Monthly Archives: January 2020

Donald Trump, Republicans

Republican Senators expressing umbrage “are desperate to find an outrage off-ramp”

I think that Chairman Schiff’s presentation through this very long ordeal has been at the very highest level of legal advocacy. He has marshaled an immense amount of information extremely well and effectively. And I thought that last night’s closing was oratory for the ages. So, I give him nothing but props.

I think that if you are a Republican and you’re looking at a really damning case that you have no counter to, and where you’re sitting on lockers full of evidence and not allowing it into the trial, you are desperate to find an outrage off-ramp.

And they will find something outrageous in parts per billion in order to seize the outrage off-ramp and get away from the damning case that has been made on the substance.

…

I think there have been a lot of uncomfortable moments for them through these days. And I thought that Adam’s presentation last night had a lot of them very thoughtful and pensive about the position that this president has put them in.

Uhm, we really have a battle here between truth and falsehood, and right and wrong. And this president is demanding that they follow the path of falsehood and wrong, or face peril. – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, January 24, 2020

Senator Whitehouse was responding to the manufactured outrage (and dissembling) of Republican Senators to Adam Schiff’s reading a quotation from the mainstream media. “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’”

There were reports of gasps from the Republican side of the aisle. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was seen shaking her head and could be heard from gallery repeating, “That’s not true,” several times. Later she said, “I know of no Republican Senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the Administration.”

“None of us have been told that. That’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.” – Senator James Lankford of Oaklahoma

The fear of Washington Republicans – in both the House and the Senate – at the possibility of Trump turning on them when they seek re-nomination in a Republican primary is one of the most unshakable facts of today’s GOP. Not giving Trump a reason to turn on them is a guiding principle.

Mark Sanford, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker all felt Donald Trump’s ire. None remain in office. Trump owns the Republican Party. And – for every Republican who wishes to continue serving in the U.S. Senate after his or her next Republican primary election – Trump owns them regarding any issue he cares about.

The “head on a pike” quote, while pithy (and even demeaning), expresses a fundamental, inescapable truth – all disingenuous protests notwithstanding.

(Image: screengrab from Lincoln Project ad.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

“If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well written the oath of impartiality is.

If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.

The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. You know, that’s what they do in the old country — that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great-grandfather came from. Or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from.

But here right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us [if] right doesn’t matter anymore.

And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.

This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost. – Adam Schiff, Thursday, January 23, 2020 

Donald Trump, Tribalism

Trump’s legal wizards argue that abuse of power is not impeachable conduct

“The Articles of Impeachment … are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their President.” A “brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn … the 2016 election” and a “highly partisan and reckless obsession,” the “Articles … are constitutionally invalid on their face.”

They fail to allege any crime or violation of the law whatsoever, let alone “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” as required by the Constitution. They are the result of a lawless process that violated basic due process and fundamental fairness. Nothing in these articles could permit even beginning to consider removing a duly elected President or warrant nullifying an election and subverting the will of the American people.

So Jay Alan Sekulow and Pat A. Cipollone attest (“Answer of President Donald J. Trump“; all quotations from page 1 of the six-page brief). While I realize that this is political pamphleteering, not strictly the practice of law, it is a breathtaking response to the weighty, well-documented case – virtually uncontested in this defense by Trump’s personal attorney and counsel to the Office of the President –  that the House presents for the President’s removal.

The brief insists that a president cannot be impeached for abuse of power if he has violated no federal statute. While Alan Dershowitz, another of the President’s lawyers, did not sign the brief, he has made this case in a book on impeachment:

Assume Putin decides to “retake” Alaska, the way he “retook” Crimea. Assume further than a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to “its” original territory. That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.

Adam Schiff replies:

The logic of that absurdist position that’s being now adopted by the president is he could give away the state of Alaska, he could withhold execution of sanctions on Russia for interfering in the last election, to induce or coerce Russia to interfere in the next one.

That would have appalled — the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders, who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit, the danger it poses to national security. That goes to the very heart of what the framers intended to be impeachable.

The narrowest reading of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which Trump’s lawyers rely on, has been refuted again and again. It is hard to see how we can reconcile the view of Sekulow, Cipollone, Dershowitz, et al. with the concerns of Hamilton (and the men who drafted our constitution) with “the abuse or violation of some public trust,” as distinct from prosaic violations of the law.

Trump has famously boasted of his supporters’ extraordinary loyalty to him: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

What if Putin decided to retake Alaska with Trump’s acquiescence? Would Republicans accept that? Perhaps Lisa Murkowski, if not Susan Collins, would find grounds to object. Mitch McConnell would certainly strive to deflect the issue if he believed control of the Senate were at stake.

There’s a serious point embedded in that counter-factual. Trump has welcomed the intervention of foreign powers in our elections (past and future). Is that in any sense less significant, if we are concerned with democracy and constitutional governance, than ceding one of 50 states to a foreign adversary? The facts, when push comes to shove, don’t matter to Trump’s Republican defenders. The bottom line is: what will the base accept (looking no further into the future than the 2020 election)?

There is scant evidence of a deeper principle at stake for Trump’s Republican defenders in the House or the Senate.

(Photos: ACLJ and Politico.)

Republicans, Tribalism

Nikki Haley, adopting a venerable GOP tactic, falsely smears Democrats on Fox News Channel

In yesterday’s post, I suggested that a well-worn Republican political strategy was to strip Democrats of legitimacy — to cast their points of view as shamefully beyond the pale. Today brings a fresh example of the technique, as reported by Philip Bump (“The Soleimani aftermath pivots to a key Trump talking point: Democrats are traitors“) in the Washington Post. He quotes Nikki Haley, formerly governor of South Carolina and Trump’s former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, speaking with Sean Hannity:

“You’re not hearing any of the Gulf members, you’re not hearing China, you’re not hearing Russia — the only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates,” she said, using the by-now familiar “Democrat” diminution. “No one else in the world.”

“That is sad,” Hannity replied, laughing.

(We can thank Bob Dole for the ungrammatical use of the noun ‘Democrat,’ instead of the adjective ‘Democratic,’ to describe leaders and candidates in the Democratic Party. Nowadays, this has become the politically correct fashion among Republican talkers.)

I haven’t read Haley’s With All Due Respect, but since she is dissing the party leadership and candidates, I suppose she doesn’t include Democrats among those who are due any respect.

Hannity’s laughter reveals the insincerity of his expression of sadness.

As Bump notes, Haley’s claim is bogus. No Democrats have mourned Soleimani’s death. “What Haley’s tapping into here, though, is a swifter current than simply the last week of criticism about the strike on Soleimani. Hannity’s rapid, unquestioning embrace of Haley’s line was certainly on-brand for Hannity, but it also reflected that, to Hannity and many other Republicans, Democrats are seen as unpatriotic or, worse, traitorous. It’s not a new idea in politics, but it’s a newly powerful one, embraced by President Trump himself and by his campaign.”

Democracy, Republicans, Tribalism

When asked, Are you ready to get off the Trump train? “No one ever says yes.”

Sunday morning’s Los Angeles Times featured a column by Scott Jennings (“Why Republicans will stick with Trump in 2020 — even if they don’t love his behavior“), which offers an analogy to explain why Trump supporters aren’t budging. The piece begins with these words:

Recently, a close friend and fellow Republican told me he was “personally shocked at what the evangelicals have been willing to stomach” from Donald Trump. I’m not shocked at all.

My friend’s sentiment — a variation on the empty “if Obama had done this, Republicans would’ve impeached him” — has become a staple of Democrats and Never Trumpers. “Are you ready to turn on him yet?” Republicans are asked over and over.

No one ever says yes.

Jennings sets up the analogy like so:

Imagine standing at a train station in Louisville, Ky., staring at the schedule board. You want to get to Los Angeles, and you have a choice of two trains — one headed to San Diego and one headed to Washington, D.C. Neither gets you exactly where you’re heading, but there’s really only one choice as the alternative to San Diego is to go precisely the wrong way.

Even if the San Diego train sometimes hits bumpy tracks, and the conductor comes on the PA and says crude and dumb stuff, and there are people on the train you really wish would get off: It is still taking you basically where you want to go.

To the average Republican voter, like the passenger on that train, the destination is what matters.

Let’s acknowledge up front: the analogy has the virtue of accurately characterizing the intractable nature of Trump’s support. Trump’s evangelical base is no more likely to get off the Trump train, than I would be to board a train (or plane or any other conveyance) heading in the opposite direction of my intended destination.

But as usual with Republican talking points in defense of Donald Trump, the analogy – indeed the whole column – serves to divert attention from inconvenient facts, rather than to illuminate the consternation of Jennings’ close friend at what “the evangelicals have been willing to stomach” from Trump.

The first sentence references evangelicals. Of course, if we wish to be accurate, we’ll note that it is white evangelicals who are stuck on Trump (though the 2020 Trump campaign is making a concerted effort to generate the support of Latino evangelicals as well, especially families who have immigrated from south of the border – such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – who are “leery of what they see as left-wing ideology.”). Jennings – who at one point offers fleeting acknowledgement that it is mostly men who comprise Trump’s base, not women – doesn’t clarify that it is white men who predominate.

That detail does not serve Jennings’ analogy, but it is surely of some relevance for understanding the unshakable support of a man who revels in insulting women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and – yes – even faith communities that happen to lie outside the GOP base.

Other details in the fable also serve to obscure critical issues in the real world. Jennings describes a bumpy ride and crude, dumb comments by the conductor on the train. But the President of the United States is the leader of the country – of the whole country, of Americans of all hues and backgrounds and convictions – not just of his partisan base.

Trump has been insulting half the country since his campaign began and – after a tiresome year in office when pundits kept professing to see a pivot – it is now incontrovertible that Donald Trump rejects a unifying role as president. (Fun contrast: even in 2020, as impeachment looms and an impulsive Trump gambles with our security in the Middle East, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president has repeatedly struck a chord for bipartisanship.)

Trump is a divider. By choice. That’s far and away more consequential than an obnoxious functionary hurling insults while collecting tickets.

Trump’s critics aren’t pining away for a “nicer conductor.” One might have expected believers of the Gospel (“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”) to have concerns for the Americans Trump has derided and threatened. But, among Trump’s base, no one ever says enough already.

Moreover, Trump’s talk – in the Oval Office, on the White House lawn near a waiting helicopter, in phone calls to Fox News Channel, at rallies before his fans, and in his Twitter account – is hardly the most significant reason to oppose him.

He is President of the United States. His words command generals, cabinet secretaries, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and much more. He has separated children from their parents, cast aside allies who have stood with us for three quarters of a century, and embraced enemies who have contempt for democratic government and seek to do us harm. In every instance (and we could easily cite additional actions) his behavior is diametrically opposed to values and practices that Republicans and evangelicals formerly embraced – and not so long ago.

This gets us back to ‘the empty “if Obama had done this, Republicans would’ve impeached him”’ idea, and closer to the astonishment of Jennings’ Republican friend. That friend might well have taken evangelicals, his fellow Republicans, at their word when they professed the importance of personal morality in our nation’s leaders. Jennings’ reply: “To a Christian conservative voter, the individual behavior of an imperfect human pales against the importance of protecting human life.”

That anti-abortion stance and the fear of folks at our southern border seeking refuge are the twin issues that Jennings cites – and I agree that both are central, especially the latter, to evangelicals’ embrace of Trump. But Jennings’ rhetoric suggests a third motivator. A more toxic and pernicious factor, which explains, more than a couple of specific issues, why Republican evangelicals will overlook so much of what Trump does, no matter how antithetical it is to traditional morality and old-fashioned patriotism.

Jennings references Democrats in a handful of passages, disparaging the opposition party, not as citizens who oppose Trump’s policies out of conviction, but as cranks who harbor unreasonable views. A sampling of the language employed: “extreme tilt to the left,” “the wild extremism of his would-be opponents,” and “how the Democrats became so radicalized.” (He also demeans GOP opponents of Trump as “Republicans who make a living hating Trump” as though money, not principle, explains their opposition. I’m confident, though, that Jennings and other pro-Trump Republicans are amply rewarded.)

Virtually all Trump fans in Congress, on TV, and in op-eds featured in print and on the internet delight in demonizing the opposition party. Jennings – who employs mild insults in a casually off-hand way, suitable for the mainstream media (as opposed to the conservative media universe), is a master of the genre. While more subtle than Fox News, he gets the point across.

If Trump’s critics aren’t nutty, what are they getting at? The fierce opposition to Trump goes beyond rude, belligerent language. Alarm from small-d and big-D democrats goes beyond disagreement regarding conventional political issues. Jennings asserts:

Most of Trump’s governance has been what you’d expect from any Republican president (conservative judges, lower taxes, deregulation, an embrace of pro-life policies), and the wild extremism of his would-be opponents is causing some center-right voters who were lukewarm on Trump three years ago to feel closer to him than ever before.

“Most of” leaves out what’s most important to constitutional governance and the rule of law. It leaves out mutual toleration and forbearance as critical virtues for democratic societies (How Democracies Die). It leaves out the fundamental reasons for the intensity of the determined opposition to Trump: the obvious, undeniable ways that Donald Trump stands apart from every previous Republican president in the history of our republic. Jennings could count the ways as well as I could, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Jennings at once overlooks the reasons Democrats (and Republican Never Trumpers) oppose the President and places the opposition as beyond the pale – a well-worn Republican strategy.

That strategy has worked remarkably well. So well that folks who rely on traditional sources of information have found it hard to fathom how and why Republicans have gone all-in with Trump. Jennings’ Republican friend is “personally shocked” because – outside the conservative media bubble – Trump’s behavior (and the celebration of his behavior by the GOP base) clashes with notions of civility, respect, and good will toward other Americans. The two trains metaphor invokes an “intended destination,” but obscures the backdrop. Upon arriving, we get anti-abortion judges and strict border control, but also assaults on democratic institutions, and foreign policies that undermine U.S. security and American exceptionalism.

Why does the evangelical right wish to go there? Because they’ve been taught that Democrats are contemptible liberals/radicals/socialists. Because they’ve learned that the views of the opposition are outrageous and unworthy of a moment’s reflection. Because they have acquired the conviction that their political opponents lack legitimacy.

Democrats (and liberals et al.) aren’t the loyal opposition. They are the enemy.

And Trump stands against their enemies in the other party. Not so long ago Republicans regarded Democrats as fellow citizens who held opinions that were fit subjects for debate. Trump’s evangelical base dismisses this point of view.

Jennings’ parable of the two trains obscures what’s shocking about evangelical support for Trump, instead of bringing it into focus.

(Image: Trump Train on YouTube.)

Income Inequality, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Democratic Party to do list: close the chasm separating the super-rich from the rest of us

Annie Lowrey gets the decade exactly right (“The Decade in Which Everything Was Great But Felt Terrible“):

“… when the United States grew to its wealthiest point ever—and when the middle class shrank, longevity fell, and it became clear that a whole generation was falling behind. The central economic dynamic of the 2010s was that no matter how well the market was doing, no matter how long the expansion lasted, no matter how much the economy grew, families still struggled. It was a decade that strained America’s idea of what economic growth could do, and should do, because it did so little for so many.

. . .

In household terms: The rich had it great, growing richer than they have ever been and accounting for a greater share of American wealth than at any other point since the Gilded Age. The gaps between the 10 percent, the 1 percent, and the 0.1 percent grew. The difference between doctors and hedge-fund managers widened, just as the difference between doctors and janitors did. But everybody in the top 20 percent, roughly speaking, thrived in the 2010s—most of all, the richest of the rich. The country got its first centibillionaires.

At the same time, the Great Expansion did not do much for working families. Wages are at last growing quickly at the bottom end, after years of slack demand holding down earnings. Still, it would take years and years of that kind of growth to chip away at the country’s inequality and to improve the standing of the country’s hourly employees relative to all workers. Research by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the top 1 percent of families captured half of all real income growth between 2009 and 2017. The incomes of the top 1 percent have grown nearly four times as fast as those of the bottom 99 percent since the Great Recession ended. Inequality is now a 50-year story.

Credit Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party for destroying the post-World War II economic consensus (embraced by Eisenhower and Nixon, but by no Republican President since then), and giving us an economy much nearer to the GOP ideal.

The Democratic Party has often failed to push back, but if ever there was a time for a change, this is it.