Monthly Archives: November 2020

Democracy

COVID-19, the economic consequences, and the role of the federal government

Nurses and doctors across the country are exhausted by the ordeal they are confronting day after day.

“We are physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted,” Dr. Kate Grossman, a pulmonary and critical care physician in Columbia, Missouri, wrote in a message shared on Twitter.

“I have seen so many emergent intubations. I’ve seen people more sick than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Lacie Gooch, an intensive care unit nurse at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, said in a video that Nebraska Medicine shared on Twitter this week.

And they are exasperated that people in their communities refuse to take the simple steps to prevent the airborne virus from continuing to spread.

“We’re tired. We’re understaffed. We’re taking care of very, very sick patients and our patient load just keeps going up. We’re exhausted and frustrated that people aren’t listening to us,” said Gooch, who said she has patients who don’t believe in COVID-19 even as they are hospitalized for it. “It kind of blows my mind and it’s frustrating.”

Medical care providers are risking their lives to help others and doing so at a time, nearly eight months into the pandemic, when PPE shortages persist.

NPR reported on this exchange today with NRP’s Will Stone and two nurses, Rachel Heintz of Bismark, North Dakota and Mary Turner of St. Paul, Minnesota:

HEINTZ: There are times when you feel like, I should be in four different places at once. People’s lives are hanging on, and I can’t even check if their oxygen level is OK or check if their airway is OK. Like, just the basic make sure that they’re still alive.

STONE: Not everywhere is quite as bad as North Dakota, but many places are starting to look that way. More than a thousand hospitals are critically short on staff, and the fears among health care workers are familiar – not enough people and not enough personal protective equipment.

HEINTZ: We are still worrying N95s for the entirety of our shift, whether that’s 12 hours – or the other day, I worked a 16-hour shift.

STONE: Before the pandemic, that would be unheard of. These N95 masks shield against tiny airborne droplets. And they’re only supposed to be used once. But now Heintz considers herself somewhat lucky. She even gets one per shift. Mary Turner, who works in a COVID ICU, is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

MARY TURNER: I have nurses in Minnesota that still wear their masks eight to 10 shifts.

Amanda Mull decries the illogic in the rules governors, mayors, and other authorities have put into place to contain the virus. That — plus the lack of a national plan and misinformation from the federal government — has confused the public, including Mull’s friend Josh, who had been dining indoors in restaurants.

Josh was irritated . . . If indoor dining couldn’t be made safe, he wondered, why were people being encouraged to do it? Why were temperature checks being required if they actually weren’t useful? Why make rules that don’t keep people safe?

Across America, this type of honest confusion abounds. While a misinformation-gorged segment of the population rejects the expert consensus on virus safety outright, so many other people, like Josh, are trying to do everything right, but run afoul of science without realizing it. Often, safety protocols, of all things, are what’s misleading them. In the country’s new devastating wave of infections, a perilous gap exists between the realities of transmission and the rules implemented to prevent it.

The problem isn’t, as Mull puts it, that leaders are moved to placate “centers of power” in their communities, it’s that the effects of closures reach far beyond the powerful: devastating businesses and putting employees out of work. State and city leaders are attempting a delicate balancing act — and failing.

It isn’t safe to dine indoors with folks who aren’t part of your household. And after many months it has become clear that safely opening schools, while keeping bars open isn’t likely to be a successful approach. Drinking, talking, laughing, and flirting in crowded indoor settings are inconsistent with reducing the infection rate, which makes for safer schools and families.

And in failing to keep us safe, our political leadership has also failed to sustain the economy. Many professionals, especially men (whose wives devote a disproportionate amount of time to tending to children) have thrived during the pandemic (often while shedding commuting time). Less advantaged workers, often people of color, have fared far less well.

Last week, Jerome Powell urged Congress (which hasn’t passed a comprehensive coronavirus bill since March) to step in.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday made a fresh appeal to Congress to pass another coronavirus relief package to help troubled businesses and out-of-work Americans.

In a talk to a business group in San Francisco, Powell said Congress’ tax and spending powers can directly target income support for groups that really need it, in a way that the central bank cannot.

“There hasn’t been a bigger need for it in a long time,” Powell said.

Getting us through this should be job number one for the White House and Congress. This is why we have a federal government. The failure of the Trump administration to do this, or even to try, is a huge reason we’re in the midst of a transition now.

The President, watching TV, tweeting, golfing, and whining that his loss was due to (imagined) fraud, hasn’t shown a scintilla of interest in curbing the virus. Or in assisting working Americans who have struggled financially. What about Congress? Which means, what about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell?

Joy Reid noted the severe impact of COVID-19 on families in Kentucky (with one-third of Kentuckians struggling to pay for food, heat, or rent, and experiencing 162,838 cases of the virus) and reviewed federal assistance programs expiring by year’s end, noting that the Senator McConnell has sent the Senate home on vacation. She suggests that the Majority Leader is indifferent to this suffering. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy responded:

Let me just underscore that level of desperation. I literally just came from Hamden, Connecticut from a food distribution event for the holiday weekend. And the organizers were panicking a little bit, because they had enough food for 300 people and they had what looked like about 300 cars lined up prior to the beginning of the event. And they were scrambling to figure out what they were going to say to all of these families who were now faced with perhaps going hungry over the holiday weekend.

People are at the end of their rope. And, you’re right, Mitch McConnell is refusing to do anything.

What we need for Mitch McConnell to do is just enter the negotiating room. He has refused to negotiate with anybody. With Nancy Pelosi, with Chuck Schumer. Again, because he is afraid of splitting his caucus. Right now about half of the Republicans want to do nothing. They think that this should just be all up to the states or that Joe Biden should be saddled with the entirety of the problem.

And so Mitch McConnell is sort of putting the unity of his caucus ahead of the survival of the nation, because there are 20 Republicans that would vote with 47 Democrats in order to pass a pretty substantial coronavirus relief bill. But he doesn’t want to split up the Republicans, again, heading into Georgia, heading into the new Congress.

You know, that’s kind of par for the course for Mitch McConnell, unfortunately.

Let’s stipulate: it’s not unheard of, or even objectionable, for the party leader of his caucus to have an eye on the next election. So long as s/he has one eye out for the American public.

With McConnell the next election is an interest that invariably overrides the national interest or the welfare of Americans. For eight months (since passage of the CARES Act) McConnell had his eyes on the November 3 election. Now he has his eyes on the January 5 election in Georgia. And after that?

Recall McConnell’s affirmation during the first term of the most recent Democratic president: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

On January 6, whether or not Republicans prevail in Georgia, the single most important thing McConnell will want to achieve will be to limit the Democrats to one term in the White House.

There have been questions about whether Joe Biden, who has reached out to the other side, seeking to unify the country, can coax the Kentuckian’s cooperation in defeating the coronavirus and putting the economy back on track. At this stage, McConnell hasn’t even acknowledged Biden as the president-elect.

Mike DeBonis puts the issue this way: “McConnell’s ongoing silence, even as the Trump administration moves to allow Biden to start his transition, leaves a question mark over what could be the most important Washington relationship of the next two years – between an incoming president who promised to tackle the nation’s most pressing concerns and the win-at-all-costs Capitol Hill operator who may well serve as his legislative gatekeeper.”

I’ll grant this reported assessment of McConnell as likely: “…GOP aides say he is unlikely to orchestrate a complete blockade.” Not a complete blockade.

That’s a very low bar.

I suggest keeping our expectations for bipartisan cooperation very low. I’m pretty sure we can count on Mitch McConnell’s eyes to be focused on November 8, 2022, no matter how many Americans die or struggle financially throughout 2021 and 2022 — while he aims to duck accountability for whatever bad stuff happens.

(Image: Nebraska Medicine Twitter via GMA/ABC News.)

2020 General Election, Democracy, Republicans

No Courage of their convictions? Or no convictions to uphold democratic governance?

In a letter today, Emily Murphy informed Joe Biden that the General Services Administration would permit the formal transition process to begin. After experiencing widespread criticism for the unprecedented delay, as Donald Trump has refused against all evidence to admit that he lost the election and has raged that he was cheated, Ms. Murphy insisted that no one had pressured her to slow walk the approval; rather, she had difficulty determining what to do because the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, “provides no procedures or standards for this process.”

Her missive resembled a defensive and obstinate, ‘Excuse me.’

There have been no reasonable doubts raised about the election’s outcome, notwithstanding Trump’s hurt feelings, his campaign’s frenzied maelstrom of litigation, or conservative media’s carnival of disinformation.

Joe Biden beat Donald Trump handily. By roughly six million votes. And, though some states were relatively close, by convincing margins that delivered a 306 to 232 Electoral College victory.

It is safe to say that few United States senators harbor any doubts about this — even Republican senators. Yet with Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s statement on Saturday, he became only the fifth Republican in the upper chamber (if we allow Marsha Blackburn a do-over) to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Ohio’s Rob Portman followed today, getting us up to six (out of fifty).

Why the playacting or silence by GOP leaders? They were mollifying an angry Donald Trump. And why not? As one Republican official explained:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”

The downsides are to the institutions that sustain democratic government, to respect for the people’s vote and the outcome of the election, to the sanctity of a peaceful transfer of power.

And — of course — to the winning candidate. Of the opposing party. That is to say: there is a downside to President-elect Joe Biden.

Let’s acknowledge: that’s an advantage to Republicans. Crippling the Biden presidency is a goal of Donald Trump, of Mitch McConnell, and of every Republican partisan who views Democrats as an enemy tribe.

Judging by his actions, Trump appears to have a motive other than overturning the election. He is determined to cripple Biden’s presidency even before it becomes official. No defeated president has ever undertaken such an audacious and anti-democratic act. There are short-term and longer-term consequences that could deeply affect Biden’s ability to govern.

. . .

This assault on the system, the government, the integrity of elections, the institutions of democracy, and on the truth, means Biden will take the oath of office with perhaps a third or more of the electorate viewing him as illegitimate. No amount of wooing will bring them around, however genuine Biden is in his outreach. — Dan Balz, “A vindictive Trump seeks to undermine Biden’s presidency”

Republican senators, who know full well who won the election, also know full well what Trump is up to. They understand that when playing along with Trump, they are also crippling the president-elect. 

They have made a deliberate choice. It may be possible to look past (if not excuse) the blunt, clumsy shenanigans of a GSA administrator trying to please her superiors.  She can’t do much more damage than she’s already done.

It is tougher to stomach the undemocratic stratagems of U.S. senators — leaders of the Republican Party — who lack the courage of their convictions, or simply the convictions, to uphold democratic values.

Richard Hasen observes (“Trump’s Legal Farce Is Having Tragic Results”):

By the time President-elect Biden takes the oath of office, millions of people will wrongly believe he stole the election. At least 300 times since Election Day, Mr. Trump has gone straight to his followers on social media to declare the election rigged or stolen and to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, himself as the real victor. Mr. Trump’s false claims will delegitimize a Biden presidency among his supporters. It should go without saying that a democracy requires the losers of an election to accept the results as legitimate and agree to fight another day; Republican leaders echoing Mr. Trump’s failure to support a peaceful transition of power undermine the foundation of our democracy. It’s not only the fact that we have had to say this, but that we keep having to repeat it, that shows the depths that we have reached.

E.J. Dionne notes that “Joe Biden’s victory offered the cheerful prospect that we might begin to detoxify our politics.” Biden pledged “to be the president of all Americans and honored the dignity of voters who had supported Trump in the past by expressing an understanding of their discontents.”

And the GOP’s response to the outreach? With just a handful of exceptions, abject refusal to stand up against the anti-democratic lunacy of Trump’s efforts to nullify the results of a fair election.

Dionne suggests that we are confronted with “a form of conservatism that openly disdains democracy.” I am on board with Dionne regarding the antipathy of the Republican Party for the democratic tradition:

Those who lack the conviction to sustain that tradition by defending rationality and the democratic rules of engagement forfeit their standing to ask the rest of us to believe that they are operating in good faith.

(Image: Thomas Paine via Wikimedia Commons.)

Democracy, Off the Rails, Republicans

Lies, gaffes, inconsistencies, silence, and hiding from the media: the GOP and the election

From this morning’s Los Angeles Times:

To U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the general election was a resounding success for his party.

“Not one Republican incumbent lost,” McCarthy said during a news conference last week.

Except, of course, President Trump.

Now, more than two weeks after the election and several failed attempts to overturn it, the Bakersfield Republican still refuses to accept Trump’s defeat. — Maya Lau and Laura J. Nelson, “California Republican leaders go all in on Trump’s election subterfuge, but some are more vocal than others”

Not a single California Republican headed to Congress in January has broken ranks from this duplicitous playacting. None have pushed back against the narrative that denies the results of a free and fair election, obstructs the peaceful transition of power, and wounds the incoming president. None have acknowledged Biden as the winner.

Republicans from the Golden State are not outliers. The same pattern is true nationally, where just four United States Senators in the Republican caucus have acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins. 

Until yesterday when Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn did so.  “I have not spoken with the president-elect. We did have… the vice president-elect come to the floor this week to cast a vote.” 

Oops! The Nashville Tennessean reports that following the live interview, the Senator took it back:

Later Friday night, a spokesperson for Blackburn said the comment was a mistake and that Blackburn had “been very clear” on her position about the election outcome. 

“She simply misspoke — it’s nothing more,” said Abigail Sigler, a campaign spokesperson for Blackburn. Blackburn’s Senate staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sigler emailed to clarify after this story published. — Natalie Allison, “Staff of U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn says she misspoke by calling Biden ‘president-elect'”

Of course Senator Blackburn knows perfectly well that Joe Biden was elected president, as do (at least most of) the four dozen Republican Senators (and dozens more Republicans in the House) who are playing along with the reckless man whom they fear. 

They are creating doubts among the GOP base that the Democratic candidate won the election; they are justifying Donald Trump’s attempts to sabotage the incoming president; and they are creating a narrative for the next four years that Joe Biden found his way into the White House illegitimately. 

Senator Blackburn had, in speaking truthfully, committed the classic Michael Kinsley gaffe: she spoke a truth that she wanted to hide. 

When lying (or playacting as though you believe something that you know perfectly well is false), you have to keep your guard up. 

“One of the problems of successful lying is that it’s hard work,” says psychologist Michael Lewis. “You have to be very consistent in doing it.”

In this instance, the lie is far-fetched. There is no evidence to support it (as revealed in courtrooms across the country). The results of the election are clear. Whenever the insecure, vindictive man in the White House isn’t in the forefront of your mind, you might slip — relying on what you take for granted — and speak truthfully. Then you have to send your press secretary out to clean up your mess.

This would be humorous if it weren’t so dangerous. The cynical calculation that runs throughout for every Republican official is this:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”

As noted above, there are significant downsides to democratic government, to public trust, to the national interest. The question the Republican official is actually asking is: What’s the downside for me and for the Republican Party?

And when we focus on party, not country, the question answers itself. That’s why Kevin McCarthy, Marsha Blackburn, and very nearly all their colleagues in both houses of Congress, are humoring Donald Trump.

(Image: Marsha Blackburn via Wikidmedia Commons.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Republicans

President Donald Trump is brazenly attempting to subvert a democratic election in plain sight

The President of the United States is trying to steal the 2020 election, which he lost decisively to Joe Biden. He is doing so in plain sight, while the leaders of the Republican party either egg him on, play along with the dishonest charade, or remain mute.

President Trump has invited the leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature to meet him in Washington on Friday, according to a person familiar with those plans, as the president and his allies continue an extraordinary campaign to overturn the results of an election he lost.

Trump’s campaign has suffered defeats in courtrooms across the country in its efforts to allege irregularities with the ballot-counting process, and has failed to muster any evidence of the widespread fraud that the president continues to claim tainted the 2020 election.

Trump lost Michigan by a wide margin: At present, he trails President-Elect Joe Biden in the state by 157,000 votes. Earlier this week, the state’s Republican Senate majority leader said an effort to have legislators throw out election results was “not going to happen.”

But the president now appears to be using the full weight of his office to challenge the election results, as he and his allies reach out personally to state and local officials in an intensifying effort to halt the certification of the vote in key battleground states.

In an incendiary news conference in Washington, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is now serving as Trump’s lead attorney, made baseless claims that Biden had orchestrated a national conspiracy to rig the vote.

Trump’s team appear to be increasingly focused on Michigan as a place where Republican officials — on the state’s Board of Canvassers and in the legislature — might be persuaded to overturn the results. — Tom Hamburger, Kayla Ruble, David A. Fahrenthold, and Josh Dawsey (“Trump invites Michigan Republican leaders to meet him at White House as he escalates attempts to overturn election results”). [Emphasis added.]

Rick Hasen, among the foremost authorities on election law, said this: “It’s easy to joke about this, and Rudy has become the butt of…jokes. On the other hand, this is deadly serious stuff. They’re talking about trying to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people, and take the election away from the winner and hand it to the loser.”

There are sixty-two days until the inauguration of Joe Biden. Donald Trump — whose public schedule has been virtually empty for the past two weeks — is virtually bunkered down in the White House. His attention is not on a raging coronavirus, which is infecting, hospitalizing, and killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but on how to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters — mostly Black — so he can claim a victory that is not his.

And Republican leaders offer no objection. Professor Hasen has a message for them: “If you are in a position of power and you are wondering if now is the time to show some courage, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

While these efforts — of a flailing wannabe autocrat and his inept accomplices — appear to be playing out like a ridiculous farce, this is serious stuff. A presidential election and a peaceful transition of power in the United States of America are in the balance.

Even Trump’s critics, who have warned about the erosion of our democratic institutions, might have expected — after Biden’s substantial win seemed to put Trump beyond cheating distance — that by this time the leadership of the Republican Party would have pushed back against this reckless, lawless rampage.

But, these are the men and women who saw nothing in Trump’s shakedown of a foreign leader to warrant impeachment (or censure or even a slap on the wrist), the same folks who have watched as hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, as the White House shunned accountability, … and so on and so on and so on — for four years.

The leadership of the Republican Party is beneath contempt.

(Image: Rudy Giuliani’s theatre of the absurd press conference from The Guardian video.)

2020 General Election, Democracy, Democrats

Did Kevin Drum have it right all along?

This week a friend sent me a link to Steven Teles’s New York Times op-ed (“Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It.”). I found it hard to disagree with Teles, in contrast to the tact I had taken in response to Kevin Drum on November 1 (‘Is democracy alive and well in the U.S. and unthreatened by a “bugnut insane” GOP?’)

Professor Teles:

… As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution “forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes.” As a consequence, liberals can’t have nice things.

The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.

Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change. 

I accept this argument, while I dissented from Drum’s view opposing Ezra Klein. As I summarized at the time:

An off the rails Republican Party threatens democratic governance. Political scientists and other observers have made a strong case for this judgment. Kevin Drum’s appeals to previous eras of American politics, to past partisan skirmishes with wins and losses for each side, and to old school leadership fail to undermine this conclusion.

What gives? The short answer is: what a difference a day makes — in this case, November 3.

When Drum made his case (on October 23 and again on October 24), we didn’t know the results of the election. In particular, we didn’t know that Democrats would fail to retake the Senate and to increase their majority in the House. Barring a double victory in Georgia on January 5 (which I do not rule out!), Democrats will be in no position to advance a pro-majoritarian agenda (including judicial reform and admission of new states).

I agree with Teles because, at this stage (with a Biden victory and down ballot disappointment), we’re stuck (at least prior to January 5). Thus, we “can’t have nice things.”

Drum’s argument — regardless of whether or not Democrats were heading toward a landslide — flatly rejected the pro-majoritarian agenda as misguided, unlike Teles, who begins his op-ed with a reality check:

The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Even if Democrats somehow squeak out wins in both Georgia Senate races, the Senate will then pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Not only does this take much of the liberal wish list off the table, it also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible.

This is the world we live in. We have to take stock, trim our agenda, and then move forward. Such is life at least until we regain a working majority. Teles agrees with this assessment (at least regarding D.C. statehood): “If Democrats at some point get a chance to get full representation for Washington, D.C., they should take it.”

Editor’s note: I began my November 1 post by noting that Kevin Drum and I do not think alike, nor do we agree on “nearly everything.” We do, though, agree (or very nearly agree) sometimes. On November 7, he posted how he voted on each of the dozen California state ballot initiatives. As it happens, I voted — with one exception — exactly as he did. I too was disappointed in how often I found myself in the minority (though this is nothing new).

The exception: I voted No on Prop 25, which would have ended cash bail. After some consideration, I bought the argument of some civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California: “NO on Prop 25 that would eliminate money bail, but replace it with risk assessment tools that are racially and socioeconomically biased. “

Who knows whether this was the right call.

(Image: voters lined up to cast ballots in California’s March 2020 primary.)

Blue State Blues, Democrats

Our elites are failing us — California edition

Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian had three questions for Governor Gavin Newsom this week:

Why did Newsom attend his friend’s birthday party on Nov. 6 when he was telling his constituents to do one thing (dine in alone), while he and his wife did another (dined out with friends)?

How sincere was his subsequent apology following the very public spanking he received after the San Francisco Chronicle broke the news that he’d broken the rules?

And why does our governor hang out with a lobbyist who is trying to influence him on behalf of clients?

As question number two suggests, the governor — once he was caught — did apologize. (This puts him into a different category than, say, Donald Trump. But that’s a pretty low bar.)

The governor explained, after getting caught, that though he knows he was wrong, at least the dinner was outside. Perhaps it was, but the party began inside.

And as if this weren’t bad enough, it turns out a couple of officials from the California Medical Association were among the partiers. That would be CMA CEO Dustin Corcoran and the association’s top lobbyist Janus Norman.

On July 2, I posted that Governor Newsom’s quick action in mid-March to impose a statewide shelter-in-place order (following early action by Bay Area counties) “cast California’s political leadership in a good light and protected Californians before the virus had gotten out of control,” but that the guv’s subsequent actions cast doubt on his pledge to base his decisions on science and public health data.

Now we learn that Newsom has one standard for the public and another for himself and his friends. And apparently we can say the same thing about the leadership of the California Medical Association.

And then there’s this: “Legislators from California and other states are gathering for an annual conference in Maui this week despite a spike in COVID-19 cases in the Golden State that resulted in travel warnings by health officials.“

It has been confounding to live in Los Angeles County, which leads California with coronavirus cases and deaths, and trying to follow sensible steps (wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding gatherings — and being painfully separated from family and friends), while rates of infection, hospitalizations, and deaths increased because obviously so many people are flouting these sensible steps.

The political elite in California, by the way, is overwhelmingly Democratic. These folks are committed — just ask them — to science, equality, social justice, and (of course) public health.

Robin Abacrian advises us that the governor paid for his own dinner. “That’s a relief,” she notes, “because if he hadn’t, he’d be in violation of the California law that says lobbyists can only cover $10 of a public official’s meal.“

By the way, entrees at the French Laundry are $350 each. That’s a cool $700 for the Newsoms. Of course we don’t know what wine they had. And I couldn’t say if dessert was extra. Was there a cake?

(Image of one of two daily menus at the French Laundry.)

2020 General Election, Democrats

Reflections on the 2020 election and reaching more voters

  1. Words of wisdom from Michelle Goldberg:

Left-wing populists often believe that there’s a silent majority who agree with them, if only they can be organized to go to the polls. If that were true, though, an election with record high turnout should have been much better for progressives. Instead, 2020 was a reminder of something most older liberals long ago had to come to terms with: The voters who live in the places that determine political control in this country tend to be more conservative than we are.

I’m an older liberal. I live in Los Angeles County, where Joe Biden romped with more than 71% of the vote to Donald Trump’s not quite 27%; Congressman Adam Schiff was reelected with more than 72% of the vote; an advocate for criminal justice reform defeated the incumbent (an African American woman and a Democrat) for District Attorney; and my city councilman (a progressive Democrat in a nonpartisan office, with a slew of mainstream endorsements, including Mayor Eric Garcetti and Speaker Nancy Pelosi) became the first City Council incumbent defeated in 17 years, by a candidate running to his left.

I’m fine with those results (though I voted for my councilman, whom I had no reason to be mad at, but won’t miss). But I know that Los Angeles is hardly representative of the rest of the country — and I want Democrats to win there too.

2. I was convinced that 2020 was the year that Susan Collins would go down. (A more reasonable prospect than daydreams about the defeat of South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham or Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell.) Mainers disappointed me again.

Today’s New York Times provides perspective on that senate race, which suggests that so much money poured into the state that much of the spending misfired:

Maine’s mill towns were reliably Democratic until they flipped red for Mr. Trump in 2016. Once wealthy communities, they have steadily lost population, and remain dotted with relics of their old prosperity, like Rumford’s elegant, neoclassical Hotel Harris. The paper industry began a long decline in the 1980s, and Rumford’s mill work force contracted from a high point of 3,000, in the 1960s, to around 650 today.

“They’re fed up with politics, politicians in general, Democrats and Republicans,” said Kerri Arsenault, whose memoir, “Mill Town,” traced the industry’s decline.

“There’s a lot of angry Trump people who work in that mill,” said Deano Gilbert, 57, a union official at the mill. “I deal with guys that have had union jobs for decades that are superstrong Trump supporters. In the 1970s, everyone would be trying to vote their jobs, but now that’s all over.”

Asked how Democrats could better reach voters in towns like Rumford, he said, “Know your audience.”

3. Did I mention Lindsey Graham? Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger — under fierce attack by many Republicans who don’t like the state’s election results — alleges that Senator Graham called with questions about Raffensperger’s handling of signature-matching laws and the oblique suggestion that Raffensperger throw out legally cast ballots. Graham made the call on the same day a Trump supporter filed a lawsuit in Georgia to do just that and Trump tweeted, “Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO), won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud.”

Graham denies Raffensperger’s account, but when asked earlier by Sean Hannity — at a time when the South Carolinian was raising bogus charges of electoral fraud — whether the Republican-controlled state legislature in Pennsylvania should consider rejecting the majority vote for Biden and selecting Trump electors by fiat, responded: “I think everything should be on the table.”

He said “everything” on Fox News Channel and endorsed the possibility of throwing out the ballots from Pennsylvania, but we’re supposed to believe he balked at making a discrete call to a Republican Secretary of State in Georgia to suggest more limited sabotage? This is hardly a credible denial from a hardly credible Senator, someone who has been all-in with Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the election results and the incoming presidency of Joe Biden.

4. When he arrives at the White House on January 20, Biden’s first order of business will be defeating the coronavirus, which Trump has refused to take on. It will be a tall order — especially in light of how the Republican Party has created yet another wedge issue to divide us by opposing wearing a mask and social distancing to stop the spread of infection.

Democrat Joe Biden may have won the presidency pledging a national mask mandate and a science-based approach to controlling the pandemic. But in the states where the virus is spiking highest — particularly in the Upper Midwest — Republicans made substantial gains down-ballot. Often they did so by railing against the very tool that scientists say could best help arrest the virus’s spread.

Democrats on the left, convinced that messaging that’s effective in California or New York or other solidly blue states and metro regions, will be well-received in areas with a redder tinge, should pause to reconsider. Reflect on the opposition to taking simple steps — recommended by scientists, doctors, and public health authorities — to save American lives. This is the same audience that accepts election fraud nonsense.

Most of these folks — among the 73 million voters who embraced Donald Trump’s reelection — may be out of reach. But Democrats have to figure out a way to pry apart this bloc, to bring a portion of these Americans over to our side — enough to form a working majority.

Right now, they’re not talking our language, not accepting our facts, not seeing what we’re seeing. Expecting that an effective message in blue America will resonate in red America is wishful thinking. It’s going to be a harder lift than that.

(Image: Susan Collins via wikipedia.)

2020 General Election, Democracy

Trump, whether he accepts it or not, is on the way out. What’s next for him and for a polarized nation?

Jonathan Bernstein notes the speculation about how long Donald Trump’s domination of the Republican Party will last:

You can’t shake a stick right now without hitting someone who thinks that outgoing President Donald Trump will dominate Republican politics while President-elect Joe Biden is in office, and will surely be nominated again in 2024. . . .

On one hand … sure, it’s plausible. . . .

On the other hand? I’m with Josh Chafetz, who says that it’s “equally plausible that he really fades.”

Both Bernstein and Chafetz look to Fox News as a key indicator. I agree that keeping Fox on board could be decisive in extending Trump’s influence. But I found this insight regarding a run for the 2024 Republican nomination from an insider — within the extended family, not a political source — to be altogether convincing: Trump will not run again in 2024. Because, as Mary Trump told Chris Cuomo: “He will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again.“

Meanwhile, Amy Walter surveys the election results — where the Republican Party (aside from Trump) did very well — and sees continuing polarization, mistrust, and disillusionment as precluding any bipartisan cooperation in our future.

In the past, when I was asked what it would take to break the partisanship and gridlock in Washington, I said I thought it was going to take something truly horrible happening. Like a war. Or a Great Depression type of economic collapse. But, here we are, almost a year into the worst pandemic this country has seen in 100 years, and this crisis, instead of bringing us together, has become yet another one which divides us. And, even as we flirt with a dangerous descent into a deadly third wave of the virus this winter, those divisions are likely to remain. This is one time when I hope that I will be proven wrong. But, I fear that I won’t be. 

So do I.

Going back many months, watching the pandemic rage throughout the country on Trump’s watch, even as I realized we live in a deeply polarized country, I was convinced that Trump would pay a price with his base for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus.

Headline after headline, day after day revealed his callous indifference — which continues apace. A report from today’s Washington Post (“More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel”) illustrates his ongoing failure to defeat the virus, with Trump’s rallies and White House events serving as superspreader events.

Masks and social distancing have been rejected — never mind the consequences. And contract tracing? The White House doesn’t even inform vulnerable staff members of outbreaks: “People present at Wednesday night’s campaign party in the East Room who were around Meadows, Lewandowski and other now-sick staffers say they have not been contacted by the White House.”

Yet the base stuck with him — 71 million strong. Isn’t that a testament to polarization?

Ezra Klein, who wrote a book about polarization, sees the problem as a lack of small-d democratic accountability. He observes that the traditional model of politics has gone belly-up:

The fundamental feedback loop of politics — parties compete for public support, and if they fail the public, they are electorally punished, and so they change — is broken. But it’s only broken for the Republican Party.

Because — in an era when Democrats are concentrated in densely populated urban areas, and Republicans dominate rural areas — the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate, gerrymandered House and state legislative districts, and a conservative judiciary, have given the GOP an electoral advantage. “As a result, Democrats and Republicans are operating in what are, functionally, different electoral systems, with very different incentives.”

The Republican Party has become increasingly extreme, yet even as it loses majority support, it flourishes. Klein concludes:

In politics, as in any competition, the teams adopt the strategies the rules demand. America’s political parties are adopting the strategies that their very different electoral positions demand. That has made the Democratic Party a big-tent, center-left coalition that puts an emphasis on pluralistic outreach. And it has let the Republican Party adopt more extreme candidates, dangerous strategies, and unpopular agendas, because it can win most elections even while it’s losing most voters.

(Image: Donald J. Trump on Twitter.)

Donald Trump, Republicans

GOP deliberately chooses political advantage over national security and American lives

There is widespread alarm among congressional Republicans at how President Trump this week abruptly replaced Pentagon leaders with political allies, and sent signals he might do the same in the intelligence community, but for now lawmakers are refraining from overtly criticizing the moves for fear doing so could harm the party’s chances of holding on to its two Senate seats in Georgia. 

That report from this morning’s Washington Post (“Republicans muzzle anger over Trump’s Pentagon culling, afraid antagonizing him could imperil Georgia runoff,” by Karoun Demirjian) portrays Republicans as concerned with the President’s actions, but unwilling to go beyond offering “praise for Esper’s tenure and little else.”

Congressional aides say the anodyne public expressions represent a concerted attempt to self-muzzle, as the political party that prides itself on being strong on national security grapples with its fear of antagonizing an erratic and impulsive lame-duck president while battling to keep control of the Senate.

Further:

GOP aides described the sudden change in leadership as an “unwise” move that could cause “chaos” within the U.S. national security establishment as the country already is vulnerable to threats. Multiple GOP aides also surmised that the shake-up would hamper the incoming Biden administration if Trump’s newly chosen leaders and senior staff withhold information from his opponent’s transition team while the president contests the election outcome.

While Republicans regard themselves as a “political party that prides itself on being strong on national security,” they are unwilling to place national security above an upcoming election in Georgia. By now this is a familiar pattern — going back most dramatically to Trump’s deference, on the international stage, to an adversary by taking Vladimir Putin’s word over that of the Intelligence Community of the United States. The party’s unwillingness (with the exception of a single Senator) to hold their party’s leader accountable when he sought to extort the Ukrainian President to provide dirt on Joe Biden underscored the GOP’s priorities.

In another era, neither the leadership, nor the caucus of the Republican Party would have chosen to place partisan interests over national security concerns. By now, the habit is as well established as a sacred ritual.

Republicans recognized before Trump’s election in 2016 his unfitness for office. Through his actions, he has confirmed their judgment many times over. No matter what misdeed or malfeasance they witness, Republicans chose to either offer praise, meaningless murmurs of discomfort or gentle dissents, or silence. It is not politically advantageous to push back. No matter what the consequences to the nation or to Americans, partisan political advantage rules the day.

For the contemporary Republican Party, the choice is clear. And the indelible pattern extends beyond issues most closely associated with international relations and intelligence.

Yesterday, November 11, 1,565 people died of COVID in the United States. Overall deaths from the virus in this country exceed 242,000. Coronavirus hospitalizations nationwide exceed 60,000. Many states are approaching hospital capacity, yet even more concerning is the lack of qualified medical personnel to attend to the increasing numbers of sick patients. The rate of infection continues to grow. And yet — there is no national plan to defeat the coronavirus, not to amp up testing, to supply PPE, or to bring down the rate of infection. States, cities, and counties are on their own. The disastrous results are clear for all to see.

The President of the United States — as far as we can tell — is indifferent to this rising toll. There is no evidence that he has given a thought, since losing the election, to saving American lives from this scourge.

Furthermore — judging by its silence and inaction — the national Republican Party is willing to overlook this ongoing tragedy, which has flourished on Donald Trump’s watch.

Based on the 71 million votes cast for Trump, rank and file Republican voters embrace the indifference of the President and accept the deaths of family members, friends, and neighbors, as well as Americans with whom they have no direct connection.

This acceptance by the base, and the refusal to hold the President accountable, explains the calculation that Washington Republicans have made. If there is a line this party, its leaders, and its voters are unwilling to cross in support of Donald Trump, if there is a bridge too far, we haven’t yet reached it.

(Image: The first two items in Donald Trump’s twitter feed this afternoon. The top tweet is a fraudulent claim about voter fraud; the second is a complaint about Fox News. Trump’s concerns, and matters of indifference to him, are plain for all to see.)

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Are Trump’s shocking, reckless outbursts not “the tirades of a tyrant, but the tantrums of a toddler”?

Eli Lake offers a commentary on Trump’s firing Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (who publicly disagreed with Trump about the wisdom of using the nation’s military to scatter peaceful demonstrators so the President could stroll to Lafayette Square for a photo op). Lake criticizes Donald Trump’s score-settling as “shocking, but predictable.” He suggests that, if Trump fires CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wrey, this “would again be shocking, but not surprising.”

It appears now that he will leave office in the manner in which he has governed: recklessly. The difference is that, now that he has lost his bid for re-election, his outbursts are not the tirades of a tyrant, but the tantrums of a toddler. Trump could have accepted defeat and focused on the fact that his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map. If he wished to run in 2024, he could start making that argument now.

By pronouncing Trump’s eruptions this week as “the tantrums of a toddler,” rather than “the tirades of a tyrant,” Lake diminishes their significance. A reckless president is capable of doing ample damage in the next two months. Furthermore, this is unconvincing:

… Trump did not prove himself to be the authoritarian menace that his opposition claims. Trump could have fired Esper then and there. Instead he waited and seethed, sounding like a dictator but not acting like one. Only now, when he actually is a lame duck, is Trump choosing to settle scores.

A tyrant isn’t defanged simply because he chooses when to retaliate.

Moreover, something more consequential goes unmentioned: the compliance — whether eager or reluctant, over four years of erratic “outbursts” — of the Republican Party with the wannabe autocrat. That compliance, coming again and again, has ensured that the ongoing damage to our national interests and security is altogether predictable. If not for their willingness to countenance Trump’s off the rails words and deeds, Republican leaders might have kept him in check.

Instead, Republicans have folded. While Trump is still subject in some measure to institutional constraints, we can expect to see more unsurprising, reckless conduct over the next two months because Republicans are content to play along.

The elephant in the room

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” asked a Republican about playacting while Trump refuses to admit that he lost the election. This is identical to the calculation Republicans have made regarding the bluster, bullying, and incoherence throughout Trump’s entire term in office.

Today in Washington, Republican officials — in particular those who foresee a possible Republican primary in their future — are rallying around Trump. They’re either all-in with the nonsense about voting irregularities and fraud, or they pretend that his lies, delusions, complaints, and resistance are standard procedure after a presidential election. What they won’t do is push back. With this refusal, they enable.

Eli Lake credits Donald Trump with these accomplishments: “his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map.”

Lake doesn’t acknowledge that Trump’s remaking of the Republican Party has placed the United States in peril. The most significant threat to a wise, prudent foreign policy (as well as to wise, prudent domestic policies) from January 2016 through January 2021 is the servility of the Republican Party to an insecure, vengeful president and a base willing to do his bidding. It is disappointing that Lake hasn’t noticed this pattern.

(Photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times.)