Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren

2020 Democratic Primary, Democracy

Elizabeth Warren bows out, Joe Biden soars to the lead – How did we get here?

Regarding Warren:

There are many reasons why she failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. But don’t kid yourself: Being a woman is one of them. – Francis Wilkinson

People always say …

Well, It’s not the right woman. Well, who’s going to be the right woman? Look at us, we’re as diverse as you can get, we’re all different shapes, sizes, colors. So which one of us is the right woman? – Pennsylvania Congresswoman Susan Wild

She was doing so well for a time.

For a while, it seemed like she had a good shot, but then as voting approached, she didn’t. Spooked voters blamed “the country,” as if they themselves didn’t populate the country. I’m ready for a female president, but the country isn’t. And then they voted for a man they could tolerate instead of the woman they loved.– Monica Hesse 

Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, her defeat diminished the prospects of a woman winning the Democratic nomination in 2020. The safer choice turned out to be an old white guy whose “policies, such as they are, are milquetoast appeals to moderation in the face of impending catastrophe — vows to compromise on legislation with Republicans, despite their demonstrated commitment to steamrolling democracy in the interest of partisan advantage; refusals to fight for free health care for all in the name of preserving private insurance, despite the rampant horror stories of insulin rationing and deferred emergency-room visits that prevail among the tens of millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans,” in the words of Zak Cheney-Rice, who continues:

But where his policies underwhelm — and, indeed, most voters would be hard-pressed to name a single one — his campaign has found incredible success drawing on voters’ emotional attachment to what they think he represents: a return to the sociopolitical norms that were so rudely disrupted by Trump’s election.

Black voters in South Carolina are credited with giving Joe Biden the boost he needed to overtake Bernie Sanders in the race for the nomination.

Mara Gay laments Elizabeth Warren’s withdrawal from the race: “Looking at this as an American woman, and thinking to yourself, Elizabeth Warren was the most qualified, in many ways, … most experienced candidate in the race. She had the best ideas … and she really did her homework. And I think there is a sense among a lot of women that you have to be twice as good – and even then it’s not enough. And I think that’s what happened tonight.”

“But,” Gay adds, “there is a larger context here.”

I just got back from a trip across the South … And the reality is that Senator Warren was running in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s loss. And voters – Democratic voters, especially black Democrats in the South who really spoke up forcefully in favor of Joe Biden – they are so desperate and so intent on beating Donald Trump that they are looking for the least risk imaginable.

I had voter after voter tell me, ‘You know, we really like Elizabeth Warren, but we don’t know if our neighbors were going to vote for a woman.’ . . .

‘We look at what happened to Hillary and we think maybe it’s too risky.’ . . .

They know Joe Biden. So he may not be Barack Obama and as inspiring, but he’s somebody who they believe is the best bet to get Donald Trump out of the White House.

In a column earlier this week, Gay offered additional context, illustrating the depth of southern black voters’ concerns:

Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow.

For those who lived through the trauma of racial terrorism and segregation, or grew up in its long shadow, this history haunts the campaign trail. And Mr. Trump has summoned old ghosts.

“People are prideful of being racist again,” said Bobby Caradine, 47, who is black and has lived in Memphis all his life. “It’s right back out in the open.”

Cheney-Rice represents a younger generation, which has no memories of Jim Crow, and a different worldview than Congressman Jim Clyburn, born in Sumter, South Carolina before the U.S. entry into World War II. Moreover, many of us view the governing norms that, in Cheney-Rice’s dismissive words, Trump “so rudely disrupted,” as fundamental to a healthy democracy.

If searing memories of a brutal, vicious past moved South Carolina voters, many Democrats — white, black, Northern, Southern, from East to West — have embraced the principle that this isn’t the year to take big risks.

Why Biden? Why late February 2020? Kevin Drum has a chart (actually two): Biden started to surge on February 22 (two days after the Las Vegas debate and four days before the Clyburn endorsement).

So what happened on or around February 21? The only thing that stands out is the Las Vegas debate, which took place on the evening of February 19. The consensus for this debate was that Elizabeth Warren left Mike Bloomberg bleeding on the floor, but that no one else especially distinguished themselves. I just reread the New York Times summary of the debate, and it barely even mentions Biden except to note that he joined Warren in attacking Bloomberg.

So there’s something peculiar here. The conventional wisdom says that Clyburn’s endorsement powered Biden to a big win in South Carolina, and the big win in South Carolina powered Biden to victory on Super Tuesday. But Clyburn endorsed after Biden had started surging. Something else must have started the Biden surge, but the Las Vegas debate sure doesn’t seem like it was a turning point either.

Though Drum expresses puzzlement, I think he has pinpointed the key event: the debate – and the news coverage that followed over the next few days. The big story, as he notes, was Warren’s takedown of Bloomberg. And that’s – as I suggested in the last sentence of a previous post – a key to Biden’s rise. This isn’t at all peculiar.

Bernie Sanders was ascendant. Many Democrats (even on the left) were convinced that a Sanders nomination posed significant risks for the party in November. The former VP — hogging the moderate lane — appeared shaky throughout the nomination process. Other less risky choices had fallen by the wayside.

The results of the Nevada caucuses on February 22 — the beginning of Biden’s rise in Drum’s chart — would prove that neither Buttigieg, nor Klobuchar could go the distance (a result that the press had anticipated). And Warren (et al.) had already faltered.

But Bloomberg — following a half billion dollar+ campaign, including scads of slickly produced TV ads — had secured many Democratic endorsements and had steadily risen in the polls. He was waiting in the wings, ready to step up on Super Tuesday to rescue the party and the country. His fortunes changed, however, when Warren eviscerated him on stage.

No one else was left standing at that point — except Joe Biden. What exquisite timing.

(Image: WaPo on YouTube.)

2020 Democratic Primary

Democrats seek a nominee to take on Trump: thoughts on the state of the race

Bernie Sanders romped in Nevada. Some observations on the contest:

Bernie Sanders

I see no reason to reject the conventional wisdom that Bernie Sanders is the clear frontrunner, with ample resources to compete on Super Tuesday and no rivals well positioned at this stage to overtake him. Absent Biden (or another rival) achieving a lopsided takedown of Sanders in South Carolina, this is unlikely to change.

Sanders’ success, thus far, proves the adage that practice makes perfect. He did this in 2016. He has built an ardent following, a formidable campaign organization, an impressive online donor base, and – even with an intervening heart attack – he has hardly missed a beat in the 2020 race.

“I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”

This is a central theme, not always articulated so plainly, of the Sanders campaign. The theme rubs many grassroots voters (including this blogger) – who embrace the Democratic Party and have more faith in Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and other establishment Democrats (even James Carville), than we have in the junior senator from Vermont – the wrong way. But if Sanders wins the nomination, and if Democrats are prepared to rally ’round their nominee (as I am), this stance is likely to serve him well.

Joe Biden

He wasn’t impressive in his first two runs for the Democratic nomination. He clearly has lost more than a step or two at age 77. I didn’t buy the “Comeback Kid” shout on the night of the Nevada caucuses. Biden had better hope for an impressive performance in South Carolina or his political swan song will be that he smothered the prospects of several 2020 primary competitors positioned ideologically near him, who might have been stronger presences on the debate stage and the campaign trail than the former VP has been.

Pete Buttigieg

The former mayor of South Bend (along with numerous Republican candidates) has started running TV ads that go after Sanders by name. More emphasis on term limits and bashing (with Bernie!) the Washington establishment won’t win the day, so it’s time to go negative. Unless Buttigieg wins or finishes a strong second in South Carolina, it’s hard to envisage him with much chance of catching Sanders at this stage.

Mike Bloomberg

“He has now spent more than half a billion dollars since late November, propelling a rapid ascent in the polls.” Wow.

Mark Green relates his experience running against Bloomberg:

Three weeks before the New York mayoral election in November of 2001, I got a call from Mark Mellman, the pollster working on my race against Michael Bloomberg.

“Well, I have good and bad news. The good news is that I’ve never had a client 20 points ahead this late in a campaign who lost. The bad news is that Bloomberg is spending a million dollars a day — not a month but a day — and gaining a point a day.” I quickly did the math and shuddered.

Green lost 50% to 48%.

I’m skeptical that even with his billions, Bloomberg can secure the 2020 nomination from Democratic voters. But his immense stash is hard to contemplate. Will unlimited resources enable the mayor to block Sanders’ rise? Will ‘centrist’ establishment Democrats move to the billionaire’s corner and bring voters with them? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.

Elizabeth Warren

With all her assets, my favorite candidate to take on Trump has been overtaken by others in the field. Amy Klobuchar has experienced a similar fate.

Not the year of the woman – at least not at the top of the ticket

Which brings me, as someone convinced that a woman could beat Trump in November, to a galling (albeit unprovable) conclusion. Democrats were snake bitten by Clinton’s crash in 2016. To the extent that Warren’s gender has harmed her in the primary, this can be laid at the feet of Democratic voters – spooked by Trump – fearful of misogyny, sexism, and intractable gendered traditionalism among the broader electorate – other voters – who might consider voting for a Democrat with a Y chromosome. If you’re convinced that the strongest candidate happens to be female, you must agree (as Jimmy Carter reminded us), life is not fair.

Democrats in disarray

Edward-Isaac Dovere, writing in the Atlantic, suggests that the Democratic establishment is desperate to stop Sanders, though he found few folks, apparently, saying so aloud. He quotes a vice president at Third Way, which opposes a Sanders nomination, and a lieutenant governor of California (who few Californians could name), who supports Buttigieg, plus someone at Emily’s List, which continues to support Warren and Klobuchar, the women still in the race. This is pretty weak tea. I guess most of the heavy hitters are in hiding.

Dovere writes, “This summer, party leaders may be forced to accept the nomination of a man who’s not officially a member of the party, who won’t have won a majority of primary voters, and whose agenda is popular with his progressive base but doesn’t have as much support with Democrats as a whole.” The link is to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey showing that 77% of Democrats support Sanders’ signature issue, Medicare for All. Yes, the public option is even more popular and support for Medicare for All diminishes when realistic details are added to the question, but – like Obamacare and the individual mandate – that’s the nature of public policy and public opinion.

Let’s acknowledge: democratic socialism and revolution aren’t popular Democratic campaign themes. But Sanders – in contrast to Hillary Clinton in 2016 – has a compelling economic message that resonates with many voters, especially younger voters who have reason to believe that the system hasn’t worked well for them.

The Democratic Party didn’t have to allow Sanders to enter the Democratic primary in 2016. The man is a free agent with virtually no loyalty to the party. But it did so. I welcomed Sanders’ challenge at the time (though I never entertained the idea of voting for him) because I thought he would make Clinton a stronger candidate and, in particular, to prompt her to sharpen her economic message to middle- and working-class Americans.

In retrospect, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t think her campaign learned a thing from Sanders’ challenge. And, I suspect that a comfortable life with Bill Clinton, who has cashed in as a past president and advanced into the ranks of the one-percent, made it tough for Hillary to recognize the measure of economic angst and anger directed toward the one-percenters who crashed the economy, escaped justice, and continue to thrive.

Sanders – although he is a millionaire with three houses – is speaking to those voters.

Can Democrats unify to beat Trump?

Defeating a president presiding over a continuing economic expansion won’t be easy. Sanders continues to poll well against Trump, but it’s early. I’m convinced that Sanders wouldn’t be the strongest possible contender this fall. But in a base election, I believe any Democratic nominee stands a fighting chance. The country is split down the middle. Democrats are highly motivated to end Trump’s reign.

Will Sanders at the top of the ticket harm the prospects of Democrats taking back the Senate? Probably. He will almost certainly make life more difficult for many down-ballot Democrats. So it is up to the party and the candidate to do their best to overcome this disadvantage.

Sanders has been – as Matt Yglesias has argued – an effective legislator, “dramatically more pragmatic than his record,” not a kook. One hopes, if he wins the nomination, he runs a savvy, pragmatic general election campaign. With Sanders at the top of the ticket, the Democrats will have a strong case to make for creating an economy that works for everyone, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senate and House candidates can run away from Sanders (as many ran away from Nancy Pelosi in 2018) if they must. They can embrace the strongest elements of his agenda, a Democratic agenda, while promising that they’ll never vote to take away employer-based health care. And note that the leadership of the Culinary Workers Union, which brought its members a superb health care plan – offering 24-hour clinics with no deductibles and modest co-pays, coverage for dental care, eye care, and prescription drugs, while pushing out middlemen and profit centers – opposed Sanders in Nevada. Much of the membership disagreed.

Sanders put together a diverse winning coalition in Nevada. If he can keep this up, he will be the Democrat nominee.

(Image of Sunday, February 23, 2020 Los Angeles Times with Mike Bloomberg front-page wraparound ad.)

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.

Democracy, Income Inequality

George Will, trolling Elizabeth Warren, asks the wrong question about billionaires

“Warren, whose profile in courage is to foment hostility toward a small minority (“billionaires”), should try an experiment — not at her rallies of the resentful, but with an audience of representative Americans. Ask how many in the audience own an Apple product? The overwhelming majority will raise their hands. Then ask: How many resent the fact that Steve Jobs, Apple’s innovator, died a billionaire? Few hands will be raised.” — George Will, “Elizabeth Warren is progressivissm’s Donald Trump”

He adds this for good measure:

Warren’s dependence on a wealth tax announces progressivism’s failure of nerve, its unwillingness to require anyone other than a tiny crumb of society’s upper crust to pay significantly for the cornucopia of benefits that she clearly thinks everyone wants — but only if someone else pays for them.

On the same morning Will’s wisdom about taxation, billionaires, and Americans with iPhones and other Apple merchandise appeared, a SurveyMonkey poll in the New York Times revealed the measure of popular support for Senator Warren’s proposed two percent tax on individual wealth above $50 million.

Sixty-three percent of Americans support this wealth tax; 77% of Democrats; 55% of Independents; and 57% of Republicans.

That’s right, even a clear majority of Republicans are in favor of imposing a 2 percent tax on this “tiny crumb of society’s upper crust.”

The Times reports: “Support for a wealth tax cuts across many of the demographic dividing lines in American politics. Men and women like it. So do the young and the old. The proposal receives majority support among every major racial, educational and income group.”

The survey found a single group that opposes this plan: College-educated Republican men, only 41.5% of whom endorse the proposed wealth tax.

Will’s reference to the popularity of stuff made by Apple is confirmed by the link he offers, which reports, “Sixty-four percent of Americans now own an apple product,” — virtually the same percentage that support a 2-cents on the dollar tax on assets over $50 million.

While George Will is focused on hostility and resentment and hand-wringing over the oppressed minority of the rich, Americans — including those of us (like Elizabeth Warren) with ample appreciation for the benefits of a competitive market economy — believe in the fairness of progressive taxation, just as the U.S. had back in the 1950s and 1960s, when everyone received a more equitable share of the nation’s wealth.

2020 Democratic Primary

Irony watch: Has ‘Mary Poppins’ morphed into another … unlikable Democratic woman?

My last post included this quotation on Elizabeth Warren’s attempt to distinguish herself from the last Democratic woman to seek the presidency: ‘Instead of the aloof insider-technocrat, she is promoting herself as a kind of “Mary Poppins” figure — the cheerful, exuberant, uber-competent woman who simply gets things done and makes everyone feel included and proud.’

It turns out that a couple of the men — Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg — seeking the Democratic nomination have discovered that Senator Warren, like Hillary Clinton before her, lacks the proper presidential demeanor:

Buttigieg laid the groundwork by criticizing Warren’s “my way or the highway approach” and suggesting recently that she is “so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose.” Biden, launching a range of new attacks on Warren, said this week that she reflects “an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics.”

This tact is depressingly effective in contemporary politics:

“Labeling a woman angry, or emotional or shrill, is a well-worn strategy when it comes to attacking women’s qualification to serve an office,” said Amanda Hunter, a spokeswoman for the Barbara Lee Foundation, which conducts research on women seeking elected office.

Those attacks, she said, can be effective because they sow doubt in the person and make them less likable.

“Voters will not support a woman they do not like even if they believe she’s qualified,” she said, citing extensive research. “But they will vote for a man they do not like.”

Anyone who has watched Warren on the campaign trail can see how ill-fitting this critique of her is: “Warren bounds onto the stage…. The affect is upbeat, barely contained energy.” But, in my view, Biden’s recurring promise to restore comity in Washington is even more off the mark.

“With Donald Trump out of the way, you’re going to see a number of my Republican colleagues have an epiphany. Mark my words. Mark my words.”

Barack Obama offered this exact critique circa 2012: “I believe that If we’re successful in this election, when we’re successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”

Didn’t happen. And Biden should know better, since he experienced the absolute Republican intransigence from the beginning:

Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said. The Vice President said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.

“So I promise you — and the President agreed with me — I never thought we were going to get Republican support,” Biden said.

The Veep has apparently forgotten what the country experienced during eight years of the Obama presidency. And if he wants to preserve his self-christened “middle class Joe” credentials — though that has become more of a stretch — he may wish to embrace a more unyielding approach.

It’s going to take a fight to undo decades that created the chasm between the middle class and the super rich. Republicans (who have fought tenaciously to create this dichotomy) won’t be helping just because likeable Joe Biden wins an election.

(Image: Senator Warren’s official portrait.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Polls

Would Elizabeth Warren lead Democrats to victory or spoil their prospects in 2020?

“Tall and wiry, Warren visibly thrums with good cheer. She’s got that kind of pert friendliness stretched taut around a core of steel that some foreigners find confusing in certain willful Americans. But in Warren, both the chipper facade and the steel guts feel genuine: She is a very nice lady who will put up with exactly zero bullcrap.” —  Julia Ioffe, “The Summer of Warren.”

Five months ago, Markos Moulitsas approvingly quoted a Daily Kos reader, Fatherflot, who described Elizabeth Warren’s attempt to distinguish herself from Hillary Clinton with this observation:

Instead of the aloof insider-technocrat, she is promoting herself as a kind of “Mary Poppins” figure — the cheerful, exuberant, uber-competent woman who simply gets things done and makes everyone feel included and proud.

Sounds good to me, but then I fit the demographic profile of a Warren supporter. College educated white liberal who lives in solid blue California. My first vote for president was for George McGovern. I am a Democrat first and foremost because of my conviction that the economy should not be stacked against middle- and working-class Americans.

Warren is my first choice for president. But should I be scared away? As Warren’s polling numbers increase, a number of Wall Street executives are in near-panic because she might win the presidency (“From corporate boardrooms to breakfast meetings, investor conferences to charity galas, Ms. Warren’s rise in the Democratic primary polls is rattling bankers, investors and their affluent clients, who see in the Massachusetts senator a formidable opponent who could damage not only their industry but their way of life.”), while Democrats are voicing alarm that she is taking stands, most especially her uncompromising embrace of Medicare for All, that could ensure her defeat. Jonathan Chait is typical of this group of Democrats: “If Warren wants to beat Trump, she needs to ditch Bernie’s health-care plan and come up with one that doesn’t have political poison pills.” (Chait’s observation came before Warren doubled down with her written plan to pay for Medicare for All.)

Recent polling serves to increase Democratic anxieties. Medicare for All is popular among Democratic activists; it is unpopular among registered voters. (I have opposed Medicare for All on both policy and political grounds – at least in the foreseeable future.)

Chart from Thomas Edsall, “Democrats Can Still Seize the Center.” Numbers from Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, “U.S. Voters Support Expanding Medicare but Not Eliminating Private Health Insurance.”

In recent polling, among Democratic voters, 63% supported Medicare for All. Among all registered voters, 56% opposed it.

Warren is a persuasive advocate – in a classroom or before a live audience in Iowa. (The house lights are on when she speaks: “I don’t want to be in a theater where I’m on stage and the audience is in the dark. This is not a performance, this is a chance to engage, for all of us in the room to think about what’s happening to our country, to our lives, and I need to see faces when I’m talking through that.”) But as the campaign transitions from retail to wholesale, and the Republican noise machine trains its focus on the one Democrat left standing, Medicare for All is going to be a very hard sell (and Warren seems to be digging in, rather than anticipating a pivot during the general election).

And then there’s this:

From Nate Cohn, New York Times.

There is a full year before Election Day, and a lot can change. Ms. Warren is an energetic campaigner. She could moderate her image or energize young and nonwhite voters, including the millions who might not yet even be included in a poll of today’s registered voters. Mr. Biden could lose the relatively conservative voters who currently back him; the president could be dealt irreparable political damage during the impeachment process.

But on average over the last three cycles, head-to-head polls a year ahead of the election have been as close to the final result as those taken the day before. The stability of the president’s approval rating is a reason to think this pattern might hold again for a fourth cycle, at least for the three leading and already well-known Democrats tested in these polls.

What Democrats make of this picture is undoubtedly in the eye of the beholder. As I think of Joe Biden’s performance to date, his marginal polling advantage a year out doesn’t make me more likely to support him in the primary. I’d rather put my faith in Elizabeth Warren’s skill at communicating with conviction a message for working Americans.

Jonathan Chait, who is clearly worried about Warren, nonetheless acknowledges her skill set: “She is a compelling orator with a sympathetic life story and a gift for explaining complex ideas in simple terms. Yet she has spent most of the last year positioning herself as if the general election will never happen. At the moment, I’d feel very nervous betting the future of American democracy on Warren’s ability to defeat Trump. But a lot can change in a year, and it’s not hard to imagine the Warren of 2020 as a potent challenger.”

I’m not one to panic. But I certainly recall the jolt of Trump’s victory. The week before election day in 2016, I was reassuring my friends that Hillary Clinton would win by sending them this confident tweet from David Plouffe:

“Clinton path to 300+ rock solid. Structure of race not affected by Comey’s reckless irresponsibility. Vote and volunteer, don’t fret or wet.” — 11:05 am – 30 October 2016

I wasn’t a worrier – not until about the time the polls were closing in California (when I first tuned-in to TV coverage). There had been too many reassurances from Plouffe (and many others) throughout the months preceding that tweet. I’m part of the reality-based community. I was too well-informed to fret or wet.

I’m still not a worrier. I have no trouble envisaging a Democratic victory – 12 months hence – no matter who is nominated. Time will tell.

In the meantime, as a Californian, it doesn’t much matter what I think. Not yet. In 2020, as in so many previous elections, caucus goers in Iowa and primary voters in New Hampshire are going to shape or reshape the race. I was on board with Obama and Clinton before Iowa in 2008 and 2016, respectively. In the years before that, I was as often annoyed, rather than pleased by the choices of Democrats in those early states.

For now, I can only wait and watch.

(Image by Mary Shepard circa 1934.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Disconcerting, dispiriting, and scary quotations and headlines of the day

▪ “The country is entering a new and precarious phase, in which the central question about President Donald Trump is not whether he is coming unstrung, but rather just how unstrung he is going to get.” — Peter Nicholas, “The Unraveling of Donald Trump: As the impeachment inquiry intensifies, some associates of the president predict that his already erratic behavior is going to get worse.”

▪ We’re in an astonishing situation. Mr. Trump seems to have single-handedly and unilaterally precipitated a national security crisis in the middle east.

You know, at the end of the day, he green-lighted the Turkish invasion. The five-day pause is probably a good thing. Maybe it will reduce the number of people murdered by Arab militias that are following the Turkish army. Give the Kurds time to run for their lives. Where they’re supposed to go is beyond me. 

But, you know, the instant take on this is: You allow Assad to reenter the Kurdish areas. You allow Iranian dominance in the region. And you let the Russian military occupy abandoned, hastily abandoned U.S. military outposts. It’s an astonishing outcome. What did Mr. Trump think he was getting out of all this? — General Barry McCaffrey, retired — “Gen. Barry McCaffrey blasts Trump’s ‘inexplicable’ policy in Syria.”

▪ Trump has publicly sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence in dismissing the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and suggested this year it would be “appropriate” for Russia to rejoin the Group of Seven richest countries — reversing the 2014 expulsion after Russia invaded Ukraine.

No Trump foreign policy move, however, has redounded so directly to Russia’s benefit as the Syrian pullout, with the Kurdish forces striking a deal with Russia. — Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim, “‘All roads lead to Putin’: Pelosi questions Trump’s loyalty in White House clash.”

▪ At one point during one of his most unpresidential of days, President Trump insisted that he knew how to be presidential.

“It’s much easier being presidential, it’s easy,” he told a stadium full of more than 20,000 boisterous supporters in MAGA hats and T-shirts cheering his every word on Thursday night. “All you have to do is act like a stiff.”

He buttoned his suit coat, pursed his lips, squared his shoulders and dropped his arms rigidly at his sides. “Ladies and gentlemen of Texas,” he then droned in a sleep-inducing staccato monotone the way he imagined most of the other 44 presidents had done. “It is a great honor to be with you this evening.”

The crowd loved it, roaring with laughter. Transforming back into the unpresidential president America has come to know, Mr. Trump added, “And everybody would be out of here so fast! You wouldn’t come in in the first place!” Being presidential, he was saying, is so boring. Who wants that? — Peter Baker, “On Day 1001, Trump Made It Clear: Being ‘Presidential’ is Boring.”

▪ “This is unquestionably the most outstanding nomination that I’ve ever recommended to Presidents to serve on the bench in Kentucky,” Mitch McConnell tweeted in July, when Walker’s name first came up. However, the Senate Majority Leader made his endorsement to the detriment of the nonpartisan American Bar Association, which gave Walker a rare “not qualified rating.” The ABA suggests that “a nominee to the federal bench ordinarily should have at least 12 years’ experience in the practice of law” — not zero cases in court under their belt. In addition, Paul T. Moxley, chair of the ABA committee on the federal judiciary, issued the closest thing to an I Don’t Know Her that a lawyer can physically emit: “Based on review of his biographical information and conversations with Mr. Walker, it was challenging to determine how much of his ten years since graduation from law school has been spent in the practice of law. — Matt Steib, “As Trump Fumes, GOP Advances Real Party Goal of Making the Federal Judiciary Great Again.”

▪ “I don’t believe I’m leading a wing of the party. Because there’s no wing that’s very large that is aligned with me.” — Senator Mitt Romney, “Mitt Romney Marches Alone: ‘I don’t believe I’m leading a wing of the party.’“

▪ And, yes, among the unsettling items in today’s news, is one about the Democrats:

Democrats aren’t comfortable with the brutal language of unvarnished national interest. They aren’t comfortable acknowledging tragic tradeoffs between the welfare of ordinary Americans and the welfare of vulnerable people overseas. Donald Trump is. He genuinely doesn’t care what happens to the Kurds or the Afghans—or any other group of people who can’t offer him votes or money or project his image onto the side of a luxury hotel. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden do care, which is why they found it so easy to offer ferocious moral denunciations of Trump’s Syria policy at this week’s debate. They just don’t care enough to ask Americans to sacrifice to reduce the chances that Syria’s horrors repeat themselves in Afghanistan. — Peter Beinart, “Democrats are Hypocrites for Condemning Trump Over Syria: Presidential hopefuls blasted Trump for abandoning the Kurds — but want the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan under similar conditions.“

2020 Democratic Primary

Campaign event as theatrical performance – Elizabeth Warren wins critical plaudits

Peter Marks, theater critic for the Washington Post, is doing a series “applying a theater critic’s eye to the performative skills of the presidential candidates.”

Yesterday he critiqued Elizabeth Warren:

“Warren bounds onto the stage…. The affect is upbeat, barely contained energy. She just can’t wait to tell you stuff…. It’s almost as if you were attending a one woman Broadway play. She’s as agile as many physical comedians. She uses her hands gracefully driving home points with precise fluid gestures. In her native Oklahoma twang she can speak for 30 minutes or longer without notes or ums or ers. And her presentation, even her humor, tells a story that skillfully integrates her own biography with a political philosophy. A philosophy that she is able to boil down to what sounds like everyday common sense.”

[Editor’s notes: 1. This is the third in a series. I hadn’t checked out the first, on Kamala Harris, or the second, on Joe Biden, but — full disclosure — I’m an Elizabeth Warren fan and I enjoyed the video the Washington Post produced for the series.

2. I’ve linked to Marks’ videos, not his written reviews. (The quote above is my transcription from the Warren video.)

3. I wondered how Donald Trump might respond to reports of Warren as rock star, delivering bravura performances before big crowds. This brought to mind an apparently apocryphal story (it was always hard to take literally, though it has had staying power) about the 1950 Florida Democratic primary campaign for the U.S. Senate. At the time Time magazine reported a “yarn” that George Smathers, who went on to defeat incumbent Senator Cluade Pepper, had told campaign crowds:

Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.

So far, in spite of Warren’s command of the stage, no one has alleged that she is an actual thespian.]

(Image from WaPo video on YouTube.)

2020 General Election, Democrats

Trump has spooked Democrats, who fear nominating a women for president

Quote of the day:

“Trump has so thoroughly demoralized Democrats that they are exhibiting sexism in their own political judgments in the guise of ‘electability.'” — Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

Kilgore links to Li Zhou’s attempt (in Vox) to knock down fears (based on Trump’s 2016 election) that voters are not ready to elect a woman president.

Women powered the 2018 midterm victories to take back the House. And, as Zhou observes, most of the seats flipped from Red to Blue were won by women.

Zhou also notes that Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand, have never lost an election. In contrast, Joe Biden — Mr. Electability, a safe white male — (when not on a ticket with Barack Obama) suffered two not-even-close defeats in previous bids for the White House.

Zhou notes the added enthusiasm generated by women and people of color; cites the lack of empirical evidence that a woman can’t win in the Midwest (or elsewhere); and rejects electability as a squishy, untrustworthy guide.

Kilgore concludes:

So if you happen to have two women, one “progressive” and one “moderate,” who can credibly promise a greater 2020 payoff than just ejecting Trump from office, why keep preferring men who appear to live in a different era (Biden) or country (Sanders)? Yes, Trump has gotten deeply into the donkey’s head, and has convinced Democrats that his dark misogynistic soul is America’s. That’s some serious damage.

(Image from Wikipedia, which offers this description: A satirical photo from 1901, with the caption “New Woman—Wash Day”. Shown is a woman wearing knickerbockers and knee socks (traditional male attire) and smoking a cigarette, supervising as a man (who appears to be wearing a dress and an apron) does the laundry with a tub and washboard.)

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.