Tag Archives: Brian Beutler

Democracy, Donald Trump

Juneteenth, Confederate statues and flags, Tulsa, race-baiting, and the strange career of Jim Crow

Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865 after arriving at District Headquarters in Galveston, Texas on the 18th :

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

Juneteenth has been a holiday in Texas since 1980. Ed Kilgore asks what it will take to make it a national holiday.

That may be as difficult as overcoming Republicans’ objections to ridding the Capitol of Confederate statues. Or getting NASCAR fans to put away their Confederate flags — which are as rich in historical symbolism as nooses.

Donald Trump found an historic setting — Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of a race massacre that killed hundreds of Black residents and burned 40 square blocks of the Greenwood district (“The Burning of Black Wall Street, Revisited” by Brent Staples) on June 1, 1921 — to relaunch his campaign after a coronavirus hiatus.

Trump offered the usual fare — including a ample portion of “white racial grievance” — to his assembled fans, as described by Jose A. Del Real (“With ‘kung flu,’ ‘thugs,’ and ‘our heritage,’ Trump leans on racial grievance as he reaches for a campaign reset”):

He referred to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus as the “kung flu.” He called racial justice demonstrators “thugs.” He attacked efforts to take down Confederate statues as an assault on “our heritage.” And in an ominous hypothetical, he described a “very tough hombre” breaking into a young woman’s home while her husband is away.

Today Trump is doubling down on race-baiting:

“Historically presidents have tried to calm tensions and not stoke them but elect a racist reality television host….” — Molly Jong-Fast 

“There’s a not-terribly-subtle subculture of white nationalists and neo-Nazis who share video footage of black people assaulting white people, trying to make images they believe will incite race hatred go viral. Anyhow, the president of the US is a key member of that community.” — Brian Beutler 

“The President of the United States is sharing videos of crimes committed by black people to push back on the notion that racism is a problem in our society.” — Aaron Rupar

Last summer, Brian Stelter reviewed Trump’s history of race-baiting, suggesting that “The pattern is the big story.”

These events brought to mind a passage in C. Van Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow describing white Southerners’ frustration at the economic, political, and social crises of the 1890s:

There had to be a scapegoat. And all along the line signals were going up to indicate that the Negro was the approved object of aggression. These ‘permissions-to-hate’ came from sources that had formerly denied such permission. They came from the federal courts in numerous opinions, from Northern liberals eager to conciliate the South, from Southern conservatives who had abandoned their race policy of moderation in their struggle against the Populists, from the Populists in their mood of disillusionment with their former Negro allies, and from a national temper suddenly expressed by imperialistic adventures and aggressions against colored peoples in distant lands. But for the majority it came much easier to blame the Negro for their defeat, to make him the scapegoat, and to vent upon him the pent up accumulation of bitterness against the legitimate offenders who had escaped their wrath.

“The pattern is the big story.” Donald Trump has been offering 21st century permissions-to-hate from the White House since his inauguration.

The public protests and other activity across the country may suggest that the tide is turning. Time will tell how well and how far things go with efforts to reform police culture and, more broadly, to change the status of Black Americans.

The prospects of ridding the White House of Donald Trump — critical if we are to see meaningful change — are going to play out in unpredictable ways over the next four and a half months. The story from Tulsa — where few participants wore masks, but attendance fell far short of campaign-generated expectations — was mixed.

The small crowd and rows of empty seats in Tulsa last week actually restored a measure of my faith in human nature. For all his lies, and hate, and divisiveness — which his supporters either celebrate or accept in stride — it was reassuring to think (at least last week at the BOK Center) that the Republican base is not so gullible as to believe every tale the fabulist in the White House (and Fox News Channel) spins.

Donald Trump is not even trying to defeat the coronavirus. He’s trying to wish it away. And at least a portion of his base knows it is still here. Score one for common sense over motivated reasoning.

Trump returns from Tulsa. Photo by Patrick Semansky / Associated Press in Los Angeles Times.

Finally, a note about style: ‘Black’ is the new black. “Why hundreds of American newsrooms have started capitalizing the ‘b’ in Black,” describes a step toward “affirming the experience and existence of an entire group of people who built this country and have contributed to every sector.”

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

“We may very well have crossed the Rubicon here.” — Congressman Adam Schiff

(Click on the hyperlink immediately above for a video of the exchange.)

Congressman Schiff, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been in sync with Speaker of the House Pelosi in resisting the impeachment of President Trump. (As he says in the video clip, “There is no chance of our persuading the Senate — the Senate Republicans — in an impeachment trial. They have shown their willingness to carry the President’s baggage no matter how soiled its contents.”)

“But if the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit — that is, providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign — then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that that conduct represents.”

If Trump (and Giuliani — and others in the Executive Branch) have done what has been alleged (and Trump and his personal attorney have come close to admitting it), then the President has used the powers of his office to undermine the upcoming election. That’s a fundamental assault on our democracy. (“This seems different in kind,” in Schiff’s words.)

I agree with Tom Nichols that “If this isn’t impeachable, nothing is,” though there were ample grounds for impeachment before this came to light. David Leonhardt provides an impressive checklist.

But the fundamental calculus of whether or not to impeach hasn’t changed.

I have resisted arguments for impeachment chiefly because there is no chance of persuading Senate Republicans to put the country and the Constitution above partisanship and the GOP. Impeachment by the House followed by acquittal in the Senate would fail to hold Trump accountable. The man will be booted from the White House, if at all, through defeat in November 2020. (As Adam Schiff has stated previously, “2020 is unquestionably the only way he gets removed from office.”)

November 2020 is critical. Doing whatever we can to defeat Trump is a moral imperative. The primary question is, as it has always been (since Senate Republicans will not do the right thing): Does impeachment make Trump’s defeat more or less likely?

Brian Beutler has written, “The only defensible case against impeaching a president like Trump is a prudential one.” An advocate for impeachment, Beutler is decidedly unconvinced by the prudential case.

But at this stage we have no reason to believe there are enough votes in the House to approve articles of impeachment. A failure in that chamber would spell disaster. If the latest transgressions by Trump, or further off the rails activities going forward, lead to unanimous, or near-unanimous agreement among House Democrats to impeach, that will shift the calculus. And Nancy Pelosi will shift accordingly.

It would still be a risk, since Senate Republicans have shown no signs of shifting, for the House to impeach. But with Democratic unity, it might be a risk worth taking. We’re hardly there yet. The public opposes impeachment. Many House Democrats, hardly unreasonably, are sensitive to the opinions of their constituents.

In the meantime, if Nichols, Leonhardt, Beutler, most of the Democratic candidates for president, and many other Americans are successful in their advocacy, an ample majority of House Democrats will find their way on board.

Whether or not that day comes, November 3, 2020 looms large.

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.