Donald Trump, Republicans, Tribalism

This President – and the Republican Party that has his back – is off the rails

Look in vain in this report for a Congressional Republican to stick his head out of the bunker, where Republicans who expect another primary election in their future hide, and to offer a comment. “Trump’s plan” – to transport migrants detained at the border to sanctuary cities, like so much else in the Trump (and McConnell) era, is a reckless assault on democratic norms and the rule of law.

In my first post in this blog (July 7, 2018), “Is this the most divided you have ever seen the United States?” I commented on the answer to that question offered by an experienced journalist (Jamie Dupree): “My answer is always – no, this is not the most divided that our country has been, even in my lifetime.” He justified his response by pointing to the U.S. in 1968.

In that banner year we endured a losing war with high casualties, the My Lai massacre, a military draft, brutal clashes in the streets between protesters and police, and two political assassinations (Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy).  So, why did I dissent from the journalist’s sanguine view that things were worse then than a half century later?

Because in 1968, we elected a president, Richard Nixon, who – however you assess his campaigns and administration – strove to be president of the whole country: Republicans and Democrats, rural and urban, partisans and swing voters, working folks and the GOP donor class. Richard Nixon was not ignorant or indifferent to public policy, to enacting laws and overseeing federal agencies to benefit the nation as a whole. He had a conception of the presidency that is beyond the ken of Donald Trump. And the Republican Party that Nixon led had not yet become the outlier – the scorched-earth, win at all costs group – that it is today.

Trump is presiding over a factional government. That’s the bottom line for a president who only plays to his base. As I said in that first post: “The stubborn refusal of our president to embrace America whole – all of our citizens; our country’s abiding national interest; what we share in common, not what divides us – sets this era apart from the divisive years that Dupree recalls.”

To reiterate: it’s not just Trump. The Republican Party has his back, with no more than occasional murmurs of displeasure (almost invariably fashioned to be absolutely ineffectual).

Hat tip to Josh Marshall for flagging this story (“MSM Journalism Can’t Handle Trump”), with the observation that the article is emblematic of “the problems MSM/bothsidesist journalism faces in the age of the Trump.”*

Update: *In the 8 or 10 hours since I saw Marshall’s initial post, he has revised it and edited out most of his commentary, including the sentence that contained the quote immediately above. I’ll still give him credit for alerting me to the WaPo story describing a “plan” to punish political opponents by a man who is unfit for the presidency.

Off the Rails, Republicans

U.S. Attorney General amplifies Right wing conspiracy theories and Trump talking Points

Senator Jeanne Shaheen: So, you’re not, you’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?
Attorney General William Barr: I don’t – uh, well, I – I guess you could – I think there was spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.

[Exchange begins at 30:38, C-SPAN3]

Is there a difference between a counter-intelligence investigation authorized by federal court and spying on a political campaign?

Senator Jack Reed: Do you believe that the investigation that Director Mueller undertook was a witch hunt or illegal, as has been asserted by the President?
Barr: Uh, as I said during my confirmation, it really depends on where you’re sitting. If you are somebody who is being falsely accused of something you would tend to view the investigation—
Reed: Well, you’re sitting as the Attorney General of the United States with a Constitutional responsibility. So, if you could answer in that regard.
Barr: Well, I’m not going to characterize. It is what it is. You know, Mueller and his team conducted an investigation and are issuing a report.

[Exchange begins at 55:5]

Barr’s testimony today suggests that he is acting as a political operative on behalf of Donald Trump and not as the United States Attorney General in service of the rule of law. It is dispiriting to observe the depths of degradation of the contemporary Republican Party (once a bastion of law and order).

April 11, 2019 update: Jeffrey Toobin makes the point in a pithier way:

“This is a classic demonstration of the Fox News-ification of the Republican Party. That even an establishment figure like Bill Barr, someone who comes out of the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, talks like Sean Hannity.”


Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Taken for granted: Trump holds himself above the law and the GOP supports him

Quote of the day:

“It is by now simply taken for granted that this president holds himself above legal accountability and that his party will support him to the hilt.” — Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

Context: the House Ways and Means Committee makes a written request for Donald Trump’s tax forms; the law clearly authorizes this request. Senator Chuck Grassley, Chair of the Finance Committee criticizes Congressional Democrats because they “dislike” Trump.

As Chait summarizes, this is an entrenched pattern (which the media more or less shrugs off as the new normal):

“Grassley is fixating on the motivation of Congress to obtain Trump’s taxes, while ignoring Trump’s own motivation to hide them, so that he can steer the conversation away from the obvious solution — from the standpoint of both the public good and the letter of the law. This is the method Republicans have used to justify every debasement of norms and the law Trump has undertaken: Drain the question of any neutral principle and reduce it to a simple struggle of us versus them. And the more gross and unjustifiable Trump’s behavior, the more Democrats resent him, which gives Republicans all the more reason to defend him.”

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Yes, Democrats have their strong favorites among the contenders for 2020 nomination

Quote of the day:

‘But anyone that paints 2020 as a “my candidate or bust” situation really has no perspective or understanding of the myriad great choices we have. If I ranked the current field by order of preference, I’m at candidate 9 or 10 before I think “ugh.” We Democrats are in a good place.’ – Markos Moulitsas

Agreed. And I don’t expect an ‘ugh’ to win.

(Image from the 11th Hour during the last half of March.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

Anita Hill, not Lucy Flores, represents Joe Biden’s most troubling blind spot: A look back

Last week I posted a ‘quote of the day’ by Rebecca Traister. I thought the most significant point she made was that Joe Biden has hardly changed at all since, after Anita Hill’s appearance, he blocked corroborating witnesses from testifying at the Clarence Thomas hearings. In my view, Joe Biden is a throwback to a U.S. Senate when Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch co-sponsored legislation; when Joe Lieberman and John McCain were best buds; when the filibuster was rare and blue slips were respected by both parties; and when 100% of Senate Republicans would not have given Mitch McConnell a pass when he blocked a hearing for Merrick Garland.

I cross posted the Traister quote of the day on another website, which generated a number of comments, virtually all of which focused on Biden’s well-known habit of hugging, touching, and kissing women whom he doesn’t know. So I’m revisiting this issue.

Biden’s handling of the Thomas hearings is more significant, especially since he has never acknowledged a mistake. Plus, he continues to act – to this day – as though somehow, someway we can bring back the good old days of comity and bipartisanship to American politics.

First, let’s look back at the hearings, which Anita Hill, and 4 women in the House and 1 in the Senate (circa 1991) spoke about with the Washington Post in 2017. The Post describes then-Members of Congress and the Senate as “all allies of Hill during her historic appearance at the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991.”

Pat Schroeder: “As I recall, a group of us walked in, and you know how you can do the one-minute speeches on the floor? So we each got up and we’re doing them. And that then inspired us to go over to see the wonderful Senate, because they were having lunch as they always do on Tuesday. So we marched over there to go see them, because we were dumbfounded.” . . .

Barbara Mikulski: “I’m the only Democratic woman in the Senate. I didn’t know they were marching over. There’s George Mitchell, our Democratic leader, and somebody hands him a note and he says there are congresswomen outside. They want to speak. I said let them in. Others were saying okay.” . . .

Later Schroeder and Louise Slaughter called on Joe Biden. Slaughter: “We went to see Biden, because we were so frustrated by it. And he literally kind of pointed his finger and said, you don’t understand how important one’s word was in the Senate, that he had given his word to [Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), Thomas’s chief sponsor] in the men’s gym that this would be a very quick hearing, and he had to get it out before Columbus Day.”

Biden was a man of his word. He respected Republican Senators as colleagues. He hasn’t changed much, as far as we can tell. Whether it is complimenting a Republican Congressman (when a Democrat was running to flip the seat in 2016) or praising Donald Trump’s Vice President as “a decent guy,” (though, yes, he walked it back, but) Biden apparently isn’t onboard with a more aggressive approach toward Republicans that many Democrats in 2019 are ready to embrace. He comes out of a kinder, gentler era, when Senatorial courtesies and bipartisan deference were ascendant.

None of this is disqualifying. It’s an intra-party disagreement. Maybe the right Democrat in the White House could get Mitch McConnell to be more reasonable. Maybe he (or she) could persuade a handful of Republicans to object to McConnell’s obstructionism. Recall the suggestions by serious people that Obama should have played more golf with Republicans. Or perhaps invited GOP opponents to the White House more frequently for bourbon and cigars (or whatever). Maybe then a few of them would have supported the ACA.

Or not.

Joe Biden is a prospective Democratic candidate for the nomination of his party; based on polling, he would be a front-runner (though I’m skeptical, having watched him seek the nomination twice before, that he is a likely winner). If he runs, this history (which isn’t dead, and may not be past), is something for Democratic voters to consider when deciding on their nominee.

(Image of Kumbaya moment at South Park from the web.)

Democrats, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Doubts about Joe Biden go back decades and haven’t disappeared

Quote of the day:

“Here’s the truth: If Joe Biden had ever done two minutes of actual thinking about the harm he’d helped to inflict on Hill, on women, and on the nation in handling of those hearings, he wouldn’t still be doing this kind of thing. ” – Rebecca Traister, NYMag, “Joe Biden Isn’t the Answer.“

My view: I was angry in 1991 about Biden’s handling of the Clarence Thomas hearings. I am angry still, especially because as Traister describes, “Biden was reluctant even to let Anita Hill testify as to how Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed her, since — as he would explain afterward — he had given his word to a Republican colleague, in the Senate gym, that he’d make sure Thomas’s confirmation was speedy.” And he still says of his decision (and of his refusal to call three women, who were willing to testify as corroborating witnesses), “I wish I could have done something.” He was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(Image: screen grab of the Thomas hearings from YouTube.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Adam Schiff: “You might say that’s all OK, but I don’t think it’s oK.”

The Barr coverup continues – and Republicans pretend that the Barr letter is the Mueller report, while Barr declines to release the Mueller report. Adam Schiff cites a litany of bad behavior – all of which is on the public record – by Trump campaign officials and advisors:

  • the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic nominee
  • the President’s son did not call the FBI; he said he would love the help the Russians offered
  • the President’s son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman Paul Manfort took the meeting and concealed it from the public
  • a year later, they lied about it and the President is helped dictate the lie
  • the campaign chair offered information on the campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt relief, and offered polling date to someone linked to Russian intelligence
  • the President called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails and the Russians attempted later that day to hack into her campaign
  • the President’s son-in-law sought to establish back-channel communications with the Russians
  • an associate of the President contacted the Russian military intelligence agency through Lucifer 2 and wikileaks
  • a senior campaign official was instructed to find out what dirt that hostile agency had on Trump’s opponent, and
  • the National Security Advisor-designate secretly spoke with the Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions and lied about it to the FBI

“You might say that’s all OK. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s OK.

I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic. And, yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion.”

Representative Schiff observes that he has always distinguished between this bad behavior and proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy. And he expresses complete confidence in Robert Mueller and the Mueller report.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are pretending that the Barr letter is the Mueller report and that collusion is off the table. Yesterday they issued a letter demanding that Adam Schiff step down as chairman.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, also pretending that the Barr letter is the Mueller report, declared victory at a campaign rally and thundered: “After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over.”

As noted in my previous post, the Barr letter appears to have been designed to give cover to Republicans’ falsehoods regarding the Mueller report. So far things have worked out as designed. And the coverup continues.


Democracy, Donald Trump, Republicans

William Barr’s Letter is a master stroke in media misdirection and political mischief

The Attorney General’s 3 ½ page letter is a master stroke that has – by design – incited a media circus, transformed the state of political discourse, strengthening Trump and Republicans while turning the tables on Democrats, and set the stage for the Trump reelection campaign.

It has thrown Democrats back on their heels and given life to wild Republican demands for payback: with cable television black lists of Trump critics, calls for deposing Democratic committee chairs, and demands for new investigations of the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign (even the Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch visit on the tarmac), and the counterintelligence investigation of candidate Trump.

We will look back on this letter much as we look back on James Comey’s July 5, 2016 public scolding of Hillary Clinton (which overshadowed his announcement that the justice department would file no charges against her) and his announcement, two weeks before the November election, that with the discovery of new emails, the FBI was reopening the case.

Those events in 2016 were catnip for the media – including the prestige and partisan press, the tabloids, cable news, internet sites, talk radio, and social media – resulting in significant impacts on the shape of public discourse and campaign narratives. Polling shows that they swayed public opinion and, arguably, the results of the 2016 election.

In the same way, the Barr letter has fundamentally changed media preoccupations, priorities, and daily news coverage. Consider Monday morning’s headlines: ‘Republicans and Democrats angle to take offensive after Mueller report,’ Los Angeles Times and ‘Trump and Republicans Seek to Turn Tables After Report,’ New York Times. We are not yet at ‘after Mueller report!’ Barr is still hiding it from view. The Washington Post’s headline is a bit more careful, ‘With Mueller probe over, Trump allies switch from defense to bruising offense,’ but the gist is the same. We’ve raced past the actual Mueller report (in virtually complete ignorance of it) and are onto how the report boosts the Republicans and harms the Democrats. (Note these are the headlines that appeared on the first online pages of these newspapers Monday morning; they may not match the headline that appears after the click.)

The Barr letter – at barely more than 3 pages of text – is a big, shiny object that the media, political actors, and the public can’t help but fixate on. Because – apart from the Barr’s purported summary of “the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation” – there is nothing else to examine. The report is still shrouded from view.

Not a single complete sentence, as written by Robert Mueller, appears in the Barr letter. We have only words, phrases, and sentence fragments pieced together by Trump’s AG to go on.

Never mind the parsing of Barr’s letter, which reveals even at this stage that the Attorney General is spinning like mad. To understand this cynical act of media misdirection and political mischief, consider a single, simple question: How long is the Mueller report? Mueller’s talking indictments stretched to hundreds of pages. Their strength lay in details and context. Moreover, because of their considerable heft and scope, they had a greater impact than they would have otherwise. We could assess their significance and their credibility even with scads of redactions.

The Barr letter doesn’t so much as reveal the length of the report. Two hundred pages? Five hundred? More than 1,000? The lengthier the report, the fishier Barr’s letter looks. Whatever the length, though, there would be vastly more grist for the mill – and tremendously more substance for the media to dig into and the public to focus on – if we could see the actual report. We know this because we know Robert Mueller’s work.

Barr’s release of this meager summary – which we have every reason to believe has a heavy partisan slant – has precluded meaningful discussion. The letter, without the report, hides Mueller’s decision-making regarding prosecutions and declinations from view. We get, instead, a spin-doctor’s characterizations. More significantly, Barr’s letter has preemptively killed a robust series of narratives – including alarming facts and context of Russian interference, an account of  the President’s off the rails actions, a record of unseemly and despicable behavior by those surrounding the Trump campaign, and who knows what else?

Well, Barr knows. And he’s not saying.

By the time we see the Mueller report (if we ever do), the Trump White House, Fox News Channel, Congressional Republicans, talk radio, Brietbart,  Daily Caller, et al. will have baked-in the narrative that the Mueller investigation has exonerated the President and exposed the concerns with Russian sabotage and the Trump campaign as invidious slanders by Democrats. The mainstream media (from the New York Times to NPR to CNN and all the way down) will report all this in typical He Said, She Said fashion (which even the prestige press favors when covering partisan issues), so this cake will be fully baked.

Whatever the Mueller report contains, the significance will have been brushed aside for most Americans who have not yet chosen sides. Those are the folks who can turn elections.

Mission accomplished, Mr. Barr.

Note: my suggestion in the first sentence of this post, that Barr’s letter was crafted (“by design”) to achieve political ends, this is based on Barr’s longstanding partisanship. As Josh Marshall has reported, William Barr in his first gig as Attorney General, was among the political appointees in the Bush 1 administration who “took a case that Bush-appointees in Little Rock didn’t believe had merit and worked hard to make it an active case. This was in the hopes that a late breaking scandal would help then-President Bush stage a dramatic comeback to win reelection.”

I regard this history at least as relevant to Barr’s Trumpian partisanship as his 19-page audition memo for his second run as AG, which preemptively cast doubt on the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation of presidential obstruction.

April 4, 2019 update: The New York Times reports in this morning’s paper, “Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public,” as I suggested in this post.

(Image: William Barr via wikipedia.)

2020 General Election, Democrats, Donald Trump, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Why a loss to Trump in 2020 would be an existential crisis for Democrats

Quote of the day:

“All in all, Democrats should approach 2020 with the mind-set that this is an election with such high substantive and political stakes that history will never forgive them for blowing it. “

– Ed Kilgore,”Hellscape 2021: Why a Second Loss to Trump Could Produce an Existential Crisis for Democrats,” March 24, 2019

(Image: Hell – detail from a fresco in the medieval church of St Nicholas in Raduil, Bulgaria, wikipedia)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

This explains why Republicans have cast off their principles

In a previous post, featuring a snarling Lindsey Graham, who transformed into a Trump sycophant after John McCain’s death, I acknowledged, “I don’t know what happened to Senator Graham.”

This polling – before and after – tells the story of his success in improving his poll numbers with the Republican base:

April 2018:  51% // March 2019:  74%

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1108676614550884353

The Senator is up for reelection in 2020.

This week the President of the United States has been obsessed with attacking Senator McCain – who died seven months ago. Few Republican Senators have objected to these attacks. Most who have spoken up, including Graham, have done so only gingerly.

And so it goes, over and over again. The President’s assaults on common decency, democratic norms, and matters of principle get a pass from Republicans likely to have a Republican primary in their futures.