Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

The Trump administration is destroying the country’s governing capacity

After Jonathan Bernstein (“The Long, Slow Destruction of the U.S. Government”) lists disheartening examples from Thursday of ways the Trump administration is “destroying the U.S. government,” and briefly reviews previous misdeeds, he aptly sums things up in the quote of the day:

“… [T]here’s nothing systematic about any of what’s happening here. No plan. No strategy. No effort to separate the worthwhile from the worthless. It’s just basically random attacks on random pieces of the government. It will take years to recover from. In some ways, perhaps the nation will never recover. 
As with the failure to fill positions with confirmed presidential nominees, it’s always possible that some of this will lead to very visible catastrophic failure. But what’s more likely is just an erosion of the capacity of the nation. We won’t necessarily be able to connect the dots when things go wrong, but there will be effects, and they are likely to stretch out into the future.”

Yeah. I take his point. Trump’s notable weaknesses as an executive and every personality flaw are at play — so the actions appear random and senseless.

My first thought (I guess it’s an obsession) is: Where are the responsible leaders of the Republican Party? We hear a murmur here and there, regarding this or that action, or this resignation, or that nomination, or the failure to nominate … but the debacle continues unabated.

These guys are just going along for the ride. As long as they can lower taxes for the GOP donor class, gut regulation across the board, and stack the courts with ideologues — what’s not to like?

But this moment’s reflection provides the insight on the grand plan at work. From Ronald Reagan’s “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” to Grover Norquist’s “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” through Newt Gingrich’s deliberate campaign to undermine public trust in our governing institutions and Mitch McConnell’s embrace of dysfunction and implacable opposition to bipartisan policy making, movement conservatism has been committed to a long term strategy of diminishing the size and scope and stature of government.

If government becomes less effective, less responsive, less capable — so be it. If the capacity of government and the reservoir of public trust disintegrate — so be it.

The Republican Party is in thrall of an ideology. Conservative doctrine hasn’t changed much since the country put Reagan in the White House. Movement conservatives purged the liberals and moderates from the GOP. Then they went after the pragmatists. They have beaten back reliance on science, empirical evidence, and a rational process of making policy when these conflicted with conservative doctrine (as they must from time to time). And, more recently, they have been willing to shame or oust Republicans who have resisted the authoritarian impulses, the sowing of racial and ethnic discord, the affection for dictators, the self-dealing, the chaos, and much else that Donald Trump has ushered in.

Most Republicans in office have chosen to go along to get along — so long as it doesn’t threaten their next bid for reelection. Does that count as a plan?

One might object that conservative ideology, circa 1980, didn’t entail stupidity or overreach or hate. That wasn’t the plan. Perhaps not.

But conservative true believers from the beginning demanded fidelity to the one true cause (as they defined it). And over the past four decades, as the movement has advanced and grown more powerful, they have become relentlessly more rapacious, less open to accommodation of their political foes, and unalterably opposed to dissenting voices. We have reached a point where collateral damage to democratic institutions, to the country’s economy, and to the public welfare warrants no more than a shrug, if preserving these things stands in the way of conservative victories.

There may be a point at which a substantial number of Republican office holders choose to step back from inevitable devotion to (what passes for) conservatism. There may be a point where principle or patriotism, where the Constitution or a diverse body politic, or where a fundamental sense of right and wrong trumps conformity to conservative dogma (as mediated by Fox News, et al.).

Thus far, there are few signs that this day is imminent. Instead, we have the plan, the system, the strategy of the conservative movement: fidelity, come what may, to an intractable ideology. Start down this path and, even when things turn stupid and ugly, there’s no way out of the cul de sac.

(Image from wikipedia.)

Democracy, Off the Rails

Mass murder, the power of prayer, public policy, the NRA, and the Second Amendment

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott: “I want the city of El Paso to know and El Paso police department and everybody in this entire community know that the state of Texas provides its full support for this community and their efforts to rebuild. For the country that I know has been paying a lot of attention to this, asking what they can do, I ask that you keep El Pasoans in your prayer. We know the power of prayer and the power can you have by using that prayer. For every mom and dad and son and daughter, we ask you put your arms around your family members tonight and give them a hug and let them know how much you love them.”

Texas Congresswomen Sylvia Garica: “I believe in the power of prayer so I will pray for El Paso. I also believe in the power of public policy. We have to do more!”

The NRA embraces the unrestricted sale and possession of military assault rifles. (“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” — Wayne LaPierre, following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre of children. Nothing has changed since then, except the body count.)

Second Amendment to the Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Does anyone — from the conservative legal movement or the Republican delegation in Congress — believe that the Founders intended to prevent federal restrictions on access to assault weapons? What conservative principle stands in the way of doing more than extolling the power of prayer in the face of mass killing after mass killing after mass killing? (See Case #1 in this post on the current state of ‘conservative’ jurisprudence.)

(Image of Dayton Daily News website the morning the mass shooting in Dayton eclipsed the mass shooting in El Paso at the top of the news.)

2020 General Election, Republicans

Moscow Mitch once embraced his dark side, but a mean nickname has hurt his feelings

In May, Politico reported that Mitch McConnell reveled in his critics’ view of him as a villain (“because there’s almost no downside unless he somehow finds himself in a competitive general election”). Certainly, the man is a master of tribal warfare, who has never exhibited any shame.

When John Brennan showed the Gang of Eight evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and sought to craft a bipartisan statement for the American people, McConnell turned a blind eye to the evidence and replied, “You’re trying to screw the Republican candidate.”

By all accounts, partisan advantage for McConnell trumps consistency of principle, the preservation of democratic norms, and, yes, even defense of our nation’s security — and up till now, the senior senator from Kentucky seemed fine with his reputation for “unhinged partisanship” (to borrow McConnell’s phrase).

But, when MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough dubbed McConnell “Moscow Mitch” and the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank suggested that the senator was a Russian asset, they struck a nerve.

Could — “somehow” — McConnell “find himself in a competitive general election” in 2020? Is he anxious that his new nickname, and charges of covering for Putin’s Russia, might threaten his safe reelection?

Yes, that’s a long shot. But in the Trump era, it’s hard to take anything for granted. So much could go wrong in the next 16 months.

(Image courtesy of Kentucky Democrats.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Colorful flow chart + animus toward Bezos leads Trump to block Pentagon contract

On July 30, the Washington Post reported that the “Pentagon has issued an unusually strong rebuke of Oracle” for its efforts to sabotage the military’s process for awarding a $10 billion dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract.

On August 1, the Post reported that the sabotage was successful:

The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon, officials close to the decision-making process said.

What led to this change of heart? First, Donald Trump’s animus toward Jeff Bezos (who owns both the Washington Post and Amazon):

Trump on several occasions has spoken out against Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. And he has attacked the Bezos-owned Washington Post for its coverage of him by conflating it with Amazon’s interests. The president has called the news organization the “Amazon Washington Post,” while accusing it of publishing “fake news” and being a “lobbyist newspaper” for the company.

Second, “a colorful flow chart” (image above), created by an Oracle executive, that landed on the President’s desk and precipitated a discussion with his aids. Last April, an Oracle co-CEO had raised the issue with Trump at dinner in the White House:

Oracle has lobbied Trump aggressively on the matter, hoping to appeal to his animosity toward Amazon as well as former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who angered the president when he resigned last year over the administration’s foreign policy decisions. Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck, who runs the company’s policy shop in Washington, said he created a colorful flow chart labeled “A Conspiracy To Create A Ten Year DoD Cloud Monopoly” that portrayed connections among Amazon executives, Mattis and officials from the Obama administration.

In other news of the day, President Trump continued to dismiss Mueller’s warnings of ongoing Russian interference in U.S. elections. [Video at link:]

Addendum: “To the careful observer, the Trump administration’s foreign policy provokes two strong reactions. The first is despair. The Trump White House has succeeded in doing a lot of damage to U.S. national interest. …

The other strong reaction, however, is laughter. The Trump White House has beclowned itself so frequently, across such a wide variety of foreign policy issues, that it is difficult not to chuckle at the buffoonery on display.” — Daniel Drezner

(Image: Jonathan Swan on Twitter.)

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

“Infested. It sounds like vermin. . . . subhuman.” — Wallace; “It’s fair to have that conversation.” — Mulvaney

“There is a clear pattern here, Mick,” Chris Wallace says and goes on to describe Donald Trump’s dehumanizing language directed always at people who happen not to have white skin. “Infested. It sounds like vermin. It sounds subhuman. And these are all six Members of Congress who are people of color.”

Mick Mulvaney responds: “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines.”

Wallace: “I’m not reading between the lines. I’m reading the lines.”

Mulvaney scrambles to divert attention from the pattern of Trump’s smears by raising the possibility that if Adam Schiff had criticized Trump’s border policies, then Trump could be directing these comments at Schiff.

Wallace interjects: “I don’t think he’d be talking about his crime-infested, rodent-infested district.”

Mulvaney plows ahead, insisting that if Trump were directing these insults at Schiff, this would not be because Schiff is Jewish.

Mulvaney: “This is what the President does. He fights. And he’s not wrong to do so.”

Mulvaney continues talking, still diverting attention from Trump’s vilification of black and brown Members of Congress and minority Congressional districts. Sticking to (the non-existent, but hypothetically possible) criticism of Schiff, Mulvaney castigates California: “The richest state in the nation. The richest state in the nation has abject poverty like that. A state, by the way, dominated for generations by Democrats.”

Mulvaney’s audience of one may have found this defense convincing. Then again, Mulvaney’s comments might be aimed much more broadly (“… Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.”).

Democracy, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

U.S. Constitution and democratic institutions are tools to make our country better

“The president’s rally will be a defining moment in American history. It reminds us of the grave stakes of the coming presidential election: that this fight is not merely about policy ideas; it is a fight for the soul of our nation. The ideals at the heart of our founding — equal protection under the law, pluralism, religious liberty — are under attack, and it is up to all of us to defend them.
Having survived civil war in my home country as a child, I cherish these values. In Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, I saw grade-school children as young as me holding assault rifles in the streets. I spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, where there was no formal schooling or even running water. But my family and I persevered, fortified by our deep solidarity with one another, the compassion of others and the hope of a better life in the United States.
The America we arrived in was different from the one my grandfather had hoped to find. The land of opportunity he imagined was in fact full of challenges. People identified me in ways that were foreign to me: immigrant, black. I learned that these identities carried stigmas, and I experienced prejudice as a visibly Muslim woman.
But the beauty of this country is not that our democracy is perfect. It’s that embedded in our Constitution and democratic institutions are the tools to make it better. It was in the diverse community of Minneapolis — the very community that welcomed me home with open arms after Mr. Trump’s attacks against me last week — where I learned the true value of democracy. I started attending political caucuses with my grandfather, who cherished democracy as only someone who has experienced its absence could. I soon recognized that the only way to ensure that everyone in my community had a voice was by participating in the democratic process.” — Ilhan Omar, New York Times

Image via wikipedia.

2020 General Election, Democracy

Is it defensible, as a matter of principle, to discount the risks of Trump’s reelection ?

“While I doubt any impeachment fans feel equanimity toward a Trump reelection, you have to wonder if they are really thinking through what it means to brush off 2020 concerns as “political” and less important than engaging in a quixotic effort to pretend Trump can be removed from office any way other than at the polls.” — Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

Here’s the debate: a number of Trump’s critics have argued that the House of Representatives must impeach Trump as a matter of principle and that declining to act out of concern for political consequences constitutes a moral failure. Elizabeth Warren, the first prominent 2020 candidate to support impeachment, makes this argument. (“There is no political convenience exception to the constitution of the United States of America. You know, there are some things are bigger than politics. And this one is a point of principle.”)

Brian Beutler (in sync with Warren) excoriates the “Pelosi standard” for impeachment: that the House should not move forward with impeachment unless the case against Trump is “compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan.”

Beutler (“The Democrats Great Impeachment Abdication”) objects that the failure to impeach

will establish a new precedent in our country that presidents can make themselves untouchable, to the law and to Congress, if only they’re willing to be as selfish and malevolent as Trump. And it will do so at a moment when one of the country’s two political parties has fully embraced an ethos of corruption, greed, and will to power.

Beutler grants that moving toward impeachment in 2019 would not play out as it did in 1974 (in large part because Fox News and the conservative media bubble would shield Republicans from any good faith effort to hold the president accountable) and doesn’t regard acquittal in the Senate as reason to refrain from impeachment. He wants to see a trial! He wants to require Republican Senators to vote for acquittal.

“If Democrats build a solid case, and pass compelling articles of impeachment, the Senate’s rules obligate it to conduct a trial, with the chief justice of the United States presiding, in a manner that will be very hard for Republicans to cheapen.”

Does Beutler believe that Republicans would in any significant way be constrained from cheapening a Senate trial? That conceit is hard to accept. This doesn’t, however, blunt Beutler’s argument that a Senate trial would place the case for impeachment front and center for voters in 2020 “to render the final verdict.”

There is that. But, as Kilgore has argued in the past: “A 2021 Trump in charge is a progressive hellscape.” The consequences of a Trump reelection are highly significant. So significant that it makes no sense (politically or morally) to insist that the House must impeach without more than a shrug at the possibility that this would aid and abet Trump’s reelection prospects.

Beutler argues that the House must impeach because otherwise Democrats have given Trump and Republican carte blanche to commit any outrages they wish (so long as Fox and company can keep the base onboard).

“Under the Pelosi standard no abuse of power is too severe to tolerate if a third of the country can be convinced to overlook it. Under the Pelosi standard, Republicans enjoy a handicap where they and their propaganda allies can short circuit the Constitution through relentless disinformation and culture war nonsense, and never face a referendum on their underlying conduct or character. Under the Pelosi standard, Republicans can openly embrace any impeachable conduct that actually delights their supporters, which means Trump and future GOP presidents will have a freer hand than they already do to sic the Justice Department on their political enemies.”

“… and never face a referendum on their underlying conduct or character.” To reiterate: Beutler wants to compel Republican Senators to vote against impeachment and then to face the voters regarding their choice.

Without impeachment, Beutler argues, “Republicans can openly embrace any impeachable conduct that actually delights their supporters,” and the result is “Trump and future GOP presidents will have a freer hand than they already do to sic the Justice Department on their political enemies.”

In numerous discussions on the web (such as at Daily Kos), a handful of advocates for impeachment will concede that Trump’s reelection is a price they are willing to pay to see Trump get his comeuppance in the House. Most, however, stick to their guns without critically engaging in consideration of whether or not a House impeachment would make a second Trump term more likely. They reject this out of hand or simply decline to think that far ahead. The principle they embrace — Democrats in the House must take a stand – is too important to sully with discussion of real world political consequences.

Beutler, to his credit, has looked ahead. He insists that not impeaching would make future bad behavior by Republicans more likely and would make future presidents “untouchable.”

But this projection isn’t credible. As Kilgore argues, Senate acquittal with reelection offers an even worse prospect than failure to impeach and Trump’s defeat in November 2020:

“Talk about untouchability! A reelected Trump would be rampant, vengeful, and (of course) unrepentant. The Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary would likely become a confirmed enemy to progressivism for a generation. With one or two more Trump appointees to SCOTUS, reproductive rights would almost certainly be vaporized. Climate change might well become truly irreversible. Trumpism (or something worse) would complete its conquest of one major political party, and the other would be truly in the wilderness and perhaps fatally embittered and divided.”

Although Beutler nods toward a future in which impeachment has a beneficial effect on the conduct of presidents and senators, that’s not (on my reading) the basis for Beutler’s conviction. As he weighs the question of impeachment, and whether to refrain or move forward, Beutler writes:

“The pro-impeachment proposition is that Democrats should build the case, hold the trial, and let Republicans in Congress decide whether they want to shred our shared standards of accountability—to let their votes be counted—instead of doing it for them as they quietly sidestep the question.
In either case, the voters will render the final verdict, but in an impeachment scenario, the question would be laid before them clearly, and will place the entire Republican Party on the hook directly for the crimes they’ve been passively abetting for over two years now. It would also preserve important norms about what kinds of behavior should be impeachable.”

As I read Beutler, he wants a public accounting. And — though he doesn’t say it outright — he implies: consequences in November 2020 be damned. It’s all about principle. Even the last comment about preserving democratic norms is consistent with my interpretation.

Impeachment and acquittal don’t preserve norms. Rather, impeachment (with or without acquittal) represents for Beutler a stance on what norms “should be” in place.

That, in my view, is pretty weak tea. ‘Should be‘ doesn’t move the needle. The way to preserve democratic norms is to be rid of the man and the party that undermine them. Absent Senate conviction, the opportunity to make that happen will be found at the polls in November 2020.

If I’m wrong about this, if Nancy Pelosi is wrong about this, show me how. I’m open to persuasion. If impeachment now makes it more likely that we boot Trump out of office in 2020, show me how.

But don’t — with so much at stake — simply brush aside that possibility. It won’t do — with so much at stake — to embrace acting out of principle, as though this absolves you of responsibility for the real world consequences of your stance. You must, as a moral agent, as a political actor, as a defender of the Constitution, reckon with the consequences.

Donald Trump, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

“2020 is unquestionably the only way he gets removed from office”—Adam Schiff

Congressman Adam Schiff, interviewed on CNN the day after Robert Mueller testified before the House Intelligence Committee, characterizes the president’s conduct as: “Unethical, unpatriotic, wrong, and criminal.” Doesn’t that meet the definition of what is impeachable?

“I think that’s unquestionably the case, but that’s what I think. Can we make the case to the country? And does the country benefit from going through an impeachment if it is going to be unsuccessful? And we know in the Senate, at least, it would be unsuccessful.
So, I’m not there yet, but I’m keeping an open mind and I may get there.
…
2020 is unquestionably the only way he gets removed from office, so we can never lose sight of that.
I have tried to put the political question out of my head—that is, Does an impeachment help us in 2020 or does it hurt us politically?—because I don’t think it’s the right question to ask.
But we do need to be realistic and that is: the only way he’s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out. And I think our efforts need to be made in every respect to make sure that we turn out our people.
But on the policy question, what’s the best thing, what’s the right thing for the county? Should we put the country through an impeachment? I haven’t been convinced yet that we should. And going through that kind of momentous and disruptive experience for the country is not something we go into lightly.”

Video from from TPM Livewire.

Democracy

Democratic Sheriff dismantles accountability for deputy misconduct

[August 15, 2019 update: The Los Angeles County Democratic Party is expressing buyer’s remorse over its 2018 endorsement of Alex Villanueva. On August 13, the party passed a resolution calling on the Sheriff “to restore the public’s trust in the Sheriff’s Department.”]

Last year Alex Villanueva was a surprise winner against the incumbent in the race to become the new sheriff of Los Angeles County. I don’t live in LA so I’ve followed this only from afar, but as near as I can tell Villanueva’s main goal in office is to rehire deputies who have been fired for a variety of offenses, including unreasonable force, domestic violence, lying, and so forth. He started off with a couple of rehires, then announced six more, and apparently the total is now up to a couple of dozen or so.— Kevin Drum, “LA Sheriff Really Hates It When Bad Folks Get Fired.“

Drum points to Villanueva’s pledge to kick ICE out of the county jails, which engendered broad support among Hispanic voters, as the key to his victory, then he adds:

So far he’s kind of done that and kind of hasn’t, but in any case his top priority by far has been a so-called “truth and reconciliation” committee whose job is to reinstate fired deputies and make it clear that everyone knows the good old days are back.

As a Los Angeles County voter, I can confirm Drum’s impression. (The article Drum cites, “Sheriff’s chief says she quit over ‘highly unethical’ demand to rehire deputy fired for abuse,” reports a new revelation: a week before Villanueva was sworn in, his incoming chief of staff asked the department’s chief of professional standards to alter retroactively the disciplinary records for Caren Carl Mandolyn, fired after a string of misconduct incidents, because the new Sheriff’s “No. 1 priority” was to reinstate him, which he has done.)

I watched, with interest and dismay, the 2018 campaign for sheriff play out over many months. That campaign connects to issues—such as partisanship, group interests within a broad coalition, shortcuts used by voters, and opposition to Trump and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies—related to the themes of this blog. Without further ado, here are some observations by your fearless editor (who follows local politics mostly by reading the Los Angeles Times and listening to Southern California Public Radio):

The County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is an imposing fiefdom for (whomever happens to be) the Sheriff, who is independently elected and substantially free of meaningful oversight by the County Board of Supervisors (which oversees virtually everything else in county government). LASD patrols unincorporated areas of the county and more than three dozen cities, provides security for the county courthouse (Superior Court), and runs the massive county jail system. (Note: LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department, which has jurisdiction within the City of Los Angeles, is a separate agency from LASD.)

The Sheriff’s Department is huge, insular, and—both within the county jail and out on the streets—the department has had more than its share of “problem deputies” and a widely discussed history of scandals.  

Jim McDonnell—a former high ranking officer at LAPD, who left to become Chief of Police in Long Beach—ran for sheriff after his predecessor, Lee Baca, who portrayed himself as a reformer, was caught up in a scandal that resulted in a prison sentence (though Baca is out on bail while appealing his conviction). McDonnell won election in 2014 (defeating Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, now in prison) and, while the controversies swirling around LASD didn’t disappear, the sheriff seemed me to be doing a credible job in his first term. 

Sheriff McDonnell was, however, a former Republican in a Democratic stronghold. While the office of sheriff is nonpartisan, and while McDonnell had dropped his Republican registration, 2018 was not a good year for Republicans (or unaffiliated former Republicans) running in Los Angeles County, which has the greatest concentration of Democrats in the nation’s most revved up blue state.

It’s safe to say that McDonnell was unprepared for a competitive reelection bid in 2018. McDonnell had ample funds to conduct a campaign and his endorsements included a number of prominent Democrats, such as L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and County Supervisor Hilda Solis, as well as District Attorney Jackie Lacey and the Los Angeles Times editorial board, but—perhaps because going back more than a century, no incumbent sheriff had lost an election in Los Angeles County—he was caught flatfooted. His campaign, which acted as though he could coast to victory, was clearly outmatched by Villanueva’s effort.

Alex Villanueva hustled. He met with community groups, attended forums (which McDonnell often conspicuously declined to attend), and emphatically embraced a reform agenda (while doling out large portions of contempt for the incumbent sheriff). His promises:

  • Reform the LASD by cleaning house, top to bottom, and raising standards across the board
  • Rebuild the organization around the principles of community policing
  • Restore trust that has been lost between the community and the LASD, and within the LASD itself.

Sounds good. Nonetheless, I didn’t find Villanueva to be a credible candidate, because he lacked leadership experience (he had never risen above the rank of Lieutenant after 3 decades in the Sheriff’s Department); he had never held public office, or taken a leadership role in immigration rights, or shown any other evidence of being a trustworthy agent of change; his rhetorical salvos directed at McDonnell and ICE often didn’t seem to bear close scrutiny; and—this was the critical point—Villanueva locked arms with the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), the deputies’ union—a tenacious opponent of deputy accountability and implacable foe of reforming the institutional culture within LASD—which bankrolled his campaign.

I wasn’t the only critic who was not persuaded. Steve Martin, former mayor of West Hollywood (one of the cities where LASD patrols) and former president of the Stonewall Democratic Club (ironically, a prominent backer of Villanueva in 2018), who has a long history of advocating progressive reform of LASD, articulated his objections to Villanueva in an op-ed the week before the election. (Although I didn’t see this op-ed last November, it lays out a clear case for opposing Villanueva’s candidacy.)

Martin notes Villanueva and ALADS’s opposition to McDonnell’s commitment to cooperate with the District Attorney’s office in investigating more than 300 problem deputies. He references Villanueva’s attacks on McDonnell’s cooperation with ICE, but notes that this cooperation is governed by California’s sanctuary state law (no matter who heads LASD), that Villanueva’s differences with McDonnel (when examined closely) were sometimes negligible, and that—once in office—there would be significant limits (in contrast to his over the top rhetoric) on what policy changes he could actually bring about.

Most significantly, Martin highlights ALADS’s role in fighting reform:

Over the years it has been obvious that ALADS, the union representing the rank and file deputies, has been a consistent opponent to reform.… A Villanueva administration would give us the same sort of window dressing we saw under the Baca/Tanaka regime, with little meaningful change. Electing a relatively low ranking former deputy backed by a union that opposes deputy accountability, is not a receipt for reform.

I was flummoxed as I watched the campaign unfold. It was understandable why immigrant rights groups and other opponents of Trump’s disgraceful anti-immigrant policies would focus on Villanueva’s criticism of ICE, but what about civil rights, social justice, and prison reform concerns more generally? Deputy misconduct (on a force where out-of-policy misbehavior is widely recognized) was overlooked. Why did the Democratic Party go all-in for this guy?

I believe the answer is that Villanueva ticked off all the right boxes in his campaign. (Just as important: McDonnell’s campaign failed to offer a convincing rebuttal to Villanueva. As noted above: McDonnell’s campaign seemed to think they could ride the advantages of incumbency to reelection, while Sheriff McDonnell even boycotted community forums, instead of meeting and communicating with voters.) Consider:

Villanueva campaigned (mostly under the radar of the L.A. Times) for Latinx support throughout the county. (“He will be the first sheriff to speak Spanish since 1888.”)

He campaigned in African American neighborhoods as well and gained significant support. The Sheriff’s Department has not been much-beloved in many neighborhoods.

He ran as a reform candidate and critic of LASD’s past leadership. (“He was also the founder of an organization dedicated to fighting against the administrative corruption of Sheriff Lee Baca and Paul Tanaka.”)

He pledged to double down on community policing. (“He will establish community policing countywide, hire additional deputies to keep our streets safe, and have a local pipeline to create diversity in the department. He wants to ensure the County Sheriff’s Department is transparent and available for all residents of Los Angeles County.”)

And of course he ran against ICE.

But most of all, he ran as a Democrat:

It has been 138 years since our last Democratic Sheriff. In order to protect our communities and our families we need to elect a Democrat for Sheriff.

This November, help make history. Elect a Democrat for Sheriff.
Vote Democrat for LA County Sheriff. Vote Alex Villanueva.

The image above (a screen grab from Fox 11 News) is from a Villanueva campaign brochure. Though most voters probably couldn’t have picked Jim McDonnell out of a lineup, the pairing of the Sheriff and Trump aimed to make an impression they would remember.

Two factors, in my view, were especially powerful in this campaign: The first, was linking McDonnell to Trump’s immigration policies and pledging to distance the department from ICE. The second, more significant factor was the Democratic Party endorsement. Note that there was no indication on the ballot that Villanueva was a Democrat, since this office is nonpartisan. But his affiliation was conveyed by his campaign at every opportunity: on his website, in his literature, on door hangers, mailed brochures, and social media, in Democratic club voter guides, and in many stories in the press, on radio, and TV: Villanueva was the Democratic candidate for sheriff.

Voters rely on cues to make decisions. Jonathan Bernstein has pointed out that even well informed voters are not “remotely qualified” to make independent judgments about the large number and range of issues they are asked to vote on. That’s why we “take the shortcuts” that are available to us. We look at a range of trusted sources —officials, groups, others who master the nitty-gritty details we have no time or expertise to delve into—to come to an understanding and make decisions. And, as Bernstein notes, among the cues available to us: “The biggest one is party affiliation.”

So, in Democratic Los Angeles County, voters turned out an experienced incumbent to make Alex Villanueva the Sheriff.

On his first day in office the new sheriff, who had repeatedly clashed with his superiors during his 30-year tenure at LASD, immediately removed the top 18 executives in the department and required 500 supervisors to reapply for their positions, creating more questions about Villanueva’s judgment and priorities. More alarmingly, he eliminated two constitutional policing positions created by McDonnell to advise the sheriff on use of force and disciplinary matters.  

Aside from his unconventional approach to management, thus far Villanueva has presided over an LASD that looks pretty much what the department looked like in the bad old days, as a recent headline suggests, “Cop group with matching skull tattoos costs taxpayers $7 million in fatal shooting.” Are the secret societies that deputies join, groups that feature: names such as Banditos, Jump Out Boys, Grim Reapers, and Regulators; matching tattoos (skulls and guns are popular); gang signs exchanged by the deputies; and accusations of links to unlawful behavior on the street and in the county jail—as well as violence, harassment, and bullying directed at deputies who haven’t joined the cliques—a problem that demands a sheriff’s attention? Or, as Villanueva suggested, is the issue no more serious than intergenerational “hazing” (a bonding experience to create esprit de corps among deputies, perhaps)?

At this point, with each new story of the direction that the new sheriff is taking the department, progressive criticism has begun to appear. And, it turns out that critics of Villanueva’s anti-ICE rhetoric and his promise to “physically remove” ICE agents from the jails were right: within federal law and California’s sanctuary law, the Sheriff’s Department has only limited leeway. “While Villanueva has indeed banned uniformed ICE agents from the jails he has replaced them with private contractors, which critics have called a distinction without a difference.”

After Bernstein’s comment on the primacy of party affiliation, he adds: “If the party endorses a candidate, you have a good idea how that person will behave in office.”

That’s where I think the local Democratic Party, and all those Democratic clubs, failed Democratic voters. They didn’t foresee Villanueva’s “main goal in office” (as Kevin Drum put it). Why not? I don’t think they were looking very hard. Not in 2018.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. The Democratic agenda emerges from the separate agendas of those groups. Sometimes there are disagreements among constituencies, but often there are groups with standing in the party that can lead on issues within their province. Such groups have, in Jo Freeman’s words, “policy sovereignty over a policy territory and can generally designate those issues and positions within it that are to be part of the party line.” The immigration rights groups in 2018 had standing to dictate the party line: unequivocal opposition to ICE.

And, of course, their position was fortified by another Democratic group: the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. ALADS is a public employee union and as such is a part of the Democratic coalition. While the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association (PPOA), which represents LASD supervisors, endorsed McDonnell, a number of other Los Angeles unions joined ALADS in supporting Villanueva. (Competing endorsements from organized labor didn’t seem to be especially significant in this race.)

Immigration activists took Villanueva at his word. They pushed for a sheriff whom they regarded as committed to their agenda. No other Democratic groups had reason to object to this agenda and furthermore no other issues were as prominent during the 2018 campaign.

All other concerns related to LASD—the use of unreasonable force, domestic violence, abuse of prisoners in county jail, outlaw cliques at LASD stations, and holding deputies accountable for misconduct—were more or less submerged. ICE, on the other hand, was a hot issue. So concerns with ICE carried the day.

It’s a testament to Trump’s extremely hateful policies and the degree of harm he has inflicted that activists were not more wary of Alex Villanueva: a man with no track record to show that he was up to job or that he could be trusted to serve the public faithfully. (It’s also additional evidence of McDonnell’s feckless campaign that these concerns failed to become live issues.)

While I believe that Jim McDonnell is a man of integrity, who was pursuing a genuine reform agenda and would have steadfastly tracked California’s sanctuary law (as Villanueva has done), the local Democratic Party disagreed with me (and convinced most voters as well).

One could, of course, decide that the relatively modest changes vis-à-vis LASD and ICE that Villanueva has implemented outweigh the issue of deputy accountability at the department. It is possible to decide that on balance this is the right choice. Immigrant rights activists may reasonably hold this view.

But the fact that a number of progressives are reassessing their judgments about the new sheriff, as well as their silence or muted objections in 2018 suggest that Democratic endorsements of Villanueva were not grounded on a balancing of interests. Instead, the urgency of opposing Trump and ICE took precedence, precluding a well-grounded evaluation of the man who is now our sheriff.

Democratic dominance in Los Angeles, Democrats’ fierce resistance to Trump and commitment to immigrants, in the absence of meaningful countervailing factors in 2018, has resulted in the election of a sheriff who is squelching reform and accountability at LASD. Public safety and trust in law enforcement are casualties.