega, but his immediate family’s farm-- as well as his family-- is long gone.

There’s nothing particularly strange about a congressman’s family moving. But what is strange is that the family has apparently tried to conceal the move from the public-- for more than a decade. As far as I could tell, until late August, neither Nunes nor the local California press that covers him had ever publicly mentioned that his family dairy is no longer in Tulare.

For example, in 2010 Nunes traveled to northwest Iowa to campaign for Steve King, the most anti-immigrant member of Congress, who now represents Nunes’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law in Sibley. It was an unusual place to find Devin Nunes, given that at the time he wasn’t known to be hostile to immigrants in the way that has made King, who has called illegal immigration a “slow-motion terrorist attack,” so infamous.

King’s office posted a press release online announcing that the town-hall event would be in Le Mars, a town fifty miles southwest of Sibley, and included some biographical information about Nunes, including this fact: “Congressman Nunes’ family has operated a dairy farm in Tulare County, California for three generations.” There was no mention that the Nunes family actually lived up the road in Sibley, where they operated a dairy. Strange.

The Nunes family farm runs on the labor of undocumented workers from Mexico and Guatemala. Still, the family contributes to the local GOP and Steve King, whose immigration agenda would put them out of business. More strange.

Just asking about it, got Lizza kicked out of the town coffee shop. Hostility was very high towards outsiders prying into the hypocrisy of it.

The absurdity of this situation-- funding and voting for politicians whose core promise is to implement immigration policies that would destroy their livelihoods-- has led some of the Republican-­supporting dairymen to rethink their political priorities. “Everyone’s got this feeling that in agriculture, we, the employers, are going to be criminalized,” the first area dairy farmer I had spoken to said. “I’ve talked to Steve King face-to-face, and that guy doesn’t care one iota about us. He does not care. He believes that if you have one undocumented worker on your place, you should probably go to prison and we need to get as many undocumented people out of here as possible.” (A spokesman for King did not respond to multiple interview requests.) The second dairy farmer, speaking of Trump’s and King’s views on undocumented immigrants, added, “They want to send ’em all back to Mexico and have them start over. What a crock of malarkey. Who’s gonna milk the cows?”

There is massive political hypocrisy at the center of this: Trump’s and King’s rural-farm supporters embrace anti-immigrant politicians while employing undocumented immigrants. The greatest threat to Iowa dairy farmers, of course, is not the press. It’s Donald Trump.

But that’s not how the Nunes family apparently saw it... The undocumented workers live in the shadows and, especially in the era of Trump and zero tolerance, constantly fear arrest and deportation. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress, including Devin Nunes (per his CaRepublican website), have decided that unwavering support for ICE is crucial to their efforts to attack Democrats and help the GOP keep control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections. Naturally, the prospect of passing legislation that would create a guest-worker program for dairy workers who are undocumented-- an idea overwhelmingly supported by the industry-- is a fantasy in the current environment; Trump, King, and their allies describe such policies as “amnesty.” The Washington debate is completely detached from what is actually going on in places like Sibley.

The relationship between the Iowa dairy farmers and their undocumented employees is indeed fraught. I cringed at the way some of the dairy farmers talked about their “help.” When I asked one dairy farmer, who admitted many of the farm’s workers are undocumented but who also inexplicably claimed to be “very supportive of Trump” and “kind of in favor of his immigration laws,” what a solution would be, this farmer suggested a guest-worker program but compared the workers to farm animals. “It’s kind of like when you bought cattle out of South Dakota, or anyplace, you always had to have the brand inspected and you had to have the brand sheet when you hauled them across the state line,” the farmer said. “Well, what’s the difference? Why don’t they have to report to the city hall or county office and say we’re here working and everybody knows where they’re at?”

YES, IT'S TREASON

Lenin-Trump Doctrine by Chip Proser

According to the law, the federal crime of treason is committed by a person “owing allegiance to the United States who... adheres to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort.” Misprision (abetting) of treason is committed if a person “having knowledge of the commission of treason conceals and does not disclose” the crime."

Trump has certainly captured more than a quick news cycle. His treason on TV-- who ever heard of that-- isn't going away soon. Even before the Helsinki thing happened, Ryan Lizza, in an essay, Vanishing Point for Esquire focussed in on one of the key questions: "As the GOP increasingly comes to resemble a personality cult, is there any red line-- video tapes? DNA evidence? a war with Germany-- President Trump could cross and lose party support? 'Very doubtful,' say a dozen GOP members of Congress stuck hard behind the MAGA eight ball."

Mark Sanford (R-SC) went out of his way to say-- and seemingly out of the blue-- that he's not comparing Trump to Hitler, which is exactly what he was doing. "Like any good conservative," wrote Lizza, "Sanford has studied and reveres Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, the philosopher-economist’s 1944 account of how dictators take over democracies. Sanford is "worried about America’s political dysfunction, Trump’s 'strongman' affinities, and where that combination could lead. He also brings up the fall of Athenian democracy. 'In part this is not a new movie,' he concluded. 'This is a replaying of a script that’s played throughout the ages, but with incredibly ominous possibilities if we don’t recognize the dangers of the themes that are now at play within American society.'"

Right after the press conference former CIA director John Brennan said flatly that the event was "nothing short of treasonous." When have you seen a tweet like this before?

Brennan, as you know, never worked for Trump. Dan Coats does. Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, was appointed by Trump to be Director of National Intelligence, in other words, the guy who oversees all the U.S. intelligence services. After Trump said he believes in the Russian intelligence services as much as the U.S. intelligence services. This is what the idiot blurted out: "My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia." Coats' reply:

The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers. We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.

He didn't offer an opinion on whether or not Trump is a Russian operative and if he's guilty of treason. But what do you call this that Trump babbled yesterday? "I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia who hacked the opposition party. I have great confidence in my intelligence people. But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."

I wonder what Leonard Lance (NJ) will say. He was one of the only Republican congressmen Ryan Lizza found who was-- on the record-- willing to say there is a red line for him over which Trump could not cross and still expect his support: "Personal collusion by Trump with the Russians during the campaign."

Conservative Trump critics fear becoming the next Sanford and stay quiet—what Flake and others call the “don’t poke the bear” mind-set. Meanwhile, many of the moderate anti-Trump Republicans are leaving office. Congressman Ryan Costello, a Republican from Pennsylvania who decided to quit (redistricting gave him a bluer constituency), said, “If I were running for reelection, every single time that I saw on the TV screen that the president was going to hold another rally, I’d be like, ‘Oh, fuck!’ Because he’s going to say fifty things that aren’t accurate.”

Sanford has started to think seriously about what he should do now to contain the forces he says Trump has unleashed. “I came back to Congress worried primarily about debt, deficit, and government spending,” he told me. “This thing, though, given my own personal experiences, has begun to crowd into that space, to say this is a bigger and more clear and present danger to the republic than even the debt and the deficit that I thought was the end of the world.”

I asked Sanford: If he really believed what he said about Trump, shouldn’t he too support a Democratic takeover of the House or Senate? He paused for a long time, perhaps wondering how Friedrich Hayek might answer.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I mean, everybody’s going to come up with their own remedy as to what you do next. I wouldn’t say that’s mine.”

But he wouldn’t rule it out.

“I’m not there at this point,” he said. “Let me just take one day at a time.”

Thomas Friedman is pulling his hair out of his head: Trump and Putin vs. America. Is that not an accusation of treason? "My fellow Americans," he wrote, "we are in trouble and we have some big decisions to make today. This was a historic moment in the entire history of the United States."

There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior-- behavior that violates his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Trump vacated that oath today, and Republicans can no longer run and hide from that fact. Every single Republican lawmaker will be-- and should be-- asked on the election trail: Are you with Trump and Putin or are you with the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A.?

...Putin unleashed a cyberattack on America’s electoral process, aimed at both electing Trump-- with or without Trump’s collusion-- and sowing division among American citizens.

Our intelligence agencies have no doubt about this: Last week, America’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, described Putin’s cybercampaign as one designed “to exploit America’s openness in order to undermine our long-term competitive advantage.” Coats added that America’s digital infrastructure “is literally under attack,” adding that there was “no question” that Russia was the “most aggressive foreign actor.”

I am not given to conspiracy theories, but I cannot help wondering if the first thing Trump said to Putin in their private one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, before their aides were allowed to enter, was actually: “Vladimir, we’re still good, right? You and me, we’re still good?”

And that Putin answered: “Donald, you have nothing to worry about. Just keep being yourself. We’re still good.”

I guess when he eventually needs to, Trump can fly off to Moscow and ask for asylum-- though not soon enough for me or anyone I know. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan wants to be really clear-- wellllll.... he wants to be clear enough to not cause a landslide against Republicans in November, but not clear enough to anger Señor Trumpanzee:

Will Flynn And Nunes Wind Up Sharing A Prison Cell?

Trump's General Misha

The FBI doesn't have to give Flynn immunity. They have him on tape. He's going to prison. As Ryan Lizza reported in the New Yorker on Friday a a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee told him that he's seen the transcript and that Flynn had discussed easing the sanctions on Russia with Sergey Kislyak who serves simultaneously as Putin's ambassador to Washington and as Russia's chief spy-maters for North America. "Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak," wrote Lizza, "is now at the center of F.B.I. and congressional investigations into Russian interference in the Presidential election, which are seeking to determine whether there was coördination between Russia and the Trump campaign."

I asked the Republican congressman if he believed that Flynn did anything illegal in the phone call, in which Flynn discussed actions taken the same day by the Obama Administration. A rarely enforced eighteenth-century law known as the Logan Act makes it illegal to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” or “defeat the measures of the United States” in disputes with an adversary. “That’s open to question,” the Republican congressman told me.

If a former high-ranking official like Flynn is offered immunity, it generally means he can offer up a bigger fish. “The problem with being high up in government is that there are few people higher for the purposes of targeting,” the legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted today on his blog. “People get immunity to incriminate the Flynns of the world. With the exception of the President himself, it is hard to see who Flynn could offer as a possible target in exchange for his own immunity.”

...Three of the four Trump campaign advisers whose names have surfaced in connection with the F.B.I. investigation-- Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman; Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser who officially worked on the campaign when it launched, in 2015; and Carter Page, who served as a foreign-policy adviser-- never made it to the White House. Flynn was different.



After the election, Trump was slow to assemble a White House team and Cabinet, but one of the first personnel decisions he made was naming Flynn as his national-security adviser, on November 18th. On December 29th, Barack Obama announced that, in retaliation for Russia’s meddling in the election, the U.S. would expel thirty-five Russian diplomats, close down two Russian diplomatic facilities, and impose new economic sanctions. It was one of the most sensitive moments in U.S.-Russia relations in decades, and Kislyak texted Flynn asking if they could talk.

The call, in which the two men discussed the new Obama sanctions, was monitored by American intelligence, and the transcript was circulated within the Obama Administration. On January 13th, the day after details of the call became public, the Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that the call “never touched on the sanctions.” In preparing Vice-President-elect Mike Pence for TV interviews, Flynn apparently denied that he and Kislyak discussed sanctions, and Pence repeated that assertion on CBS’s Face the Nation, on January 15th.

These denials apparently caught the attention of F.B.I. agents, who interviewed Flynn in late January. On January 26th, Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General, who was later fired by Trump, informed the White House that Flynn’s account of what he discussed with the Russian Ambassador was false and made him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians. Despite the F.B.I. interview and the Justice Department’s warning, Trump took no actions against Flynn. (The White House later said that it conducted a review of the call and determined that there were no legal issues.) On January 28th, Flynn was on the line when Trump and Putin held an hour-long conversation.

On February 8th, Flynn himself insisted to the Washington Post that he and Kislyak did not talk about sanctions, an assertion that the Post reported was false and which Flynn then clarified. With the issue public and creating a firestorm, Trump finally fired Flynn, five days later.

So why did Trump wait so long after knowing Flynn was breaking the law by talking with Kislyak about sanctions before firing him? And why did he defend his actions and then support an immunity deal? Is Nunes part of a scheme to grant Flynn immunity so that he becomes unprosecutable?



When Nunes went home to his district Friday, he addressed a closed private event in Fresno with campaign donors from corporate AgriBusiness. No constituents and no media were allowed. But outside, several hundred of Nunes' angry constituents were waiting, yelling ("Come out and play, Nunes, you coward"), and waving homemade signs linking him to Trump and Putin-- "Congressman Nunes, we need a guard dog not a lap dog" and "Get out of bed with Trump." KQED reported that "Passing cars honked their approval and gave the crowd a thumbs up. A loudspeaker blared the Russian national anthem."

“Many people here, we haven’t been out since the ‘60s,” said Dave Derby, a former Clovis school principal turned community organizer. “I never thought we’d be back doing this again, but here we are. We’re in our 60s and 70s-- I think it’s amazing what’s happening.”

Derby and his wife started the group Every Tuesday Vigil, which holds weekly demonstrations outside Nunes’ Clovis district office.  He said the group was one of several that grew out of protests at the Fresno airport in the wake of President Trump’s travel ban announcement earlier this year.

A few people drove in from out of town, like a group from Stockton that rejects Nunes’ stance on California water issues.

But most were Central Valley constituents. One of them, a lifelong Republican named John Essex who voted for Nunes in 2004, said Nunes’ recent secret intelligence briefing with White House officials raises serious questions about the congressman’s ability to lead an investigation into that very administration.

“I don’t think our congressman needs to be making midnight trips in Uber to the White House,” he said, referring to reports that’s how Nunes met up with officials for the intelligence briefing.

While the recent controversy has shoved the little-known Republican from rural California into the national spotlight, Essex and others here say their beef with him goes way back.

“If anything, Devin Nunes needs to come and talk to us. It’s been years and years since he’s held a public town hall. No one sees Nunes!”

And that didn’t change today. Nunes slipped into the event through a back entrance and left without demonstrators getting a glimpse of him.

Meanwhile Pelosi was tweeting Saturday morning that Nunes had "not only lost all credibility-- he's tarnished the office that he holds." Pelosi, of course, only needs to make one phone call to Ben Ray Lujan, chair of the DCCC and Nunes will wind up with something he's never experienced before: a serious challenger to reelection. Its more likely CA-22 residents will have to wait until Pelosi retires before the DCCC ever takes on Nunes. She vehemently opposes the DCCC going after GOP leaders or committee chairs.