Tag Archives: Ed Kilgore

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.”

The Way the World Goes 'Round

Round and round: The president, the governor, voting rights, and the Grim Reaper

1.  Speech acts

In 1974, John Searle made an observation in a classroom about this sentence: ‘This room would look good in blue.’ He noted that the import of the sentence could differ from speaker to speaker. So, for instance, the words constituted a simple declarative sentence when spoken by a casual observer to a friend, while the same sentence could function as an imperative – Paint it blue – if spoken by the homeowner to a contractor.

I was reminded of this lecture when reading Bonnie Honig’s comments about an exchange on Fox News (which I quoted yesterday):

Jesse Watters: The President’s spitballing and he’s asking questions. ‘Would it be possible to maybe target the virus through a cure using certain ingredients and using sunlight?‘ You didn’t believe the President was putting anyone in danger, did you?

Dr. Deborah Birx: No. He gets new information. He likes to talk that through out loud. And really have that dialogue. And so that’s what dialogue he was having. I think he just saw the information at the time, immediately before the press conference. And he was still digesting that information.

It was easy enough to take the good doctor’s suggestion – that Trump was just digesting the information when he commented on bleach and light – at face value. But, Honig illustrates why this is wrong.

Trump isn’t just riffing aloud. He is demanding public praise for his intelligence from a distinguished authority whose job depends on Trump’s goodwill. Honig (“Spitballing in a pandemic”) [emphasis added]:

Dr. Birx … tried to explain it all away on Fox News, and what she said rings true: “When he gets new information he likes to talk that through out loud and really have that dialogue and so that’s what dialogue he’s having.” The issue, she implies, is not the musing: that is his process. The issue is that it happened in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But Trump knew that. He mused publicly because he hoped to give us all a peek behind the scenes. He has ideas and his people take them seriously! See? And who knows? He himself might come up with the cure! 

. . .

What we saw on Thursday in the briefing room is what is going on behind the scenes: his advisors indulge Trump’s bright ideas and take them seriously. “I just had a thought. Look into it.” He did not say it like it was an order. On Thursday, his tone was inveigling, whispery. He was impersonating what he imagines it looks like to have an idea. Buttressed by power and smothered in noblesse oblige, however, his “thought” was really a command: act like it’s a good idea. — Yessir, we will.

2.  That’s bracing

In California, declaration of an emergency results in an extraordinarily broad expansion of a governor’s power, in this case, Gavin Newsom’s:

States are afforded broad authority under constitutional law, which grants them “police power” to improve the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the population. Under California’s Emergency Services Act, the governor’s powers are virtually unlimited — he can suspend any law or regulation during a state of emergency.

3. Voting rights

On April 12, I referenced election expert Richard Hasen’s fear that Republican-controlled state legislatures, in purple states (or red ones that could flip to Biden), could cancel the November 3 election and allocate the state’s electoral votes to Trump. The U.S. Supreme Court noted in Bush v. Gore that state legislatures possess this authority under the Constitution.

Last week, in a review of Joe Biden’s warning that Trump could try to cancel the election, Ed Kilgore noted that in fact the Florida legislature – in 2000 (when Bush v. Gore was before SCOTUS) – filed a brief asserting the authority to throw out the election results and direct all of the state’s electoral votes to Bush. The five Republican men who comprised the Court’s 5-4 majority in the case rendered this move unnecessary to give the election to George W. Bush.

In the aftermath of the Court’s unsigned 5-4 ruling overturning a lower court’s extension of time to count ballots in Wisconsin’s recent election in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Nina Totenberg commented that “in a voting case, Chief Justice Roberts assuredly would have played a pivotal role.” Roberts has been deeply involved in voting rights cases dating to 1982, when as a staffer to Ronald Reagan, he worked (unsuccessfully) to narrow the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Later, as Chief Justice, he succeeded in gutting provisions of the law. Regarding the Wisconsin case, she observed:

So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, called the language “callous,” “cynical” and “unfortunate.”

4. The Grim Reaper aka the Majority Leader of the United States Senate

Mitch McConnell was on conservative talk radio last week. He made news by suggesting that he thought, rather than provide funding for states facing unprecedented financial burdens fighting the coronavirus, that he would prefer to see the states declare bankruptcy.

I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available. My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.

And:

“I said yesterday we’re going to push the pause button here, because I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments needs to be thoroughly evaluated. You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done to themselves with their pension programs. There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.” 

In a press release, McConnell highlighted his comments about state bankruptcy with the heading, “On Stopping Blue State Bailouts.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo responded:

Let me go back to my self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, Senator McConnell for another second. He represents the State of Kentucky, okay? When it comes to fairness, New York State puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out, okay. At the end of the year, we put in $116 billion more than we take out, okay? His state, the State of Kentucky, takes out 148 billion more than they put in, okay.

… Senator McConnell, who is getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out, not my state.

Cuomo also took McConnell to task for the rawest kind of partisanship.

Don’t help New York State because it is a Democratic state. How ugly a thought. I mean just think of – just think of what he’s saying. People died: 15,000 people died in New York. But they were predominantly Democrats, so why should we help them? I mean, for crying out loud, if there was ever a time for you to put aside, for you to put aside your pettiness and your partisanship and this political lens that you see the world through — Democrat or Republican, and we help Republicans but we don’t help Democrats — that’s not who we are. That’s just now who we are as a people. I mean, if there’s ever a time for humanity and decency, now is the time.

As I have observed repeatedly in this blog, Mitch McConnell’s M.O. is to exacerbate partisanship at every opportunity. Humanity? Decency? Not among McConnell’s priorities.

I learned from David Frum that Republican proposals to encourage state bankruptcies date back more than a decade. The idea, which Frum sketches, is this: rich blue states impose higher taxes, and spend more on social programs (including, incidentally, generous public employee pensions), than Republicans like. Yet many wealthy Republicans – the GOP donor class – live in blue states. Moreover, Mitch McConnell’s biggest donors are not from Kentucky: they too live, work, and pay taxes in blue states. If Congress (when Republicans are in charge), and the federal courts (which are being stacked with right wing ideologues), could impose a bankruptcy process on the blue states, then those rich Republicans living in California, New York, and other wealth-generating states where Democrats reliably get elected, could see their taxes go down.

And if that meant that public employee pensions could be gutted, then Republicans would be smiting the most well-organized Democratic constituency – public employee unions – in the country.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s comments (characterizing McConnell’s suggestion as “one of the saddest, really dumb ideas of all time”), asserted that state bankruptcies would wreak havoc on markets worldwide, wrecking the economy. Actually not (as Frum explains): Republican proposals to permit state bankruptcies would ensure that big money interests get paid; it’s the labor unions that would lose. And Democrats.

Frum observes:

A federal bankruptcy process for state finances could thus enable wealthy individuals and interest groups in rich states to leverage their clout in the anti-majoritarian federal system to reverse political defeats in the more majoritarian political systems of big, rich states like California, New York, and Illinois.

In other words, in a country where more than half the population only elects 18 of 100 Senators; where the Electoral College reflects this disparity; and where boundaries for Congressional Districts (because of demographics related to cities and state of the art gerrymandering) make Democratic votes less potent than Republican votes, Democratic majorities may still rule within the states. But If Republicans in Washington could change federal law (and shape federal court rulings) as proposed, then a national minority could crush majorities within the big blue states. California, New York, Illinois, and others would cease to enjoy majority rule.

Yet another Republican plan for extinguishing responsive democratic government. Here’s hoping Mitch McConnell is deposed as Majority Leader after November 3.

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

If only the women running for the Democratic nomination were more likable

“A gentle warning to Democrats who are newly awakened to the prospect of Amy Klobuchar:

Remember that right now you like her. . . .

A woman but not, you know, the Elizabeth Warren kind of woman everyone had decided they didn’t like or couldn’t win. . . An electable woman. Acceptable to the assorted Biden castoffs and Buttigieg skeptics. . . .” — Monica Hesse (“You like Amy Klobuchar now? Remember that when your inner sexist starts doubting her,” WaPo, February 13, 2020).

As Hesse reminds us, Hillary Clinton had a 65% approval rating as Secretary of State, while Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand made strong positive first impressions when they declared their candidacies — until doubts about how likable (or, in some way or another, how presidential) they were overtook them.

In a November 2019 post, I noted that Elizabeth Warren was being transformed from a “cheerful, exuberant, uber-competent woman who simply gets things done and makes everyone feel included and proud” — à la Mary Poppins — into another unlikable Democratic woman.

I’m still with Ed Kilgore: C’mon, Democrats, don’t buy into Trump’s misogyny. Women serving in the House, the Senate, as governors and state legislators, and in local offices all the way down the electoral ladder are highly successful.

There is a long list of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016: Vladimir Putin; Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer, and Clinton Cash; James Comey; complacency; her campaign’s neglect of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin … I could go on and on, and never mention sexism.

But after 2016, Democrats are spooked. They are second-guessing their own judgment — er, um, the judgment of other voters — on who is best qualified to beat Trump. Gotta make a safe choice, right?

Wouldn’t it be great to elect a woman, though? Kilgore quotes Li Zhou, who makes the case that the prospect of electing women creates added excitement among Democratic voters. Remember 2018 when Democrats, and a record number of women candidates, took back the House?

After November 2016, and the Mueller Report, and the Senate acquittal of Trump, and the week since the acquittal, fear is gripping Democrats by the throat.

Better — in my view — to act with clarity and confidence of what matters to Democrats, of what we stand for, of the vision and priorities that distinguish us from Republicans, than to succumb to fear and a thousand doubts about electability.

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.

Democrats, Donald Trump, Republicans, Tribalism

Gender and religion – the People’s House takes a couple of strides toward better representing Americans


After the overwhelming Democratic victory for the control of the House of Representatives – Democrats won by nearly 10 million votes nationally, which was the greatest popular vote margin in U.S. history – a highly diverse Congress convened yesterday. It doesn’t look quite like America – but it’s closer than ever before.

A woman became Speaker of the House for only the second time; Nancy Pelosi, who made history the first time, made history again. More women – 102 – will serve in the 116th Congress than in any previous House. (And consider this contrast: in 1989 there were 16 Democratic women and 13 Republican women in Congress. In 2019, there are 89 Democratic women and 13 Republican women in Congress.)

Two Native American women will serve in this Congress. And, heralding greater religious diversity, two Muslim women (a Somali-American and a Palestinian) will serve.

A PEW survey notes that even with the new members, Congress still doesn’t accurately represent Americans’ religious preferences and ‘by far the largest difference between the U.S. public and Congress is in the share who are unaffiliated with a religious group. In the general public, 23% say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In Congress, just one person – Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who was recently elected to the Senate after three terms in the House – says she is religiously unaffiliated, making the share of “nones” in Congress 0.2%.’

Ed Kilgore notes that the two parties present a stark contrast regarding religious diversity: “With the exception of the two Jewish Republicans in the House, all of Congress’s non-Christians and religiously unspecified members are Democrats. Professed Christians are over-represented in both parties’ congressional ranks…”

Meanwhile, evangelical Christians continue to be the most devoted, unwavering supporters of one Donald J. Trump, a man (in Michael Gerson’s words) “prone to cruelty, bigotry, vanity, adultery and serial deception.” Gerson, who embraces a never-Trump conservatism, notes in an op-ed in this morning’s newspaper – borrowing a phrase from Ronald Brownstein – the “hardening loyalty” of evangelicals to Trump.

Gerson suggests that something other than fidelity to the Gospel lies behind this support:

Trump has understood something about evangelical Christians that many are unable to articulate themselves. White, theologically conservative Protestants were once — not that long ago — a culturally predominant force. Many of their convictions — on matters such as sexuality and public religiosity — were also the default settings of the broader society. But that changed in a series of cultural tidal waves — the Darwinist account of human origins, the application of higher criticism to the text of the Bible, the sexual revolution — which swept away old certainties.

Americans, in an increasingly diverse country, have reason to celebrate more diverse representation at the national level. Democrats are at the forefront of the changes taking place. Make no mistake: Trump and Republicans, 89% of whom approve of the job he is doing in the latest Gallup Poll (December 17-22), view diversity as a threat. Identity politics, tribalism, and cultural anxiety have swamped faith, hope, and charity in this group.

(Photograph is MSNBC screengrab of Kyrsten Sinema, a departing member of the House just elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona, taking the oath of office with her hand on a law book, which contained the Constitution of the United States, rather than a religious text.)